Change Science

A friend sent me this yesterday.

Change or Die
Fast Company
May 2005
Issue 94
By: Alan Deutschman

"All leadership comes down to this:

Changing people's behavior.

What if you were given that choice?

For real.

Your own life or death.

What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act?

If you didn't, your time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to.

Could you change when change really mattered?

When it mattered most?

Yes, you say?

Try again.

Yes?

You're probably deluding yourself.

You wouldn't change.

Don't believe it? You want odds? Here are the odds, the scientifically studied odds: nine to one.

That's nine to one against you.

The conventional wisdom says that crisis is a powerful motivator for change. But severe heart disease is among the most serious of personal crises, and it doesn't motivate -- at least not nearly enough. Nor does giving people accurate analyses and factual information about their situations.

What works?

Why, in general, is change so incredibly difficult for people? What is it about how our brains are wired that resists change so tenaciously? Why do we fight even what we know to be in our own vital interests?

John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor, has hit on a crucial insight. "Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people's feelings," he says. "This is true even in organizations that are very focused on analysis and quantitative measurement, even among people who think of themselves as smart in an MBA sense. In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought."

Pioneering research in cognitive science and linguistics has pointed to the paramount importance of framing. George Lakoff, a professor of those two disciplines at the University of California at Berkeley, defines frames as the "mental structures that shape the way we see the world." Lakoff says that frames are part of the "cognitive unconscious."

The big challenge in trying to change how people think is that their minds rely on frames, not facts. "Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have -- the long-term concepts that structure how we think -- is instantiated in the synapses of the brain," Lakoff says. "Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain.

Otherwise, facts go in and then they go right back out. "

And then there is this story from the Associated Press

Experts: Petroleum May Be Nearing Peak
By MATT CRENSON,
AP National Writer
Sun. May 29

Could the petroleum joyride — cheap, abundant oil that has sent the global economy whizzing along with the pedal to the metal and the AC blasting for decades — be coming to an end? Some observers of the oil industry think so. They predict that this year, maybe next — almost certainly by the end of the decade — the world's oil production, having grown exuberantly for more than a century, will peak and begin to decline.

And then it really will be all downhill. The price of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability. Princeton University geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes predicts "a permanent state of oil shortage."

Deffeyes thinks the peak will be in late 2005 or early 2006. Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons puts it at 2007 to 2009. California Institute of Technology physicist David Goodstein, whose book "The End of Oil" was published last year, predicts it will arrive before 2010.

None of this will affect vacation plans this summer — Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland relatively unimpeded by the cost of getting there. Though gas prices are up, they are expected to remain below $2.50 a gallon. Accounting for inflation, that's pretty comparable to what motorists paid for most of the 20th century; it only feels expensive because gasoline was unusually cheap between 1986 and 2003."

So, let me try to get my mind around this.

If you are told by a well-informed, trusted authority figure that you must make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act and that if you didn't, your time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to...

that you are going to die,

unless you change your behavior,

the odds are 9 to one that you will tell them to

go jump in the lake.

Somehow I feel better knowing this.

All this time, when I would talk about Climate Change,

When I would speak to group after group about Peak Oil,

When I would testify before the legislature

of the need to move boldly towards a Solar Hydrogen Economy,

I would focus on my facts, on my charts, on a good humor,

and on being a likeable, believeable guy.

Now I know that if I was a heart surgeon with grave news,

that 9 out of 10 of my patients wouldn't change their behavior anyway.

I think my batting average may be better than that.

And I don't wear a white robe or have gizmos hanging on my head.

I was thinking about it though.

Perhaps we should be thinking about Lakoff's mental structures

that shape the way

we see

and feel.



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Memorial Day Editorial

A democracy is in great danger

when the media fails in its watchdog duties

and fails to report and therefore condones

the mendacities and corruption

of the government and financial community.

For the fourth estate has a solemn duty to report what it finds

and what is ignored

in front of the blind folded eyes

of those who choose not to see.

Today, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

has walked away from this herd of mediocrity


Praise bravery, seek forgiveness
Minneapolis Star Tribune
May 30, 2005

Nothing young Americans can do in life is more honorable than offering themselves for the defense of their nation. It requires great selflessness and sacrifice, and quite possibly the forfeiture of life itself. On Memorial Day 2005, we gather to remember all those who gave us that ultimate gift. Because they are so fresh in our minds, those who have died in Iraq make a special claim on our thoughts and our prayers.

In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country.

In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

The "smoking gun," as some call it, surfaced on May 1 in the London Times. It is a highly classified document containing the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting at 10 Downing Street in which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair on talks he'd just held in Washington. His mission was to determine the Bush administration's intentions toward Iraq.

At a time when the White House was saying it had "no plans" for an invasion, the British document says Dearlove reported that there had been "a perceptible shift in attitude" in Washington. "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

The (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

It turns out that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were right. Both have been pilloried for writing that by summer 2002 Bush had already decided to invade.

Walter Pincus, writing in the Washington Post on May 22, provides further evidence that the administration did, indeed, fix the intelligence on Iraq to fit a policy it had already embraced: invasion and regime change. Just four days before Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, Pincus writes, the National Security Council staff "put out a call for new intelligence to bolster claims" about Saddam Hussein's WMD programs. The call went out because the NSC staff believed the case was weak. Moreover, Pincus says, "as the war approached, many U.S. intelligence analysts were internally questioning almost every major piece of prewar intelligence about Hussein's alleged weapons programs."

But no one at high ranks in the administration would listen to them.

On the day before Bush's speech, the CIA's Berlin station chief warned that the source for some of what Bush would say was untrustworthy. Bush said it anyway. He based part of his most important annual speech to the American people on a single, dubious, unnamed source. The source was later found to have fabricated his information.

