I got an eMail today from an associate.  She is a member of a Portland City Commission, a gentle and loving woman who moves around in a wheel chair.

The eMail had a link to a digital movie short she had made about an incident of discrimination which occurred in her life last fall on an outing with her family.

I have been deeply troubled by that event all day.  I have talked about it with friends.  I remain troubled by the incident, and other recent incidents that have swept into my life in the last month or so.

Another friend, an elderly gay man, who is also wheel chair bound now, had an issue at his dialysis clinic, because he is “sweet” on one of the technicians at the facility.

In his case, he was friendly with the tech, nothing sexual, just trying to make conversation because his entire life consists of going to dialysis and going home.  He is about as harmless as a de-clawed house cat, and probably not long for this world at 77.

For whatever reason the clinic felt it necessary to bring him into the directors office and tell him that his behavior was unacceptable, and that he was to have no further contact with the technician.  The technician had never mentioned anything, expressed any discomfort or concern.  All of a sudden, my friend gets hauled in and dressed down for his harmless conversations.

In tears, he related this story to me, and his sense of betrayal over the situation.  His partner was also deeply hurt and angered and gets sick at the thought of ever going back to the place.

The woman who is mentioned at the beginning shared about how she was bullied out of the event, and her family went on to do the event without her, leaving her in tears outside.

I was shocked, not just that the bullies had run her out, or that her family had not opposed the injustice, but then they went on without her, leaving her alone with her tears.

As I write about this, I want to be very clear that it is not just my associate, or my friend, but a regional malaise, a mental illness if you please that seems to run a heavy thread in most “native” families in the region.

My comments are not meant to be accusatory of her, or her family, or my friend at the dialysis clinic.  This is a systemic issue, a cultural one, and most of us who have moved here from other places, or locals who have lived elsewhere and returned all have the same reaction to it.

Dumbfounded amazement.

This is truly “off the scale” to me.  I just don’t get it.  Not just because of my own sense of personal justice, but our national legacy of “taking a stand”, “sitting in”, and other non violent acts of courage that have formed a more just society.

What if Rosa Parks had cooperated and gotten up and given her seat to the white man on the bus?  After all of the blood shed so that people could live with more dignity, surrendering dignity in order to “get along” makes no sense, and insults those who died so that we could have freedoms.

The “South” is just as polite, just as “family oriented”, and has family roots that run just as deep.  But any of this bullying behavior would be met with a very different response “back home.”  The response would be measured and polite, but firm, “you and what army?”

Surrendering to a bully is the ultimate way to “lose face.”

The south is a culture that spawned the Dixie Chicks song “Good Bye Earl” about two women who poison an abusive husband and dump the body in a lake.  Capitulation is not celebrated, life is too tough.

People out here don’t seem to understand that all of the work of Gandhi and King was “in your face” direct confrontation of an oppressive status quo.  The actions were peaceful, measured and disciplined, but they were also confrontational and combative.  It specifically was civil disobedience, in other words, they broke laws that they believed to be unjust.

I have a wonderful documentary, “The Women of Country Music” about the rise of women in the music business in America.  Few realize that it was these women who were the first to write their own songs and sell millions of them.  They changed the music business forever.

One of the earliest, Patsy Montana, the first woman to sell one million records (”I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart”, 1936) shares about how in her career, they tried to pay her less because she was the “girl singer.”  She said, “I stood my ground, I didn’t let them scare me, I stood my ground and I got the cut I was supposed to get.”

In the same documentary, Loretta Lynn states, “you have to toughen up to survive in this business.”  Given the brutalities of current life in America, that seems like good advice for all of us.  What the documentary makes clear is that the only way people get ahead is to feel comfortable fighting for what is important to them.

There seems to be an ethos in the region about confrontation, and the avoidance of it, that makes it very easy for bullies to rule the day.   I would also suggest (as winter and “the rain” approaches) that our region has some of the highest rates of clinical depression in the country.  We blame the weather on it, but I suspect the weather is only a co-factor.

I think a lot of people are depressed because they don’t feel much control over their lives, and human interactions seem to be one long mine field filled with injustice and pain and no acceptable way to protect ones self from assault with one’s own honest anger.

In my private practice, every client I’ve had who is a native of the region (and usually trying to get off of the anti-depressants they have been on for years) comes to the conclusion that he/she has never learned an acceptable way to express anger when someone is hurting them.

