After reading a post on the website of the American family Associations website about why we should not vote for Barack Obama I wrote them a letter explaining why I felt they were trying to sway voters the wrong way and corrected statements they made in error on their website about him. They responded to me in what I considered to be a very rude way and even suggested that anyone who is a Christian could not vote for Barrack Obama!! I told them there are many reasons why John Mc Cain is NOT the man I want to be the President of the country I live in and why I feel he is unfit to lead our country. I was just alarmed that they are spreading lies and rumors about Barack Obama and I wish others would write to them to correct them as well.
http://www.afa.net/
THE AFA has a poll to try to prove our favored candidate is NOT prepared to be president. Please help show that he IS!! He is WAY behind in this poll!
http://www.afa.net/petitions/pbspoll/takesurvey.asp
Check this out to see how women in Alaska feel about Palin!
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Can I brag? She thought up this answer all by herself. Next stop: the Bill O'Reilly show! See the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re8oKYCe7BE
Joe Romm posted "Follow your money" August 2nd and one of the responders issued a call to action for Barack:
Dennis wrote -
It’s not just our money we need to follow; in many cases, it’s also our oil. Just who owns the land (and seabed) these companies want to drill on? We do! The prices they pay for “leases” are nothing compared to their profits. With oil being pumped out on OUR land at $120+ per barrel, all those excess profits by right out to be the public’s, for the purpose of getting our country off oil and on renewables. Obama needs to start making this argument NOW.
Another response by Rod Adams is a must read ... I encourage all to read it.
This is an serious situation that many not be aware of, so I feel inclined (ever so humbly) to copy my response to Rod here ... PLEASE MAKE THE PHONE CALLS to the numbers listed below:
Maiken,
I will do as you suggest (quote below).
AND for what it's worth -- you never know who is connected to whom -- IF ANY BODY READING THIS HAS A CONNECTION TO A PRIME MINISTER, A PRESIDENT, A PAUPER, A POET, A PRINCE, OR A KING ... or anybody who might have the ear of Angela Merkel, please get a message to her that she and Mr. Obama need to respond to Dr. James Hansen's letter to her about coal-fired power plants.
July 17, 2008 - Al Gore invited every American to accept a challenge: "I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge - for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It's time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now."
Mr. Gore put forth a way each of us can help: "This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I'm asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership."
Al gave another great speech yesterday. Take a hard look at it. This plan puts the stake in the ground where it needs to be.
It's time to take a cold shower in the numbers and wake up. As Barack's mom would tell him, "this is no picnic for me either, buster". I think Obama knows very well how big this is. $150 billion is nowhere near what we need to meet the goal of energy security.
I think we are ready for the challenge, but let's be realistic- this is going to be tough. Gore's decade sounds like a long time, but it isn't when you consider the production bottlenecks involved with moving from fossil fuel electricity generation. Don't picture Apollo. Picture WWII.
Our total electricity output is 3 terawatts. 50% is from coal, and 20 is from Natural gas, so Al is talking about replacing about 70% of our capacity, or 2100 Gigawatts of power. Gore rightly highlights in his July 17 speech the interstate energy transmission network we need to move power around the nation. We don't have that right now. To get power from Geothermal, Solar, and Wind energy from the western states that are rich in these sources to the big cities in the east and along the coasts we need a whole new ultra high voltage transmission network. Never mind the cost of that generation for a moment- look at the cost of the transmission network.
An example, a recent USAEE report* stated that it would cost $31 billion to ship 16 GW of wind energy from the western regions of the Midwest ISO to states in the Northeast. That's 5% of Obama's 150 billion right there, and that is "only" 16 GWs. Remember- we have to replace 2100 gigawatts of capacity.
That's just the transmission problem. Besides money, we have a problem with time.
Join in asking Senator Obama to lead on Gore's challenge of 100% carbon free power in ten years.
Choose a coal-free running mate, please!
The upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is 350 ppm. We're above that now. An international grassroots climate movement, 350.org, is spreading the word: we need to get back to 350.