Also comes word, from the May 19 New York Times, that senior U.S. military leaders are not encouraged about prospects in Iraq. Yes, they think the United States can prevail, but as one said, it may take "many years."

As this bloody month of car bombs and American deaths -- the most since January -- comes to a close, as we gather in groups small and large to honor our war dead, let us all sing of their bravery and sacrifice. But let us also ask their forgiveness for sending them to a war that should never have happened. In the 1960s it was Vietnam. Today it is Iraq. Let us resolve to never, ever make this mistake again.

Our young people are simply too precious."


The transgressions of the government of that geographic state

that fashions itself to be the light of the nations

may be too grave for a just people to leave unpunished.

These mendacities are impeachable offenses.

In the eyes of the oneness

And in the soul of the earthfamily ,

they are abominations.


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Sunday Brunch

Instead of watching the Sunday Morning media malady.

Take a walk in the park.

Talk to the birds.

Chat with the squirrels.

Seduce the flowers.

If you need a rich concerned human to visit with you.

Listen to George Soros.

on the Open Society.

This comes from Link TV.

It is the future.

Watch their award winning Middle East News Show

Or select from a growing selection of streaming videos.

And here is an interview with George Galloway

by Thom Hartmann.

It's worth the listen.





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Words

hanging in the air

Shudde has collected an index of newspaper stories in
Bastrop, Texas about local soldiers in WWII, headlines
that honored our boys, her friends, first love, sons of a
tiny community outside Austin, thick black farm land,
country roads you can still drive down the middle of,
tip your hat as you move to your own lane when an
oncoming vehicle appears, limestone court house, town
square. Her father was the local doctor. She has been
telling me that we don't honor our soldiers anymore, not
the way we did, that they are sent to wars that are wrong.
I say soldiers are recruited badly, knowing in past
centuries they were simply kidnapped. Now we trick
them. I say as a mother I do not give government the right
to kill my children, point to Jon, a Marine in Vietnam, say
I am profoundly glad he came home, but I'd have tried to
keep him from going in the first place. He says it's a good
thing sons don't listen to their mothers at the same time
Shudde says WWII was a good war, if we'd not fought it
we'd be saluting Hitler today, at the same time I shake my
head and say, "that's wrong" to Jon and "we are" to
Shudde. Wars don't solve anything. Hitler's rant and
fascism and genocide have surfaced here, in spite of the
blood debt of our finest young men and women. Amazing
how the issues of our time jump out in passing, three
people stop to chat at the end of a meeting, leave a
lifetime of understanding, questioning, huge issues,
the best and worst of us, just out there -- words, hanging in
the air.

©Susan Bright, 2005.

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad.Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.


And words just can't describe this.

You must see and hear this for yourself.

Go to Catapult the Propaganda.

Watch it.

And just to remind you of the words that made this happen.

Go here.

Click on Bush vs. Gore oral augument.

And here are some words that should make you realize

that we are not in Kansas anymore.

WASHINGTON
05/26/05
Cox News

Amnesty International USA urged foreign governments Wednesday to use international law to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other alleged American "architects of torture" at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons where detainees suspected of ties to terrorist groups have been interrogated.

"If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them," said William Shulz, executive director of the U.S. branch of the international human rights agency.

Watch it here.

These are powerful words.

Are we listening?



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Being There

From the novel by Jerzy Kosinski

Screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski and Robert C. Jones
January 10, 1979

PRESIDENT: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?

[Long pause] CHAUNCEY: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.

PRESIDENT : In the garden?

CHAUNCEY: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.

PRESIDENT: Spring and summer?

CHAUNCEY: Yes.

PRESIDENT : Then fall and winter?

CHAUNCEY: Yes.

BENJAMIN RAND: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we're upset by the seasons of our economy.

CHAUNCEY: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!

BENJAMIN RAND: Hmm!

CHAUNCEY: Hmm!

PRESIDENT: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I've heard in a very, very long time.

[Benjamin Rand applauds]

PRESIDENT : I admire your good, solid sense. That's precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.

RON STEIGLER: Mr. Gardner, uh, my editors and I have been wondering if you would consider writing a book for us, something about your um, political philosophy, what do you say?

CHAUNCEY: I can't write.

RON STEIGLER: Heh, heh, of course not, who can nowadays? Listen, I have trouble writing a postcard to my children. Look uhh, we can give you a six figure advance, I've provide you with the very best ghost-writer, proof-readers...

CHAUNCEY: I can't read.

RON STEIGLER: Of course you can't! No one has the time! We, we glance at things, we watch television...

CHAUNCEY: I like to watch.

RON STEIGLER: Oh, oh, oh sure you do. No one reads! Listen, book publishing isn't exactly a bed of roses these days...

CHAUNCEY (mild interest) What sort of bed is it?


DENNIS WATSON: You know, I've never met anyone like you in Washington before.

CHAUNCEY: Yes, I've been here all my life.

WATSON: Really? And uh, where have you been all MY life? [laughs]

WATSON: Ah, tell me, Mr. Gardner... have you ever had sex with a man?

CHAUNCEY: No... I don't think so.

WATSON: We could go upstairs right now.

CHAUNCEY: Is there a TV upstairs? I like to watch.

WATSON: You like to uh, watch?

CHAUNCEY: Yes.

WATSON: You wait right here. I'll go get Warren!


PRESIDENT: Life is a state of mind.


MORTON MULL: Do you realize that more people will be watching you tonight, than all those who have seen theater plays in the last forty years?

CHAUNCEY: Why?


DUDLEY: But what do we know of the man? Nothing! We have no inkling of his past!

