Amid the mounting fiscal and economic crisis that is threatening to undermine the project of European integration, the Group of Lecce has issued a new statement on the need to reform European economic governance. The Group of Lecce aims to develop policies “to strengthen economic and financial multilateralism”, strengthening the democratic underpinnings of the Union, along with the dynamism of the European economy, through advanced ongoing cooperation.

According to this report: “we do not see any alternative to reinforcing cooperation and to achieving stronger unity across and within the EU, with the very same spirit that has animated in the past all major reforms of the European institutions. Indeed, a major step forward to greater cooperation and unity would make Europe the strong international player that all its national economies need to face the challenges of todayrsquo;s globalised world.”

As today’s more-than-ever integrated Europe faces a crisis of unprecedented proportions, and some in government speak openly of dismantling, at least in part, the common currency or other mechanisms for long-term cooperative integration, the Group of Lecce argues that major structural reforms are needed, to move the Union closer to real, viable, and more agile, policy integration.

The report also concludes that: “We strongly believe that the apparent trade offs between democracy and efficiency, and between solidarity and rigor in managing EU economic policies can be resolved by establishing an adequate system of checks and balances, and by limiting to the extent possible emergency and transitory intergovernmental measures and actions. Severe difficulties seem to lie in the different degrees of integration characterizing the Euro area and the other EU members. A higher economic and fiscal integration is necessary for the European Monetary Union to work effectively…”

• To read the full report, visit ProjectQuipu.net

We need a system of cooperative public-private infrastructure financing, a national infrastructure bank. But we also need to use that fabric of cooperative investment and output to foster specific areas of major improvement to our national economy. The model could be replicated across the world, but the US is uniquely positioned to deploy this solution and to vastly improve its chances of restoring vibrancy to the wider middle class by doing so.

Two parallel projects are necessary to make the infrastructure redevelopment and economic recovery strategy a success:

• a renewable energy infrastructure bank – to help target some of the wider funding options to the project of building a sustainable, smart energy economy, free of the massive externalized costs of carbon-based fuels
• an economic opportunity bank – to aggressively, specifically and persistently direct funds to businesses that are hiring, building capacity at the community level, and restoring real wage gains to the middle class

The first is our topic here: a national renewable energy infrastructure bank. To build such a bank, we would need to first establish how a cooperative public-private infrastructure financing scheme would work. Ideally, it needs to work much like an investment bank, where individual investors see visible gains, but money is kept in the pot for a long enough period of time to produce gain across the full spectrum of investor contributions.

In other words, there has to be commitment to the project, and that shared commitment of resources will yield shared substantial gains to all parties. In the area of clean energy investment, this is possibly much easier than with other types of infrastructure investment, because the industry is entering into a period of massive, and necessary, prolonged expansion. Big investors understand that big investment will help to secure that prolonged expansion.

If Congress acts to incentivize this investment, massive amounts of private-sector capital will flow to clean energy resources. There are three reasons why this will happen:

1. Fossil fuels carry with them massive production costs that have long been externalized; the economy can no longer afford to continue such a strategy.
2. Clean energy technologies offer a major opportunity for prolonged expansion of business value, as information technologies have shown over the last 30 years.
3. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars of private capital sitting on the sidelines, waiting for directional certainty that fossil fuels cannot provide.

So, how to structure such an operation? The renewable energy infrastructure bank would need the following to reach its full potential:

1. A national price signal or clear set of incentives to direct investment to clean energy
2. An investment strategy that looks at best practices, value to community, prospects for building aggregate demand, and structural resiliency
3. A focus on job-creation, skilled retraining, and positive value feedback loops that favor consumers
4. A legislative charter that sets forth priorities favorable to public-sector, private-sector and start-up investors alike
5. A model for redirecting funding when key elements of a project require support or restructuring
6. A focus on rewarding institutions, individuals and investors who do cutting-edge R&D that is practicable, 100% carbon-emissions-free and scalable
7. Short-, medium- and long-term investment strategies for building, optimizing and utilizing the smart grid

Suggestions for deployment:

1. Implement a national carbon fee and dividend policy, to correct market failures in the pricing of carbon, return control of the energy economy to households and incentivize major private capital investment in the rapidly expanding clean tech sector
2. Identify, build or support and expand, focus facilities in cities and regions across the country, to operate as cooperative laboratories of R&D, start-up incubators, and investment engines (examples might be Brooklyn Navy Yard or Philadelphia Navy Yard, or the Fab Labs project)
3. Motivate scalability planning for distributed clean energy production projects, to ensure sustained investment opportunities, and optimized overlap between community-building, job-creation and investment strategies, for higher overall cost efficiency
4. Ensure legal support for avoiding corrosive business models, favoring generative ones, to ensure Investment flows to the new technologies and collaborative strategies that build future prosperity, not to extraction-oriented investments
5. Reward rapid ramping up of high-efficiency clean energy tech, because this will build structural resiliency, favor the highest-value market-healing technologies, and help to revive the middle class

We can begin doing this nationally tomorrow, if:

• We focus first on wind and solar, due to their naturally occurring US domestic supply far outstripping total demand and all possible demand growth
• We commit to decentralizing innovation, influence and income-growth in the energy sector, so community and regional economies are empowered by the transition
• We recognize the need to fully develop leading-edge infrastructure at all levels
• We identify and elevate the pioneers who already know how to motivate and execute this transition
• We charter public-private partnerships to manage investment flows to stakeholder-defined initiatives

The clean energy economy is coming, and to fully enable its expansion, the US needs to flex the muscle necessry to turn the ship of state, to wrest from entrenched industries and financial investment patterns rooted more in extraction than in generative payoff the ability to decide what comes next. There is nothing beyond clean and renewable in terms of energy production and distribution, except the work of achieving the most advanced efficiency gains and making robust power generation an ever more ephemeral affair, at an ever faster rate.

To lead in that new economy, we need to be the first to build its value.

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Originally published October 12, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

The Occupy Wall Street movement—now being called “the American Autumn”, after the Arab Spring, or the September 17th movement, after the day it got started in lower Manhattan—is now completing four weeks on the scene. Yet we can still be astounded to hear so many incredulous “experts” unable to understand how a grassroots movement, infused with the zeitgeist of very problematic times, is working toward anything constructive. What is the meaning of this? Why don’t they have a ready-to-go list of demands? What are they asking us to think?

It’s actually very simple. It’s self-evident, but if you’re at a loss, you can also go to Zuccotti Park, or to any of the Occupy Together protest sites, and just talk to people, and what did not seem evident will rapidly become so. The meaning of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the United States like wildfire is: democracy. The unifying sentiment, which is actively put into practice every day at Occupy encampments, is that citizens have a right to participate. They are building a participatory process to restore the principle of informed citizen participation to our political system and our economy.

Listen to the protesters: “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” This is not pretend protest; this is the message. The message is that people have a right to free assembly, have a right to free expression, have a right to govern their own destiny, have a right to earn a living, to expect that as citizens of a free society, as implicit signatories to the social contract that gives legitimacy to our democracy, they have a right to be treated with dignity.

Above all, they believe it is necessary to restore to prominence the idea that we all have a right to expect that the powers that decide the shape of our everyday existence 1) represent us, and 2) be accountable directly to us, to the people. Participation and transparency are antidotes to the temptations of unfettered power, elite negotiating environments, and deals that ignore the interest of most people and structure outcomes to favor insider interests. Participation and transparency are democracy; their absence is not.

The non-violent citizen-action uprisings that ousted dictators in Tunisia and Egypt early this year inspired a wave of protest across Spain, in which people calling themselves Los Indignados—the indignant—occupied central squares in Madrid, Barcelona and cities across the country, with semipermanent encampments: acampadas. They formed asambleas by topic or task and held asambleas generales to decide the direction of the national movement through direct democracy.

OccupyWallStreet.org describes the American movement as follows:

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a people powered movement for democracy that began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas, we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy … join us!

There is now a nationwide OccupyTogether movement that seeks to coordinate the actions, debates and proposals of protesters across the United States, and across the world. As of today, they have rallies planned for 1,539 cities, large and small.

The global movement inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings has spawned not only the Spanish acampadas and the American Occupy protests, but also the Chilean student uprising, which has shut down much of Chile throughout the southern winter, as students demand wider access to high quality public education.

Some participants have been very vocal that the message should consistently be anti-corruption. And it clearly is. In every sense, the non-violent, sleep-on-the-street, do-for-others, collaborative enterprise that is the Occupy Wall Street movement, has persistently demanded transparency, integrity, corporate social responsibility and accountability. It is very much about transcending what is corrupt in the current system. But it is also about something deeper than that.

Last week, with a large crowd echoing her words in chorus—a practice called “the people’s mic”, done to amplify spontaneously, at the human scale, without electrified amplification—Naomi Klein said the movement was attempting one of the most arduous, improbable and time-consuming tasks: that of “changing the underlying values of our culture”.

There have been crazily tone-deaf responses from some in the political establishment, calling citizens engaging in constitutionally protected non-violent assembly “mobs” and referring to calls for justice, fairness and the restoration of middle class opportunity “class warfare”. What motivates such comment is hard to fathom, though pundits, activists and foreign observers alike seem to think it is simply an unwillingness to see the obvious truth: that the powers that be have forged a dysfunctional and distorted economy that does not benefit most people and does not foster real democratic freedom at the human scale.

The movement has consistently made reference to “the 99 percent“, the vast majority of people not earning 7-figure annual income. The movement seeks to represent the right of that 99 percent of all people to be heard, to have a direct role in helping to fashion the policies that determine what kind of society they and their children and families will inhabit. Messages describing the complaints and motivations of those who want better treatment of the 99 percent are posted at We are the 99 percent.

And they have won support from many of the 1 percent that do benefit from the policies that disadvantage so many. A Tumblr page called We stand with the 99 percent is recording their messages of support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Occupy Wall Street movement seems only to be spreading, gaining support and becoming more organized, because it is focused on restoring a sense of reason and justice to a nation too long forced to accept widening inequality, rigged markets and pervasive corporate tax dodging. The cause is as close to universal as one can get. It is about calling on those with responsibilities to hundreds of millions of people, whose decisions affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, to behave as if that responsibility carried some weight in the calculus of their decisions.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is about people willing to give voice to those without a voice. In the assembly process, people don’t just debate ideas, or choose leaders. They aren’t caucusing for positions, or jockeying for influence. The assemblies allow anyone to speak, and aim for consensus. The consensus building process entails hearing all voices, considering competing ideas, then building coalitions of support in order to achieve real consensus among those in attendance. The plan is direct democracy, plain and simple, but specifically a kind of direct democracy in which no one is marginalized.

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Originally published October 14, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

With gasoline prices at record highs in 2008, 2009 and 2010, 2011 has looked like a microcosm of the longer oil-market trend: consistent increases in pricing, fuel costs hurting small business and the middle class, slowing the pace of economic growth in the US, and—maybe most strangely of all—no national policy to motivate a rapid, comprehensive transition away from fossil fuels and the volatility and cost inefficiency of their products to the wider marketplace. Instead, we have seen a recommitment to ramping up production, expanding drilling and exploration, and prioritizing local importation (from Canada and Mexico), instead of real coordinated policy planning to end dependency on foreign-sourced fuels.

With the oil strain on an already precarious American economy at an historic extreme, Pres. Bush in 2008 pushed Congress to hold an “up-or-down vote” on renewed exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) before its August recess. Opponents protested vocally that none of any oil found there would be available for production for 10 to 15 years, the total amount would do little to ease the overall dependency on foreign-sourced fuels, and that the OCS plan was little more than an aggressive attempt to deliver to hugely profitable oil firms an unjustifiable gift, taking advantage of the pressurized situation of exorbitant prices.

The Energy Information Agency (EIA), evaluating the OCS strategy, found that opening offshore sites in the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico would still not produce enough oil and natural gas to have a significant effect on domestic reserves, even as far out as the year 2030. In July 2008, as the debate raged over drilling, CNN reported that Democratic members of Congress were saying a preliminary investigation was attributing more than 50% of the soaring oil prices to speculation, while traders were saying OPEC had deliberately held production low in order to drive prices up. Dependency on speculation-susceptible foreign-sourced fuels was building unaffordability into the US economy.

So, after three years of prolonged economic malaise, with the energy and fuel sectors continuing to extract massive amounts of wealth from our local and regional economies, transferring economic leverage away from the middle class and spontaneous job creation, we must face the underlying truth: that fossil fuels work on the marketplace in ways that are corrosive to the long-term health and stability of democratic societies conducive to a vibrant middle class. And given the massive negative externalities, which all of us are funding all of the time, and the unaffordability of so much of the stagnant, status-quo industrial economy, we must also face the increasingly clear economic reality that carbon emissions are not just destructive to the health of our natural environment, but that they have real economic costs not directly related to ecosystem resilience, such as human health, and the cost of industrial activity related to clean-up and to the obsolescence of devices running on combustible fuels.

Devoting increasing amounts of our energy economy to combustible fuels at a time when prices are soaring—a periodic reverse trend of a few months of gradually easing prices is not a reversal of the long-term trend—has a multiple-negative economic effect. The key to understanding what is happening, and which looks likely to make recourse to nuclear and carbon-based fuels counterproductive, is to understand that we are no longer living in a traditional industrial energy economy. We are now dealing with the consequences of that economy’s exploration and combustion burden. The “carbon footprint” is not merely an environmental ethics concern, but a serious economic factor potentially mitigating future productivity, or added long-term costs on a scale never before seen.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 Republican nominee for president, proposed building 45 new nuclear plants across the country in order to bring down energy prices overall. The idea was borrowed, to a large extent, from then Vice President Dick Cheney, who had long been close to the nuclear lobby and who included nuclear energy as part of his initial proposals for a new national energy policy. Yet the economic reasoning behind such proposals is dubious: no plants have been built in the US in three decades, and environmental and cost concerns, including pending court rulings, make the strategy unlikely to be implemented.

The state of California—the world’s 5th largest economy—has only two nuclear plants, so the amount of energy sought in producing 45 plants is more than ambitious, especially when compared to the promise of new alternative fuel and energy-production options. That each plant could ulimately cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in construction, maintenance, security, decomissioning, insurance, health and environmental costs, makes the proposition seem like an ill-informed proposed detour into fiscal collapse.

The entire nation has only 104 nuclear reactors, so the commitment to 45 new nuclear power plants—under McCain’s 2008 plan—would be serious, even as new options become available. What’s more, the history of accidents and near accidents is widely unknown among the public. We know the word “Chernobyl”, but most people don’t know that the V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station had four reactors, only one of which exploded in the cataclismic disaster of 1986. The other three reactors were finally shut down only years afterward, in 1991, 1996 and 2000, respectively. And, the Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant, also Europe’s largest, at Zaporizhzhia, has six pressurized light-water reactors.

We saw this spring what kind of unrelenting social, economic and biological catastrophe can result from the failure of multiple reactor cores, containment strategies and engineering and regulatory mechanisms, when Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi complex went into meltdown, after being struck by a tsunami. That crisis has yet to be fully contained, and no government agency in Japan or elsewhere, seems willing to publish definitive statistics detailing the full scale of the radiation released into the air and water. We know that contaminated rain has fallen on the other side of the Pacific Ocean—which covers half the globe—and so the US is living with fallout from the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

We have heard of the serious nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in March 1979, in which partial core meltdown in one reactor led to the release of 43,000 curies of radioactive krypton (1.59 PBq), and 20 curies (740 GBq), considered a relatively small amount of the especially dangerous iodine-131 isotope, into the surrounding environment. But few people are aware of the major explosion, following core meltdown, in January 1961, at the National Reactor Testing Station in the Idaho desert. All three people working the plant during the explosion were killed and the radioactivity levels were so intense, they were required to be buried in lead coffins.

A massive 890 square-mile complex, now known as the Idaho National Laboratory, was the site of the first success in producing electricity from nuclear reactions, and is in part a national historic landmark. But among its 52 reactors, only three are currently operational, and there are reported to be plans to use at least one to produce plutonium-238 for classified national security purposes.

Now, given the intense security concerns related to nuclear power, rapid construction is literally impossible. Federal public health and environmental laws also require fastidious attention to detail, which has intensified since the last plant was constructed 3 decades ago. Failure to meet with absolute precision all the security requirements can result in catastrophic accidents and/or major cost-overruns in relation to federal regulatory fines and/or takeovers. This means that entirely new systems for construction need to be designed and tested before even the first construction of any new plant can begin.

There is, simply put, no way that new nuclear plants can affect current gas prices.The timeline here has also been pushed back as far as 2030 for any significant shift on percentage of national energy production derived from nuclear power, if the massive new construction project were undertaken.

