The March 2009 edition of National Geographic had a piece about saving energy in the face of advancing global warming. It was noted that Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, notes that to stay below the threshold of critical global warming tipping points America alone must cut back it’s CO2 emissions by 80%. The following figures represent pounds of CO2 emitted per item per year in an average U.S. household: washer: 153; electric dryer: 1,521; television: 548; desk top PC: 321; dishwasher: 599; central air conditioner: 4,067… So how do we cut this by 80%? Simple. Sacrifice. Our family has. We don’t use air conditioning. We hang the clothes on a line outside or in the basement. We decided not to have a television. I use the computer at the library on average about a half an hour a day. We don’t have an electric dishwasher, we got kids… I’m tired of hearing how people are slowly easing into this conservation thing. The crisis is immediate! Our response should be immediate!
2/26/09
We had the Republicans weigh in after Mr. Obama’s speech to Congress Tuesday. Now it’s the “average Joe” response: Mr. Obama ended his speech with: “God bless America.” Do we think God is going to bless a nation that is dismembering 4,000 babies in their mothers’ wombs every day? Do we think God is going to bless a nation where a significant number of people are living in suburban comfort, while billions of people worldwide are either homeless or living in Third World slums? Do we think God is going to bless a nation where 66% of it’s occupants are overweight (33% obese), while billions of people are tremendously malnourished and 25,000 people starve to death daily? Who are we kidding, but ourselves? This is what should have been said Tuesday night to that room full of people dressed in their $300 suits. Incidentally, $300 could feed a small Third World village for a month. Note: The road to heaven is narrow and definitely not paved with opinion polls.
2/18/09
President Obama was in Arizona yesterday announcing his new plan to curb home foreclosures. He said there are currently some 6 million homes in foreclosure or at risk of foreclosure. (Many of these are your average size, or bigger, suburban homes.) This wave of foreclosure, the president said, is putting the “American Dream” in jeapordy for many. Maybe it should be the other way around… That is, instead of families scrambling to stay in these places — maybe they should look to home sharing with another family and cut expenses (mortgage, utililites, furniture, appliances…) in half. At this, all of these American families would still be living way better than billions of people who live in the Third World often without just the basics in adequate shelter, food, medicine… So if we connect the dots here: If some of this home-sharing savings in America starts going to more help for people in these Third World countries — doesn’t the “American Dream” get realigned a bit better with, oh I don’t know, maybe the Gospel message? Note: I was just reading the kids a story today in the Bible about a farmer who has a good crop and fills his barn up. But instead of giving the rest of the crop away to the poor, the “fool” (Jesus’s word) decides to build another barn and store it for himself. Are we doing the same by hoarding all this home space for ourselves in America, while billions live worldwide in tiny slum dwellings? Sure we are.
2/11/09
Ok, the Obama administration bail out is on the table. While multi-dimensional, the crux is to help many banks gain bouyancy again and inspire renewed consumer trust. New York Times columnist David Leonhardt best summed up the primary dynamic that got us here: “It’s your fault. Part of it is, anyway. You, the American consumer, spent too much money. You bought too much house, took on too much debt and generally lived beyond your means. Your free-spending ways helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And now you’re going to have to do your part to end the crisis. How? By spending.” Wouldn’t this be akin to asking an alcoholic in the process of hitting bottom — to drink more? Well, sure.
2/10/09
I am currently working on a book about the somewhat hardscrabble urban neighborhood we live in. The other night I was writing about coaching a Rec. Center soccer team. Driving one of the boys home after a game, he pointed to some toughs hanging out on a street corner near his house. “Them’s the drug dealers. They always trying to get me to try some…” he said. The boy is eight-years-old. I recently told the Wooster Daily News that in a saner world, no child would be continually trying to dodge hunger, drugs and bullets growing up, anywhere.
2/4/09
Just finished an article about “Hip Hop” music. It ran in National Geographic. Writer James McBride categorizes some of Hip Hop as “social commentary.” And he went to Dakar, Senegal, to search for the African roots of this music. Upon arriving in Dakar, he notes: “The stench of poverty in my nostrils was so strong it pulled me to earth like a hundred-pound ring in my nose.” Just like the slaves in the South invented “the Blues” out of their pain, true Hip Hop eminates from the “quiet rage and desperate fury” of the Senegalese, McBride continues. And he adds that desperation has indeed gone global: “Today, two percent of the Earth’s adult population owns more than 50 percent of it’s household wealth, and indegenous cultures are swallowed with the rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato chips…” And to spin off from this metaphore, therein lies the problem. In the market at Senegal, McBride met a teenage beggar whose body was malformed by polio. He crawled on his hands and knees like a spider, begging for scraps of food. And meanwhile, people in our culture will think nothing of buying ‘bag after bag’ of non-nutritional junk food like potato chips — while this youth in Senegal (Biafra, Uganda, Burundi…) is in such tremendous pain and desperation. Note: As president, I would do everything possible to try to mobilize more people in America (and throughout the First World) to help that kid in Senegal.
