Not Nearly Good Enough

The House just passed a bill raising efficiency standards for cars, lightbulbs, and appliances, as well as funding huge subsidies for corn-based ethanol. Everyone in Washington seems pretty pleased with themselves. But as far as I can tell, this bill is the equivilant of me switching the lightbulbs in my house to CFLs and turning the powerstrip off when we’re not watching the TV. Nice gesture, reduces the impact a bit, everyone should be doing it… but it’s not going to save the planet. Here are my issues:

1: New fuel standards will require new cars to get at least an average of 35 miles per gallon, a 40% increase from the current 25 mpg standard. That’s lovely. My 1986 Toyota gets 37 miles per gallon right now. Mind you, this standard won’t go into full effect for twelve more years. So in 2020 my car which was made 34 years before will still be more fuel efficient than your average family car will be required to be. That’s progress, right there. (Please note that there’s nothing special about my Toyota - it’s just a good car - and I do not actually expect it to be around in 2020, but if it was, I would still drive it!)

2: Ethanol subsidies are taking us down the wrong road. Aside from the fact that it is the least energy efficient alternative fuel out there (in terms of the ratio of fossil fuel input to energy output), aside from the fact that I think that in a world in which millions of people go to bed hungry and thousands starve to death every single day it is crime to grow anything but food on arable cropland, there is this important point:

“For farmers and agribusiness, the energy bill is a windfall, perhaps providing more support than the farm bill. It doubles the use of corn-based ethanol - despite criticism that corn-based ethanol is driving up food prices, draining aquifers, and exacerbating fertilizer runoff that is creating dead zones in many of the nation’s rivers.”
-Boston Globe

For the purposes of this post I”m going to ignore the fact that the last two are things regular farming does as well… I’ll get to that in a future diatribe. Ethanol may be a reasonable solution for Brazil (though by no means a permanent fix) where they make it from sugar cane, which is both cheaper and much more land and fossil fuel efficient, but in the US where the ratio of energy in to energy out in corn-based ethanol is only about 1:2 (not counting the environmental distruction and hidden costs of rising food prices) it is just not worth it. There may be a magic biofuel out there that will free us from our dependency, but corn ain’t it.

3: They cut out the bit where clean energy like wind and solar get more tax breaks and oil companies get few tax breaks. Excuse me, but I don’t think that what is effectively the most lucrative and the most environmentally distructive industry we have, one which everyone currently uses due to need for energy and lack of alternatives should be getting any tax breaks at all. Unless they are working to develop clean alternative energies. That they can can get tax breaks for. But other than that, I say tax them and give the money to alternative energy research. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship for dry land, they will follow the money.

In conclusion, despite some very laudable legislation about lightbulbs and dishwashers, I think this bill will do more harm than good. It allows our lawmakers to sit back and say, “We passed new energy standards, we gave money to alternative fuels…it’s not perfect but we’ll look at it again in 12 years or so,” while the environment continues to go to hell. Our meager cuts aren’t even offsetting our own growth, much less what China and India are doing (it may be the other side of the world, but guess what? We all share the same atmosphere.) This bill gives excuse to do nothing more. Our lawmakers are afraid (and rightly so!) of pushing the auto and oil industries. Saying, this is what you have to do - if you don’t have the technology now then you’d better invent it because this is what is required to make a real difference. In a country that went to the actual moon in an actual spaceship after the government decided that was a priority, I find it very hard to believe that we can’t make solar power feasble or be driving 100mpg cars in a couple of decades if that’s what we really wanted to do. And saying to the public - it is nice that you want big powerful cars that burn a lot of gas, but you simply cannot have them unless we find a better way to power them because that is harmful to all of us. That is the government’s primary duty: to protect everyone under its rule. To me, that consistents pretty much of preventing people or companies from doing things that hurt other people or the society as a whole.

Status Update

Sorry for the lack of activity this weekend! My “pack” (ie, parents) is visiting, and since they only come down from the Great White North once or twice a year, my life tends to get to co-opted almsot entirely while they are here (not that I mind). I should have some things up tonight or tomorrow in the categories of “environmentalism” and “kinky stuff” (not in the same post, however).