With both offshore drilling and new nuclear construction likely to delay the infusion of new supply into the domestic energy economy, the real economic result of committing to these strategies for expanding domestic energy production may actually be the increase in prices for oil and automotive gasoline, as it becomes clear that overall supply depends heavily on these resources for the foreseeable future. Over the last few years, as carbon pricing legislation has stalled, discussion about future economic development has shifted to the need for funding the broad expansion of national infrastructure for renewable resources, like wind and solar power.

It is fair to say that given the revolutionary advances in cost-effective construction and comparable end-user cost for renewable resources—we now know existing wind and solar technologies can power the entire US economy—, there has not been enough attention given to the potential for rapid infrastructure development that could bring new sources of energy production online within 2 to 3 years.

We face a stark choice, at this moment of economic division, confusion and peril: we can continue to heavily invest in the old, dirty, costly energy paradigm, or we can deploy smart policies to price carbon accurately, in a way that is designed to return economic influence to the middle class, to innovators and communities, and build a local, user-centered smart energy economy.

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A version of this report was originally published July 31, 2008, at CafeSentido.com

Futurismo Verde :: Desde el comienzo de la civilización humana, el proceso de montar sociedades organizadas, formular historias compartidas y diseñar visiones del futuro humano, el ser humano ha buscado maneras de profetizar y de pronosticar. La ciencia moderna ha descubierto indicios fiables que ayudan a describir el mundo, pero para saber qué vendrá después del momento actual, tenemos que aprender a medir la salud de los sistemas naturales que deciden cómo vivimos.

El hecho es que la Tierra es un complejo de sistemas naturales, separados de los ecosistemas terrestres más remotos sólo por la intervención de otros ecosistemas. De alguna forma, todo el material del planeta, orgánico y no orgánico, está en constante comunicación a través de esta red de interacciones. El mundo viviente prospera debido a la interacción sana y sustentable de distintos sistemas naturales, alternando entre competencia y colaboración, y ganando por esa relación sana más flexibilidad de adaptación, más elasticidad.

La crisis vital viene a un ecosistema cuando deja de ser lo bastante elástico como para enfrentar el desafío sistémico del momento. Esa rigidez puede nacer de muchas causas distintas, pero suele arraigarse en una tendencia a la uniformidad y a la reducción de contacto dinámico con otros sistemas contra los que tendrá que competir, en un momento u otro.

La intervención humana, entonces, ¿qué significa para un ecosistema? Eso depende del tamaño y de la intensidad de la huella que deja esa intervención humana. Si se trata de construir una ciudad, es posible que la inmensa mayoría de los ecosistemas naturales desaparecerán o se desplazarán de forma integral y posiblemente fatal. Si se trata de eregir por dos días una tienda de campaña, y comer sólo lo que existe en el ambiente, sin dejar rastros de química sintética o productos industriales, la intervención será mínima, y todos los ecosistemas ambientales seguirán su curso, casi sin interrupción alguna.

Para la mayoría de los seres humanos del planeta, la decisión de intervenir o no en un ecosistema ha vuelto una decisión pasiva: las ciudades ya existen, los pueblos ya tienen su huella física y ambiental, y las decisiones de aumentar el terreno ocupado por un asentamiento humano suelen ser decisiones organizadas y municipales, no de un sólo individuo.

Por lo tanto, es fácil distanciarnos del problema sin darnos cuenta del serio y duradero papel que nuestras actividades tendrán en los sistemas naturales de los que dependemos y de los que depende el medio ambiente más extenso. Esta distancia conceptual influye no sólo en nuestro imaginario cultural y económico, sino además en el futuro tratamiento mutuo entre la economía humana y la naturaleza.

Los servicios naturales más valiosas—producción de oxígeno, agua limpia, ritmos y corredores fiables de lluvia, la corriente global del océano profundo—exceden por mucho todo el valor económico de la actividad humana en conjunto. Privilegiar y promover elasticidad y resistencia en los sistemas naturales es la única manera de prevenir los efectos corrosivos a largo plazo de una industria inconsciente de sus efectos.

Un nivel adecuado de elasticidad y resistencia ecosistémicas es necesario para asegurar el suministro alimenticio global y el suministro de agua limpia. Es necesario para asegurar un promedio de estabilidad climático: la diversidad de influencias promueve la estabilidad sistémica a largo plazo; la reducción de influencias promueve precariedad sistémica.

Una referencia útil sería la inversión financiera: un rango mínimo y más uniforme de inversiones expone a uno a mayor probabilidad de fracaso y pérdida de valor total; un rango más diverso y variado de inversiones protege a uno de la inestabilidad de valores y proporciona mayor estabilidad y mayor probabilidad de aumento de valores.

El futuro económico, a escala global y local, depende definitivamente del nivel de elasticidad y resistencia en los sistemas naturales de los que toda la actividad humana depende. La economía humana se funda en la biología, el organismo humano, y las necesidades vitales del conjunto de todos los seres humanos. El medio ambiente es un sistema en el que participamos, y la elasticidad de ese sistema decide nuestra resistencia ante los cambios emergentes o sorprendentes que pueden presentarse en un momento dado.

Futurismo Verde :: En servicio al proyecto del Foro sobre Política y Crisis, la Red Hot Spring de innovación y debate plantea una conversación global sobre la seguridad alimenticia y la escasez crónica de agua y comida en África. Las lecciones de este experimento en investigación y brainstorming colaborativos se podrá aplicar a otras situaciones de crisis y escasez alrededor del planeta.

Los temas principales de debate serán:

1. Problemas relacionados con el abastecimiento alimenticio global, sobretodo en aplicación a las poblaciones más necesitadas;
2. La degradación medioambiental: o sea, servicios ecológicos y medidas de bienestar ambiental;
3. Deficiencies en las políticas de uso terrenal: cómo mejorarlas;
4. Caza furtiva de animales y cosecha furtiva de leño;
5. Tendencias corrosivas económicas;
6. La corrupción y la deficiencia urgente de presupuestos;
7. Medidas cooperativas para extender el suministro alimenticio a las zonas de conflicto;
8. Cómo superar los límites de la infraestructura de transporte;
9. Las enfermedades comunicables: tratamiento, educación, efectos socio-económicos;
10. Fallos comunicativos: cómo hacer llegar los datos tanto investigados como anecdóticos a los servicios relevantes.

La meta será idear y modelar soluciones calibradas a los desafíos al parecer imposibles de resolver, en relación a la seguridad alimenticia en diversas regiones del continente africano. Esperamos poder proporcionar ideas nuevas y factibles, prácticas y económicamente virtuosas, para que las poblaciones locales interesadas puedan comenzar a desplegarlas en su entorno.

Click aquí para agregar sus comentarios al foro…

El ser humano se ha vuelto tan influyente en los proceso naturales que los científicos ahora temen que la naturaleza ha perdido capacidades vitales de resistencia

Futurismo Verde :: En una reunión de científicos europeos, en Estocolmo, el hombre que inventó el término ‘antropoceno’ para describir una nueva época geológica—en la que la influencia humana domina los proceso naturales—ha anunciado que el término ahora se está aplicando desde múltiples campos de estudio. La importancia real del término es que la información ecológica es cada vez más imprescindible para poder llevar a cabo las ambiciones humanas de una forma responsable y sostenible.

The Financial Times, de Londres, ahora informa que “The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.” [En el foro EuroScience, en Estocolmo, el jueves pasado, escucharon que el cambio climático era el más obvio de un complejo tejido de efectos de la actividad humana, que están cambiando rápidamente la física, la química y la biología del planeta."] Otros efectos tendrán que ver con la resistencia de la cosecha, fertilidad de la tierra, elasticidad de habitat vital para especies de sustento.

El alba de la época Antropocena, en la historia geológica, conlleva una cantidad importante de desafíos y oportunidades. En sentido de llevar a cabo una transición rápida de ubicuos modelos económicos a una metodología sostenible, hay una gran oportunidad de aumentar la producción económica potencial de la economía global. Hacerlo, sin embargo, exigirá cantidades masivas de inversión y de innovación acelerada.

Un grupo de 21 de los científicos e investigadores más respetados ha publicado su estudio de la cronología geológica en GSA Journal, y han confirmado que ocurrió un cambio fundamental a una época geológica definida por el efecto humano en el medio ambiente, a principios del siglo XIX. Lo que ocurre ahora, más allá de eso, es que se está desarrollando una conciencia del impacto severo de 200 años de expansión industrial agresiva, incluyendo explotación de recursos, construcción urbana y remodelación terrenal sin precedentes.

Estamos llegando a un punto de inflexión, después del que la ciencia no podrá evitar la necesidad de reconocer y manejar los impactos de la actividad humana en los sistemas naturales. Se ve ahora alteraciones fundamentales en la sedimentación, calidad de tierra, patrones geológicos y habitat biológico, hasta en la misma flora y fauna que habita los sistemas naturales afectados, y en la atmósfera respirable.

Específicamente:

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, global human population has climbed rapidly from under a billion to its current 6.5 billion (Fig. 1), and it continues to rise. The exploitation of coal, oil, and gas in particular has enabled planet-wide industrialization, construction, and mass transport, the ensuing changes encompassing a wide variety of phenomena, summarized as follows. [...]

Humans have caused a dramatic increase in erosion and the denudation of the continents, both directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude [...]

Carbon dioxide levels (379 ppm in 2005) are over a third higher than in pre-industrial times and at any time in the past 0.9 million years [...]

The projected temperature rise will certainly cause changes in habitat beyond environmental tolerance for many taxa (Thomas et al., 2004). The effects will be more severe than in past glacial-interglacial transitions because, with the anthropogenic fragmentation of natural ecosystems, ‘escape’ routes are fewer.

Los mecanismos principales de resistencia ecológica se ven erosionados, y el medio ambiente natural se encuentra menos capaz de adaptarse a los cambios en los sistemas naturales y su manera de competir dentro de y entre sí. El estudio también cita evidencia de un nivel acelerado de extinción de especies y de la creciente probabilidad de una ola masiva de extinciones, resultado directo de la actividad humana.

La comunidad científica ha comenzado a elaborar modelos informáticos del sistema natural integral, un complejo de ecosistemas e interacciones a nivel planetario. Esos modelos servirán para averiguar hasta qué punto la actividad humana influye en el medio ambiente y cómo se puede actuar para mitigar esos impactos y lograr un futuro más sostenible, y más capaz de seguir proporcionando los beneficios naturales necesarios como base de la civilización humana.

La idea del periodo Antropoceno es más que una clasificación cronológica del momento en el que nos encontramos. Se trata de una conciencia cada vez más desarrollada de la necesidad de modificar nuestras tendencias para colaborar con los sistemas naturales de los que dependemos tanto para la supervivencia. Es un despertar al efecto que tiene nuestro nivel de vida, nuestra producción y consumo industriales, y a lo que significa la integración de las sociedades alrededor del planeta, en una red global de comunicación y un mercado global de intercambio material y cultural.

Es posible ahora hablar de una creciente conciencia global de la necesidad de cambiar las motivaciones básicas de la política estatal, el negocio privado, el consumo y los mercados en general. Es posible ahora hablar de un momento en el que la evidencia existe para darnos cuenta del poder que tiene la industria de una civilización globalizada sobre el medio ambiente.

La época Antropocena existe porque el impacto medioambiental ya no se trata de un impacto local, en un ambiente limitado, sino de un impacto a nivel global, con secuelas en ecosistemas que no parecen tener contacto directo con la causa de su malestar. El cambio de pensamiento que ahora viene tiene que coincidir con una creciente capacidad de imaginación y colaboración, para dejar atrás la dependencia peligrosa que nos ata a los combustibles fósil.

• Geological Society of America: “Are we now living in the Anthropocene”
• Financial Times / MSNBC: “Scientists warn of a new Anthropocene age”
• About.com Geology: “Introducing the Anthropocene”
• Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie: “Anthropocene” [article that coined the term]
• Resilience 2008: “Resilience, Adaptation & Transformation in Turbulent Times” [Conf., Stockholm 14-17 April]
• Albaeco, Sustainability School: “Masking Environmental Feedbacks”

As early as one day after the March 11 tsunami sparked the (still ongoing) nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s government had advanced radiation fallout and atmospheric modeling showing the area most likely to be hit by fallout from the explosions and the ongoing seepage. The government allegedly concealed this information, to prevent mass panic, but the result may have been the evacuation of large numbers of people to the most dangerous zones.

According to the New York Times:

Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.

The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima — and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that.

But the forecasts were left unpublicized by bureaucrats in Tokyo, operating in a culture that sought to avoid responsibility and, above all, criticism. Japan’s political leaders at first did not know about the system and later played down the data, apparently fearful of having to significantly enlarge the evacuation zone — and acknowledge the accident’s severity.

Officials of the Japanese government have admitted there was a pattern of concealing information, denying known facts, even of releasing data that were modified to achieve more politically expedient outcomes, even as the nation and the world were waiting for a thorough and serious crisis response. The government reportedly withheld crucial modeling projections from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, also known as SPEEDI.

According to the Times, Seiki Soramoto, a former nuclear engineer who was asked for information by the prime minister, said “In the end, it was the prime minister’s office that hid the SPEEDI data, because they didn’t have the knowledge to know what the data meant, and thus they did not know what to say to the public, they thought only of their own safety, and decided it was easier just not to announce it.”

Though at least three of the six reactors were in meltdown, and were known to be, and the government was permitting the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) to dump huge volumes of radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean, the status of meltdown was repeatedly denied, and was not acknowledged for several months.

In June, it was revealed that tellurium 132, an isotope that indicates a meltdown has occurred, was detected on the second day of the crisis, but the readings were kept from the public for three months. It is not clear how the alleged campaign of distorted data and concealed modeling might have impacted the crisis response, but scientists and engineers have expressed concern that the nuclear emergency response was stunted by inadequate information and poor decisions.

There are also likely to be new investigations into the public health consequences of the concealed information.

creative prosperity is sustainable prosperity

To build a future of vibrant open democracy and robust and sustainable economic prosperity, it is necessary to privilege creative activities and constructive solutions to the challenges we face. Addressing major challenges in constructive, innovative ways, is the single most significant driver, historically, of sustained economic booms. In short, we need to move deliberately and swiftly toward a creative prosperity agenda.

The first consideration, then, is to examine how the creative prosperity agenda would differ from what we are doing now. At present, we are wrestling with the complex fabric of consequence related to long-running economic distortions, most of which we have not yet corrected. Healthcare reform and financial regulatory reform were comprehensive in scope, but moderate in impact, cautious and rooted in the prevailing model; energy reform needs to move forward rapidly and do more to prioritize innovation.

We are facing a major, civilization-wide transition from one way of conceptualizing political and economic power to another. We stand at the dawn of what should be the global solidification of open democracy as the standard for elevating and defending human dignity and freedom of thought. But we need to build creative prosperity into that future, and this will require a fundamental shift in the dominant view which holds that power is more effective when concentrated in fewer hands.

That view comes from ancient times—from prehistoric times, in fact—when the governing principle of human life was the need to survive in competition with forces far more powerful than any one individual, family or band. Power, then, was a combination of accumulated resources and raw force. In that light, power is a destructive force, requiring intense concentration of resources and the ability to draw a line between the inside and the outside of the power circle.

the feudal (concentration) model

Economically, the fact of human society was that there was not enough technology, enough resources, enough liberty, to deliver real comfort to most or all people. In fact, there was only the material wealth to deliver substantial comfort to about 1 in every 100 people. The model of concentration allowed those in that 1 percent to cling to comfort and fight off would-be attackers.

The only way into the circle in which power, means and comfort were concentrated was to pay the toll for access. That might be done by force of arms, or by handing over significant sums of wealth. Paying the toll perpetuated the model, and won significant privileges for those who helped to make sure that system remained viable.

This developed eventually into authoritarian empires and the medieval elevation of aristocracy. The logic of the model of concentration held: those inside the circle must remain there, and the society must be organized to keep them there. They were, it was presumed, worth more than other people, and so they were able to treat their privilege as if it were part of a life of service—maintaining law and order—to those with less.

the democracy (decentralization) model

Modern democracy posits an entirely different model: the model of decentralization. Modern democracy, according to the ideals of the American revolution and the French revolution, requires a comprehensive departure from the status quo of feudal dominance. It requires the engineering of a model for economic and political activity whereby power cannot be concentrated, and where excessive concentration of power brings disadvantage.

A creative prosperity agenda for public policy and economic renewal would put aside the bias of the old model, once and for all, asking enterprises large and small to join together in a fabric of imaginative competition, prioritizing localization, innovation and service value to the marketplace. It would help to recapture the energy of modern democracy, wherein monopolies and juggernauts sputter and trudge, slowed by their weight, and individuals and small businesses are better able to take the field, to effect positive change, to feed a generalized economic expansion.

