Le Dernier Cri

After the 2004 presidential election, Adam Werbach, then-president of the Sierra Club, wrote a number of theses critiquing the performance of the Democratic Party, which he posted, in the style of Martin Luther, on the door of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. He did this because he felt the party was being led by ”people who have failed to articulate a moral-intellectual vision for America and the world,” and as a result, Democrats had become the minority party for “the foreseeable future.” Among other things, Werbach’s theses stated that “Democrats are now history’s spectators, Republicans its actors”; that “Democratic candidates will continue to lose as long as they treat Americans as rational actors who vote their ’self-interest’ after weighing competing offers for health care, jobs, and security”; and that Democrats’ “obsession with denouncing the radical conservative project as a “lie” has become a useful substitute for vision.” In order to reverse the trend toward irrelevancy, Werbach said, Democrats needed to shed their party of anyone who “resist[s] the process to create a new vision” or who insists that the path to redemption needs only “more money and effort” rather than a new-found dedication to political realignment and a coherent set of values. ”In despair and defeat lie the seeds of triumph and victory,” he stated. “In that loss lies the opportunity to define a new progressive politics in the new century.” (For a complete list of Adam Werbach’s November 3rd Theses, see http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1112-34.htm).

But just two years later Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate, and last year they lost the White House. The new minority for the foreseeable future is now the Republican Party. What happened?

Personally, I’m not so sure it was because the Democrats “got religion” so much as it was that the Republicans failed to meet the expectations of the American people. Werbach spoke of a need for “fulfillment” in his theses; Americans want “a deeper sense of personal meaning, a national mission, and passion in times of fear.” The Republican Party has spent decades building itself as the party of traditional values, but somewhere along the way those values became little more than campaign tactics that lost their urgency once the election was over.

I’ve been watching the deterioration—or is it self-destruction?—of the Republican Party since Obama assumed the presidency. There appears to be no consistency in the Republican position anymore, except to stand in opposition to all things Obama regardless of who it helps or hurts. For example, one of Republicans’ main arguments against health care reform is that it will undermine Medicare—a stance, notes Paul Krugman (“The Politics of Spite”; NYT 10/4/09), “utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.” But, Krugman goes on to say, because Obama’s plan to reform health care relies on funding taken from Medicare savings, the GOP “has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.” In effect, Republicans’ obsession with denouncing the liberal agenda as a “lie” has become their useful substitute for vision.

But this doesn’t give Democrats license to rest easy. If anything, the elections of 2006 demonstrated how quickly the pendulum can swing back the other way. Besides, “[e]lections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument,” says Krugman (“Paranoia Strikes Deep”; NYT 11/9/09). “They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.” If the economy is slow to recover and jobs remain scarce, voters might start looking to Republicans out of frustration. The lesson to be learned by Democrats and Republicans alike is that your success is sometimes nothing more than your opponent’s failure. An election won is no cause to bask in the glory of new-found political capital—especially since such capital is so quickly spent—but time to roll up the sleeves and get to work defining a new politics for a new century. Loss of position and power is only ever an election away.

I’m feeling dryer-guilt.

I’m somewhat of an environmentalist. I say somewhat because my activist days of rallying and lobbying are, at least for now, pretty well over. Nowadays, I assert my environmentalism mainly through lifestyle: I drive a small fuel-efficient car and use public transportation for my commute; I recycle; I buy natural non-toxic cleaning products; I turn lights off when I’m not in the room; I keep my thermostat lower in the winter and higher in the summer; I run my dishwasher only when it’s full. Maybe it’s not much; I try to make conscious decisions to lessen my impact on the planet, but I know there is always more I could do. So I read with great interest recently about a campaign headed by a group called Project Laundry List to promote clothelines and ditch the dryer.

According to Alexander Lee, executive director of PLL, “[t]here is no such sense as an Energy Star dryer; these machines are inherently inefficient, using natural gas or electricity to heat air.” The Dept. of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy site says basically the same thing: the amount of energy used by a clothes dryers does not vary much between models, and therefore dryers do not display EnergyGuide labels, nor are they listed in the Energy Star database (*gasp*). Lee also notes that the dryer is the second most energy-consumptive appliance in the house. I am guessing that the number one energy hog is the refrigerator, because it’s always running. I can’t really shut off my refrigerator though—even if it is usually almost empty—but I had never thought about treating the dryer as optional. 

So now I’m thinking about it, and there are some pretty strong arguments for eliminating the dryer. On any given week, I do 3 or 4 loads of laundry, and for each load my dryer runs up to an hour, depending on the size of the load and the types of clothes I am drying (and whether I remembered to clean the lint trap before I started the cycle). Since I live in a small condo, my electric bill isn’t large to begin with so I don’t know if I would see a significant financial savings—at least from month to month—if I didn’t run the dryer, but being the environmentally-conscious hippie that I am, it’s the energy savings that intrigues me. I’m all about benefitting the environment.

