More Airport Insecurity

While Amsterdam was busy harassing me and forcing me to abandon my small bicycle tool kit at the airport in the name of national security, they allow on board someone who nearly blew up a plane last week.

I was able to take my tool kit on four earlier flights. The TSA says it's legal to take it on board in any event...yet, because our zero tolerance policy focuses security on white guys, white grandmas, nuns, priests, rabbis, paraplegics, asthmatics, and nursing mothers, they can't focus enough efforts on the most likely terrorists.

My odds, and frankly your odds, of dying at the hands of a terrorist are less than being struck and killed by lighting...yet we've spent over one trillion dollars, a million million dollars, fighting terror the world over and fighting white environmentalist bicyclists from packing a 2.5mm hex wrench on board flights. Since the state department has been keeping track since the 1960's, only 5,000 people have been killed by terrorists...as many by lightning. That many Americans are killing themselves each month on our roadways. The odds of either you or me dying by the hands of a terrorist are zero.

You know, in the end, this makes for fantastic blogging fodder. My house is nearly paid off, I have a fantastic recession-proof job, I'm outta debt -- I really couldn't give a rat's ass about how much you spend to fight phantom terrorists like me (carrying aboard a bicycle chain tool is the same as five pounds of Semtex according to TSA). I pay my taxes happily and wouldn't be bothered if I have to pay more for your happy shit to save Our Way Of Life From Terror. If you so choose to allocate a trillion dollars to prevent another 5,000 people from dying while ignoring the more obvious such as spending a tenth of that to get almost all our assholes off the roadways, well, that's your prerogative.

I will sit back and have a lot to blog about in twenty ten. I will be publishing my 2010 forecast shortly.

Motor Mania

Thursday, I took RTs 65 bus to work for the first time ever. I wanted to take my usual e-Tran 52, but because Christmas Eve is a quasi-holiday and the e-Tran website said the 52 was on a limited schedule without defining what limited means, I took the RT bus.

And man! It was as fast as e-Tran! I have to take it up my Franklin Blvd. to Florin light rail, catch one train, then another train to get to work but it worked great. The same amount of time with the 52 and one train. This in stark contrast the the rest of my neighbors, all of whom subscribe to the Elk Grove Compulsory Motoring Program. The EGCMP, even with $3 gas, is alive and well.

I was thinking about the 1950 Motor Mania, where Goofy transforms from Mr. Walker into Mr. Wheeler when behind a car. Now nearly sixty years later, it's as valid today as it was then. I am beginning to realize the futility of blogging about energy and transportation when many people sixty years ago felt that auto dominance wasn't healthy yet we've done every fool thing since then to only make it worse. I hold a minority opinion.

Motor Mania is such a fantastic short! It depicts an electrified train with passengers/pedestrians as undesirables, much like I am viewed as a bus/train rider today. The last train passenger cheerfully offers a "good morning," in the exact same way as I feel coming off the train into work instead of how I feel coming out of my car. I discovered early on how liberating and how stress-free my commute has become since I'm no longer Mr. Wheeler. This is one of the best cartoons of our time.

Letter to the Bee

RE: RT a drain on the county's taxpayers, Dec 19:

The opinion correctly states how intensive public transit subsidies are, but fails to offer that the major alternative to transit, namely cars, are provided much larger subsidies from public tax revenues. The costs of highway building, maintenance and free parking are borne only partially by users but also indirectly through higher taxes and prices. I doubt California would build any additional highways if federal matching or stimulus funds weren't available to subsidize them.

The underlying problem is that the Sacramento region is comprised chiefly of low-density suburban development which cannot be adequately served by public transit. Combined with single use zoning that pervades regional planning, it is absurd to suggest that light rail ought to reduce congestion and commute times. We implicitly built in automobile dependency.

The question that isn't asked is "what kind of environment do we want to live in?" A region where the only viable transportation option is your own car(s) and perpetual debt servicing? Continued dependence on foreign energy? Public transit ought to be subsidized even more, and integrated with medium density, walkable, mixed-use development. A more liveable Sacramento would result, and would promote the climate and energy security goals that loom on our horizon.

Edit: Published in the Bee on 24 Dec, 2009.

Veterans Of Future Wars

My sister commented that the next generation would have a lower standard of living than the previous generation. I'm curious about her statement. She has no children, but her siblings do...does that influence her opinion? And why now? Why the next generation specifically?