The key to that model is the vibrancy of an expanding and upwardly mobile middle class. Achieving that means doing what the United States did so effectively in the 1950s and 1960s, decentralizing the levers for creating wealth, allowing more free people to participate not only as citizens but as leaders and entrepreneurs.

losing our former focus on creative (decentralized) prosperity

A period of intensive deregulation in key industries has led the United States’ economy into a period of prolonged slow growth, because it has led to the hyper-concentration of wealth and of access to the levers of wealth-creation generally. Average household income has dropped by about $2,500 since 2000, even as the gap between average pay and the earnings of the wealthiest has expanded to historic highs.

There is a problematic knock-on effect of this, which is that innovation is no longer a priority, as major conglomerates seek first of all to secure their position. Upstarts like Apple are not emerging at the rate they were during previous periods of economic expansion, and the most powerful, most concentrated interests—Apple now among them—are controlling the field of play.

recapturing momentum: how to build a creative prosperity agenda

There are a couple of key changes that need to take place to move toward a creative prosperity agenda:

1. Move from a bias favoring large conglomerates to one against them;
2. Move away from subsidies for high-polluting, low-yield fossil fuels;
3. Move toward clean energy technologies that favor rapid innovation, brainy startups, more robust job creation, and local economies;
4. Revive national commitment, public and private, to infrastructure redevelopment;
5. Provide direct tax credits for real job creation (payable on a per-job basis);
6. Establish sustainability incentives for municipalities (ref: Sustainable Jersey), states and businesses;
7. Establish an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard;
8. Prioritize higher education spending, including post-graduate studies incentives for businesses looking to sponsor their employees;
9. Introduce critical thinking, macroeconomic studies, engineering basics and public policy debate, to public high schools—judge these as more valuable than test scores;
10. Make sure tax reforms are not regressive; make sure they prioritize family and community-level “thriving”, i.e. asset-building, quality of life and spending power;
11. Tax derivative financial instruments at a higher rate than direct capital investments in enterprise, innovation and hiring;
12. Apply national policy to correct market distortions relating to fossil fuel costs.

The outcome of this process of reform would be:

• accelerated, more widespread innovation;
• entree for creative small business models;
• unprecedented opportunities for sustained hiring;
• more vibrant, resilient local economies;
• a consumer-centered smart electricity grid;
• cleaner air and water;
• a sustainable economy where growth is not tied to the promotion of vast negative externalities;
• more robust civic engagement from citizens, communities and creative thinkers…

The United States is perfectly capable of achieving this kind of virtuous cycle between democratization, decentralization, creative thinking, entrepreneurship and the expansion of the middle class. But substantive policy changes need to be made—to remove the incentive for corrosive activities that favor the unhealthy concentration of wealth and productive capacity and motivate the revival of generative activities that favor the healthy decentralization of assets and productive capacity.

A vibrant middle class—where the best ideas can come to the fore and be implemented and the dignity and worth of citizens and communities takes priority over the naked pursuit of profit—is better suited to fostering creative, sustainable prosperity. The first step is to recognize where we favor profit over people, and then work to change the prevailing model and free human creative talent to achieve that goal.

The United States government, until Friday, had more than twice the AAA debt outstanding as any other category of AAA debt. According to Nomura, while the US had $11.2 trillion in AAA debt oustanding, agency mortgage backed securities account for over $5 trillion, and Germany and France follow with less than $2 trillion. Standard and Poors has now downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States government, though there was no default and no indication the government was in any way likely to default.

S&P has come under fire for reportedly having made a $2 trillion error in its calculations. Though its estimations are based on publicly available data, the ratings agency reportedly estimated $2 trillion more in government spending than actually exists. According to Reuters: “S&P was forced to remove the number from its analysis after Treasury officials discovered that the rating agency’s estimates of the government’s discretionary spending was $2 trillion too high, sources familiar with the discussions said.”

Though the underlying economic reasoning for the credit downgrade was the figure which was $2 trillion too high, and the difference between the debt ceiling deal and the $4 trillion demand made by S&P is less than $2 trillion, the ratings agency refused to forego the credit downgrade. S&P suffered a severe blow to its reputation, when it was revealed that the agency has maintained, with little to no evidence of merit, AAA ratings on subprime mortgage-backed securities, which eventually collapsed, and led to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Reuters also includes this detail in its report:

Ian Lyngen, a senior government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group in Connecticut, agreed S&P now had more than just a credibility problem.

“The fact that they have now downgraded the United States suggests to me that they are now going to be dealing with a relevance issue,” he said. “Because the fact of the matter is that 10-year (Treasury note) yields are near 2.5 percent, and that in no way suggests a lack of sponsorship for U.S. debt.”

Yields on U.S. 10-year notes US10YT=RR, a benchmark for borrowing rates throughout the economy, fell as far as 2.34 percent on Friday — their lowest since October 2010 and very low by historical standards.

The credit downgrade was expected to impose massive escalating costs on the entire US economy, the borrowing of the US government, and also competing sovereign debt products and commercial investment. The fear, then, would be that a credit downgrade on the entity whose bond products and currency support the entire global financial system could lead to a second great recession, possibly a global economic depression.

But Standard and Poors has possibly waded into quicksand, for six crucial reasons:

1. The United States did not, in fact, default;
2. The ratings agency in question made a $2 trillion error in its calculations;
3. Despite conceding that its chief calculations were erroneous, the agency insisted on the downgrade;
4. Treasury officials were told that S&P was using the downgrade to express its displeasure that a bigger debt package was not agreed;
5. Other ratings agencies have not seen fit to downgrade US Treasury bonds;
6. There does not appear to be a lag in investment in Treasury bonds…

Taken together, it would appear that while there is virtually no evidence to substantiate the downgrade, and with S&P’s only internal justification for the downgrade discredited, S&P representatives expressed a desire to downgrade Treasury bonds—with all the global economic fallout that might entail—in order to express displeasure that their will was not done on Capitol Hill. S&P may now lose relevance, even as its actions may motivate serious economic slowdown around the world.

There are reports that China will immediately seek to begin diversifying its bond holdings and reserves. The S&P downgrade could ultimately threaten the value of the US government’s lending and the Chinese government’s holdings, and undermine the legitimacy and security of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It now appears Treasury officials will be meeting with key players in the world’s financial markets, including major foreign bondholders, like China, to hold off interest rate increases, and possibly to marginalize the S&P finding.

Shoring up the US and the world financial markets is now crucial, as another financial collapse could leave the world economy with negative growth, and could destabilize governments in fractious regions and even do serious harm to the fiscal integrity of the European Union. The S&P downgrade will be less influential if it is limited to one rating agency, and could have massive unintended consequences, if it is not contained.

John Chambers, chair of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee, said today that “There are two things that we should emphasize. One is that the political discourse has diminished the credit standing of the United States. The other is a fiscal analysis.” This makes four distinct justifications given so far for the downgrade: the $2 trillion in (non-existent) extra spending; the structural problems that might materialize despite the $2 trillion error; the agency’s expression of “displeasure”; and the fact that “political discourse has diminished the credit standing of the United States.”

In April, a bipartisan Senate committee found that S&P, Moody’s and other rating agencies may actually have directly “triggered” the financial crisis:

In one of the most stark condemnations of the credit rating agencies, a Senate investigations panel said the agencies continued to give top ratings to mortgage-backed securities months after the housing market started to collapse.

The agencies then unleashed on the financial system a flood of downgrades in July 2007, the panel said.

“Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass downgrades of (residential mortgage-backed securities) and (collateralized debt obligation) ratings were the immediate trigger for the financial crisis,” the staff for Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn wrote in their report.

Today, there are mounting questions about how S&P came to make direct policy demands on the United States Congress, under threat of a credit downgrade, and if the agency is now expressing displeasure, what is the actual ask? Numerous economists have taken issue with the S&P demand for $4 trillion in deficit reduction now, in the midst of a slow recovery, warning that draining that amount of capital from the economy could end the recovery and push the economy back into recession.

Texas, the most energy-rich populous state in the country, with more oil, more wind, more sun, and a more developed energy sector, than any other state, is now undergoing rolling blackouts, in part because Gov. Rick Perry’s budget policy is bankrupting the state, ending incentives and cutting off supply. Under Perry, the state has run up a $28 billion deficit, and Chinese firms have been buying up major wind energy projects.

Perry’s ideological manipulation of state budget priorities has not only hampered the state’s development of cutting-edge clean energy sources, it has eroded the educational opportunity, targeted lower income families for reduced opportunity, and slowed job creation. The one thing propping up the state’s economic output is immigration, which has allowed new opportunity, new hiring and new capital flows, despite the governor’s attempts to shut them down.

When he named a top utility regulator to head the state’s railroad agency, he did so specifically proclaiming his appointee ”will continue to push back against the Obama Administration’s misguided energy policies which threaten Texas jobs and our nation’s energy security”.

Specifically, Perry meant he wanted to stop construction of high-speed railways—which would create tens of thousands of jobs—and slow, halt or even reverse the transition from costly fossil fuels to more efficient clean energy technologies. The reason? Fossil fuels produce a higher profit margin for the interests that back them, though clean energy technologies, high-speed rail and the smart grid would produce more generalized prosperity and a healthier economy for the state and the region.

Perry has consistently sought to stock the state’s regulatory authorities with industry-interested figures. He has complained that Texas, which emits a huge amount of carbon-dioxide and other pollutants, from fossil fuel-powered plants, should not be subject to the clean air rule that seeks to prevent contamination of one state’s air by activities in another state. He maintains that Texas is above federal law, and has been criticized for a ‘head-in-the-sand’ approach to energy.

Now, in the long, hot summer of 2011, Rick Perry’s Texas has run out of energy, and is experiencing rolling blackouts. The energy capital of the United States is out of energy, because the governor’s fiscal policies and manipulation of incentives has been reckless, ill-informed and biased, crimping the flow of investment and undermining the rate of innovation.

Though oil and gas are not producing the level of job creation of wind, solar, geothermal and renewables, Perry has sought to curtail investment in new technologies, privileging outdated fuel sources whose entrenched power is hampering the job creation potential of what has been Texas’ best opportunity for growth: wind and solar power.

While the nation has been moving toward, albeit at a painfully slow pace, a cleaner energy paradigm, for three decades, with technologies to achieve this accelerating in efficiency and productivity several fold in the last ten years alone, and while Texas is the nation’s wind-energy leader, he has sought to put fossil fuel interests first, to the detriment of the state’s immediate and long-term economic health and vibrancy.

Under Perry’s stewardship, the leading energy-rich state in the nation has been forced into its fifth “energy emergency” this year alone, and is now importing electricity from Mexico. According to a Texas Tribute report from earlier this week:

As scorching temperatures continued and Texas electricity use reached another all-time high, the state grid operator initiated the first step of emergency procedures today, seeking power from other grids, including Mexico.

About 20 power generation units, accounting for around 3,000 megawatts of capacity, were unavailable today during unplanned outages, adding to the strain on the grid. Today’s temperatures soared well past 100 degrees, and it’s not likely that the situation will get better Wednesday or Thursday unless some thunderstorms pass over a major metropolitan area, like Houston or Dallas, to lessen demand.

ERCOT—the Energy Reliability Council of Texas—has sought to implement these emergency procedures due to a combination of record electricity demand and inadequate supply. The unplanned outages were the most significant development, in that they suggest the grid itself has been underfunded and unprepared for the volume needed.

When Perry’s bad fiscal planning and ideological manipulation of taxes is combined with his loyalty to entrenched oil, gas and coal interests, it is clear the clean energy and smart grid industry is fending for itself, and doing very well, but not as well as Texas’ world leading electricity demand requires. His policies have, in fact, left his state with a massive and worsening budget deficit, with no serious plan for course correction, and with severe obstacles to improving the electricity generation crisis.

According to the New Republic:

The Lone Star State has a standing $10 billion shortfall every two-year budget cycle, thanks to a faulty tax system pushed by Perry that fails to balance the budget. Although the governor normally stays away from the state Legislature—sightings in either chamber are rare and exciting—Perry engineered a new business tax in 2006 to replace a prior one riddled with loopholes. Ostensibly a good idea, his new tax nonetheless suffered from the simple fact that it didn’t bring in enough revenue. Furthermore, it turned out to be incredibly complex, leaving many business owners scratching their heads. Those who figured it out, meanwhile, realized that, because the new tax was levied on gross margins as opposed to profits, companies could be losing money and still find themselves on the hook.

State legislators on both sides of the aisle have decried Perry’s ill-conceived fiscal planning. The chief Senate budget writer, Republican Steve Ogden, hasn’t been afraid to mince words about just how bad the business tax is. “None of us were elected to raise taxes on anybody,” he said the first day of the session. “But the margins tax is different. If we don’t fix the margins tax, local property taxes will definitely go up.” The regular legislative session came and went, however, without any real effort to fix the broken tax. The result is that the state is still operating with a structural deficit, and will very likely face more cuts the next time around.

Perry’s loyalty to old energy interests means the state’s cuts are hurting the more job-creation-intensive new energy sector. There has not been the funding available to develop the smart grid, or the major transmission lines, needed to maximize output from wind farms. So even as the Texas wind industry has seen a nation-leading boom in the last decade, its ability to adequately serve the marketplace has been slowed by outdated priorities and what some call overt political bias.

Due to its Renewable Portfolio Standard, which Perry supported, Texas has outpaced other states in wind energy sector development, but critics say too much of the profit is going to foreign companies, not enough Recovery Act funding was deployed to spur investment and too few incentives are in place for in-state start-ups to compete with big oil, coal and gas, and with the Chinese firms Perry is now relying on to fund wind development.

When the Texas wind industry was gearing up for what was likely to be one of the biggest investment booms the state, or the nation, for that matter, had seen in a long time, as a result of Congressional action to reduce carbon emissions and incentivize a transition to clean energy, Perry vehemently opposed the action. When the carbon pricing legislation failed, in the summer of 2010, the result was a swift reversal on the part of major investors, like oil tycoon Boone Pickens, who had been ready to devote record sums to the wind energy sector.

One year later, Texas is undergoing rolling blackouts, its fifth energy emergency in just 8 months, and is having to import electricity from Mexico, because the fiscal and regulatory management of Gov. Rick Perry is not designed to, and is not capable of providing for a more robust smart energy economy. The state has more demand than conventional energy sources can provide, and Gov. Perry has sought to prop up those power sources, to the detriment of innovation and job creation.

The most wind-rich state in the Union could be supplying more than half its electricity from advanced wind power systems, were the infrastructure in place to do so, and Perry’s budgetary mismanagement has diverted both public and private investment to wasteful spending on outmoded power sources, which are costing the state still more in terms of regulatory and public health adaptation, and in opportunity costs from jobs foregone, competition not stimulated, and infrastructure not built.

A wind-and-solar supplied smart grid would allow Texas’ hobbled fossil fuel economy to meet demand, and could, within just two years, reach the 20% clean energy threshold, using existing public-private investment incentives, were they directed where they need to be. The long-term plan should be for 50% wind and solar by 2020, something an adequately funded Texas clean energy sector could easily accomplish, with its abundance of wind, solar and land area.

There are also concerns that, as the focus has moved away from aggressive development of wind energy, Texas may now be experiencing a kind of energy market manipulation like what took place in California, right before the collapse of Enron, when power utilities and power-supply traders colluded to deprive the market of supply in order to force blackouts, during hot—deadly—summer months, and extract huge long-term price hikes from the state. Public policy in Texas has been steered toward subsidizing low consumer electricity prices, but now, the same suppliers that benefit from the resulting massive demand are crying poverty, producing too little and demanding higher prices.

They have hit the state electricity price cap of $3,000 per megawatt-hour, but despite that cap, and what should be the potential to rapidly ramp up clean energy output, the deregulated Texas energy sector leaves the state vulnerable to this kind of underfunded energy production, supply shortages and potential market pricing disruptions. It will be up to Rick Perry to figure out if the status quo is the best thing for Texas; we can only hope he sees that what Texas needs is a majority-renewable smart energy sector, sooner rather than later.

TheHotSpring.net :: Yemen may be where the Arab spring, this sweeping current of democratic upheaval in the Arabic-speaking world, takes a turn definitively toward violence or toward civic solutions. The regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, a tribal dictatorship using feudal power tactics, based in the capital Sanaa, is now waging one war against extremist Islamists and another against non-violent pro-democracy protesters.

Yemen is an intensely poor country, likely to see its dwindling fresh water resources 100% depleted before any nation in the world, and could be the global home-base for jihadist extremists. Yemen could also, however, be a sparkling example of how peaceful democratic change can bring sustainable prosperity and security to an otherwise impoverished society ruled by feudal warlords and kleptocratic dictators.

The gap between the democracy movement and the regime is stark: while protesters are lawyers and doctors, university professors and economists, the dictator Saleh has only a high-school-level education. Saleh’s former allies have tired of his brutality, and are demanding that he immediately cease all violence against civilians, and honor his multiple pledges to leave power, allowing for a peaceful democratic transition.