NELSON: Correct, and that is an asset. A man's past can cripple him, his background turns into a swamp and invites scrutiny.

CALDWELL: ...Up to this time, he hasn't said anything that could be used against him.

NELSON: The response from his appearance on the 'Burns Show' was over- whelming; mail and telephone response was the highest they ever had, and it was ninety-five percent pro!

CHARLIE BOB BENNET:(a Texas oil millionaire) Well, I'm certainly open to the thought - it would be sheer lunacy to support the President for another term.

LYMAN MURRAY :(a banker) Exactly. That is why I agree with Ben's final wishes, and I firmly believe, gentlemen, if we want to retain the Presidency, that our one and only chance is Chauncey Gardiner!

PRESIDENT (reading) ...'I do not know the feelings of being poor, and that is not to know the feelings of the majority of people in this world.

For a man in my position, that is inexcusable.

Just in case you wondered where the saying

Life imitates art

comes from.

Sometimes it's better to say nothing about nothing.


Today, we were driving back from the Radio Shack

because we were having equipment failures with the microphone.

We were working on a documentary on the Earthfamily.

And we were listening to some kind of weird talk radio.

They were talking about Nazis and Zionist and whatever.

They were selling emergency food kits with real seeds that sprout,

for the coming trouble.

The main pitch was this.

It's better to be a year early.

Than a minute late.

The driver of the van,

who is an old friend and part time film maker,

told me,

"If this kind of stuff upsets you,

It's because you are not right with yourself."

This is just noise.

These are just words.

All of these concepts just divide us.

Each of us must find the truth for ourselves.

As Chauncey says,

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well.

And all will be well in the garden."




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Inherit the Wind II

Scopes Is Indicted in Tennessee for Teaching Evolution
New York Times
May 25

Schoolroom Is Declared a Place to Develop Character, Not to Violate Laws

John T. Scopes, young Dayton (Tenn.) high school teacher, tonight stands indicted for having taught the theory of evolution to students attending his science classes in violation of a law passed by the Tennessee Legislature and signed by the Governor on March 21, 1925.

The hearing of the case will bring many notables to the little mountain town, including William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow of Chicago and Dudley Field Malone of New York for the defense.

The specific charge of the indictment is that on April 24, 1925, John T. Scopes, "did unlawfully and willfully teach in public schools of Rhea County, Tenn., which said schools are supported in part and in whole by the public school funds of the State, certain theory and theories that deny the story of Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and did teach thereof that man descended from a lower order of animals."

The penalty prescribed in the law for such violation is a fine from $100 to $500.

"The school room is not only a place to develop the power of thought, but also a place to develop discipline, power of restraint and character. If a teacher openly and flagrantly violates the law of the land in the exercise of his profession, this example cannot be wholesome upon the undeveloped mind and naturally tends to cerate and breed a spirit of disregard for good order and a want of respect for necessary discipline and restraint in our body politic.

New York Times 1925 Thanks to Rising Hegemon

80 Years later to the day, there is this.

Voyager 1 reaches final frontier
Aljazeera
Wednesday 25 May 2005,

Nasa's Voyager 1 has reached the final frontier of the solar system, having traveled through a turbulent place where electrically charged particles from the Sun crash into thin gas from interstellar space.

Astronomers tracking the little spaceship's 26-year journey from Earth believe Voyager 1 has gone through a region known as termination shock, some 14 billion kilometres from the Sun, and entered an area called the heliosheath.

"Voyager 1 has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space," Edwad Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Voyager watchers theorised last November that the craft might be reaching this bumpy region of space when the charged solar particles known as the solar wind seemed to slow down from a top speed of 2.4 million kilometres per hour.

Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 on a mission to explore the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. The pair kept going, however, and the mission was extended.

Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, the only spacecraft to have visited these outer planets. Both Voyagers are now part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission to explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain.

Both Voyagers are capable of returning scientific data from a full range of instruments, with adequate electrical power and attitude control propellant to keep operating until 2020.

Wherever they go, the Voyagers each carry a golden phonograph record which bears messages from Earth, including natural sounds of surf, wind, thunder and animals. There are also musical selections, spoken greetings in 55 languages, along with instructions and equipment on how to play the record.

Maybe there should have been a copy of Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow in Inherit the Wind

And thanks to Molly Ivins, here is Rep. Senfronia Thompson speaking against the Texas Legislature's recent folly of putting a superfluous anti-gay marriage measure into the state constitution:

"I have served in this body a lot of years, and I have seen a lot of promises broken. . . . So . . . now that blacks and women have equal rights, you turn your hatred to homosexuals, and you still use your misguided reading of the Bible to justify your hatred.

You want to pass this ridiculous amendment so you can go home and brag -- brag about what?

Declare that you saved the people of Texas from what? "

Persons of the same sex cannot get married in this state now. Texas law does not now recognize same-sex marriages, civil unions, religious unions, domestic partnerships, contractual arrangements or Christian blessings entered into in this state -- or anywhere else on this planet Earth.

"If you want to make your hateful political statements then that is one thing -- but the Chisum amendment does real harm. It repeals the contracts that many single people have paid thousands of dollars to purchase to obtain medical powers of attorney, powers of attorney, hospital visitation, joint ownership and support agreements.

You have lost your way. This is obscene. . . .

"I thought we would be debating economic development, property tax relief, protecting seniors' pensions and stem cell research to save lives of Texans who are waiting for a more abundant life.

Instead we are wasting this body's time with this political stunt that is nothing more than constitutionalizing discrimination. The prejudices exhibited by members of this body disgust me.

"Last week, Republicans used a political wedge issue to pull kids -- sweet little vulnerable kids -- out of the homes of loving parents and put them back in a state orphanage just because those parents are gay.