Of course, there are obvious benefits to the clothes themselves. Air-dried clothes last longer (all the material that collects from drying will still be on the clothes, not stuck in the lint trap); they don’t shrink; they don’t have static cling (no more Bounce sheets!). I still have yet to test the theory that clothes dried in the sun smell better, but isn’t it true that detergents and fabric softeners are always trying to mimic that “fresh air-dried scent”? And sunlight naturally whitens and brightens clothes, so there is no need for toxic chlorine bleaches (although, obviously, I avoid those anyway).

And if that isn’t enough, there are even benefits from drying clothes indoors. I was disappointed—but not necessarily surprised—to read that many communities, particularly those managed by HOAs, have clothesline restrictions (believe it or not, there are some people who think that preventing “unsightly” clotheslines from cluttering the neighborhood is more important than conserving energy and reducing climate change). Others, like me, are space-challenged and have nowhere to put an outdoor clothesline. Drying clothes indoors may not give them that fresh air scent, but it does increase humidity levels in the house (something I think might also benefit my house plants). For someone like me who lives in a dry climate and is constantly battling the effects of dry air, especially in the winter, anything that generates humidity (and energy-free) is a welcome addition.

Hence the dryer-guilt. Do I have any good reasons left not to ditch my dryer?—or at least demote it? I’m going shopping for a drying rack…

In a speech to Congress (his first State of the Union address after assuming the presidency three months earlier), Theodore Roosevelt spoke on the “[delicate] mechanism of modern business” and the role it plays in shaping the nation’s economy. Although Roosevelt achieved a notable reputation for “trust-busting,” it wasn’t necessarily his intent to destroy large corporations; as he said, “The captains of industry who have . . . built up our commerce . . . have on the whole done great good to our people.” But Roosevelt understood the evils of overcapitalization, and he was firm in his conviction that businesses that exercised a higher level of influence within the economy—and therefore had a greater ability to cause harm—needed to be regulated: 

“[C]ombination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled. . . .  It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”

The question of how to regulate large corporations is once again before the nation’s leaders, and although the circumstances are relatively similar (as Frank Rich of the NYT put it, large financial institutions like Goldman Sachs may not constitute trusts or monopolies, but are as much the new “octopus” of this century as Standard Oil was in Roosevelt’s day), the approach has drastically changed. Corporations are no longer viewed as too large to exist but rather too large to fail, and extensive deregulation of the financial sector in the name of laissez-faire capitalism has enabled high-risk behavior that is further encouraged by the implicit guarantee that the government will step in with rescue dollars should things become dicey. The government makes this guarantee because it recognizes, as Roosevelt stated, that “[d]isaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at the top.” But such policy begs the question of whether the government is obligated to rescue these corporations, or whether Roosevelt was right in believing that businesses that are too big to fail are too big to exist.

Both Congress and the White House are currently working on plans to regulate large financial institutions in the hopes of avoiding future economic crises. These plans focus largely on demanding adequate capitalization and greater disclosure from corporations whose failure would jeopardize the economy. Regulations that require banks to keep more money in reserve and prohibit overextension of available capital are certainly needed, as is better oversight. Roosevelt in particular felt that disclosure of a company’s operations was key: “Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and full and accurate information as to their operations should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.”

But these solutions don’t address or question the existence of corporations that pose a potential threat to the economy simply by virtue of their size. Lawmakers have stopped short of considering breaking up large corporations before failure becomes imminent, a solution that a century ago was seen as necessary to prevent public injury. Companies that consider themselves “too big to fail” are more likely to engage in risky behavior, while unlikely to discontinue doling out multi-million dollar bonuses to corporate executives—something they would not be able to do if they did not expect the government to intervene.

At the very minimum, when you demand free-market capitalism unfettered by government interference and then bring your company to the brink of bankruptcy by engaging in high-risk behaviors made possible by the deregulation of your industry, there shouldn’t be a government bailout waiting for you. Either way, it would be good to revisit the ideas of the “trust-busting era” and rethink our “too big to fail” way of thinking.

I recently read about a study that examined how the brain responds to nonsense. Two researchers read Kafka’s “The Country Doctor” to a group of college students and then administered a number of tests, with the conclusion that after exposure to something that makes very little sense, the brain demonstrates a heightened ability to sense patterns or connections in other areas (mathematics, language, etc.). It’s interesting to note that this reaction isn’t a conscious decision, but rather what researchers term “implicit learning,” or “knowledge gained without awareness.” (You can read about the study HERE: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?th&emc=th). The results seemingly indicate that the brain is hard-wired to find meaning in the world; if it can’t make sense of one scenario, it steps up its capacity and puts extra energy and focus into finding it elsewhere. In short, nonsense makes us smarter.

It’s ironic that, albeit indirectly, things without meaning play a role in giving our lives more meaning. But in this world rife with nonsense, I’m seeing lots of opportunities to enhance my mental acuity. I can watch reality TV and surf YouTube. I can benefit from the encounters with the man at the train station (and the many like him) who shouts ”Terrorists and Thugs!” at random intervals and then reminds me that he doesn’t need to date to get married. I can admit that there might be something to gain after all from listening to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. And when I said I was a wiser person for frequenting the KSL chat board, I had no idea just how true that was.