Much of the country is illiterate, and tribal politics continue to be an easy way to sow division, to justify cold-blooded killing, and to undermine the progress promised by peaceful protesters. Even the government seems unable to comprehensively put down the Islamist militia vying for power in the deep south. And neither the protesters nor Saleh have been able to fashion a secure plan for bringing prosperity back to Yemeni ports on the Gulf of Aden.

The Yemeni democracy movement is well read, well educated and rooted in a commitment to nonviolence. Yet there are grave concerns that if the regime succeeds in applying the tactics of Col. Muammar Qadhafi—the once and possibly former Libyan dictator of four decades—Yemen could descend into a failed state status reminiscent of its neighbor across the water, Somalia.

Heavily armed Somali pirates—linked to a vast black-market criminal network which feeds the ongoing Somali civil war—have become a menace to global shipping through the Gulf of Aden, the main southern route of entry into the Suez Canal. That vast criminal network has expanded the power of Islamist militia in southern Somalia, and has contributed to the intensification of drought, famine and social collapse.

Yemen may be more at risk than Somalia in many ways, should collapse follow the atrocities committed by Saleh against the Yemeni people. The pro-democracy movement needs to maintain its non-violent approach, but plan for significant innovations and improvements in the process of governing and of economic development and planning.

Yemen is strategic enough to warrant major foreign investment, debt forgiveness and development aid, and its ports might be able to benefit from a secure, reliable, democratic challenge to the armed chaos in Somalia and throughout the Gulf of Aden. Mokha (on the Red Sea), Aden and Ta’izz could form a powerful new economic hub for regional trade, facilitating passage from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea.

Ta’izz, the intellectual capital of Yemen, could develop into the administrative center of power governing the new port industry. Such an outcome would be very much in the interests of the international community, as Ta’izz is the virtual home base of the surprising, liberal and modern pro-democracy movement.

Al Mukallah, in the remote east of the country, could be a first-stop along the coast of safe passage, if such a situation could be cultivated and secured. Mokha could be a Red Sea trading post, bridging the African and Asian continents in ways strategically designed to sow stability, mutual interest and prosperity.

The United Nations would likely need to be involved in helping to secure a fledgling Yemeni democracy against the chaos and sabotage sought by militant groups on the one hand and by regime loyalists on the other. But the development strategy makes sense for the region and for the wider world: instability anywhere inflates risk everywhere, and long-term planning for the Gulf of Aden trading zone is more than worth any time, effort and resources required to lay the groundwork.

An added benefit would come to Yemen, which as a safe harbor state with revitalized, modernized port cities, would be able to more easily gain access to an affordable imported flow of fresh water, and to afford state of the art desalinization facilities. We know that fresh water resource is urgently needed to prevent the total collapse of civil society in Yemen, and brining that resource value to Yemen could raise its profile among Arabian states, building into the fabric of economic cooperation which as of now, eludes it almost entirely.

The road from Mokha to Sanaa, like the road from Aden to Sanaa, should run through Ta’izz, allowing for what could become a virtuous feedback between the ideals of democratic government and the ideals of a vibrant trading culture in which not all wealth flows to or through the hands of the individuals who hold political power. It could create a more balanced and decentralized relationship between the people of Yemen and the power of those who govern them.

In short, the storied and problematic history of Yemen, along with the vast and surging need for new economic development, creates a real opportunity for massive coordinated international assistance to the nonviolent political activists who are seeking to build a modern, democratic civil society, and to build unprecedented cooperative links between Yemeni society and the outside world.

TheHotSpring.net :: The rupture of a pipeline in Montana has caused at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil to spill into the pristine Yellowstone River, raising concerns about the tar sands pipeline planned to pass through the most important fossil aquifer in North America. The spill is precisely the kind of irreversible and unnecessary environmental disaster conservationists, farmers, energy reformers and local activists across the Great Plains seek to prevent.

The initial reports cited Exxon-Mobil spokespeople explaining that only a few hundred barrels of oil had been released into the river, and that the multinational was bringing in top cleanup experts from across the nation to do the most advanced cleanup work possible. But yesterday the news came that the spill had in fact released at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River, threatening pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, and human health, across several states.

Exxon-Mobil now says its expert cleanup effort is being hampered by Mother Nature. The takeaway seems to be that, more than twenty years after the catastrophic Exxon-Valdez spill, the oil giant has used its routine megaprofits to produce no viable cleanup strategy. It also appears there was insufficient maintenance to an insufficiently constructed pipeline, and a near total disregard for the potential impact on the natural and human environment.

The scale of the disaster was revealed when the multinational’s false reports were shown to be false by huge amounts of oil washing up on farmed land and spilling over the banks of the rising river. Critics say Exxon-Mobil’s complaints that rising waters are responsible for hampering the cleanup effort reflect the company’s frustration with how that same phenomenon revealed it had lied to the press and, presumably, to authorities, about the scale of the spill.

The material composition of the nation’s energy markets has a lot to do with this kind of crisis. Unreasoned overreliance on carbon-based combustible fuels continues even now, in the second decade of the 21st century, to incentivize irresponsible practices that threaten other natural resources, as well as animal life, arable land, aquifers and human health.

Hydrocarbon fuels currently comprise such a significant segment of the overall energy landscape, they are clearly built into our energy future, to some extent, but their current dominance does not reflect their viability as resources that produce optimum benefit to our society or our economy. The Yellowstone spill is just the latest in a seemingly unending chain of events that demonstrate the very serious dangers inherent in depending on fossil fuels as the baseload (or “go to”) energy resource.

The combustion-based energy extraction model goes back to the days when fire was first discovered and harnessed. It has served to help human civilization achieve great advances and humanize the planet, both in terms of resource-use and the expression of ideas. But that does not mean it does not bring with it the drawbacks of a primitive technological paradigm.

The amount of waste built into the combustible fuels model of energy extraction is startling. Only 2% of the energy from burning coal reaches the lightbulb in your home. The other 98% is lost, mostly in the form of uncontained heat. But the risk of uncontrolled spills, into pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, groundwater and the food production process, is worst with oil.

The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, over several months in 2010, showed that across the entire oil industry, there is still a glaring lack of advanced strategy for doing immediate, effective and total cleanup. The Yellowstone spill appears to show that even on a much smaller scale, that lack of understanding and know-how plagues the industry and threatens the natural and human environment.

We don’t, in fact, have to rely on combustible fuels anymore, as the state of the art in clean renewable resources, like wind and solar, is now sufficient to extract enough energy to power the US economy. All that we are lacking is the state of the art energy infrastructure required to harness clean renewable energy on that scale.

That the nation is undergoing a prolonged job-creation slowdown is just one hint that the time is right for a major investment in new state of the art energy infrastructure. The emerging race with China for the global clean energy future (China is now investing an estimated $600 billion in developing, producing and acquiring advanced clean energy technology) is another.

But it is the massive externalized costs (costs passed on by industry to taxpayers and consumers) that pose an immediate and continuing threat to the economic wellbeing of the nation. The externalized costs of oil include not only the massive costs of even small spills, which are far more frequent and numerous than is widely reported, but also the impact of pollution on human health, the impact of heat-trapping emissions on the stability of climate bands on which all human civilization depends.

Wind and solar energy have no cleanup costs, no hidden human health costs, no climate-band dislocation costs, no long-term costs associated with burning and wasting the resource itself, no world-record military spending costs, and need pose no risk whatsoever to groundwater or the human food supply.

The Yellowstone spill has to be a signal to the American people, the United States Congress and to markets, that the time has come to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. The way to phase out that reliance is to incentivize a shift to the construction of state of the art smart grid infrastructure and the proliferation of technologies to harness clean, renewable energy from the environment.

As of this writing, Exxon-Mobil now says the scale of the spill could be worse than has so far been reported, but has not yet released new numbers, beyond the latest estimate of 42,000. It appears the pattern of reporting is following the customary pattern for such spills, where the company involved starts with severe underreporting and little by little increases the estimates until an eventual admission of massive, catastrophic levels of contamination of the environment.

TheHotSpring.net :: Citizens Climate Lobby is an international non-partisan, non-profit volunteer organization, working to build political will for a livable world. To do that, they aim to find an ideologically neutral, democratically viable, market-focused way to reduce the amount of carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere and speed the transition to clean, renewable fuels. I am proud to be a member of the organization, and one who is inspired by the passion of its volunteers and fortunate to count so many good friends among its partners.

This past week, the organization took its campaign to Capitol Hill, bringing 85 volunteers to 140 office visits in the United States Congress —both houses, both parties— along with the State Department, the Department of Energy and the World Bank. The project is more than a response to fallout from excess atmospheric carbon dioxide; the CCL project involves connecting citizens with decision-makers on Capitol Hill, to take ideology out of the energy debate, and fashion policy more democratically.

CCL proposes addressing the carbon crisis in a new and different way, which in fact avoids the pitfalls of more complex and unwieldy past attempts at reducing overall emissions: the proposed Carbon Fee and Dividend Act of 2011 would put a fee on carbon-emitting fuels at the source, then deliver 100% of that money directly to American families and households.

The plan avoids the need to create burdensome new regulatory infrastructure, does not deliver any new revenue to the federal government, and turns the power to forge a brighter, more economically efficient energy future back over to the American people, the marketplace. By unmasking the massive externalized costs (not paid by industry) of fossil fuel dependency, but covering consumers so the transition is not traumatic, the fee and dividend proposal allows the virtues of a genuine market to operate.

The CCL mission is guided by the principle that when people remain open to one another, to differences of opinion and to opposing views, they can fashion a dialogue based on common vocabulary and put aside ideological biases. This, then, should allow for intelligent people, working to serve their nation in the most forthright and meaningful way possible, to work together to craft practical solutions to practical problems.

Climate destabilization has been turned into an intensely partisan issue, in which ideological assumptions and partisan strategy trump cooperative civics and negotiated problem solving. This is bad for democracy and bad for the human environment, in which impacts from inaction are mounting, and the economic fallout looks to be accelerating, certainly beyond the current window of opportunity to act.

The challenge of the political moment is to find a way around the intense partisan divide, and that is no small task.

On Capitol Hill, there is frustration on both sides of the aisle with the inability of Congress to work together in a responsible way on practical issues, and much of the gridlock is due to ideological bias interfering with sound policy judgment. But the United States now faces another moment of urgency regarding climate and energy: China is racing ahead with massive investment in clean energy resources, even as it expands at record pace its use of the dirtiest form of fuel, coal.

The Chinese agenda, to take control of the global marketplace for new technologies, not by manufacturing alone, but by developing the newest, most cutting-edge technologies that will build the future economy of the world, means the United States now sees its dominance in technological innovation and research and development threatened. If we, as a nation, do not succeed in building the foundations for the global clean energy economy of the 1st century, our ability to compete internationally, and to thrive domestically, will face constant pressure.

The most advanced intelligence work of Pentagon analysts has found that sustainability and security are now intertwined and cannot be disentangled: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, the sustainability of alliances, of political borders, of nation states, of an economic model that allows us to thrive in relative peace and security, are all linked, and the emerging national strategic narrative [pdf], capable of addressing the complexity of the global environment, needs to rethink the paradigm of threat and risk, and view such challenges as opportunities to shape and influence the landscape of human civilization, for the better.

The great success of this week of CCL lobbying on Capitol Hill was that individual volunteers, the citizen-based movement as a whole, and some of those who sat in meetings with the organization, experienced breakthroughs in terms of openness and interest in dealing with this issue as one of practical problems demanding practical solutions.

It is CCL’s mission to work with members of Congress of all variety of ideological inclinations, many of whom have never been able to share a constructive conversation about climate or energy, with one another, to build a coalition based on citizen interest and a shared vocabulary for building a vibrant and resilient, cutting-edge clean energy economy, through which sustainable American prosperity and quality of life can be secured in this century.

It will be citizens who build, manifest and deliver the political will to achieve these vital goals, and success will mean the strengthening of our democracy and our economic future.

Tens of thousands of youth protesters are occupying la Puerta del Sol, the central square in Madrid, the capital of Spain. They have been occupying the square for a week, and last night camped overnight, despite a new government ban. The protesters are calling themselves “los Indignados”, the indignant.

They are demanding new employment opportunity, “better living standards, a fairer system of democracy and changes to the Socialist government’s austerity plans,” according to the BBC. The complained to the press that the government wants them to leave the Puerta del Sol without access to public health (a guaranteed right, in Spain), without universal public education (due to massive budget cuts), with nearly half of the nation’s young people unemployed.

Natividad García complained that on top of all of these hardships the protesters link to the government’s “austerity measures”, they have also increased the age for retirement benefits. There is widespread concern that Spain’s modern welfare state may be failing, and that this generation of youth will live in a less equitable, less free democratic society.

According to the BBC:

Spain’s electoral commission had ordered them to leave ahead of local elections on Sunday.

But as the ban came into effect at midnight, the crowds started cheering and police did not move in.

The protest began six days ago in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol as a spontaneous sit-in by young Spaniards frustrated at 45% youth unemployment.

With police holding back, the protests are expected to spread. Spain has a history of major protest: in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, there were massive street demonstrations, with 94% of the public opposing the Aznar government’s support for the invasion, but the government ignored public sentiment and sent troops into Iraq.

For decades, there have been massive anti-terrorism protests across Spain, demanding an end to separatist violence and a commitment to civics and the rule of law. In 2004, when the Aznar government lied publicly about the evidence for who had carried out the Madrid train bombings, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets to demand the truth be told, rushing Zapatero into government in the election just three days after the attacks.

Spain has long-running, endemic economic problems that have not been resolved by either the Zapatero government or the Aznar government before it. Labor laws are not as well enforced as they should be, leading to widespread exploitation of young or marginal workers, and incentives to start new businesses are not as bold as they could be, keeping pressure on small business owners, holding back employment.

Some have said that enrolling in “el paro” —unemployment— is a rite of passage for young adults, and many expect to go through this rite of passage after receiving a university degree.

There are now large protests growing in cities across Spain, with thousands gathered in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Sevilla, and elsewhere.

The BBC radio today described the Madrid protest as “a large open-air democracy camp”, where protesters have begun forming small civic debates in locations across the square. Sarah Rainsford has reported:

The protesters’ demands, pasted up all over Puerta del Sol, are impossible to ignore.

A statue of King Carlos III on horseback has been decorated with declarations. The metro entrance is now a vast citizens’ noticeboard. “We are not slaves,” one sign says; another instructs: “No alcohol: today the priority is revolution!”

The camp has become more organised by the day, with bright blue tarpaulins strung from statues and lamp posts and tents pitched on the cobblestones. There are sofas, mattresses and – since Wednesday – four chemical toilets, provided by the firm for free.

The protests will, as across the Arabic-speaking world, be fed by the widespread unemployment, which allows the demonstrators to attend and to swell the numbers of the vanguard who seek to occupy the square around the clock. Today’s debate activities and new media attention may be leading toward something of a coordinated list of demands.

In the past, such large demonstrations in Spain have been linked to labor activity, and have included threats of general strike or of attempts to shut down the national economy. In 2008, there was an effort by truckers to literally close down the capital by blocking all access roads. There will be mounting pressure for the Spanish government to alter course, repeal its austerity measures and move toward an investment-oriented recovery plan.

Weekly Address: “Instead of Subsidizing Yesterday’s Energy Sources, We Need to Invest in Tomorrow’s”

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Obama laid out his plans to address rising gas prices over the short and the long term. While there is no silver bullet to bring down prices right away, there are a few things we can do. This week, the Attorney General launched a task force dedicated to rooting out fraud or manipulations in the oil markets. The President called for finally ending the $4 billion in taxpayer money that the oil and gas companies receive annually. And, we need to continue safe, responsible production of oil at home. But in the long term, we need to invest in clean, renewable energy. That is why the President strongly disagrees with a proposal in Congress that cuts our investments in clean energy by 70 percent.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address on Gas Prices
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Washington, DC

This is a time of year when people get together with family and friends to observe Passover and to celebrate Easter. It’s a chance to give thanks for our blessings and reaffirm our faith, while spending time with the people we love. We all know how important that is – especially in hard times. And that’s what a lot of people are facing these days.

Even though the economy is growing again and we’ve seen businesses adding jobs over the past year, many are still looking for work. And even if you haven’t faced a job loss, it’s still not easy out there. Your paycheck isn’t getting bigger, while the cost of everything from college for your kids to gas for your car keeps rising. That’s something on a lot of people’s minds right now, with gas prices at $4 a gallon. It’s just another burden when things were already pretty tough.

Now, whenever gas prices shoot up, like clockwork, you see politicians racing to the cameras, waving three-point plans for two dollar gas. You see people trying to grab headlines or score a few points. The truth is, there’s no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away.