Score One for the Good Guys

The New Jersey Legislature voted yesterday to repeal the the death penalty, and the Governor is expected to sign the bill within the week. NJ will be the first state to repeal it after it was legalized in the ’70s. Now, its not very often I can say that I’m proud of my home state but today is one of those days (although it would be better if we’d never had it all, but I’ll take what I can get). 1 state down, only 36, the federal government, and the military to go!

How Much Does Bush Hate Kids? This much!

CNN reports that George Bush has vetoed a second bill expanding the funding of the SCHIP program for poor/uninsured kids. Why is it the so-called “godless liberals” seem to be the only ones interested in, oh, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, taking care of widows and orphans. You know, all that stuff Jesus was so keen on. How on earth did the Republican party become the evangelical Christian party? Does anyone even read the Bible anymore?! Oh I forgot…they only read the smiting bits.

And I hate the excuse that I hear for vetoing these sorts of bills and for trying to block a national healthcare system: “It’s a step towards communism.” Oh, come on! We all know communism doesn’t work. We’ve seen the fall out and aside from a few overly-idealistic college students I think most of us are over it. But a healthy pinch of socialism in certain areas doesn’t seem to have done those European nations with longer life spans, better education and job security, and shorter work weeks any harm. And who benefits by having millions of people uninsured? No one. They either get treatment and can’t pay for it, go into debt, and drag the economy down with them, get the government or charity to pay for it once the situation becomes acute, which is more expensive than insuring them beforehand, or get no treatment and are unable to work (going on welfare) or die (and allowing that to happen only further weakens the moral fiber of our nation and shreds our credibility).

It’s not like we’re free from the taint of socialism anyway. What do you think the public school system is? Badly run socialism. Technically, anything that people are compelled to contribute money to for the benefit of all (irregardless of how much they themselves contributed to) is socialism. But we have deemed these form nots only acceptable but necessary to have a healthy, cohesive society. Why not healthcare? I would think that would be the first thing we would want to take care of. When people go to a underdeveloped country or into a crisis situation, they don’t start by building roads and raising an army…they start by providing food and medicine to everyone, followed quickly by education. That’s is where our priorities should be.

The words of one evangelical Christian republican voter on NPR the other day chilled me- “I’m tired of paying for someone else’s child to have breakfast at school everyday.” It shows not only a very un-Christianlike lack of compassion, but a lack of forsight. When other people’s children starve, it brings us down as a group. And the more children who grow up with out food and medical treatment and a good education, the more sick, uneducated, and probably bitter adults we will have a few years down the road. That’s bad for the economy, bad for the crime rate, bad for our intellectual standing in the world, and bad for our national conscience.

Best Sound-Byte I’ve Heard This Month

I heard this driving in to work today:

“I am not an official of the United States and I am not bound by the diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.” - Al Gore

It’s nice when people have the guts to say that, isn’t it? I heard another sound-byte from an Iowa republican woman who was pissed off at Huckabee for making jokes about the non-existence of global warming in his speech there. It’s not nearly fast enough, but the times are finally a-changing.

(More about Gore’s Bali speech here)

Sex in the Small Town

This is kind of old news, but I had some thoughts on it. A couple in Duncanville, Texas who run a weekend swingers club, The Cherry Pit, out of their home are threatened with being shut down as the town has passed a law banning sex clubs in residential areas. The couple claim they are being descriminated against for their lifestyle choices, and in a small Texas town that prides itself on its large number of churches and not having any strip clubs, that may be true. And while I may not agree with lifestyle choices, a person has a right to do virtually whatever they want (barring criminal activity) in their own home. They even have a right to have some friends over and do whatever they want with them. But when every weekend you are having up to 100 people over, parking on the residential street, playing music, and paying you for the privilige, I do feel you have crossed some sort of line.

The city’s mistake is in trying to get rid of them by outlawing “sex clubs in residential areas”. They shouldn’t need to outlaw that, because any city or town worth its salt already has in place any number of zoning codes, parking laws, and noise ordinances that are designed to prevent 100s of people noisily descending on a suburban neighborhood on a regular basis, for any purpose. And if they don’t they should get some! Their argument that because money is changing hands, it is a business and therefore illegal in that area is a little flimsy. A lot of people run small ventures out of their homes, from law offices to tutoring to tailoring, and I don’t think we want the town cracking down on the local piano teacher. However, if the local piano teacher started holding loud concerts that attracted 100 people in her backyard every Friday night, where people paid to come (and even if they didn’t) and brought alchohol, I think it would be reasonable to assume that she would be breaking several local ordinances and be asked to scale back.