That's disgusting. "I have listened to the arguments. I have listened to all of the crap. . . . I want you to know that this amendment [is] blowing smoke to fuel the hell-fire flames of bigotry."

Then they (the Texas House of Representatives)

passed the amendment.

And Scopes was found guilty.

And our golden phonograph just left the solar system.


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Hot Stuff

In my first book on energy and climate and the human potential,

I spoke to this time.

I said that once Climate Change became mainstream,

there would be a huge push for nuclear energy.

Here is part of a new Fortune Magazine story:

Fortune
May 30, 2005
Vol. 151, No. 11
VALUE DRIVEN
Nuclear Power Is Back-Not A Moment Too Soon
By Geoffrey Colvin

"It took a month for the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to cool off in 1979 after it partially melted in America's most famous nuclear accident.

The emotional heat was a lot more intense; it took 25 years to fade. But at long last it has mostly dissipated, and now, very quietly, nuclear power is on its way back in the U.S. and around the world. And-it must be said-that's a good thing.

How does a technology that was unmentionable for decades get rehabilitated?

Only by a combination of factors. Most important by far is the mainstreaming of the global-warming threat. Remember that for years scientists debated bitterly whether the earth was warming at all, and if so, why. You can still find respectable scientists who say the threat remains an unproven hypothesis. But that debate no longer matters. Enough scientists, policymakers, and citizens now believe that global warming is real and caused by fossil-fuel carbon emissions that it makes sense for everyone to behave as if that's so.

"The threat has gone mainstream. "

I rest my point.

From a power plant perspective, nuclear plants are not that different than a coal plant, or natural gas steam plant. For that matter, a large central station solar plant would operate in the same manner too. You make something really hot, you make steam by bringing water really close to this hot thing, and then you use that steam to drive steam turbines that turn electric generators.

What makes nuclear plants so special is the fuel they use and the waste they create.

It is impossible to separate peaceful nuclear technology from weaponized nuclear technology.

That is the issue in Iran at this moment.

Nuclear fuel is a finite resource, just like oil. In fact, the nuclear resource is actually very limited. Few proponents speak about this.

Nuclear waste must be kept away from our environment or it will poison our environment.

Nuclear plants must be carefully monitored so that they do not release these poisons into the environment.

All three must be guarded.

So, if you want a technology that requires the most guarding, the most security, creates the most dangerous pollution, offers a strong likelihood of providing weaponization expertise, and the greatest single risk management challenges, with implications for generations and generations that follow you, then nuclear technology is your thing.

No private insurance company will insure them.

So, the risk must be socialized at the nation state level.

The profits, of course, will be privatized at the corporate level.

There are perhaps four human types who propound the use of more nuclear plants.

Those who don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about when it comes to energy and electricity, and so have placed their faith in someone else's opinion and judgment.

Those who are physicist who have supported nuclear technology in the past and therefore want their name and public testimony vindicated before they die.

Those who have natural, innate fascist tendencies that blind them to ideas and concepts that are inherently plutocratic, anti-democratic, and socially reckless, and think Darth Vader is an OK guy in a pinch.

And four, those who have an abandonment disorder which leads them to a perverse unconscious urge to hurt themselves and everyone and thing around them.

If you are particularly unlucky, you may qualify in all four.

The Fortune story does give you some handholding here:

"Stewart Brand writes in the current MIT Technology Review, "The only technology ready to ... stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power." James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis, which regards the earth as a single, living organism, has stated flatly that "nuclear power is the only green solution." Even Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore has spoken up for nukes. They all make the same point: In a world threatened by warming, an emission-free power source is desperately important. "

Stewart, James, and Patrick should be entombed with these wastes.

And then finally, the unsubstantiated kicker comes:

"Solar and wind power cannot even begin to fill the need."

They can't even begin?

Who says?

We can provide energy for the whole world with a land mass the size of Texas dedicated to solar. It's a lot less area than we've paved already. I can provide all the energy my growing city needs simply by covering the cooling pond of our existing nuclear plant with solar panels.

When you include the mines and the footprints of the oil wells, and all our power plants, we have already committed enough land to provide all the energy we need through solar.

And, I am not talking about using any roof top real estate. The average energy guzzling American can provide all the energy for his homes and cars with half of his roof.

We can provide substantial portions of our energy needs with wind. And, in much of the US, and other land endowed nations of the world, you would never see the turbines.

Every coal plant, every gas plant that uses steam, even a nuclear plant, can be retrofitted today with boilers that burn hydrogen and oxygen that is cracked out of water from the electricity generated from a broad portfolio of wind turbines, solar generation, and heliohydrogen generation.

The next time you hear someone say, "well the wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't always shine", remind them that domestic oil wells "don't always pump, nuclear plants don't always run, and foreign oil may not always find its way here". That is why we have oil tanks, and strategic reserves, and why we will have hydrogen power plants that make H2O instead of CO2.

We can run our world without coal, without uranium, without oil, without pollution, without war, without changing the climate, without propaganda.

If we want to,

If we want to.


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Terraforming

Terraforming (literally, "Earth-shaping") is the process of modifying a planet, moon or other body to a more habitable atmosphere, temperature or ecology. It is a type of planetary engineering.

The term is sometimes used very broadly as a synonym for planetary engineering in general.

"The concept of adjusting extra-terrestrial worlds to fit the specifications for human life first surfaced in Olaf Stapledon's First and Last Men ( 1930). The phrase "terraforming" wasn't used until 19 years later in Seetee Shock by Jack Williamson .