Everyone can help, with creative ideas, inspiring actions, beautiful art.
Comment below to join in asking: Senator Obama, what's your 350 action?
Many folks focus on Detroit's failure to invest aggressively in alternative power for cars as evidence of a conspiracy. The conspiracies take many forms, but they bring us to the counterproductive state of demonizing precisely the industries we need to fight our way out of the hole that republican administrations have dug us into.
If you think about it, it's not just that Detroit killed the electric car, but they weren't even capable of seeing what they needed to do regarding their profitability against the invasion of Japanese cars in the 70s. It is common populist rhetoric that there was an intentional conspiracy to defeat alternative transportation technologies by the car makers.
Was it also an intentional conspiracy that led Detroit to lose substantial market share to the Japanese beginning in the 70s? I think not. It was really the usual suspects: a conspiracy of arrogance and stupidity, and like many of us who have been managers in large corporations, we know that this is not an unusual state for businesses to be in.In any case- to the point. I think we have to bypass the populist rhetoric however true or tempting it is to leverage for short term gain. Focusing on moving from where we are, we need to look beyond subsidies. Detroit is asking for beefier subsidies for Plug in Hybrids, because the power carriers (batteries or fuel cells) are extremely expensive. Sure, at least in the case of Lithium batteries, they pay for themselves over the life of the car.
But guess what. It isn't just Detroit that focuses on the near term. It's us. Most consumers won't pay the extra $15,000 for an electric car even if over the life of the car they will wind up paying less.
The numbers are stunning. On average, we use 1.68 gallons of gas per vehicle per day. Even if all cars got 30MPG, the cost of fuel for the 155,000 miles for average vehicle lifetime means that vehicle will use 5167 gallons of gas. If by some miracle gas prices can be held to an increase of only 10% per year, that means that the cost of the gas for such a "fuel efficient" car will be $37,045 (10% increase starting at $4.50 over 10 years yields an average price of $7.17 per gallon).
At the national average of 10 cents per kilowatt hour, the electricity needed to go the same distance with the same performance will cost you $5,166.
Hmmm. $37,045 or $5K. Which would you rather spend?
Oh. But the battery costs you $15K. So guess which car gets driven off the lot.
The one that costs $20K and costs $37K for fuel, rather than the $35K car that costs $5k for fuel.
People make poor decisions like that every day. The "pay later rather than pay now" mentality is exactly what was wrong with detroit and exactly what is wrong with consumers. It is holding us up with moving aggressively over to plug in electrics, and will guarantee that we will sent 700 billion overseas in the coming year to pay for oil, and 1 trillion the year after that.
A trillion here a trillion there. Soon it adds up to real money. If we don't get smart about the threat to our long term security, our nation is going to divest itself of all of its wealth. Really, it is that simple.
Now many of you would like to couch this as a green, environmental issue, but it isn't. This is about national survival. It may seem dry and boring, but we can't conserve or bicycle or mass transit our way out of this one. No new research is needed.
Plug in hybrids exist now. They make sense financially, but only if folks take the long view. Government can help with that, but not with piddling $3000 giveaway subsidies. No- if government simply provided financing to erase the up front barrier that the cost of the battery presents, then customers would flock to a car that delivered for them the equivalent of $2.20 per gallon of gas.
There are a variety of ways of implementing this. In my state, our democratic party passed a resolution to execute exactly such a program. I have discussed it on my blog here and on democrats.org, and I have placed the text of it along with discussion on the Policypedia wiki here.
In my Massachusetts town, I spend most of my time working at the nexus of fighting against global warming, helping people reduce their use of traditional (fossil fuel) based energy in ways that save them money, and linking with the projects and ideas of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network (MCAN) groups based in other towns.
How to get Americans to wake up and stop trashing the home planet, myself included of course, is a huge challenge. It scares me, the consequences of willful blindness to actual climate changes we are beginning to see as disruptive and harmful. They are "the tip of the iceberg".