But there are a few things we can do. This includes safe and responsible production of oil at home, which we are pursuing. In fact, last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003. On Thursday, my Attorney General also launched a task force with just one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, including any illegal activity by traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain. And another step we need to take is to finally end the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies we give to the oil and gas companies each year. That’s $4 billion of your money going to these companies when they’re making record profits and you’re paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop.

Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow’s. We need to invest in clean, renewable energy. In the long term, that’s the answer. That’s the key to helping families at the pump and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We can see that promise already. Thanks to an historic agreement we secured with all the major auto companies, we’re raising the fuel economy of cars and trucks in America, using hybrid technology and other advances. As a result, if you buy a new car in the next few years, the better gas mileage is going to save you about $3,000 at the pump.

But we need to do more. We need to harness the potential I’ve seen at promising start-ups and innovative clean energy companies across America. And that’s at the heart of a debate we’re having right now in Washington about the budget.

Both Democrats and Republicans believe we need to reduce the deficit. That’s where we agree. The question we’re debating is how we do it. I’ve proposed a balanced approach that cuts spending while still investing in things like education and clean energy that are so critical to creating jobs and opportunities for the middle class. It’s a simple idea: we need to live within our means while at the same time investing in our future.

That’s why I disagree so strongly with a proposal in Congress that cuts our investments in clean energy by 70 percent. Yes, we have to get rid of wasteful spending – and make no mistake, we’re going through every line of the budget scouring for savings. But we can do that without sacrificing our future. We can do that while still investing in the technologies that will create jobs and allow the United States to lead the world in new industries. That’s how we’ll not only reduce the deficit, but also lower our dependence on foreign oil, grow the economy, and leave for our children a safer planet. And that’s what our mission has to be.

Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend.

After what now looks like significant foot-dragging, for fully one month, Japanese authorities have finally admitted the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is undergoing a level 7 nuclear emergency, the worst possible. There is still an effort to slow-walk this news, with repeated claims the radiation release has not been as significant as Chernobyl, also a level 7, but the Fukushima disaster involves 6 reactors, with at least 4 considered to be at ongoing risk of meltdown.

Last week, radiation levels in water leaking from the plant were found to be at 7.5 MILLION times the legal limit, and it was acknowledged that officials had been deliberately dumping highly radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. The news that, on day one of this emergency, there may have been as much as 10% of the Chernobyl event’s radiation released suggests the still mounting crisis is far from contained, and the evacuation area should be expanded.

There is concern authorities are still making an effort to obscure the true extent of the disaster, and many question why if the American nuclear agency was prescient enough to extend the recommended exclusion zone to a wider radius than what currently surrounds Chernobyl, weeks ago, the Japanese authorities appear to have been cooperating with Tokyo Electric in downplaying the gravity of the crisis.

According to the Guardian newspaper:

“At Chernobyl, the reactor itself exploded while still active, which is completely different from the situation at Fukushima,” Hidehiko Nishiyama said.

He added that the decision had been taken a month after the accident because experts needed time to analyse the data.

Japan’s nuclear safety commission estimated that the Fukushima plant’s reactors had released up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per hour into the air for several hours after they were damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

The pattern of underreporting, adjusted reporting, and moving from aggressive downplaying to ever more contrite admissions, seems for many to parallel the reaction of BP to its own industrial disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the single worst release of oil in world history, aside from Saddam Hussein’s military attempt to destroy Kuwait’s oil infrastructure during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

To this day, much of what BP knew about how much oil was released during last summer’s catastrophic blowout remains unknown to the public, and the oil giant is now suing to avoid paying the $20 billion it agreed to pay as restitution to the region and for cleanup.

There is good reason to scrutinize the reporting coming from Japan, as both the plant operator and the government appear to view it as in their interest to underreport the magnitude of the catastrophe.

If as much as 10% of the release of just one isotope from the Chernobyl disaster was released just on the first day of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, and we are now at day 32, and at least 4 o ut of 6 reactors —and/or their exposed spent-fuel cooling pools— are at risk of meltdown, and they have not yet found a way to contain the radioactive water pooling around the reactors, the ultimate release from Fukushima could be far worse.

We do not yet have adequate information to make that determination, but are being given a model whereby the authorities slow-walk the crisis response, downplay the official emergency rating, and appear to be imposing an inadequate radius of exclusion, while scientists study the data, in hopes of being able to produce a less than worst-case reading of the history of this crisis.

That is not adequate effort to protect the local population, the wider public, the human food, water and air supply, beyond Japan’s borders, or the future stability of the Japanese economy. The situation in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture may yet be the most grave, costly, and consequential nuclear disaster in world history, and local officials and world authorities need to organize their response as if it were so.

As the four troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex continue to deteriorate, the news is breaking this evening that workers at Reactor #4 are being forced to abandon the site, due to the risk of extreme radiation contamination. The evacuation means that at least one of the failing reactors will not have any one in place to manage it; at this hour, it is not clear whether the entire Fukushima complex is being evacuated.

If the entire complex is being abandoned, experts say the radiation would have to be so severe it is now no longer feasible to rotate workers in and out to reduce risk to each individual worker. There are mounting concerns that total evacuation of the plant means authorities are taking a “wait and see” attitude, meaning there will no longer be an opportunity to prevent total meltdown, if that is where the failing reactors are headed.

Japan is a very densely populated island nation, and there are fears the fallout resulting from any major nuclear explosion, fire or prolonged radiation seepage, could spread to other parts of the country. Already, the radiation leaking out appears to have affected conditions in Tokyo and also out to see, where US naval vessels were moored, staging rescue and relief operations.

There were reports throughout the day that Japanese authorities and the US military were being asked by the company that manages the Fukushima site to coordinate airborne delivery of water to cool the reactors. As of 10:00 pm EDT, the news was that Japanese authorities planned to assist in the delivery, overland by pump or from the air, of water and boric acid, to cool the overheating reactors.

But just half an hour later, the situation had, reportedly, deteriorated to the point where a decision was made that it would be safer to evacuate the roughly 50 remaining workers from the site, and possibly to start planning containment measures. If, however, the result of abandoning the site is a total meltdown of the radioactive fuel rods in the reactor cores, the resulting release of radioactivity could render a wide area uninhabitable, as occurred after the Chernobyl disaster more than 20 years ago.

UPDATE, 11:02 pm EDT: There are now reports of white smoke rising from both Reactor #3 and Reactor #4. Two workers are still missing from the explosion yesterday. American military personnel flying aid missions into Japan have been given potassium iodide to protect their thyroids from vulnerability to radioactive particulates.

There is now a report that after the workers were forced to evacuate, some, all or a different crew of workers, returned to the site after 45 minutes, to again attempt to restore the cooling and containment process. Several surrounding countries are now examining all food imported from Japan. There is a surge of demand for flights out of Japan, as foreign nationals seek to return home to escape the release of radiation from the Fukushima plant.

European governments are reportedly drawing up plans for a safety stress testing regime for nuclear plants. Germany has ordered seven nuclear plants in operation since prior to 1980 shut down, and the United States Congress is being pressured to call hearings to examine the safety and disaster preparedness at dozens of nuclear plants across the US.

Christian Parenti, author of the book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, told MSNBC tonight that at least two aging nuclear plants in the northeast —one in Vermont and one in New York— are presently leaking radiation. On one day in April 2010, two different nuclear plants in New Jersey were visited by nuclear inspectors, to deal with possible radiation seepage.

According to New Jersey Newsroom, “State and federal inspectors Friday were searching for the cause of a leak of radioactive water into catch basins at the Salem 2 nuclear power plant in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County.” Then, shortly after the Salem 2 release was made public:

the state Department of Environmental Protection announced that it had been notified by Exelon, owner of Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in Lacey, Ocean County, that a monitor that measures radiation emissions from the facility was discovered to be inoperable. It is unknown how long the monitor has been out of service.

Exelon, the operator of that Ocean County plant, was forced to pay for clean-up of an estimated 180,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-laced water that leaked from the plant on 9 April 2009. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection reportedly found evidence that water with contamination levels 50 times legal limits may have reached the Cohansey Aquifer, an important drinking-water source for southern New Jersey.

UPDATE, 11:31 pm EDT: Chris Jansing reported for MSNBC that a report has found that 25% of all nuclear plants in the United States have leaked or are presently leaking radioactive waste.

The president’s proposed budget for 2012 includes $36 billion in loan guarantees for the development of new nuclear power plants. The United States has still not solved the problem of where to securely store nuclear waste material for the time frame necessary. In Japan, two nuclear reactors appaer to be in meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The $36 billion would be far more wisely spent developing a clean energy economy based on advanced solar and wind technology.

At Fukushima Daiichi, a third reactor (#2) is now said to be at risk of meltdown, after all the cooling fluid evaporated, completely exposing the radioactive fuel rods. Two other plants —one at Tokai and one at Onagawa— are also reported to be experiencing potential system failures that could lead to the release of radiation.

The effort underway at Fukushima Daiichi, to restore nuclear security to the three failing reactors, is experimental, and there is no viable alternative, due to the massive flooding of key areas of the plant. According to the New York Times:

Experts called the injection of seawater and neutron-absorbing boron into the site’s three crippled reactors units a desperation move never attempted before in the industry. It amounted to sacrificing the reactors in an attempt to maintain the structural integrity of the reactor and its encasing concrete containment structure and prevent a potential uncontrolled major radiological release. Three other Fukushima Daiichi reactors had been shut down for planned work before Friday’s 8.9 earthquake and were not part of the crisis.

“I would describe this measure as a Hail Mary Pass but if they succeed, there is plenty of water in the ocean and if they have the capability to pump this water in the necessary volume and at the necessary rates … then they can stabilize the reactor,” said former Energy Department official Robert Alvarez, according to press accounts of his press conference Saturday.

For three decades, the United States has been prioritizing other forms of energy generation, but the nuclear energy has seen a surge in support over the last decade. The Bush administration was a major source of support for the industry, governors and states have begun to talk about the economic viability of nuclear power, and the Obama administration has allotted $36 billion in new loan guarantees for the development of new nuclear plants.

But there is still strong opposition in much of the country to siting any nuclear facilities near homes, schools and workplace environments where people spend the bulk of their time. Farmers have preferred installing their own wind turbines to supporting the construction of major nuclear plants near their land. Public health concerns are very real, and safety guidelines and environmental hazards make nuclear very expensive to develop.

We are now experiencing one of the first cost-relative inflection points in the green power revolution. In North Carolina, solar energy is now cheaper than nuclear power. A report, from the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network and two Duke University researchers, finds that:

Now the nuclear industry is pressing for more subsidies. This is inappropriate. Commercial nuclear power has been with us for more than forty years. If it is not a mature industry by now, consumers of electricity should ask whether it ever will be competitive without public subsidies. There are no projections that nuclear electricity costs will decline.

The United States needs to get serious about how such subsidies are measured. When an industry “matures” in such a way that it requires more subsidies, nor fewer, just to operate, with costs to consumers rising, instead of falling, there are better options available, and those better, safer, more cost effective options should be explored.

Nuclear power plants, like the one at Fukushima Daiichi, contain 1,000 times more radioactivity to leak than the Hiroshima bomb. Nuclear scientists estimate 1,000,000 people would be killed or injured in a major accident, were one to occur at the San Onofre plant in southern California. But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Monday compared the risk to a bridge collapse or a plane crash.

Alexander literally suggested that the scale by which the people of the United States should measure the potential risk of a catastrophic nuclear disaster should be according to their fear of a highway bridge collapse. A highway collapse could kill people, and is and would be tragic, but it would be very unlikely to kill more than a few dozen people. It would be tragic to lose those lives, but such a tragedy is not comparable in scale to death or severe long-term injury to a million people.

It is one of the most astonishing examples of pathological ignorance displayed by any public official in this country for years. It is a sign that Sen. Alexander is willing to put his allegiance to industry ahead of his service to the people and the nation he has sworn to serve. Only a very cynical and corrupt mind could dare to make such a comparison or be so willing to mock the tragedy experienced by victims of radiation fallout.

Sen. Alexander may have made some astonishingly ignorant remarks in the past, or he may not. By comparison, it hardly seems to matter now. He has gone on the record telling American citizens he would be as concerned about the grave need for nuclear security as he would be about highway construction.

It should be so far beyond the acceptable limit for politically motivated misstatements for any public servant to make a remark of the kind Sen. Alexander has seen fit to interject into the debate about nuclear power that no intelligent adult would ever make such an irresponsible and flagrantly offensive statement. But it is not.

Sen. Alexander clearly holds one of two views: either he views the American people as so hopelessly benighted that there will be no political backlash whatsoever to his manipulative and grossly negligent lie, or he actually is ignorant enough to believe what he said, that a nuclear catastrophe is no worse than a highway accident.

Either way, it would seem the people of Tennessee have some thinking to do about how they plan to replace this senator with an individual who is willing to use genuine intellect and moral conscience to serve the better interests of the people of his state.

Tennessee deserves better, and the people of the United States deserve better, than a senator so deeply in league with a private, for-profit interest that makes its living on taxpayer subsidies, that he would suggest the public should not have a serious discussion about whether it is safe to put the most dangerous scientific process known to man in our communities.

Japanese authorities are reporting, just after 3:00 am EDT, that two of the reactor cores at the Fukushima nuclear plant may have begun meltdown. At least nine people are reported to have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. A 20km exclusion zone is being established, and authorities say they are evacuating an estimated 200,000 people from the area.

On Saturday, there was an explosion at the Fukushima complex, and there are reportedly fears of another explosion at the second troubled reactor. The second reactor potentially in meltdown, said to be Fukushima number three, has been reported to be using a plutonium-uranium fuel blend which is much more dangerous than the uranium fuel being used at the other Fukushima reactors.

The mass evacuation has raised discussion of the ultimate security of nuclear energy technology. The nuclear emergency has conjured memories of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania and of the far worse Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine.

<--more-->Experts on Japan’s nuclear industry say it is the world’s most advanced in terms of earthquake preparedness, but that the technology is really designed to withstand a quake as much as 50 times weaker than this quake, by far the worst in Japanese history.

There are serious disparities between the security planning and the security requirements of the nuclear industry. While the physics dictates that some radioactive waste materials, with half-lives as long as 1 million years, will need to be absolutely secured for that length of time, the industry itself has not established a protocol for protecting waste material reliably verey far beyond the expected operable life of a nuclear power plant, some 30 to 40 years.

UPDATE, Monday 14 March, 12:40 am EDT: Reports from Japan and from the IAEA now put two more nuclear power plants in trouble: in Tokai, there is a cooling system malfunction, and at Onagawa, there is a reactor listed as emergency level one, with fear about the possibility of explosion or radiation leakage.

There was also a second explosion reported today at the Fukushima plant, where there is still concern that reactor number three, which uses a mix of plutonium and uranium fuel, might be in meltdown and release radiation or radioactive material into the environment.

According to the New York Times: The release of radioactive steam, as a stopgap emergency measure of cooling malfunctioning reactors could continue for weeks or months. The scale of the nuclear emergency is now said to be spreading, and there are concerns the logistics of getting all the necessary resources, technology and materials to the reactor sites may prove difficult given the collapse of infrastructure across the tsunami affected region.

The Fukushima nuclear plant contains 5 nuclear reactors, which combine to produce the world’s largest concentrated power generation. At least one of the reactors is reported to have radiation levels 1,000 times normal inside one of its control rooms. Today, RussiaToday is reporting that white smoke seen rising from the plant may be due to an explosion. Authorities have warned that some radioactive material may have seeped out into the environment already. There is an ongoing concern that the plant may be vulnerable to meltdown, as plant operators have not been able to resume cooling of nuclear fuel.

In a desperate move to force his controversial budget measure through the state legislature, Gov. Scott Walker, Republican of Wisconsin, is now threatening to fire 12,000 state employees. Critics say there is no budget shortfall significant enough to warrant this action, and that Walker is again using threats and aggression to force his legislation through. The bill he is backing would strip public employees of all collective bargaining rights.

Walker’s proposal is so extreme that this week, FOX News’ Shepard Smith broadcast a critique of the legislation suggesting it was “melarky” to say there was a budget crisis, and that Walker was simply trying to break the unions in order to hurt Democratic candidates’ chances of winning elections.

Today, tens of thousands of protesters have again massed at the state capitol in Madison. Reports from Madison suggest that today’s protests are going to be the largest to date. Last Saturday, an estimated 68,000 people gathered at the state capitol. Today there are protests around the United States, to support the public servants fighting to keep their rights in Wisconsin.

Fourteen Democratic state senators remain in Illinois, boycotting all legislative activity until Gov. Walker withdraws the ban on collective bargaining. Walker is now being said to have “backed himself into a corner”, unable to back down and unable to get his plan passed. In other states with real budget crises, they have been able to reach consensus; if Walker continues to push his plan, when there is no budgetary logic to his final demand, it could make him a lame-duck governor, just eight weeks into his term in office.