I think people with children are biased in believing that it can't get worse, because they don't really want to think about their children living with energy constraints, pollution (either local or global), oceans without edible fish, crushing national debts, forests without lowland gorillas, greater wealth disparity, escalating armed conflict, health care whose costs increase at 7% per year, homes whose values rise at 20% per year remaining perpetually unaffordable...

But they also don't want to act either -- because doing so might limit their access to their own wants. So long as their health care is covered by their employer, so long as their own house continues to rise in value 20% per year ad infinitum, so long as their pensions are viable, so long as their tank of gas costs less than $40...

The American way of life -- a life of profligate energy use, wanton consumption, on the receiving end of global wage arbitrage, and entitlements. This is the definition of a good standard of living -- access to your wants, and there is no better way than to use as much energy as you please, to drive where you please, to have access to 1080p televisions, two refrigerators and a 3,200 sq ft starter mansion, access to copious volumes of cheap products manufactured by others, to have access to perpetual unemployment checks. I believe our nation will remain willing and able to engage war to preserve this way of life.

I look at my thirteen year old son and wonder if he will someday engage in war, and if so, what kind of war would it be? Seems Americans are quite the warring people, engaging in a major war every 20 years or so since inception. Doesn't it seem plausible, even remotely plausible, that if Venezuela or Nigeria withheld available crude (horrors! another embargo!) we'd construe that as economic terrorism? Shit. We invaded Iraq for less. What's next? An economic war? A war on terror? A revolutionary war? A war of attrition? A war of conquest? A civil war? A guerrilla war? Based on American history, my son will live through and will perhaps himself engage in another war sometime between now and 2023. He very well might become a veteran of some future war.

Today --a military engaging in two foreign wars to fight terror and expensive gasoline while the rest of the population consumes, leisures, ignores, and defers payment for all of it...damn, the ultimate definition of a high standard of living.

To make this standard even higher, I offer the following:

That it is inevitable that this nation will engage in another war within the next twenty years, and that it is expected that future consumers should also reap the benefits of wars conducted by others without cost or loss of access to property, I demand the government offer a $15,000 check to all consumers to consume consumables upon conclusion of the next war, payable in 2029. However, it is but common right that this check be payable immediately, plus 20% compounding interest annually and retroactively between 2029 and 2009, as history demonstrates (through cash for clunkers, TARP, and other stimulati) that economic stimulus be brought forward, for the consumer, the most deserving, should be able to enjoy his/her consumption now rather than later as they have become so accustomed.

Copenhagen

Copenhagen was a fantastic choice as the site for the next round of climate change talks. It is as close to a correctly built city I can think of. If nothing else, this city should be used as a demonstration to Americans of exactly how wretched we've built our own cities here.

Some details of Copenhagen emerge -- nearly 36% of all trips are taken by bicycle, with a city goal of 50% by 2015. This wasn't always the case. In the 1960s Copenhagen was overrun by the automobile, as is the case for every American city, but leaders collectively agreed to change the urban fabric to accommodate bicycling, with immense opposition I might add. As Schwarzenegger pointed out in his comments, today Copenhagen is considered one of the world's most livable cities....and of course, because people want to live there, it's among the world's most expensive cities, too.

What stands out is that this city is nearly uniform in density -- medium density, with active storefronts at street level, with six to seven stories above, a uniform architecture to bind buildings together creating a sense of outdoor enclosure (that is, it makes people want to be there), with active and regular public transportation via electrified light rail, buses, and trains.

So I can't help but compare this against my fine little Elk Grovian burg, king of low-density auto-dependent sprawl, where nobody nobody! rides a bicycle to get anywhere, where light rail train service is a moving 20-year target, and where less than 5% of the population has ever boarded an e-Tran bus.

In my opinion, all of our green this and green that is really pointless unless we frame it around more livable places to live. The substitution of wind powered electric cars for the ICE doesn't address this fundamental flaw -- profligate American energy consumption because of how we live.

Chinese Cars

You were aware that China will sell more cars than the U.S this year, yes?

What will invariably happen, with tens of millions of new vehicles in that country, will be the Elk Grovification of former Chinese farmland and open space to create concrete/asphalt roads to get Betty Liu and Billy Chu out of their awful cities and into new suburban homes. Note that China has about 18 cars per 1,000 people...compared to the U.S. with 765 motor vehicles per 1,000. A quintupling wouldn't even begin to halve the disparity between us.

All occurring in a nation with a substantial savings rate, holding a substantial volume of U.S. debt, and with less than 2% of the world's crude reserves. These aren't batterized vehicles, they ain't hybrids and they aren't powered by alt.energy -- they are all gasoline powered, and several hundreds of millions more are coming, and deservedly so. When they quintuple their number of vehicles to 90 per 1,000, that would put them with the same number of cars per capita that the U.S. had in 1927.

