Audio was recorded by onegreener.com
“The challenge facing us today for the future is how to use energy efficiently.”
“Biostitutes”
Our nation is being beggared by the greatest transfer of wealth to a country that does not even share our values or beliefs (China).
RFKJ 1.3 trillion in subsidies to the oil industry in the USA every year. A trillion to coal, and half a trillion to nuke. Every nation that has decarbonized its society has experienced immediate and instantaneous prosperity. Iceland. Sweden. Brazil. Costa Rica. Entrepreneurs then rush to these countries to build theire business – especially environmentlaly related ones.
Solar thermal plants in the desert of the Southwest would power 100% of America’s needs, evne if everyone owned an electric cr. We have enough wind power in MT, Dakotas and TX to power the needs of this country. “The impediments are the huge subsidies we pay to the carbon cronies.” The market advantage the carbon companies gain frmo these government subsidies is what is creating this imbalance.
The grids are under-built, misaligned, or non-existent. People who are able generate their own power (wind farm) can’t connect to enough grid in order to transfer enough electricity to make a difference.
We need a smart grid. $150B to build a grid to erach every American home. Also public utility commissions are an impediments. They restrict access to the grid. Instead of being paid based on for consumption, they should be paid to conserve. (Pull vs push.) Right now buildings that do produce their own power, when they do sell it back to the utility (where they can), they are limited to how much they can return, and they are not paid market rates. This thinking is just wrong.
Solar plants – in the SW they are being built for cheaper than a coal plant, or nucleur plants – and once they are built they are practically free to operate. Electrons are hitting the Earth for free every day – if we could just build a way to capture that and transport to every home in America. For one investment of $650-750B we should have free energy forever.
We’ve done this before. We built an internet grid, a national backbone to every home in America, in 1979. It is practically free to use/maintain today. The cost of electrons will do the same if we build a national grid. We need a national marketplace that rewards good behavior – efficiency – and punish bad behavior, inefficiency, that is waste. We need to realign our marketplace rules so they rationalize with our national interests.
Israel is going thru transition now. Every parking space is having an outlet installed next to it, and swap stations are being built. You would drive your car in and a robot would swap out your exhaust battery and put in a new one in less than 2 minutes – less time than it takes to fill your tank. They are going to give the cars to Israli drivers for free, and they will be charged based on their usage. like cell phones today – most are free, and what you pay for is minutes and other services.
The reason why the cars can be given away for free is because the internal combustion engine is just inherently inefficient. It is heavy and costs a lot to move. An electric car weighs a lot less and requires less inputs to operate it. The driver owns the car, and the utility owns the battery. Batteries not currently in use are a power storage facility for the national grid. Conversations to make this happen in Hawaii and parts of California are currently under way.
He is listing a number of people who are head of major initiatives and departments in our national government that are actually against the thing they have been appointed to “protect”, I will sum it up this way – those damn lobbyists. He says there is nothing wrong with busines people being in government. But there is something wrong with people entering government service to enrich corporate pockets and not protect what they were appointed to protect.
Shoot, he said something about Brittney Spears and I missed it!
Control of the press – Reagan abolished Fairness Act in 1988. Instead of informing us, now they entertain us. This was a big tangent he went one, I can’t possibly keep up. There is a gap in scientific information and public perception because media no longer is responsible for reporting.
Pediatric asthma epidemic in our country – there a number of arguments of what is causing it, but the attacks are triggered by what is in the air. He lays out the different presidential administrations and The Clean Air Act. He also said that in many states it is not even safe ot eat the fresh water fish because of mercury contamination. He says he has so much mercury in his body from eating fish that his levels are more than double what is considered safe by the EPA. You can have your mercury levels tested by sending a lock of your hair to the Waterkeeper Alliance. (Will insert details later). Mercury levels can be reduced within about 5 years when cleanup happens.
“It is not just the destruction of the environment, it is the subversion of democracy.”
We are not protecting nature for the birds and the trees. Nature is the infrastructure of our communities.. That is why we are protecting it.
“Good economic policy = good environmental policy.”
It is not diminishing our wealth, it is an investmemt in infrastructure. He says there is no stronger advocate for free market capitalism than himself.. The best thing that can happen to the environment is if we had true free market capitalism. It promotes efficiency, not waste. And pollution is waste. The undervalation of resources causes waste. In a free marker society, when you make yourself rich, you make the people around you and your community rich. Polluters make themselves rich by making everyone else poor – and they do it by escaping the free market. “Show me a polluter and I will show you a subsidy.”
The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. Humans have appetites for things other than money. This is why the environemnt must be protected.
Factory farming has ruthless market control. The only way they are able to shut out the family farmer is because they are given free subsidies for inputs to run the factory. If they had to internalize the true expense as they do their profit, they would never survive in a true free market society.
There was a lengthy religions parable – most religious rebels challenged the established hierarchies. It’s not just about destroying a landscape – it is an attack on our values. The roots of culture come from nature. Art, poetry, literature – nature is the unifying value found in these things humans value. A respect for nature and a respect for future generations. It is about creating communities with dignity. It’s not just about reducing global warming emissions – it is about pride in being Americans and the moral sense we are going to be respectful of future generations and leave something for them, and not just be selfish for us.
STANDING O!!
3/8/2009 Follow-up: Another local green blogger, onegreener.com, live streamed video during the event. Unfortunately the audio is pretty bad. I tried listening to this on my desktop with the speakers at full blast and still could not hear it clear enough to listen to it for nearly two hours. I have tried contacting onegreener.com via Twitter and also an email from his blog to see if there was any way to improve the audio portion but he has not responsed. If I find a
link to a similar speech I will post it (he was doing an event in Whistler BC two days before appearing in Seattle.