When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he raised taxes in the state by $1 billion to fix a budget deficit. While Walker complains about deficits and a “budget emergency”, his plan includes zero job-creation, zero budget repair other than slashing spending, and wasteful tax cuts designed to deliver taxpayer money to the wealthy.

There have been mounting calls for a criminal probe of Gov. Walker’s activities since taking office, since he admitted to someone posing as one of the Koch brothers that he could instigate violence in order to crack down on protesters and suggested his plan is to break the unions to make it easier for Republicans to win elections.

So far, Gov. Walker has threatened, publicly:

• To order the national guard to disperse demonstrators;
• To round up state legislators boycotting the budget plan, by coercive means;
• To surveil and interrogate families of boycotting lawmakers;
• To box Democrats out of other legislative business;
• To fire 12,000 public servants…

He appears to have suggested to a prank phone caller that he was engaged in a coordinated strategy with the Koch Brothers, the Club for Growth and other Republican partisans and corporate interests, using phrases like “one of us”, to attack workers rights in his state in order to undermine Democratic candidates’ chances for election.

Gov. Walker suggested he is trying to lure Democrats back to Madison, that he will never negotiate with them, but that by luring them back “to yell at me”, he thinks Republicans can open a new session, with a quorum, then vote without any of the Democratic members present.

There is a narrow ideological segment of the American political spectrum that obsessively pushes “competition” as the sole standard by which to measure the quality of our economic landscape. The problem here is that the word is too often used to promote the idea that to be “competitive” we need to drastically reduce wages and roll back rights most Americans take for granted. This vision of competition is not conservatism; it’s feudalism.

The idea that ordinary people should have less opportunity, less access to prosperity, less personal freedom and fewer labor rights, is not American; it is not in line with the Constitutional order of American democracy. It is the privileging of arbitrary power over the basic rights of real people. This vision of prosperity bound to regressive institutions does not appeal to independents who demand of their public servants both principle and pragmatism.

There are better ways to sow prosperity, foster dynamic capital flows and enrich our democracy.

One approach might be to make sure that no institution accumulates undue power over institutions others rely on for the protection of their democratic freedoms and wellbeing. Read wellbeing here as access to opportunity or capacity for thriving, but that component of what makes citizenship work cannot be ignored in responsible economic policy.

Competition, to the mind of a committed non-ideologue means just that: the ability of a given entity to compete and to perform. Layoffs, cutting salaries, overseas outsourcing, planned obsolescence and an aversion to innovation, are all seen as cheating, not as “being competitive”.

Policy makers interested in shaping a market landscape where the basic functional framework of society is optimized for producing democracy, fairness, innovation and prosperity, should aim for strategies that can do all of these things persistently. The long term view is not in competition with the self-interest model; it is just a smarter way to secure oneself against the perils of a competitive environment.

There is a false assumption that pervades the political narrative regarding independent voters, which is that by connective fibers running through the word “independent”, all independents have an aversion to organizational solutions, and therefore are avowed libertarians, which is too often interpreted as meaning “suspicious of government”.

Facile commentary from think-tanks, newspapers and partisans, finds this view convenient, and often uses it to shelter incomplete analysis that cannot make sense of the unknowable, i.e. what all those inexplicably non-aligned voters are thinking.

We have to be honest about how we approach measuring anything, of course, or our resulting measurements cannot be trusted. So, let’s first agree that there is no one ideological view that independents as a political faction embrace. Independents helped George W. Bush win in 2004, while handing Barack Obama a landslide victory just four years later. Polling independents is only useful if we know which viewpoint is most likely to drive a given voter to vote next time.

Second, let’s admit that independent voting status does not automatically mean one is a devout libertarian. Nor is it true that all libertarians agree on policy specifics. Nor is it true that the logical response to suspicion of government is anarchism. Independents want reason in government; they want rational behavior and tend to be suspicious of organizations whose raison d’etre is to concentrate power in a more or less rigid ideological framework.

Attempts to define independents as being specifically one way or another tend to collapse, having little solid footing to stand on.

Some view all labor organizing as anathema to “capitalist democracy” and corrosive of fundamental freedoms; others view successes won by the labor movement as the crowning achievement of American democracy, and capitalist free enterprise as merely one aspect of a far more complex human picture. But it is hard to find an independent voter of any serious intellect at all who would say they prefer a world in which people are subject to the imposed will of powerful institutions that do not share their interests.

In the ten years running 1998-2008, there was a decided shift in US policy toward assisting major corporations in adjusting to a wider competitive marketplace by putting major institutional interests ahead of the individual rights and socio-economic standing of individuals and communities. The thinking was: we can stave off the potentially corrosive effects of global competition for capital, by skewing policy in favor of institutions that want or need assistance with their bottom line.

Obviously, it’s too complex an effort to devote to all enterprises, so this thinking privileged the largest, and incentivized massive consolidation, whether in banking, airlines, hospitals, media, construction, insurance or agribusiness. With that consolidation, we saw the disadvantaging of smaller entities of all kinds, and the rolling back of wealth gains for individuals and families.

One statistic often cited is that median household income fell by $2,000 between 2001 and 2008, when adjusted for inflation. It’s hard to escape the obvious conclusion that public policy tilting the economic table in favor of larger entities, rewarding consolidation and discouraging negotiated labor contracts, led to the undermining of working people’s influence in the landscape of the American economy.

The notion that all independents have a libertarian streak is partly responsible for obscuring this analysis, as it leads policy makers of all persuasions to fear running afoul of a key voting block they need to stay in office. But there is no way to justify the claim that this negative trend line in terms of the influence of ordinary people over their economic destiny is somehow acceptable to rational independent voters who want the system to work optimally.

The wrong view of what is virtuous about “competition”, or rather about how to classify what virtuous competition is, undermines the prosperity and personal liberty of individuals and families and erodes communities. We need to see a smarter interpretation of what it means to be competitive: we need to measure our progress by what we can build, not by what we take apart.

Oil as a combustible fuel is a 19th-century improvement on the 18th-century paradigm of burning coal to produce steam to run industrial machinery. The efficiency and portability of carbon-based fuels, in terms of the built-in energy they can store and which is released when they are burnt, has long been the driving factor in their popularity as an energy source. But new technologies are now making it possible to produce large amounts of portable energy sustainably, with none of the atmospheric damage resulting from the burning of carbon-based fuels.

In 2008, the five most profitable companies in the world were oil companies, their annual profits ranging from $20 billion to over $45 billion. No commercial entity in the history of humanity had ever made such immense profits. In 2009, two of the top 5 were banks, largely because oil companies’ profits had fallen as prices came back down to earth. In 2010, it again looks like oil companies were the most profitable businesses on the planet. They do not need subsidies to survive.

The United States government provides over $40 billion in subsidies, in the form of direct funding and tax credits, to oil companies. This is money that is designed to make it easier for those companies to provide cheap fuel to the people of the United States, something they are basically failing to do. Prices remain high, even as the companies in question ask for more subsidies and continue to rake in record profits.

FORTY. BILLION. DOLLARS.

Only 38 countries in the world have government budgets larger than $40 billion. Argentina, one of the wealthier countries in the developing world, with a population of 40.7 million people, does not spend that much on running its entire government. In fact, there are 192 nations that spend less on running their country than the United States does in free giveaways to the most profitable companies in the world.

Does this make any sense? Supporters of the oil subsidies say the oil companies are profitable, yes, but that without these subsidies, they could not be. That is, usually, the logic of providing subsidies to businesses: they provide a needed service and so we need to support them. But let’s look more closely at this idea, with respect to oil…

What if the removal of those subsidies would mean the oil industry is not profitable? That would seem to suggest the entire logic of the industry —that it’s the cheapest, best way to produce energy— is a lie. Even if we are not concerned with that, we might argue that we could use just enough in subsidies to make oil profitable, maybe even very profitable, without having to donate tens of billions of dollars to making companies that would not know how to make a profit without getting free taxpayer money the most profitable in history.

In short:

• The $40 billion in subsidies are immensely wasteful
• 192 nations spend less running their countries than the US does funding big oil
• The industry should, by now, be mature enough to make its own money
• If it is not, there is no way to justify the record profits it takes in

If fiscal conservatives in the United States are serious about cutting the federal budget in ways that will be constructive for building long-term prosperity and eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, it seems clear that giving enough money to oil companies to fund the world’s 39th largest government is not something they should be doing.

We could save whole agencies, avoid cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, avoid cuts to home heating fuel cost assistance to underprivileged seniors, avoid depriving the infant children of low-income mothers of baby formula, avoid eliminating funding for public broadcasting (that’s media that belongs to you and me, not to multinational corporations).

We could make sure veterans’ benefits are not cut, as is proposed in the House Republicans’ “cut to grow” budget proposal. We could actually support the hard work of innovation being done by small business start-ups and entrepreneurs, instead of just telling them to fend for themselves. We could assist those entrepreneurs by making sure they have access to the best quality of publicly funded research, so they are not boxed out of the marketplace by ultra-wealthy multinationals with an interest in slowing the pace of progress.

We could expand funding for student loan programs, transportation infrastructure and the development of the much-needed renewable energy sector and smart grid, and we could do all of this without spending the $40 billion handed out to oil companies.

Where is the ideology in opposing these subsidies? What principle of American conservatism says the most profitable multinational corporations in the history of humanity should have the largest subsidies as well, even as the government plans to systematically roll back services and benefits people across the country have worked for and rely on?

Is it conservative to tell senior citizens they don’t need to have medicine, because ExxonMobil wants to add a few billion dollars more to its bloated profit statement? Is it conservative to tell working mothers they need to live in homeless shelters and spend only minutes a day with their kids, because BP wants taxpayers to fund its operations in the Gulf of Mexico?

Is it conservative to tell veterans who have put their lives at risk and possibly suffered serious wounds that they need to give up some of their benefits, or be barred from having sustained treatment for brain injury or PTSD, because the US government needs to ensure that oil companies don’t have to work too hard, diversify or innovate, to meet their quarterly profit projections?

Does any of this make any sense? Will any principled conservative come forward to explain why the United States government needs to devote $40 billion to subsidies for an outdated technology, while the recipients of those subsidies refuse to participate in building a more prosperous, more sustainable future for all Americans?

There’s one thing no one supporting the oil subsidies seems willing to discuss openly, which is that the reduction in those subsidies doesn’t have to deprive Americans of access to affordable energy: the same subsidies can be redirected to alternative energy technologies, and the same companies could participate in that contest for major innovation, and actually earn the subsidies, if they produce the best alternatives.

We need a 21st-century energy subsidy model, which considers the need to innovate, to move away from combustible fuels altogether, to achieve alternatives that, like wind and solar, allow us to dramatically increase the productive potential of the technology, as the technology advances, and leave static energy sources like fossil fuels in the past.

This is the common-sense thing to do. And we should not waste any more money trying to buy back an inefficient past from companies that will not cooperate in building the future. We are better than that. The hard working people of the United States deserve better.

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting fuel sources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.

Neither is there anything ideological about the allegiance of some to carbon-based fuels. The considerations are entirely practical on all sides, and we need to remember this as we try to find consensus on how to move forward, responsibly, as a civilization, in terms of our relationship to energy and the environment.

For some people in the political arena, it would appear to make more sense to continue to support carbon-based fuels as the primary resource for energy production, for a number of practical reasons, each of which can be refuted on practical grounds: 1) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels donate to one’s campaign; 2) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels “create jobs”; 3) because burning things to release energy is easier to understand than more advanced technologies.

There are real ideologically-rooted reasons why the passions can run so deep on either side: for environmentalists, it is morally unconscionable that we continue burning dirty fuels and eroding the natural systems on which all life depends, no matter the reasons; for the pro-petroleum segment of the political spectrum, there are patriotic roots, hearkening back to two world wars and the Cold War, with oil seen as a guarantor of security.

Oil is no longer that, and passions aside, thinking people have to acknowledge that the root of those passions is really practical and not ideological anyway. It makes practical sense to be good stewards of the environment on which we depend for everything that we have, and it was a practical consideration that linked industrial production and national security to the availability of carbon-based fuels.

But now, national security has become so closely linked to energy supply issues that we can no longer rely —again, in strictly practical terms— on a commodity as volatile, finite and problematic as petroleum. The costs to society are too great, whether we are talking about war-fighting —and war-funding, for that matter—, the loss of freedom in terms of shaping our foreign policy, or our economic choices, costs in terms of human health or the destabilization of major climate systems.

And coal, while abundant in North America, is so dirty a resource that the environmental fallout alone makes it less than reasonable as a foundational resource for long-term future planning. There may come a time when carbon itself is a resource, required for its chemical properties, but not necessarily as useful as we now pretend, as a combustible fuel. Places where the coal industry has its roots may have to change focus or find technologically cutting-edge ways to justify the exploration for coal.

The reasons for this are hard to understand, if one starts from the assumption that there is something traditional or sacredly local or productive about coal. But if we step back and consider the real adaptability of human populations, we find that no community really needs the coal industry, having no chance of survival or prosperity in its absence, in the way the coal industry lobby pretends.

Communities are made up of human beings and are as adaptable as those human beings’ minds, hearts and relationships. The relationship to powerful coal interests is not always a happy one, and this alone can open doors for the development of resources that are more sustainable, more local-friendly, and respectful of future human need in ways that older technologies simply cannot be.

Even the coal industry itself could innovate, diversify, and find ways to turn its operations into major sources of clean renewable energy. At least three renewable resources come to mind: geothermal energy production, wind and solar. Mining companies in many cases own or lease land for which they have not yet devised a marketable use or long ago abandoned, and these can be converted to solar farms, wind farms or geothermal fields.

While international mining companies are outsourcing administrative jobs and moving to more “cost effective” mining sites overseas, some are beginning to use disused mining sites in the US to build part of the new clean-energy infrastructure. Across the southwest, such projects are already in development or being implemented. According to the Arizona Republic:

Both the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency are studying the potential to put renewable-energy projects on mines, landfills and other disturbed lands.

Mines can help avoid many of the expenses solar plants face on pristine desert, experts said, such as environmental rules that require relocating saguaros and other protected plants.

There is no reason why environmentalists seeking to promote clean energy and communities steeped in a long tradition of coal mining or oil drilling cannot come together, free of ideological constraints, to craft the solutions that will make the US a global leader in efficient, profitable, mass-produced clean energy. The ideology that claims this issue is one of ideology is simply a rhetorical framework that serves the interests of the most stagnant and unimaginative coal and oil interests.

Major oil producers could easily invest billions in renewable R&D and become global pioneers in the rush to achieve a fully self-sustaining clean-energy economy. Their resistance is perhaps more linked to a short-sighted ideological prejudice than to a lack of will to be part of the future, but they do not have any real ideological framework to back up their position, and the logic that favors a transition to renewables does not require one.

From a strictly economic standpoint, it does not make sense to continue being near totally reliant upon a way of doing business that carries the wildly exorbitant potential costs of an Ixtoc, anExxon Valdez, Texaco in Ecuador, or a Deepwater Horizon disaster. If we want to be intelligent about how we achieve “energy independence”, we have to first assess and confront the real costs of doing business the way big oil does business.

It’s not a matter of “a tax on energy” or “a tax on carbon”, it’s a matter of making sure the responsible parties pay their share. Subsidies on an unprecedented scale, have made the oil business look and feel profitable in ways that it actually is not, when the health of the wider economy is considered. Were those wider costs built into the business itself, big oil would not be nearly as attractive an investment as it seemed to be until the Deepwater Horizon well blew out in April.

While an “ideology” that values the natural environment over the right of the oil industry to make profits may rejoice at the opportunity to use such a failure as BP has experienced in the Gulf of Mexico to make the case against oil, that political motive does not make it any less true that BP had no responsible or credible action plan for dealing with an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude, despite deliberately doing everything necessary —reportedly cutting corners and ordering the suppression of good information— to bring about the catastrophe.

That such risks can be avoided with a transition to clean, renewable energy resources that do not require combustion and do not require oil or coal to achieve the efficiency gains they aim to achieve, is just as honestly not a matter of ideology. It’s the way it is. And science is now demonstrating that we can produce more than enough electricity, nationally, to power our entire domestic energy consumption through wind and solar alone, if we build the infrastructure.

At the point where the renewable energy infrastructure is pervasive and functional enough to outpace carbon-based fuels in total power generation capacity, there will be no question, practically speaking, whether or not renewables are a more effective method of promoting long-term economic health and prosperity. Where is the ideology inherent in planning for such a virtuous moment of future achievement?

• Discussions on Zero-combustion Energy Research
• Economic Report: Building a Green Economy
• Futurismo Verde: debate sobre un futuro energético limpio y renovable

In more than 100 years of Nobel Peace Prizes, only a dozen women have ever won. Civil-rights and peace activist Jody Williams, received the award in 1997 as the chief strategist of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which established the ?rst global treaty banning antipersonnel mines.