"Since then, terraforming has been a hot topic amongst scientists. The logistics of such a project are staggering, molding dry freezing Mars into a temperate life-supporting planet is beyond our present technological and organizational capabilities. However, we are tantalizingly close. Most estimates place us within mere centuries of achieving this awesome feat."

The arguments for and against terraforming have shaped the development of this process. Many believe that it is inevitable that we will exhaust/destroy the resources and environment of our own planet. Therefore, in order for the human race to continue into the far future it will require multiple settlements in order to both decrease the strain on Earth and prepare for any dire need for relocation.

In a broad sense of the term, the first clear evidence of terraforming comes from Sumeria, part of the Fertile Crescent and home to humanity's earliest civilizations. The inhabitants of those ancient cities redirected the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to better irrigate their crops and capture rich silt for use in their fields.

In that sense, the Sumerians used primitive terraforming to make their land far more arable and productive. In the modern world, there have been suggestions that we terraform the Sahara desert in a similar fashion.

Jack Williamson, one of the great Sci fi writers, has a fairly new book out called Terraforming Earth. Its about a bunch of clones that come back to earth to rebuild it after an asteroid destroys all known life.

It seems that the idea of terraforming is based on the notion that we either exhaust or destroy our habitat, or some outside force destroys it for us.

How about if we terraform our own habitat before we destroy it?

Imagine if we took the scientific creativity that some are exercising now to terraform Mars and applied that creative energy to terraform Earth?

Instead.

How would we make the Earth?

How would we fashion our habitat, our cities?

How would we shape the land and manage the elements?

How would we design our homes and the surrounding gardens?

If we focused on Terraforming?

Not real estate investments.

Not big box stores.

Not cities designed for cars instead of people.

Not streets full of Golden Arches and Corporate Glitzkrieg.

How would we design our cities and communities,

so that we could walk and enjoy a terraformed environment?

Right now, we are designing streets and towns

that are guaranteed to produce

injustice,

poverty,

dependence,

pollution,

crime,

and a wide assortment of other cultural pathologies.

Think about it.

Why can't we walk outside and pick an apple from a tree?

Why is there not a terraformed running brook with water crest

growing in between the round boulders on its banks?

Why is there not a foot bridge overlooking a pond where

your 10 year old can fish?

Why don't we design our habitat

so that food and beauty is everywhere?

Are we so hypnotized by this let the market work capitalist fantasy,

that we are incapable of imagining a truly well engineered,

beautiful habitat for ourselves and our progeny?

We wouldn't put a bunch of MacDonalds and Wallmarts on Mars?

I see no reason to put them on Earth either.

I am all in favor of terraforming...

Earth.

Instead of destroying our habitat, so we can terraform somewhere else,

Let's abide by the rule of holes.

And stop digging.

And get to work forming.

It seems like the earthfamily thing to do.



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Earthfamily Principles


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The Creation

A couple of days ago, I ran into someone I had not seen in 3 years.

We used to be pretty close.

But we parted.

The meeting was nothing short of mystical.

And it reminded me fully that the

The Creation is a creation.

I know this sounds tautological.

And I guess it is.

But the truth is, the creation is recreating itself every moment.

Just as the cells in your body recreate themselves over and over again, so does all matter. The “you that you think you are” that existed 2 years ago is not the “you that you think you are today”. Except for a few cells in your long hair or in you nails, everything about you is new. The skin, the cells in the heart, the bones in your spine have all been replaced with new cells that are almost as good as the ones they replaced.

If they were exactly as good as the ones they replaced, we could kiss aging goodbye. Instead, we become creatures composed of brand new zeroxed cells that are 99.9% copies of the previous cells. It’s that .1% that makes our skin wrinkle and our eyes grow dim.

The Creation is recreating itself every moment in time. So the creation story that we all grew up with is just that, a story. The real story and the real creation is not what happened 6,000 years ago or even a billion years ago.

The creation did not happen.

It is happening now.

These words are part of the creation. Your mind reading these words and your being understanding or rejecting them is part of the creation.

It is more like a movie that we suspect.

It is useful, if not a required exercise to see the creation as it is…
A Creation.

As you watch your lover move from the chair to the bed, imagine an energy form, a ghost moving through a magical subtle fluid that responds to her presence by forming an energy charge or cloud around her energetic form. Imagine that as that energy form moves through time and space that it is being created by the creation at every moment.

Imagine that everything, every moment is being created at that moment.

Because, you see, that is what is happening.

That realization, truly employed into your operating system, will allow for more degrees of freedom in creative thought, which in turn, will lead to a more full and pure manifestation.

As J Krishnamurti says, “matter is organized energy”. Einstein said it backwords in E=MC squared. But if you divide this equivalency by “C squared” you get Mass = Energy divided by the square of the speed of light.

That sounds very close to the same thing to me.

Now, I know it seems a little too much to ask to act as if the creation is a magic field creating itself every moment, especially when you are waiting on tables or waiting in line, but the truth is, if you do act like it, it will respond.

If you do not, it will oblige.

Our minds can only be free when we become aware of the bars,

When we awake from the dream.

According to Don Miguel Ruiz:

"In the Mastery of Transformation, the Toltec divide people into Dreamers and Stalkers. The Dreamers know that the dream is an illusion, and they play in that world of illusion, knowing it's an illusion.

The Stalkers are like a tiger, or a jaguar, stalking every action and reaction.You have to stalk your reactions; you have to work yourself every moment. It takes a lot of time and courage, because its easier to take things personally and react the way you always react.

These reactions may only generate more emotional poison and increase the drama.

If you control your reactions, you will find that soon you are going to see, meaning to perceive things as they really are. The mind normally perceives things as they really are, but because of all the programming, all the beliefs we have, we make interpretations of what we perceive, of what we hear, and mainly of what we see.