Either the rest of the world comes up to the current American way of life, or the American way of life falls back to equalize with the rest of the world. What do you think will really happen? Do you really think China will someday have .765 cars per person?

Environmentalism Canceled

I am somewhat amazed at how well my 2009 predictions held true. One more on my list came to fruition Wednesday with the CARB announcement that California's diesel emissions standards would be canceled due to the economy. Exactly as I predicted.

See? Environmentalism is only applicable when times are good. When bad, all environmental bets are off the table, and in this case, the diesel standards set to begin in 2011 will be delayed because the trucking lobby argued, successfully, that due the the number of idled trucks our "air ain't quite so bad no more."

Well, if it's a recession that's to blame for creating cleaner air, well, count me in for cheering on a full on depression. A full on depression. Let every damn truck in the state go idle, then.

Unless you commute by bicycle every day up and down Franklin Blvd., you have no idea what it's like to cycle alongside Carson Ice trucks, Campbell Soup supply trucks, and the 300 Conway Freight trucks on 47th and breathe that particulate exhaust. This is a [not so] small reason why Elk Grovians will never bike to work -- there aren't options for avoiding these emissions, and subsequently they generate copious amounts themselves with their own driving. There aren't options for avoiding these emissions because CARB won't enforce their own rules.

So, you really think this nation, really, is gonna accept carbon legislation when the economy is bad? You are dreaming if you think it's going to happen. Even if there is consensus in Congress to push through legislation, which is debatable itself, won't the various trucking and energy lobbies delay it to such an extent that it won't be meaningful? That unless we are burning through 21 million barrels a day in a booming economy it's going to get canceled because we are only burning 19 million barrels a day in an economic downturn?

I don't care much about the global climate issue when we can't even get localized environmental policy enacted. Take care of your local environment and the global environment will follow. There is no way, no way, this nation of ours will possibly reduce CO2 emissions under any conceivable scenario in my opinion. We might cancel it due to economic harm. We will likely cheat relative to any international agreements if we don't cancel it. And you can be sure our fellow Elk Grovians, whose lifestyles are wholly dependent on the burning of copious quantities of fossil fuels, will never stand for a reduction, Tuvalu be damned.

Ribeye In The Sky

It is almost futile to describe to my fellow Elk Grovians the wondrous waterfowl we had have here in this area.

I spent seven hours out at the Stone Lakes Wildlife Refuge today, primarily to kill ducks and geese, but secondly, to observe things that 99.893% of this city's inhabitants have never seen, don't care about seeing, and will never see. There is a tremendous heritage of natural beauty around this city of mine that is being destroyed daily, through the relentless march of economic progress -- the building of low-density suburban slums from Sacramento to Galt. A total waste.

This morning, in my blind here in Elk Grove, I saw 4,500 speckle belly geese, 35 mallards, 55 sand hill cranes, 25 honkers, 4 snow geese, 780 cormorants, 7 otters, an entire blackening of the sky with starlings, 35 American white pelicans, and a few thousand various swallows, blackbirds, and other unknown birds. I would have liked to take a honker like this one from two weeks ago:

This bird. I took its flesh while I respected its soul. If you find this offensive, well, piss off. I have a much higher affinity for our animals than most, and that counts for much more than buying bologna at the WINCO. I only take what I eat, and I only take what's given. It's hunting...not shooting. I spent three days over the last five trying to get birds but I shot nothing.

I am personally at odds, sincerely, with how the building of my own suburban house contributed to the destruction of this sort of wildlife. I opined in my first sentence what my Elk Grovian neighbors think of all this -- they couldn't give a rat's ass about any of it, so long as their roads aren't congested, so long as gas is cheap, and so long as their sprawl economy continues unabated. This comes from personal interaction with my neighbors. Not a one has any understanding of what their suburban enclaves and asphalt has taken from what's been here for 230,000 years.

Perhaps this post can offer some insight into what we (my co-worker Joe and I) saw this morning, and how special an occasion it was. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen in Elk Grove, in my fifteen years in this city (or near it, to be clear). From our blind, just over the cottonwoods, we could hear the sandhill cranes coming. A group of eleven:They emerged from the tree line and flew not twenty feet above our blind. We could see the whites of their eyes, their redheads, their heads scanning back and forth, their bodies flying in perfect sync. They looked like 747's they were so big. I understand in Texas they are hunted -- they are considered ribeye's in the sky, their meat is so valued. Here in Elk Grove, all hunting is banned after 12:00 PM because this is prime sandhill habitat.