There is a reason why large business are generally not placed on residential streets but in some sort of main strip. It is so people can find the business and so that the noise and bustle and traffic of the business doesn’t bother people in their homes. Especially if the main activity is going on late at night. I don’t care of if its a rock band, a sex club, or my upstairs neighbors having a karaoke contest at 3am (as was the case last night, apparently), I don’t want to hear it. While I probably don’t have too much of a case against my upstairs neighbors at the moment, you get the point. The type of business or gathering is irrelevant. It is the scale and the volume.

If the couple in question wish to continue to hold their sex parties, even if they wish to continue accepting money from attendees, that is fine. But they need to either keep to a number and volume that clutters neither the streets nor the airwaves, or move it to a location that can accomodate the number of people they have in mind. Or franchise! Break up into a number of smaller groups at several homes…you can only have sex with so many people in one evening anyway. Keep the noise down and the blinds drawn. It’s not discrimination, it’s just asking for common courtesy. I won’t hold you to my preferences and lifestyle by blasting radio sermons over the fence at you, don’t make me see naked people playing twister through your front window. That’s how we can all get along.

The town and the neighbors may be well prejudiced against these people (and despite all my tolerant talk I wouldn’t be jumping for joy if I lived next even a very quiet swingers’ hang out - although I certainly wouldn’t try to get them evicted either!) and they may not be going about things in the least inflammatory way, but what they are asking in essence is not unreasonable and not in and of itself discriminatory. Now, if the Cherry Pit applies for a legal business license in a more commercial part of town and is denied or is unable to get premises based on their activities (provided they aren’t breaking any other laws like allowing drug use), then they have a real case and I will be happy to stick up for them. But right now, they are just whining because they were being extremetly rude to the neighbors and got in trouble for it.

We Should Follow Australia’s Example…

Australia has just recently installed a new Prime Minister - Kevin Rudd - after ousting 11-year incumbent John Howard. Howard is the first Prime Minister of Australia to be unseated since 1929. Here’s the best part: he lost because of his George Bush-like stance on global climate change. According to NPR, this is the first major election in the world where climate change is the #1 issue. Of course it’s taken an almost decade-long drought in an already dry continent to do it, but still the Aussies have caught on fast than the rest of us.

Rudd’s first act as Prime Minister was to sign the Kyoto protocol, making the US officially the only developed nation not to sign. Say don’t we have an election coming up…? If everyone just wrote in Al Gore’s name, he’d have to take the job! (I’m being facetious, but really - we’ve been spending this election quibbling about Mormonism and skirting the issues of immigration and gay marriage).

Basking In My Husbands Reflected Glory…oh yeah

So how do you get more than 60 blog views in the first hour of your blogging career? Apparently by being married to Laelaps. Not that I need to plug him since I can be certain almost everyone reading this got here through his blog to begin with. Hooray for circular posting!

I’m Beginning to Think the Atheists Are Right…

Not about the existence of God, but about religion being the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. After some of the news I’ve heard this week, I’m about ready to denounce any form of “religion” and take my faith completely mercenary. Don’t get me wrong, I like my (very tiny) church and I’m still a believer in Christ… I’m just not too keen on being identified with “Christianity”  as an entity at the moment. Too much baggage.

 So what is it that has set me off? Well lots of things (not all about Christians) but primarily the news reported in the UK’s Observer that in Nigeria, many so called evangelical churches are now preaching that local children are actually witches. In fiery, pentecostal-type sermons, they call to the people to rid themselves of these curses. How do they know if their child is a witch? Anything can be a sign, from someone in the house getting sick, by the child having an unusual dream, or by the child having cotnact with another suspected “witch”. And what’s the cure? An expensive “deliverance” that puts money in the preacher’s pocket and, more commonly, beating, abusing, and abandoning the child:

An exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children - naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush.

Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance - sometimes as much as three or four months’ salary for the average working man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street.