Of course, one of the finest sources of nonsense in the last decade came from the Bush administration—a prolific source of “implicit learning” particularly in its approach to science—and no tribute to nonsense would be complete without proper acknowledgment of such. I dug up an NYT article from several years ago that highlights some of the finest nonsense lobbyists can buy.

This article (”Protocol is Cited in Limiting Scientists’ Talks on Climate”; Felicity Barringer, 3/9/07) discusses how Fish and Wildlife Service employees attending international meetings on the Arctic were prohibited from talking about climate change, polar bears, or sea ice (officials said it was simply a matter of “diplomatic protocol” in sticking to the agreed-on agenda). One of these employees, an expert on polar bears, “was invited by the World Wildlife Fund to help advise villagers along the Siberian coast on avoiding encounters with the bears.” The problem requiring his advice, as stated by the article, was this:

“With increasing frequency, polar bears are being found near the villages of the Chukchi in part because their migrations have shifted as warming trends alter the sea ice.” 

Uh oh: the perfect storm. I’m very curious to know how he responded to that (but as far as we know, by the time he got the memo—doctored into accordance with diplomatic protocol—it simply said: ”With increasing frequency, villages of the Chukchi have shifted their migrations. Please advise.”).

The article also noted that “top-down control of government scientists’ discussions of climate change heated up as an issue last year, after appointees at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration kept journalists from interviewing climate scientists and discouraged news releases on global warming.” Scientists could speak about science and policy “as long as they did not say they spoke for the agency.”

Because apparently, the agency did not speak for science.

With that kind of nonsense, I’m surprised it didn’t make geniuses of us all. Then again, after 8 years of “compassionate conservatism,” we were smart enough to know that we needed Change. Some nonsense we can do without. 

“Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet,” writes Paul Krugman (”Cassandras of Climate,” NYT editorial 9/28/09). And maybe rightly so: the scientific consensus on climate change is that it is occurring at faster rates—and with potentially direr consequences—than previously thought, while the political consensus… well, there isn’t one. Understandably, it’s difficult to keep attention on an impending crisis that is seemingly less critical in some years than in others: try convincing someone experiencing one of the coldest winters on record that it’s due to global warming (”global warming” is an imprecise term when you consider that it is accompanied by increasing extremes across the weather spectrum). And when you take into account the price tag associated with emissions reductions and the impact that could have on American industry—not to mention energy prices—support for the cause dwindles even further.

Still, there is a sense of urgency in the predictions of climatologists that calls for an immediate response to prevent real catastrophe. So why is it that Congress cannot agree to act as a unified body to divert a disaster that only becomes more serious with inaction? Because, Krugman theorizes (as did Al Gore), it’s inconvenient. The kind of measures required not only to halt but to reverse global warming trends necessitate some serious changes in attitude and lifestyle. That’s a tough sell even when the economy isn’t in recession.

In thinking about this I was reminded of one of Thomas Friedman’s editorials from the NYT (”Live Bad, Go Green”;  7/8/07) in which he talks about the effectiveness of carbon offsets in confronting climate change. It’s a nice idea: purchase an acre of rainforest in Indonesia or buy a solar water heater for a small village in China and feel better about driving around town in your giant Hummer. Carbon offsets (and similarly, cap-and-trade programs) represent a feel-good volunteer-based approach to the problem, but by themselves are a zero-sum solution that on a larger level may serve only to concentrate pollution in heavily industrialized areas—areas, I might add, that are more likely to be populated by members of the lower class. What offsets DON’T do is force us into changing our daily routine, creating the illusion that we can achieve our desired result in a virutally painless and sacrifice-free manner. And to quote Friedman, “A revolution without sacrifice where everyone is a winner? There’s no such thing.”

The single most effective way to incorporate the requisite changes and sacrifices into a viable energy policy is to focus on demand-based solutions, i.e. those policies that seek to reduce overall demand for energy. These solutions might include implementation of higher efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings, and appliances; carbon and gas taxes; and tax incentives for the purchase of “green” goods and commodities.

A good starting point is policy that seeks to reduce demand on traditional energy sources (i.e. fossil fuels) through development of alternative (and potentially renewable) energy sources. However, the feasibility of a such energy policies depends on the extent to which they can meet energy needs both economically and efficiently, subject to environmental constraints. Where the costs of energy production (funding for research and development, costs of infrastructure and equipment, etc.) are high, where energy input exceeds output, and where environmental impact (air emissions, impact to land and water systems, etc.) is high, production of alternative sources of energy may, at least initially, prove very costly. It takes time to develop and begin mass-producing alternative sources of energy on an economically efficient scale, and during the interim, demand-based policies that seek to reduce demand on all types of energy are especially critical.

The bottom line is this: for an energy policy to be truly effective in combatting global climate change, we ought to consider doing more than replacing barrels of oil with an equal number of barrels of something else, be it ethanol, or biodiesel, solar or wind power. In this day and age of globalization when very little we consume comes without some impact, it is the elimination and not the replacement of barrels that makes a practice truly effective. That might take a little sacrifice.