Williams believes that peace is de?ned by human (not national) security and that it must be achieved through sustainable development, environmental justice, and meeting people’s basic needs. To this end, she co-founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative, endorsed by six of seven living female Peace laureates. She chairs the effort to support activists, researchers, and others working toward peace, justice, and equality for women and thus humanity. Williams also continues to ?ght for the total global eradication of landmines.

There is little doubt that the United States is experiencing a long-term crisis in the scarcity of gainful employment. It is, in fact, persistently difficult for many laid off workers to find jobs even at a steep pay cut. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did a great deal to staunch the bleeding, and has helped move the economy toward a grudging reversal in job trends, but we are still saddled with two major Bush-era policy shifts that are hampering job creation almost across the board.

The first is the unprecedented giveaway of nearly $2 trillion in tax revenues, during the years 2001-2010, to mostly the wealthiest Americans. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were in fact the largest single transfer of wealth in American history, a giveaway of needed government revenues to those who least required a handout. The Bush team’s thinking was trickle-down economics to the extreme: if we give more than a trillion dollars to the wealthiest Americans, they will have to pass on that wealth by “creating jobs”.

The flaw in this reasoning was that the real impact, the real incentive of the Bush handout was: if the wealthiest interests in our society can earn more than a trillion dollars without lifting a finger, why should they waste money creating jobs? This latter logic has proven to be much closer to the economic shift we experienced in the wake of those tax cuts. American businesses began moving jobs overseas at record pace, and even pressed for the further relaxation of labor laws, so job creation wouldn’t be “so costly”.

The transfer of wealth was further exaggerated when the Bush administration persuaded Congress to overhaul bankruptcy laws, making it much harder for individuals to escape crippling debt through bankruptcy protection, while making it easier for corporations to do so. Banks whose balance sheets were riddled with bad debt resulting from mathematically unsustainable and predatory lending practices could hide their exposure by taking advantage of both sides of that bankruptcy reform.

The second major economic policy shift that took place under George W. Bush was the near total deregulation of the banking sector. Pres. Clinton had signed major bank deregulation legislation in the late ’90s, but the intention was not to give major banks carte blanche to set up a fictional trading regime which no human being could track and in which the private wealth of most Americans could be made vulnerable to systemic fraud. The Bush years, however, saw a shift in regulatory infrastructure which invited (and brought) such abuse.

Allowing major banks to not only hold deposits and make loans, but to sell stock, to convert loans into securities, to gamble with pension plans, to sell insurance, some of which was designed to insure against the collapse of their other financial products, was a calamitous miscalculation. It is what invited and brought about the worst financial abuses in generations and led to the worldwide financial collapse of 2007-2008.

If banks are not accountable for the truthfulness of their wealth claims, they have every incentive to first begin, then expand, the very risky fictionalization of wealth that we saw in the years 2001-2008. With unprecedented amounts of free cash floating around in the bank accounts of the wealthiest of the wealthy, the financial sector experienced an incredible boom in dollars invested. The comprehensive deregulation of the financial sector then allowed them to use this new economic reality to vastly inflate the value of that private wealth, by investing not in productive business opportunities, but spurious and ill-designed financial “instruments”, the true value of which was simply the point-blank multiplication of wealth.

To say that wealth is fictionalized is a specific charge: the entire financial services sector embarked on a complicated re-engineering of the meaning of investment. No longer was the smartest gamble the investment of hard cash into real businesses producing actual products and services with corresponding measurable market value; now, the focus shifted to investments in securitized investments, pools of wealth claims not corresponding to any measurable, grounded economic activity.

Building “instruments” designed to expand the financial holdings of clients was the new game. Bad loans were bundled into “mortgage-backed securities”. One could buy one-tenth of 1% of a bundle of 1,000 home loans, the total cash value of which can never exceed the contracted amount plus interest over time, in hopes that other investors will throw so much money at the same security that its financial value (wholly detached from its real economic value) will escalate wildly.

If this sounds risky, your bank could secure its other holdings against the risks of mortgage-backed securities by engaging in “credit default swaps”. The simplest way to explain these is to say that two or more banks agree to shore each other up against massive credit losses, to provide baseline security to the already improbable investment values tied to the pooling of mostly risky mortgages.

These two policy shifts saw the United States government give away $2 trillion, at the beginning of a decade which would cost nearly $2 trillion in war spending, only to throw in another $1 trillion at the tail end, to pay for the clean-up, leaving major financial institutions not only intact, despite systematic abuses, but far wealthier with respect to the average American business or household than ever before. This policy shift was undertaken deliberately by the Bush administration, and to some extent, the policy goal of putting more power into the hands of a concentrated minority of the wealthiest interests was achieved.

The current administration is dealing with the aftermath of this decade of decadence; Pres. Obama has the unenviable task of wrestling with the resulting wave of unemployment, challenging deeply held assumptions about the American genius for creating wealth and reminding citizens and politicians that free as we are, most individuals have little control over their economic circumstances. Should he raise taxes? Fine the banks? Institute wage controls on investment bankers? Ban irrationally huge executive bonuses?

His critics allege he is desperate to do each of these, and yet he has never attempted even one of them, as a response to the financial crisis. The only area where taxes have been increased during Obama’s presidency, is on the wealthiest recipients of the most expensive health insurance policies. Economists of every stripe agree this will help to bring down costs and insure more people.

Pres. Obama’s approach to the financial collapse, the government’s fiscal crisis and persistent unemployment, has been to seek solutions that will allow private markets to deal better with the challenges of the day. The bluster and character assassination from his critics has been relentless, but the fact is, he has not proposed socialist fixes to the converging crises in American markets; he has, instead, sought to make it possible for individuals and businesses to fare better, while aiming to defictionalize the investment markets without prompting a sudden collapse of values in any sector of the economy.

In this sense, Obama has been largely successful. Most economic trend lines appear to be moving in the right direction, including job-creation. In 2009 and 2010, the US economy created far more jobs than during the Bush years, 2001-2008. But employment is lagging desperately behind other economic indicators. The weakness in the US jobs market can be traced directly to these two vitally ill-conceived economic policy shifts: the massive transfer of wealth the wealthy (an incentive large enough to remove all incentives) and near total free rein to the financial sector (allowing the wealthy to isolate their wealth without losing it, undermining the capitalist-democratic model whereby wealth flows throughout the society).

Financial regulatory reform, passed by the Democratic Congress and signed into law by Pres. Obama, was a significant step in the right direction, banning some of the worst abuses, targeting crucial conflicts of interest, and instituting a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will, for the first time in US history, give ordinary Americans a regulatory watchdog specifically designed to protect against systemic fraud and abuse in the financial sector.

But we are still dealing with the bulk of the costs of these two key Bush-era policies, and the extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans may serve to stabilize the slow jobs recovery, but it is unlikely to accelerate it. We have to examine whether, as a democratic republic, we have any reason for giving such massive new wealth and such unconstrained privilege, to the already wealthy and privileged, without even asking anything in return.

In a free society, the rule of law should grant each of us the core democratic liberties that make us whole people, able to act freely in the public sphere, but the system should not be so easily redesigned to serve the personal or corporate interests of a limited few or to impede the flow of capital (as a percentage of overall investment) to ordinary people and small businesses. The folly of the Bush years was to pretend that an economy planned for the select few would work for everyone. An economy aligned to privilege market dynamics that elevate working families, citizens and communities, will enrich the wealthy, but not at the expense of everyone else.

The following text is an official transcript of Pres. Obama’s remarks to a joint session of the Indian Parliament, as delivered on Monday, 8 November 2010, at Parliament House, New Delhi, India

5:40 P.M. IST

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Vice President, Madam Speaker, Mr. Prime Minister, members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, and most of all, the people of India.

I thank you for the great honor of addressing the representatives of more than one billion Indians and the world’s largest democracy. (Applause.) I bring the greetings and friendship of the world’s oldest democracy —- the United States of America, including nearly three million proud and patriotic Indian-Americans. (Applause.)

Over the past three days, my wife Michelle and I have experienced the — and dynamism of India and its people — from the majesty of Humayun’s Tomb to the advanced technologies that are empowering farmers and women who are the backbone of Indian society; from the Diwali celebrations with schoolchildren to the innovators who are fueling India’s economic rise; from the university students who will chart India’s future, to you —-leaders who helped to bring India to this moment of extraordinary promise.

At every stop, we have been welcomed with the hospitality for which Indians have always been known. So, to you and the people of India, on behalf of me, Michelle and the American people, please accept my deepest thanks. (Applause.) Bahoot dhanyavad. (Applause.)

Now, I am not the first American President to visit India. Nor will I be the last. But I am proud to visit India so early in my presidency. It’s no coincidence that India is my first stop on a visit to Asia, or that this has been my longest visit to another country since becoming President. (Applause.) For in Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging; India has emerged. (Applause.)

And it is my firm belief that the relationship between the United States and India -— bound by our shared interests and our shared values -— will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century. This is the partnership I’ve come here to build. This is the vision that our nations can realize together.

My confidence in our shared future is grounded in my respect for India’s treasured past -— a civilization that’s been shaping the world for thousands of years. Indians unlocked the intricacies of the human body and the vastness of our universe. It’s no exaggeration to say that our Information Age is rooted in Indian innovations —- including the number zero. (Applause.)

Of course, India not only opened our minds, she expanded our moral imaginations — with religious texts that still summon the faithful to lives of dignity and discipline, with poets who imagined a future “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high” — (applause) — and with a man whose message of love and justice endures -— the father of your nation, Mahatma Gandhi. (Applause.)

For me and Michelle, this visit has, therefore, held special meaning. See, throughout my life, including my work as a young man on behalf of the urban poor, I’ve always found inspiration in the life of Gandhiji and his simple and profound lesson to be the change we seek in the world. (Applause.) And just as he summoned Indians to seek their destiny, he influenced champions of equality in my own country, including a young preacher named Martin Luther King. After making his pilgrimage to India a half-century ago, Dr. King called Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance “the only logical and moral approach” in the struggle for justice and progress. (Applause.)

So we were honored to visit the residence where Gandhi and King both stayed —- Mani Bhavan. And we were humbled to pay our respects at Raj Ghat. And I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared and inspired with America and the world. (Applause.)

An ancient civilization of science and innovation; a fundamental faith in human progress — this is the sturdy foundation upon which you have built ever since that stroke of midnight when the tricolor was raised over a free and independent India. (Applause.) And despite the skeptics who said this country was simply too poor, or too vast, or too diverse to succeed, you surmounted overwhelming odds and became a model to the world.

Instead of slipping into starvation, you launched a Green Revolution that fed millions. Instead of becoming dependent on commodities and exports, you invested in science and technology and in your greatest resource —- the Indian people. And the world sees the results, from the supercomputers you build to the Indian flag that you put on the moon.

Instead of resisting the global economy, you became one of its engines —- reforming the licensing raj and unleashing an economic marvel that has lifted tens of millions of people from poverty and created one of the world’s largest middle classes.

Instead of succumbing to division, you have shown that the strength of India —- the very idea of India —- is its embrace of all colors, all castes, all creeds. (Applause.) It’s the diversity represented in this chamber today. It’s the richness of faiths celebrated by a visitor to my hometown of Chicago more than a century ago -— the renowned Swami Vivekananda. He said that, “holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character.”

And instead of being lured by the false notion that progress must come at the expense of freedom, you built the institutions upon which true democracy depends —- free and fair elections, which enable citizens to choose their own leaders without recourse to arms — (applause) — an independent judiciary and the rule of law, which allows people to address their grievances; and a thriving free press and vibrant civil society which allows every voice to be heard. This year, as India marks 60 years with a strong and democratic constitution, the lesson is clear: India has succeeded, not in spite of democracy; India has succeeded because of democracy. (Applause.)

Now, just as India has changed, so, too, has the relationship between our two nations. In the decades after independence, India advanced its interests as a proud leader of the nonaligned movement. Yet, too often, the United States and India found ourselves on opposite sides of a North-`South divide, estranged by a long Cold War. Those days are over.

Here in India, two successive governments led by different parties have recognized that deeper partnership with America is both natural and necessary. And in the United States, both of my predecessors —- one a Democrat, one a Republican -— worked to bring us closer, leading to increased trade and a landmark civil nuclear agreement. (Applause.)

So since that time, people in both our countries have asked: What’s next? How can we build on this progress and realize the full potential of our partnership? That’s what I want to address today —- the future that the United States seeks in an interconnected world, and why I believe that India is indispensable to this vision; how we can forge a truly global partnership -— not just in one or two areas, but across many; not just for our mutual benefit, but for the benefit of the world.

Of course, only Indians can determine India’s national interests and how to advance them on the world stage. But I stand before you today because I am convinced that the interests of the United States —- and the interests we share with India -—are best advanced in partnership. I believe that. (Applause.)

The United States seeks security —- the security of our country, our allies and partners. We seek prosperity -— a strong and growing economy in an open international economic system. We seek respect for universal values. And we seek a just and sustainable international order that promotes peace and security by meeting global challenges through stronger global cooperation.

Now, to advance these interests, I have committed the United States to comprehensive engagement with the world, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. And a central pillar of this engagement is forging deeper cooperation with 21st century centers of influence -— and that must necessarily include India.

Now, India is not the only emerging power in the world. But relationships between our countries is unique. For we are two strong democracies whose constitutions begin with the same revolutionary words —- the same revolutionary words — “We the people.” We are two great republics dedicated to the liberty and justice and equality of all people. And we are two free market economies where people have the freedom to pursue ideas and innovation that can change the world. And that’s why I believe that India and America are indispensable partners in meeting the challenges of our time. (Applause.)

Since taking office, I’ve, therefore, made our relationship a priority. I was proud to welcome Prime Minister Singh for the first official state visit of my presidency. (Applause.) For the first time ever, our governments are working together across the whole range of common challenges that we face. Now, let me say it as clearly as I can: The United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality.

Together with our partners, we have made the G20 the premier forum for international economic cooperation, bringing more voices to the table of global economic decision-making, and that has included India. We’ve increased the role of emerging economies like India at international financial institutions. We valued India’s important role at Copenhagen, where, for the first time, all major economies committed to take action to confront climate change —- and to stand by those actions. We salute India’s long history as a leading contributor to United Nations peacekeeping missions. And we welcome India as it prepares to take its seat on the United Nations Security Council. (Applause.)

In short, with India assuming its rightful place in the world, we have an historic opportunity to make the relationship between our two countries a defining partnership of the century ahead. And I believe we can do so by working together in three important areas.

First, as global partners we can promote prosperity in both our countries. Together, we can create the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future. With my visit, we are now ready to begin implementing our civil nuclear agreement. This will help meet India’s growing energy needs and create thousands of jobs in both of our countries. (Applause.)

We need to forge partnerships in high-tech sectors like defense and civil space. So we’ve removed Indian organizations from our so-called “entity list.” And we’ll work to remove — and reform our controls on exports. Both of these steps will ensure that Indian companies seeking high-tech trade and technologies from America are treated the same as our very closest allies and partners. (Applause.)

We can pursue joint research and development to create green jobs; give India more access to cleaner, affordable energy; meet the commitments we made at Copenhagen; and show the possibilities of low-carbon growth.

And together, we can resist the protectionism that stifles growth and innovation. The United States remains —- and will continue to remain —- one of the most open economies in the world. And by opening markets and reducing barriers to foreign investment, India can realize its full economic potential as well. As G20 partners, we can make sure the global economic recovery is strong and is durable. And we can keep striving for a Doha Round that is ambitious and is balanced —- with the courage to make the compromises that are necessary so global trade works for all economies.

Together, we can strengthen agriculture. Cooperation between Indian and American researchers and scientists sparked the Green Revolution. Today, India is a leader in using technology to empower farmers, like those I met yesterday who get free updates on market and weather conditions on their cell phones. And the United States is a leader in agricultural productivity and research. Now, as farmers and rural areas face the effects of climate change and drought, we’ll work together to spark a second, more sustainable Evergreen Revolution.

Together, we’re improving Indian weather forecasting systems before the next monsoon season. We aim to help millions of Indian farmers — farming households save water and increase productivity, improve food processing so crops don’t spoil on the way to market, and enhance climate and crop forecasting to avoid losses that cripple communities and drive up food prices.

And as part of our food security initiative, we’re going to share India’s expertise with farmers in Africa. And this is an indication of India’s rise —- that we can now export hard-earned expertise to countries that see India as a model for agricultural development. It’s another powerful example of how American and Indian partnership can address an urgent global challenge.

Because the wealth of a nation also depends on the health of its people, we’ll continue to support India’s effort against diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, and as global partners, we’ll work to improve global health by preventing the spread of pandemic flu. And because knowledge is the currency of the 21st century, we will increase exchanges between our students, our colleges and our universities, which are among the best in the world.