There is a big difference between seeing the way people see the Dream,

and seeing without judgement,

as it is."

Then we see the creation for what it is.

A gift

I guess that explains why I broke out in hives today.


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Alpha Test

This is a test.

And it looks like we are back.

Yesterday, we were unable to publish,

so another site was created.

The new earthfamilybeta site will be useful though.

Todays and yesterdays posts are there.



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earthfamilybeta

Go to alternative site.

Earthfamily Principles

These posts over the last few weeks and months reflect many of the principles of Earthfamilyalpha.

Here are the ones that seem really important.

The Earthfamily embraces cooperation over competition.

The Earthfamily believes in the efficacy of nonviolence.

The Earthfamily calls for corporate punishment that fits the crime.

We believe that people can use the new communication tools found in the internet and in our advanced communication devices to create new inventions of social contract that can transcend the geographic state-not replace it or rebel against it, but transcend it.

We believe that as we approach a technological singularity, we will need these bonds to maintain our place on the planet as free individuals capable of competing with powerful government controls and corporate hegemony.

The Earthfamily believes that declining oil reserves and Peak Oil will force the geographic states to compete for the remaining reserves, and thus create global uncertainty and stress for most of the developed and developing world.

We see that Climate Change will further exacerbate this uncertainty and this stress.

We believe that Accelerated Technological Change will create opportunities and challenges that must be managed in creative and peaceful ways.

The Earthfamily sees renewable energy as the fuel of the future and electricity and hydrogen as the energy carrying systems of the future. We imagine nanobased power paints that convert photonic energy to electronic energy at prices that will break the existing energy markets. We believe that an Unified Photonic Energy Web can be created that can change everything if we will only allow that change to occur.

We know that a political system that is dominated by the corporate interests will in fact, in a democracy, represent those interests who dominate. This is not evil, it is economics.

We have come to realize that we must create a new global family that can respond to our needs, our hopes, and our right to the pursuit of happiness.

We are aware that we are all crewmembers of Spaceship Earth.

We respect the boundaries of geographic states, but we know that they are archaic relics of a mind and consciousness that is rapidly advancing to global awareness.

We believe that humankind is capable of living in an awakened state which will in time, bring the promise of true peace and prosperity into our lives and communities.

We hold that the promise of a bright tomorrow can only be reached by letting go of the past.

We believe in the dignity of humankind and in the oneness of our creation.

We know that it is indeed a miracle and a gift.

And it is ours to love and cherish.


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Equal Rights Amendment

Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1921 by suffragist Alice Paul. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923. It passed Congress in the above form in 1972, but was not ratified by the necessary thirty-eight states by the July 1982 deadline. It was ratified by thirty-five states. It is still not part of the U.S. Constitution.

Supporters of the ERA have re-introduced the amendment into Congress every year since 1982 without success. Some opponents of the ERA argue that if reintroduced, it would need to gain the 35 ratifications all over again, in addition to the three still lacking. Some—but not all—ERA supporters argue that the earlier 35 ratifications are still valid, and that only three more are necessary without Congress having to resubmit the ERA.

Other supporters go further and say that the remaining three ratifications could come after the deadline set by Congress, and then be recognized by Congress retroactively. They argue that the history of the 27th amendment—which was ratified over 200 years after it was first proposed—proves the validity of their approach. However, unlike the ERA, the resolution proposing the 27th Amendment did not set any deadline for ratification.

Eulogy for the ERA

Beginning with:

Mankind, Man-made, the Common Man, Man and his world, Neanderthal Man,
the best Man for the job, when Man invented the wheel, the Sun God,
Man's achievements, Man's basic needs, the history of Black Man in
America, one small step for Man, a giant step for Mankind. Man, like
other mammals, breast-feeds his young:

pressman, repairman, craftsman, chairman, conductor, railroad man,
switchman- maid

salesman, newsboy, fireman, foreman
master, policeman, watchman-
laundress

clergyman, delivery man, fisherman,
lineman, jack-of-all-trades-
wife

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created
equal- the farmer and his wife, the lawyer and his child, the poet and
his wife, the teacher and her class.

The Greeks mistreated their wives.
Columbus discovered America.
The settlers moved west with their wives and their cattle.
A man makes art because he has to, Doctor Jones and his pert wife Jane.
Marie Curie, the beautiful chemist, Elinor Wylie, the fiery redhead,
Amy Lowell, the queer duck!

Masculine: resembling man, having vigor and strength.
Feminine: resembling woman, showing delicacy and weakness.

I'll have my girl make your reservations.
Union members and their wives are invited. You drive like an old woman.
The ladies chatted about the draft. Sally's husband lets her work part-time.
Children look to their fathers for strength and courage.
In the delicate recesses of the female mind is the seed of love.

We look to:

wise men to free us from superstition
and from the old wife's tales of our forefathers.
The litany repeats.

Words and the people they create move in pilgrimage across the earth, a
woman, whose spine is a footprint.

Susan Bright 1978

Black Rose

Breaking the silence,
the stoic oblivion I repeatedly spin
in, trying to meet deadlines, find things,
give them away, breaking the silence
I allow unfolding —
wary perhaps, gated,
life force bursting through foliage,
scent, a printing press in the foyer,
Guadalupe on the front porch.

I find energy and purpose —
no time for chaos, barely enough
to do more laps in the pool, to cut through
water quickly, focus on emerald light,
laugh, cry, love, resist idiocy,
sweep.

Breaking the silence, I loose the knot
that has suffocated me differently
a thousand times, release the survivor mind
from its house of masks, tricks, frog ponds,
the primal opera, things I can't fix,
a 1964 Chevy truck with no drive shaft.