The Observer, December 9, 2007

I encourage everyone to click the link above, read full the story, and watch the video. It is absolutely heart-breaking. And it’s bad enough that its being done at all, but doing it in the name of Christ and using it make the preachers rich when the families are starving already is unspeakable. These people have tapped into the superstition of an already poor population, in an area that has a cultural history of spiritualism and shamanism. They have put a new Christian face on old practices, such as accusing people of having bad spirits when the community is unhappy with them, meting out punishments, and requiring charms and spells (or a “deliverance) to fix the situation. The twist is this so called “Christianity” seems to be far more brutal and destructive than the indiginous animistic version ever was.

Add to this the extreme poverty of the area and the high incidence of families with many children, and you have parents who already fear they won’t be able to feed all their kids being handed an apparent divine order to drive them out. Convenient. I do not absolve the families of the responsibility for their actions, but I do feel the preachers who practice this deserve an even heavier share of the blame. They are doing this purely out of greed, not caring for the pain and hurt they cause. What they are perpetrating is the antithesis of everything that Jesus preached. He preached love for God and others, selflessness, community, compassion, healing, and care for the poor. And he didn’t threaten very often, but I can think of a memorable threat that applies here, from the gospel of Matthew 18:2-6

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Strong words for a strong matter. I believe that the very few people who are trying to rescue and care for these cast off children are far better “Christians” than the imposter preachers, no matter what their religious beliefs are.

Please, get involved with this cause. There are so many children and so few people to help them. The Child’s Right and Rehabilitation Network is a local group trying to make a difference by taking in these abandoned and abused kids, and giving them some medical treatment and food, and an education. But they currently have in exess of 130 children in one large bunkhouse, and the number grows daily. They are being assisted by a UK group, Stepping Stones Nigeria. Consider donating, and spread the word about this terrible situation.

What else has made my blood boil on the topic of religion lately? Here are a few selections:

-The recent shootings at New Life Church (which I consider a bloated, judgemental, and destructive evangelical mega-church) and Youth With A Mission missionary training center. The shooter had apparently attended the missionary school but had been kicked out for acting crazy (talking to people who weren’t there) and playing “devil music” at a worship service. Did they get him help? Did they call his family and try to get him psychiatric treatments or counselling? Doesn’t sound like it. Who knows if this thing could have been prevented?

-The murder of a 16 year-old Muslim girl by her own father for refusing to wear the hijab to school. There is absolutely no excuse for that in any religion, and it doesn’t sound like something the Prophet would have condoned either, honestly. Sharia law is another example of the twisting of religion away from the faith it was founded on. I know many faithful Muslims who are gentle and kind people, and while I do not share their faith and disagree with many of their beliefs, I respect them deeply. But this sort of religion that is expressed in violence and judgement over the smallest infraction, represses women, and disrespects differing views…that’s just wrong. Some things aren’t subjective.

- The imprisonment of a teacher in the Sudan for allowing her young class to name their teddy bear “Muhammad”. She wasn’t even trying to disrespect Islam, and it wasn’t even something she did. The children (a fair number of which were likely named Muhammad themselves, since it is the second most popular name in the world) named the bear, probably because they a) loved their Prophet and b) knew so many people with name Muhammad! At worst, the teacher was guilty of not being paranoid enough. For this she was imprisoned, threatened with a beating, and had people marching in the streets demanding she be put to death. Eventually she was pardoned, but only after it became an international incident. If she had been a Sudanese woman I doubt we ever would have heard about it and she’d have been lucky to keep her life.

-Lastly, on a much less serious note, the boycott of the Golden Compass by Catholic and Christian groups who feel it spreads an atheistic message to children. Oh sure, you didn’t stage protests of Quentin Tarentino’s last bloodbath, or any of the R rated flicks objectifying women. You’re worried about a fairy tale with talking polar bears. Seriously? Okay, I saw the movie, I know the books, I get the point. The author is clearly not a fan of the church. However, I don’t find the views in the book to be anti-God, at least not the God I worship. Which is perhaps the point… the church the author has a beef with follows a version of God that bears little resemblance to the loving, forgiving God I know. So I don’t have a problem with it. You don’t want to see it, don’t see it. But don’t tell me I shouldn’t see it either, and don’t tell me I can’t get a good theology lesson about. Its also highly ironic that the main criticism of the church like body in the movie is that they try and tell people that there are things they shouldn’t talk or think about. Hmmm….

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