As we work to advance our shared prosperity, we can partner to address a second priority —- and that is our shared security. In Mumbai, I met with the courageous families and survivors of that barbaric attack. And here in Parliament, which was itself targeted because of the democracy it represents, we honor the memory of all those who have been taken from us, including American citizens on 26/11 and Indian citizens on 9/11.

This is the bond that we share. It’s why we insist that nothing ever justifies the slaughter of innocent men, women and children. It’s why we’re working together, more closely than ever, to prevent terrorist attacks and to deepen our cooperation even further. And it’s why, as strong and resilient societies, we refuse to live in fear. We will not sacrifice the values and rule of law that defines us, and we will never waver in the defense of our people.

America’s fight against al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates is why we persevere in Afghanistan, where major development assistance from India has improved the lives of the Afghan people. We’re making progress in our mission to break the Taliban’s momentum and to train Afghan forces so they can take the lead for their security. And while I have made it clear that American forces will begin the transition to Afghan responsibility next summer, I’ve also made it clear that America’s commitment to the Afghan people will endure. The United States will not abandon the people of Afghanistan -— or the region -— to violent extremists who threaten us all.

Our strategy to disrupt and dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates has to succeed on both sides of the border. And that’s why we have worked with the Pakistani government to address the threat of terrorist networks in the border region. The Pakistani government increasingly recognizes that these networks are not just a threat outside of Pakistan —- they are a threat to the Pakistani people, as well. They’ve suffered greatly at the hands of violent extremists over the last several years.

And we’ll continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks must be brought to justice. (Applause.) We must also recognize that all of us have an interest in both an Afghanistan and a Pakistan that is stable and prosperous and democratic —- and India has an interest in that, as well.

In pursuit of regional security, we will continue to welcome dialogue between India and Pakistan, even as we recognize that disputes between your two countries can only be resolved by the people of your two countries.

More broadly, India and the United States can partner in Asia. Today, the United States is once again playing a leadership role in Asia —- strengthening old alliances; deepening relationships, as we are doing with China; and we’re reengaging with regional organizations like ASEAN and joining the East Asia summit —- organizations in which India is also a partner. Like your neighbors in Southeast Asia, we want India not only to “look East,” we want India to “engage East” —- because it will increase the security and prosperity of all our nations.

As two global leaders, the United States and India can partner for global security —- especially as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years. Indeed, the just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate. That is why I can say today, in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed United Nations Security Council that includes India as a permanent member. (Applause.)

Now, let me suggest that with increased power comes increased responsibility. The United Nations exists to fulfill its founding ideals of preserving peace and security, promoting global cooperation, and advancing human rights. These are the responsibilities of all nations, but especially those that seek to lead in the 21st century. And so we look forward to working with India —- and other nations that aspire to Security Council membership -— to ensure that the Security Council is effective; that resolutions are implemented, that sanctions are enforced; that we strengthen the international norms which recognize the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all individuals.

This includes our responsibility to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Since I took office, the United States has reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and we’ve agreed with Russia to reduce our own arsenals. We have put preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism at the top of our nuclear agenda, and we have strengthened the cornerstone of the global non-proliferation regime, which is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Together, the United States and India can pursue our goal of securing the world’s vulnerable nuclear materials. We can make it clear that even as every nation has the right to peaceful nuclear energy, every nation must also meet its international obligations —- and that includes the Islamic Republic of Iran. And together, we can pursue a vision that Indian leaders have espoused since independence —- a world without nuclear weapons. (Applause.)

And this leads me to the final area where our countries can partner —- strengthening the foundations of democratic governance, not only at home but abroad.

In the United States, my administration has worked to make government more open and transparent and accountable to people. Here in India, you’re harnessing technologies to do the same, as I saw yesterday at an expo in Mumbai. Your landmark Right to Information Act is empowering citizens with the ability to get the services to which they’re entitled — (applause) — and to hold officials accountable. Voters can get information about candidates by text message. And you’re delivering education and health care services to rural communities, as I saw yesterday when I joined an e-panchayat with villagers in Rajasthan.

Now, in a new collaboration on open government, our two countries are going to share our experience, identify what works, and develop the next generation of tools to empower citizens. And in another example of how American and Indian partnership can address global challenges, we’re going to share these innovations with civil society groups and countries around the world. We’re going to show that democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for the common man —- and woman.

Likewise, when Indians vote, the whole world watches. Thousands of political parties; hundreds of thousands of polling centers; millions of candidates and poll workers — and 700 million voters. There’s nothing like it on the planet. There is so much that countries transitioning to democracy could learn from India’s experience, so much expertise that India can share with the world. And that, too, is what is possible when the world’s largest democracy embraces its role as a global leader.
As the world’s two largest democracies, we must never forget that the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others. (Applause.) Indians know this, for it is the story of your nation. Before he ever began his struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi stood up for the rights of Indians in South Africa. Just as others, including the United States, supported Indian independence, India championed the self-determination of peoples from Africa to Asia as they, too, broke free from colonialism. (Applause.) And along with the United States, you’ve been a leader in supporting democratic development and civil society groups around the world. And this, too, is part of India’s greatness.

Now, we all understand every country will follow its own path. No one nation has a monopoly on wisdom, and no nation should ever try to impose its values on another. But when peaceful democratic movements are suppressed —- as they have been in Burma, for example — then the democracies of the world cannot remain silent. For it is unacceptable to gun down peaceful protestors and incarcerate political prisoners decade after decade. It is unacceptable to hold the aspirations of an entire people hostage to the greed and paranoia of bankrupt regimes. It is unacceptable to steal elections, as the regime in Burma has done again for all the world to see.

Faced with such gross violations of human rights, it is the responsibility of the international community —- especially leaders like the United States and India —- to condemn it. And if I can be frank, in international fora, India has often shied away from some of these issues. But speaking up for those who cannot do so for themselves is not interfering in the affairs of other countries. It’s not violating the rights of sovereign nations. It is staying true to our democratic principles. It is giving meaning to the human rights that we say are universal. And it sustains the progress that in Asia and around the world has helped turn dictatorships into democracies and ultimately increased our security in the world.

So promoting shared prosperity, preserving peace and security, strengthening democratic governance and human rights — these are the responsibilities of leadership. And as global partners, this is the leadership that the United States and India can offer in the 21st century. Ultimately, though, this cannot be a relationship only between presidents and prime ministers, or in the halls of this Parliament. Ultimately, this must be a partnership between our peoples. (Applause.) So I want to conclude by speaking directly to the people of India who are watching today.

In your lives, you have overcome odds that might have overwhelmed a lesser country. In just decades, you have achieved progress and development that took other nations centuries. You are now assuming your rightful place as a leader among nations. Your parents and grandparents imagined this. Your children and grandchildren will look back on this. But only this generation of Indians can seize the possibilities of the moment.

As you carry on with the hard work ahead, I want every Indian citizen to know: The United States of America will not simply be cheering you on from the sidelines. We will be right there with you, shoulder to shoulder. (Applause.) Because we believe in the promise of India. We believe that the future is what we make it. We believe that no matter who you are or where you come from, every person can fulfill their God-given potential, just as a Dalit like Dr. Ambedkar could lift himself up and pen the words of the constitution that protects the rights of all Indians. (Applause.)

We believe that no matter where you live —- whether a village in Punjab or the bylanes of Chandni Chowk — (laughter) — an old section of Kolkata or a new high-rise in Bangalore — every person deserves the same chance to live in security and dignity, to get an education, to find work, to give their children a better future.

And we believe that when countries and cultures put aside old habits and attitudes that keep people apart, when we recognize our common humanity, then we can begin to fulfill these aspirations that we share. It’s a simple lesson contained in that collection of stories which has guided Indians for centuries —- the Panchtantra. And it’s the spirit of the inscription seen by all who enter this great hall: “That one is mine and the other a stranger is the concept of little minds. But to the large-hearted, the world itself is their family.”

This is the story of India; this is the story of America —- that despite their differences, people can see themselves in one another, and work together and succeed together as one proud nation. And it can be the spirit of partnership between our nations —- that even as we honor the histories which in different times kept us apart, even as we preserve what makes us unique in a globalized world, we can recognize how much we can achieve together.

And if we let this simple concept be our guide, if we pursue the vision I’ve described today —- a global partnership to meet global challenges —- then I have no doubt that future generations —- Indians and Americans —- will live in a world that is more prosperous and more secure and more just because of the bonds that our generation has forged today.

So, thank you, and Jai Hind. (Applause.) And long live the partnership between India and the United States. (Applause.)

END 6:17 P.M. IST

The United States of America is the “wealthiest country in the history of the world”. We hear this repeated so often, it’s almost as if it has become the national slogan. Economists tend to agree that it’s the truth, but that wealth is relative: tens of millions of Americans live in abject poverty, unable to obtain basic sustenance, medical care, adequate education or even basic public safety. One in five children in the United States now live in poverty. Among African American and Hispanic children, the rate is 30 percent.

In some formerly leading industrial states, one in four households is now on food stamps, and unemployment insurance and welfare are now capped and conditioned on expectations that cannot be met given the real-world economics of the places where affected people live. The social assistance system was reformed virtually out of existence in the 1990s, and over the last 12 years, has evolved to offer solutions that only highly educated people with no history of credit problems or public assistance could really qualify for.

Essentially, people who have comfortable lives have engineered, through their political choices, a system in which people who have never had comfort, or opportunity or anything resembling a fair and level playing field, are treated as if their poverty is the result of laziness. This is a misplaced focus on the virtues of independence and free will. We cannot use the virtue of individual liberty to throw our fellow citizens to the proverbial economic wolves.

Yes, anyone does have the freedom to and should have the wherewithal to apply informed free will to make sound choices and lead a productive, self-sustaining life, but the conditions in which such a thing is possible are not always within reach. When a system of economic activity becomes as complex and sophisticated as that of the United States, it is all too easy for hard-working, intelligent, good people to be systemically boxed out of any and all real opportunity. We should guard against that kind of institutionalized hardship cycle.

When a cycle of economic, political and educational degradation, persists long enough, entire communities can find they have no one working to improve them that is simultaneously rooted in the community and empowered by a series of successes and by a network of people who stand on solid economic footing. In such a situation, communities degrade radically, until there are no supermarkets, no banks, no clothing shops, no reliable businesses and normal everyday life cannot function in line with commercial expectations for a prosperous economy.

In that kind of situation, what sort of jobs is one supposed to seek? Whole communities find their local economic stock depleted to the point where they can only look for work in neighboring communities, often having to compete with people not facing the same obstacles they face. Protections that would help them obtain work in such communities have been stripped away and the financial cushion meant to help them retrain and take advantage of opportunities has been cut off.

The United States now faces the disturbing contradiction of being the world’s richest country, blessed with an extreme surplus of food, clothing and property, yet being unable to provide affordable housing and food to a very large segment of the population. In 2009, one in seven Americans, 14.3% of the population, was living in poverty, according to official government numbers.

That’s 44 million Americans living in poverty.That’s the entire population of Spain. Of 224 nations on Earth, 194 of them have populations smaller than the number of Americans living in poverty. There are more people living in poverty in the United States than in the Sudan. And poverty is not just a temporary gig: it’s a spiral of factors that close in and make escape all the more difficult, despite the lavish opportunity available to others within the same society.

When a family is in those circumstances, the most likely scenario is that there is not enough money to pay for enough food for everyone to thrive. When public assistance is cut off, there is no solid economic footing on which any member of that family can stand to make a move upward. Upward mobility is supposed to be the “American dream” —anyone can build a castle for his or her family, if only they work hard enough—, but the United States has fallen behind Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain, in social mobility.

The new report [pdf] from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) finds the United States falling behind other leading industrial democracies, as access to quality basic public schooling and higher levels of education is put out of reach of more and more people. Deep cuts in social spending, spurred by massive, unfunded tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, have put unprecedented stress on public school budgets, causing property taxes to rise and playing havoc with crucial programs that cultivate a more dynamic, upwardly mobile workforce.

France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States were singled out as four developed nations where the socio-economic status of fathers closely determines the opportunities available to children. The report also finds that “Inequalities in secondary education are likely to translate into inequalities in tertiary education and subsequent wage inequality.” (OECD, p. 5) In other words, if the quality of high school education is vastly disparate, access to the empowering environment of a top-level university education will be greatly diminished for those with a less advanced high school experience.

Since 2008, states and municipalities have been aggressively cutting the funds available for public education. California’s budget crisis bodes very ill for its once vibrant network of cutting edge public schools, and has caused its lauded research universities to turn to private funding to expand their endowments. In New Jersey, cuts have been so deep, even individual schools in rural Cape May saw 7-figure cuts to their annual budget, causing layoffs and reducing the resources available to students.

If not for a $100 million challenge grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, many outside observers believed Newark’s failing school system was headed for financial ruin and possible institutional collapse. Chronic underfunding and a property-tax-based system of public school funding put Newark in a kind of razor’s edge circular logic of failure and penalty, undermining students’ chances and degrading the local community.

The failing school system was in such dire straits, it was under state control (a condition in municipal-control New Jersey that means “bring of disaster”) for 15 years. Now, Zuckerberg’s grant will allow Republican governor Chris Christie (responsible for crippling cuts elsewhere) and Democratic mayor Corey Booker to give control back to the city, with Booker’s office taking on the responsibility for finding $100 million in matching donations and administering a wholesale revival of the district’s schools.

Funding matters. And education matters. The philosopher Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, speaking of his passion for Greek classics, is credited with saying “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” But in the United States, fiscal pressures lead politicians to toss funding for books, schools and teachers, to the wind, even as they decry the cost of social assistance such as food stamps and welfare (clothes and shelter).

But it might be that investing in books is precisely what troubled school districts from Newark to Camden to Cape May (all in New Jersey) to Philadelphia to Sacramento need to do. Cutting funding allows politicians to posture about their own short-term “fiscal responsibility”, but that political capital is purchased with the degrading of young people’s and entire communities’ future opportunity and prosperity.

Punitive standardized testing, viewed with concern by many education experts as something of a racket that pads the profits of educational publishers (who create and distribute the tests and sell books designed to help prepare course material related to them), has nudged public education away from the paradigm wherein every innocent child has the right to a complete and thorough top-quality education, which also serves our interest as a society by yielding more well-rounded, dynamic thinking citizens, to a cut costs, punish-to-improve mentality.

But a student that tests well in science in 3rd grade might see his or her future career limited to low-paying vocational work that requires mechanical understanding, if he is never exposed to any creative fields that work on the intellectual centers of the brain, and a 3rd grader who tests not very far above average in basic science, but excels at playing the cello, painting and gymnastics, might have a better chance of being able to recognize the potential of a career in astrophysics, and be better prepared for it.

If we are not upwardly mobile, we are not as free as we pretend to be. If we leave 44 million of our fellow citizens behind, without so much as a flutter of the eye or a downward curl of the lip, our republic is not as committed to democratic principles as we say it is. We are the republic, every one of us, and if the inner-city child in a single-family home that owns no property can’t get her hands on a book to develop her own abilities, we are less free, and if the Appalachian child, living with three generations of his family cannot develop writing and IT skills, we are less free, every one of us.

Right now, one in seven American citizens is living in poverty. If you’re not the one, then one in six of those around you is. And if you can safely say “not so in my backyard”, then you are living a segregated life where everybody’s liberty and life experience, including your own, is degraded. One in seven of us is living in poverty. One in American children are living in poverty. One in three Hispanic or African American children are living in poverty.

In the eight years from 2001 through 2008, household median income fell by $2,000. Our economy collapsed in 2008, because our banking system was operating on the assumption we were all getting richer, when in fact, most of us were getting poorer, even as basic expenses, and interest rates, healthcare and transport costs, steadily rose, eroding our individual liberty to live as we would choose.

The road to real reform is long and complicated. It will require tough choices. But those choices might have to be something a little more selfless than “cut the budget for my neighbors’ kids’ school”. It may have to be: “if I vote you in, I want you to do whatever it takes to make sure our schools work, and our kids have a future, and our neighbors’ kids and their neighbors’ kids”.

It might have to be we take seriously the lessons of thinkers as diverse as Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, John Dewey and Thomas Jefferson: if even one among us is boxed out of a full, self-empowered and prosperous life, excluded from the generosity of human intellectual history and real-time human ingenuity, then we are all diminished, and our freedoms are hollowed out, and our republic is in jeopardy.

While the Great Recession, or its lagging statistical wake, rattles on, we need to make sure that no one who lives in this society is treated as less than fully human, that no one is denied food or shelter or the right to self-improvement or genuine opportunity. We need to make sure there are no hungry children and no school closings based on ideological bias or unstudied experimentation. We need to take seriously that every single thing we do is building our future republic: do we want to slide toward an anti-democracy, or empower every citizen to help shape a better, freer future?