I toss a flower into the creek, a prayer,
a daily promise to finally, gently, finely weave
the grief that ripped through my time on Earth
into a shroud of life, love, art, humor —
the black rose behind each breath.

©Susan Bright, 2005.

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad.

Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.



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Climate of Denial

While I was in the Food Coop a little while ago, I looked down at the magazine rack and saw a cover with Uncle Sam with his funny flag top hat burning and turning into little tufts of smoke.

It is the June Mother Jones with a special called As The World Burns

It is, if you will excuse the expression, a barn burner.

Here are the stories:

Climate of Denial: Introduction
By Bill McKibben

One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?

Some Like It Hot
By Chris Mooney

A dose of doubt trumps years of solid science, but skepticism doesn’t come cheap. ExxonMobil is spending millions to sustain an echo chamber of global warming denial.

Snowed
By Ross Gelbspan

Why the “balanced” media would rather promote paid flaks and fantasy than report the biggest story on earth

The McKibben piece begins:

"Finally, from behind the closed doors, word emerged that we had a treaty. The greens all cheered, halfheartedly—since it wasn't as though the agreement would go anywhere near far enough to arrest global warming—but firm in their conviction that the tide on the issue had finally turned. After a decade of resistance, the oil companies and the car companies and all the other deniers of global warming had seen their power matched.

Or so it seemed. I was standing next to a top industry lobbyist, a man who had spent the last week engineering opposition to the treaty, huddling with Exxon lawyers and Saudi delegates, detailing the Venezuelans to change this word, the Kuwaitis to soften that number. Right now he looked just plain tired. "I can't wait to get back to Washington," he said. "In Washington we'll get this under control again."

At the time I thought he was blowing smoke, putting on a game face, whistling past the graveyard of corporate control. I almost felt sorry for him; it seemed to me (as sleep-deprived as everyone else) that we were on the brink of a new world.

As it turned out, we both were right. The rest of the developed world took Kyoto seriously; in the eight years since then, the Europeans and the Japanese have begun to lay the foundation for rapid and genuine progress toward the initial treaty goal of cutting carbon emissions to a level 5 to 10 percent below what it was in 1990.

You can see the results of that long Kyoto night in the ranks of windmills rising along the coast of the North Sea, in the solar panels sprouting on German rooftops, and in the remarkable political unanimity in most of the world on the need for rapid change.

Tony Blair's science adviser has repeatedly called global warming a greater threat than terrorism, but that hasn't been enough for Britain's Conservatives; the Tory leader (the equivalent of, say, Tom DeLay) rose last summer to excoriate Blair for moving too slowly on carbon reductions.

In Washington, however, the lobbyists did get things "under control." Eight years after Kyoto, Big Oil and Big Coal remain in complete and unchallenged power. Around the country, according to industry analysts, 68 new coal-fired power plants are in various stages of planning.

Detroit makes cars that burn more fuel, on average, than at any time in the last two decades. The president doesn't mention the global warming issue, and the leaders of the opposition don't, either: John Kerry didn't exactly run on solving the climate crisis.

The high-water mark for legislative action came in 2003, when John McCain actually managed to persuade 43 senators to support a bill calling for at least some carbon reductions, albeit much lower than even the modest Kyoto levels.

But given that it takes 60 votes to beat a filibuster and 66 to override a veto, and given that the GOP has since added four hard-right senators to its total, it's safe to say that nothing will be happening inside the Beltway anytime soon."

The cut line on the cover says it pretty well.

Think tanks and journalist funded by ExxonMobil are out to convince you

global warming is a hoax.

Then, just a couple of days ago, I found this story

Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows
The Sunday Times - Britain
May 08, 2005
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon.

“Until recently we would find giant ‘chimneys’ in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared,” he said.

“As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe.”

Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation’s power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.

“In the past we could see nine to 12 giant columns forming under the shelf each year. In our latest cruise, we found only two and they were so weak that the sinking water could not reach the seabed,” said Wadhams, who disclosed the findings at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. "

This is exactly the event that the movie The Day After Tomorrow depicted.

It is the event that the Pentagon has a plan for.

It is how mankind is sleepwalking to the end of the Earth .

Remember the headline in the Onion on 9.12?

This headline should read.

Holy Fucking Shit.


And speaking of Denial,

Watch a member of Parliament

give the Senate the spanking it richly deserves.

This will help with the rest of your day.

Watch it.



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The Noosphere

A couple of day ago, I was visiting with a downtown lawyer type

and I mentioned something about the Noosphere.

"The what?" He said.

You know, the Noosphere, the mental realm that we all live in.

He didn't know.

So I thought, dang, did I make this up?

Then a reader sent this piece on it the very next day.

Of course, the Noosphere was from Teilhard de Chardin.

Sustainability at heart of Teilhard commemoration
According to Teilhard’s supporters, nations must create a global civilization
to regenerate the Earth.
Science and Theology News
By Frederica Saylor
May 11, 2005

"Nations must create a global civilization to regenerate the Earth, according to international scholars who gathered last month to revive the philosophy of French Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

More than 800 participants — including scientists and policy makers — attended the 50th anniversary commemoration of Teilhard’s death to examine the current and future impact of his philosophy and teachings. Although part of the four-day event focused on his influence on scientific fields such as physics, biology and geology, speakers primarily emphasized how his beliefs may have an impact on the future of sustainable development.

Teilhard’s concept of the noosphere — or a planetary thinking network — has major contemporary implications, said John Grim, president of the American Teilhard Association and religion professor at Bucknell University.

“His legacy challenges us to a deep spirituality in which humans realize their own diversity that the health and well-being of all life forms, of Earth itself, is now dependent upon us,” said Grim.