You cannot, and will never, understand the poignancy of such an event unless you get out there and see this for yourself. Take the time and the effort to get out to the Consumnes preserve and witness this for yourself. As an Elk Grovian, I am totally ashamed of what my city is doing to destroy this last refuge of the last undammed river in Northern California, the Consumnes river. I am a hunter, yes...but a preservationist first.

Four Hummers

Cranes and flatbed tractor trailers were recently employed in my SMUD parking lot to remove the hydrogen fueling facility that SMUD placed into service in April 2008.

Remember Bush? Yes, that forgotten president and his famous "addicted to oil" and "we'll transition to a hydrogen economy?" Well, a mere nineteen months into our "new economy" we've abandoned it. The electrolyzer and hydrogen tanks were taken away, never to return.

SMUD built an 80 kW solar array to power the electrolyzer, enough for 14 hydrogen cars. Do you have any idea how expensive an 80 kW array is? Do you have any idea how expensive the whole hydrogen facility is? The solar array will remain above the parking lot, providing the important service of shading parked vehicles. Over those nineteen months, I never once witnessed a single hydrogen car being fueled up, but I've seen some paradoxical things in the shade cast by that array.

Consider this gem:


One of my co-workers. This single picture illustrates the massive, massive chasm between the fantasy of an alternative fueled society and the reality we live in.

Aside from parking like a prick (he'll sometimes take two compact spaces if the end space isn't available), the driver represents extreme forms of pride, excess, energy density and wanton consumption, underneath solar panels representing expensive, rarefied energy. I find the dichotomy quite interesting.

The direct energy consumed by just four Hummers driven 12,000 miles a year is equal to the entire annual energy output of this array. I haven't even mentioned the energy used to produce the array and the energy used to produce the cement pillars, the reinforcing steel rebar, the steel I-beam structure, or the alpha male building contractors. Cement manufacturing produces heroic volumes of CO2 while coal (coke) is burnt to produce steel. The two dozen or so contractors who built this array all individually drove F250s...not one of them arrived for work in a subcompact, Prius, hydrogen car, bicycle, or on foot.

I wonder -- can a guy driving a Chevy 3500 from his 3/4 acre horse property in Lincoln to construct a PV array in Sacramento still be considered a green collar worker, even though he'll burn through more fossil fuels than the supposed energy savings his job will create?


This photo demonstrates to me the impossibility of transitioning to an alternative powered society. We won't transition, in my opinion. Ever. We will instead choose to wage energy wars to keep our way of life going and we will allow our privileged culture to self destruct before we voluntarily reduce/constrain energy use.

Fabrique En Chine

A few days ago I lamented how American manufacturing lost out to low wage foreigners by suggesting that we wanted it. Yes - we wanted the evisceration of whole towns, cities, and communities so we could save a few dollars on a toaster.

While making toast this morning, I lifted my toaster up and in bright, beautiful, black letters, written in Lucida Sans Unicode font I believe, were those comforting three words: Fabrique en Chine.

I felt good. I felt real good. The toast was good, too; not too crunchy and just the perfect shade of brown.

I felt good knowing that I saved about eight dollars and forty two cents by not having to pay an American worker to build it. His toaster is Chinese, too. I felt good knowing that I will be buying another one in five years time instead of fifteen years time, negating those savings and indeed costing more in the long run, because Chinese manufacturing is utter shit compared to domestic production.

But hey. This is what we really wanted. We wanted lives of leisure. We didn't want that smelly toaster factory anywhere near our suburbia. We wanted clean jobs in office parks, jobs that service and manage the financing and shipping of said toasters from factories in China, pitting these factories against each other to see who can fill Target/KMart/WalMart orders the cheapest, with presumably the cheapest labor.

This weekend I saw what this means to towns like TuleLake, Klamath Falls, and Malin. These towns have fallen on hard times. Granted, their livelihoods are based on high desert agriculture that's marginal even in the best of times, but little local production of value added goods from these raw materials remains.

I plied the town of TuleLake, CA, looking for the old horseradish plant and storefront that I remember from years back. I gave Christmas gifts of TuleLake horseradish (and other foods) years ago to family and I wanted to do it again this year, but the small plant was abandoned about nine years ago for cheaper, centralized processing elsewhere. The specialized goods this town used to produce is mostly gone. Horseradish is still grown there, yes, as it has been grown in the volcanic soil for generations, but it is more and more being produced and shipped in from China as Chinese horseradish can be imported cheaper than producing it here in Northern California.