I am grateful for the Obama-McCain debate on climate and energy, because it needs to be a visible big priority, not a nice tack-on. I'd like to see if the environmentalists in the Obama 08 community could raise the profile of the issue within the campaign, so that it isn't drowned out by more "immediate" concerns, of which there are several vitally important ones.
But - if the planet won't continue to sustain our lives the way we're living them, that's priority #1 to fix. We've got to change, or the planet will change in hugely tragic ways, as is already happening. So how do we come together as a species, homo sapiens, to stop fouling our nest?
Anyone have any ideas about how to raise the profile of climate change in the campaign? How to make sure the very best plans are in place for President Obama to take up on his first day in office? How the President can convince literally half the American people that climate change is real and we all need to do more than change our type of light bulbs and recycle better?
We Americans on average use twice as much energy per person as Western Europeans do. We need different goals, social values, lifestyles and yes, religious understanding more than we need new technologies that would let those who can afford them (solar, wind, hybrid cars, etc.) keep squandering energy without guilt.
I'm a newbie as a participating voice here, so seeking advice - RSVP.
A few weeks ago, we ran into a very interesting gentleman who runs a large construction company in Abingdon, Virginia. I've been worried about this economy and privately believe that "Recession" is too good a word for what iI see going on. Companies that sell the little seeds you use to plant a vegetable garden are selling more of those than they have since the Great Depression. Please don't mention Bear Stears, the price of oil, our dependence on fossil fuel, either. It's time for a smart administration to deal with some big problems.
But I digress, it turns out that the diesel trucks used in their form of construction must run all day long. That's a 10-hour day costing this gentlement $1,200 A TRUCK to do business. (He had about ten trucks.) He mentioned that his tipping point is not far away and he's have to shut his doors.
So while we are inconvenienced with unairconditioned buses, wishing all our cars ran on refuse, and worry about safety of the underlying highway infrastructure, what's going to the happen to the economy when the truckers get a better price displaying their gear in museums next to the T-Rex's?
How are we going to get bacon on the table? How long will it take to migrate back to a rail system? I moved from Los Angeles to a rural place in beautiful, southwest Virginia, where Senator Obama began his campaign. We have hay and cows, although less of both of those because of the drought.
I'd look forward to what other people are thinking will happen when the gas prices start destroying whole industries.
While supporters of Obama appreciate his commitment to fighting climate change many may still be a bit unsure of what climate change/man-made global warming - a.k.a. anthropogenic global warming or AGW - is really all about. Like the tobacco battles disinformation is everywhere.
We have only a few years to understand the enormity of the crisis and successfully act, so that our children might avoid the worst effects in the following decades. Therefore ignorance of the subject should not be excused.
This post (slightly modified from a post I put on DailyKos a few days ago) attempts to provide a short list of resources that clearly and succinctly explain global warming. Please read what you can. Pass a link to this post on to those you suspect have questions or doubts about it - express your concerns and ask them to read too.
(The fun starts after the jump.)
Have you heard from family or coworkers that McCain is good on climate change? Alas one gets far too much credit for just being able to say "global warming" in BushWorld. Sure McCain's better than Bush - so what, his prescription amounts to little more than communal suicide.
If you know of anyone who retains the fantasy that McCain can be expected to deliver on climate change please forward them this link to a great Boston Globe opinion piece comparing McCain and Obama.
More after the jump...
I wished Obama had made a statement on the Senate floor during the debate of the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. But with his statement over the weekend, I now understand why he probably chose not to speak - because like many of us, he was conflicted on the legislation.
I'll clip it up here with some brief comments.
I went to the Hillary website and signed her petition to the DNC asking for Florida and Michigan to be re-instated. This is what I wrote in the comments box....
This petition makes sense if we think that rules and policies should NOT matter.
Why are we asking the DNC to change the rules now?
Florida and Michigan violated known policies & procedures - are we now required to reward them for breaking well known rules because it is covenient for Clinton?
Along those lines, let's not even bother with the previous rules of counting delegates. Let's switch to the popular vote and thereby exclude caucus states. After all they do NOT matter - right?