2/3/09
Went to a “Transition Town” meeting in Ohio City here last night. Transition Town is a worldwide movement of people trying to move their towns toward a ‘fossel fuel free’ environment. The people at last night’s meeting would be considered, for the most part, strong environmentalists. The thrust of the meeting was that society has become “addicted to oil.” Then, looking inward, these people talked about what they could each do to break even more of their own addiction to oil. People talked about wanting to bicycle more, take public transportation more. Someone else talked about cutting down on using lights in various ways. Yet another said they were “addicted to warmth” and wanted to cut back more on the heating this winter. This part of the meeting turned out to be, in effect, quite similar to a support group. I couldn’t help but think (in all seriousness) how affective Oil Addicts Anonymous groups would be nationwide. “We admitted we were powerless over oil and our lives have become unmanageable…”
1/31/09
The New York Times today carried a front page article about Sacramento, California’s non-profit Municipal Utility that has come up with a creative strategy to get people to use less energy. On their monthly bills, the Utility include a “Last Month Neighborhood Comparison.” That is, you are compared to 100 random homes of comprable size in your area. The 100 homes are dubbed as: “All” — and you are compared against their mean average energy use. Then there is another graph where you are compared to 20 neighbors who were “especially efficient in energy savings.” This is dubbed as “Green.” A social pyschologist interviewed for the article said the age-old “keeping up with your neighbors” is a strong motivating factor, even when it comes to conservation… Personally, our family tries to be as “green” as possible when it comes to home energy savings. Our family of five lives in a relatively small two-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. We don’t use air conditioning. We use energy saving flourescent lights and only turn them on (Wait ’til you hear this!) in just the rooms we’re using. We don’t use a television. Our refrigerator is half the size of most regular refrigerators. For winter, we put plastic on all the windows. Instead of using the central gas heating, we have a couple portable heaters that we just turn on in the rooms we’re using, at the time we’re using them, during the day. And in those rooms, we generally keep the temperature between 55 to 62 degrees, and often wear sweaters and hats. (I read once that you lose 70% of your body heat through your head. My wife Liz will say that with the ‘hole’ in my head, that might be closer to 90% for me.) Sure we get a bit cold in the winter, a bit hot in the summer. But in the face of potentially more and more global warming catastrophies, we think it’s worth the sacrifice. What’s more, in the context of our spirituality (Catholic), sacrificing is actually a spiritually good thing, period. Note: We would do well to become a Society of Conservers vs. a Society of Consumers. For more on our environmental position paper…
1/30/09
I mentioned at the beginning of this week that I talked with Augi Pacetti who is a youth minister at St. Ignatius High School here in Cleveland. Several of his students and another teacher have been doing The Great Garbage Challenge this week. Each has been carrying around a big, black plastic bag and depositing all the waste they generate during the week in it. The idea is to make people really conscious about how much waste we Americans generate. Hint: a lot. Those participating met at St. Ignatius’s Chapel today and Mr. Pacetti led a prayer asking God to help us “live more simply.” I then picked up a copy of the New York Times… A front page article noted that President Obama “branded Wall Street bankers ‘shameful’ for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was deteriorating…” It is my belief, many of us have a tendency to point to the far end of a continuum, in order to take the focus off, well, our own ‘shameful’ behavior. That is, instead of focusing on the bankers, why don’t we focus on, oh I don’t know, let’s say: people in Nigeria… Last night I was reading about Nigeria. It is the most populated country in Africa, and the poorest. The average annual income is $1,400 and a majority of the people live in cobbled together shacks with no power or clean water. It’s so bad that the delta region of Nigeria is now “teeming with angry, frustrated people” who are starting to get behind the rebel group MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) to fight a government that, they claim, is corrupt. And violence is erupting everywhere… Ok, let’s connect the social justice dots in all this: President Obama is saying the Wall Street bankers are ‘shameful.’ And I agree. But what about a person who knows millions of people in Nigeria (Uganda, Biafra, Haitti…) are living in hovels, while they live in a $225,000 home in Illinois — and now even a bigger one in D.C.? And then, what about all us others in America? The Nigerians have no power. We use power like it was going out of style. The Nigerians live on a meager one or two meals a day, if that. Most of us live on three full meals a day, and all kinds of non-nutritional junk food for snacks inbetween. Our homes, even the modest, one-story ones here, are like mansions compared to the Nigerians… Shameful? Well, sure! We could avert more and more bloodshed in Nigeria, starving children, disease… by simply cutting back on our food, our energy use and housesharing to halve expenses — then pump the money into these Third World places. That we don’t (in a much more prolific way) is a ‘shame…’ God, help us to “live more simply.”
1/28/09
I was talking with a Cleveland city school teacher yesterday who is also quite active doing social justice work with the Catholic Workers here. She said farmers will continue to grow coca plants in, say, Columbia “as long as their is money to be made.” Her point being that as long as people stay impoverished, in their desperation they will turn to whatever they can to feed their children and themselves. Common sense. Our administration’s ‘War on Drugs’ would, among other things, be a tremendously stepped up humanitarian aid outpouring into the Third World. Speaking of war… Bumper sticker sighting: “War doesn’t decide who’s right. Just who’s left.”