“What Teilhard has provided is a beginning vision of evolution that future generations and we will need to think through again and again as we make our way forward.”

This new evolution means moving away from separate nation states and divisive behavior toward a sustainable planetary, or globally united, civilization, according the Mary Evelyn Tucker, vice president of the American Teilhard Association and religion professor at Bucknell University.

“Every one of the life systems is showing signs of a serious and precipitous decline,” said Tucker. “We can now observe the profound effect of our human presence on the Earth over time — especially in recent times. We require a sense of common purpose as never before in human history, the common purpose of building a sustainable planetary civilization. This unifying force of creativity is what Teilhard meant as ‘spirit of the Earth.’”

As Teilhard observed, the age of nations has passed,” said Tucker. “Now, unless we wish to perish, we must shake off our old prejudices and build the Earth.”

A few moments after I got the e mail from the reader about Teilhard,
I found this story in the Progressive.

The Scourge of Nationalism
By Howard Zinn
The Progressive"
5/16/05

"I cannot get out of my mind the recent news photos of ordinary Americans sitting on chairs, guns on laps, standing unofficial guard on the Arizona border, to make sure no Mexicans cross over into the United States. There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call "nations" and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.

Is not nationalism--that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder--one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking--cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on--have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

In our time, it was the liberal Bill Clinton who sent bombers over Baghdad as soon as he came into office, who first raised the specter of "weapons of mass destruction" as a justification for a series of bombing attacks on Iraq.

Liberals today criticize George Bush's unilateralism. But it was Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who told the United Nations Security Council that the U.S. would act "multilaterally when we can, unilaterally when we must."

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What makes our nation immune from the normal standards of human decency?

Surely, we must renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle) places nations among those unnatural abstractions he calls granfalloons, which he defines as "a proud and meaningless association of human beings."

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation."

Today, just for exercise.

Try this.

Everytime you hear a story about a nation state.

Tune it out.

Tune out the US, Iraq, China, France, Israel, and the PLO.

Tune it out.

Everytime you hear a story about the earth, about humankind, about evolving, about health, about life, about art, about music,

about love,

Tune it in.

Do it for the Earthfamily.

Do it for the Noosphere.


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Eating Air

Last month, I presented the notion that we basically eat oil in my post called Soylent Green. And, in many ways, that is true. According to this article by Dale Allen Pfeiffer, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).

Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:
· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
· 19% for the operation of field machinery
· 16% for transportation
· 13% for irrigation
· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
· 05% for crop drying
· 05% for pesticide production
· 08% miscellaneous

So, it is easy to say that the energy to provide this work comes primarily from fossil fuels, but it might not be necessarily accurate. And, it is certainly not accurate to say that it all comes from oil.

The actual fertilizer component comes from natural gas. The transportation would likely be oil as would the field machinery energy. The irrigation energy would be natural gas or electricity.

So it could be said that 50% of our food energy comes from natural gas, and the other half is oil. Of that, 20% could come from electricity which would likely be generated with coal, nuclear, or wind energy.

A quick quiz:

"What's the most important invention of the last few centuries?

Electricity?

Cars?

Computers?

Consider a far more obscure innovation: the process for turning air into nitrogen fertilizer.

German chemist Fritz Haber won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1918. Without it, the Earth wouldn't be able to support its current population.

At the turn of the 20th century, scientists warned that the world's population would soon outpace global food production. One promising solution was to create a fertilizer containing nitrogen.

A young, high-strung German chemist named Fritz Haber rose to the challenge. Around 1908, he discovered a way to tap into the atmosphere's vast reservoir of nitrogen gas and convert it into compounds plants can use. The innovation, called the Haber-Bosch process, produces liquid ammonia, the raw material for making nitrogen fertilizer.

Today, fertilizer factories pour out 100 millions tons of nitrogen each year, and an estimated two billion people depend on the process to help grow the food they eat. "

Yes I know that most of you believe that fertilizer comes from natural gas but it doesn't.

It comes from the air.

At least, that is where the Nitrogen comes from.

The Haber process combines the nitrogen in the air with hydrogen in the presence of an iron catalyst in an exothermic reaction to form ammonia. The ammonia is the chemical stock to make ammonium fertilizers and, of course, all kinds of other useful(horrible) things, like gunpowder, and other explosives.

Remember, Haber invented this process shortly before World War I as the natural nitrates of Chile were becoming more problematic for the Germans to mine and import. Although Haber earned a Nobel prize for his work with nitrogen, it's not his only legacy. He also pioneered the use of chemical warfare in World War I.

It is the paradox of science.

Just ask Einstein.

The reason we need natural gas to make fertilizer is because natural gas has 4 Hydrogen atoms to every Carbon atom. The chemical plants strip out the hydrogen, leaving CO2. This hydrogen is then combined with the nitrogen in the air to create ammonia.

We don't need natural gas to make fertilizer.

We need Hydrogen and we need Air.

As, I mentioned in my Solar Hydrogen Economy posts, humankind is capable right now of using large state of the art wind turbines in high resource regimes to produce electricity in the 2 cent/ KWh range. Power paints and other advanced solar hydrogen strategies will be able to approach these costs.

This electricity can be used to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen at prices that are affordable with today's fossil fuel market.

This hydrogen can be used to make fertilizer from the air.

This same renewable electricity can drive the electric motors that can operate the irrigation pumps, the drying fans, and even the farm machinery.

In short, the good news is this.

We don't need fossil fuels to continue eating.

We may be eating oil now.

But we could be eating air.

Literally.

The solar hydrogen economy can actually make the green revolution

green.

And the earthfamily will prosper.

We just need our principles.

And leadership.

And clear intent.



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