But hey. This is what we really wanted.

DECLINED

I have been using an automatic bill pay feature through Wells Fargo for a dozen years. Admittedly, I occasionally overdraft because I overpay my mortgage -- leaving me with too much month at the end of the money. Overdraft fees are steep, but I've noticed how Wells Fargo maximizes their ability to assess them. If I have several bills that I pay on the same day, they post the largest bill first, in succession from largest to smallest. In this way, if I do overdraft, they can hit me with fees on a larger quantity of smaller charges instead of a single fee on the largest bill.

Clever fuckers, they are.

But my day of overdraft reckoning is coming. My mortgage is almost paid off. The cause of my overdrafting is trying to pay down debt. I suppose I am too overzealous to pay off my mortgage, but I accept the overdraft fee(s) for my own stupidity. I'm not whining that the government step in to fix this. I'm whining that we have an America whose citizens consumers couldn't accept the social stigma of being DECLINED while consuming consumables. Consequently, I have no way to turn this shit off on my own debit account.

The American Consumer got what it wanted with this. The worst, most despicable, and horrific form of public humiliation imaginable is to have a credit card or debit card be DECLINED while trying to consume consumables with several other Consumers present, waiting behind you, giving you the "stare" for being such an unfit American. Socially, we accepted overdraft fees (it's a short term loan, isn't it?) to avoid such awful, degrading, public humiliation. To be declined in public? Gawd. You'd feel lower than a snake's ballbag.

So we passively accepted these overdraft fees. Wells Fargo calls this a fee instead of what it really is, a short term loan, to avoid the truth in lending requirements that apply to loans but not fees. If I use their debit card, I have no ability to request that they turn this feature off and simply deny the purchase if I don't have the money...but this isn't an option. I don't want the fucking loan but they give it to me anyway, saying that I passively wanted it by overdrafting. A $4 latte at 'Lil Willys would cost $35 more upon overdrafting. What is that, a few thousand percent interest?

The thing to do, if you do use automatic bill pay, is to never send more than one payment each day. Stagger them over successive days and pay the smallest bill first, defeating Wells Fargo's ability to post the largest transaction first. If you do overdraft, yes, you'll pay for being a dolt...but at least you will [likely] only overdraft the one large transaction instead of several smaller ones.

How Did You Like The Play?

"Aside from 'that,' Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

This morning, I'm wondering if today we refuse to discuss any bad news. We just shove it aside and listen to good news about green shoots, a 3.5% good quarter, or some other such things. I'm wondering if it is worst (sic) than we acknowledge.

Obama, acknowledging that our national security interests are at stake in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more, while at the same time acknowledging that our national security interests will expire in eighteen months by withdrawing, represents America correctly -- both he and we collectively refuse to acknowledge bad news. In this case, I believe the bad news is that a perpetual war where we eventually "declare victory" will have the same outcome regardless of date. I believe it might be worser (sic) news if we brought these few hundred thousand troops home to 17% unemployment (U-6). At least they are gainfully employed overseas, just like all our former manufacturing jobs we exported because we wanted to save a few dollars on a toaster.

I asked last year, before the election, if he could have the capability to "declare victory," reach in, and suck out our troops. Clearly, he doesn't, or won't, or whatever. While my two sons aren't going to be fighting over there, they will likely spend a fair portion of their lives working to pay it off, because I'm not paying for it...I've never been asked to pay for it. This bad news perpetuates but with Obama in charge it doesn't seem so bad, does it?

Remember, there were a few million like-minded right-of center Republicans who also felt betrayed by their president in the 2001-2008 time frame; all of today's doves will find plenty of company, all of them falling into an unrepresented "middle," facilitating our two party government's inabilities. But bad news persists regardless.


By the way, where have the green shoots gone? Are they now little trees, growing our 70% consumerist economy back to life? Are they giant oaks, meaning we are completely out of recession and our "way of life" of debt fueled hyper-consumption can resume? Or have the green shoots withered, as shoots are wont to do without a solid base of minerals, soil, and nutrients. I dunno...I think our green shoots have died but we refuse to discuss it; we refuse to accept that fiscal stimulus, cash for clunkers, $600 stimulus checks (remember those?), and $8,000 buy-a-house-now programs have done little. Bad news persists regardless.

That interviewer in 1865 must have been trying to see the good news in an otherwise shitty circumstance. Bravo.