So how did we get here?  To this place where we are obsessed with being polite to people who push us around, where we think we are being noble martyrs because we won’t say “No” when we are being treated unfairly?

Family Therapy theory and practice acknowledges the importance of culture with regard to belief systems, particularly regarding human interaction and dealing with people in daily life.  The culture of the Pacific Northwest is legendarily “Conflict Avoidant”, people here will avoid any form of conflict or seemingly adversarial behaviors at all costs.

In the case of my associate, even her family did not object to the way she was being treated, and then went on to the event without her.  My friend at the dialysis clinic was polite in the directors office, agreeing with her, and only when he got in the safety of his car, did he break down and cry over the humiliation of the event.

Depression is “Anger turned inward”, so when someone treats us in a hurtful way, where does our anger go if we don’t express it in the moment when the hurt is inflicted?  We all have a large capacity to absorb pain and process it, but even the largest storage has limits.  When those limits are exceeded, something snaps.  It may be a nervous breakdown, or it may be the guy who goes home and shoots up his family and/or the neighborhood.

Those “Summit Health” ads on TV, “If your anti-depressant alone isn’t working” give me creeps.  How much more “Soma” do you need?

I have lived in three cultures before moving here.  After four years, I still love the place, and the people who live here.  But for the sake of the mental health and the social justice of the region, we need to learn ways to express our anger when we are mis-treated back at the person who is mis-treating us.  Bottling it up inside is a slow poison, that adds to the “grey” of our lives, makes us sick, depressed and unhappy.

In the same documentary, singer Lacy J. Dalton says of the early days of the feminist movement, “I didn’t like the militancy of it.  But as I’ve become older, I’ve really become very understanding of that.  Because unless we really make a fuss sometimes, nobody is gonna listen.”

If you’re unable to defend yourself, can’t stand up for your own personal dignity and justice, then why would anyone else fight on your behalf?

I told my associate that I hope she, her family and friends, go back to the venue this fall, all go in, and if they try to boot her out, make a big ruckus.

Oh, I told her to invite the press too.

“You have to make the injustice visible”  Mohandus Gandhi

Thanks,  Ed Garren

A friend sent this excellent article, published in The Guardian (a United Kingdom newspaper).

At the risk of incurring the wrath of many of my friends, I agree with the author.  We “liberals” have been too polite, too complicit and too compliant with the onslaught of “conservatives.”  In other words, we have been “lambs” while the wolves have been tearing the country to shreds, devouring the poor, gutting the treasury, and bankrupting the country.

 Is it any wonder that the use of anti-depressant drugs has doubled in the last ten years?

 One of the reasons that Barack Obama has gained so much respect is that when someone attacked him during his campaign, he came right back with an intelligent response.

He continues to engage those with whom he has differences, and while being politically expedient, he has not been politically impotent.

One of the main reasons we “progressives” have not fared well in the last decades is that we are afraid to take on issues, bullies, malcontents and liars.  Barney Frank and Barbara Boxer seem to be the only persons in congress with good old fashioned “balls” and “backbone.”  Maybe it’s because they are both Jewish and understand that when you’re dealing with bullies, you need to fight back, period.

Until we “progressives” are willing to fight back, hard, we will continue to lose ground, which we can no longer afford to do, both for the sake of the nation and the planet.

Here it is, please feel free to comment below.

*******************

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go tohttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/29/edward-kennedy-democrats-defeat

 Ted Kennedy: a lamb, not a lion

I admired and supported Ted Kennedy ? but he was the symbol of an era when liberals lost the battles that mattered

 Muhammad Cohen

Sunday August 30 2009

guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/29/edward-kennedy-democrats-defeat

Ted Kennedy was the champion of the American left during the greatest surge to the right in US political history. Rather than the liberal lion of the Senate, fiercely defending his turf, he was a lamb who failed to halt, and even abetted, the country’s slide away from his principals and ideals. The very word “liberal” morphed from an adjective to an accusation while Ted Kennedy was the keeper of its flame.

I don’t make these charges as one of the legion of Kennedy-haters. Quite the contrary: I’m a proud, card-carrying liberal. My “To sail against the wind” poster, a campaign contribution keepsake from Kennedy’s one and only presidential run in 1980, showing the senator stoutly striding to the left, has graced my walls on three continents. I would have voted for Kennedy over any presidential candidate of the past 40 years, so count me as a true believer.

I don’t blame Kennedy for that 1980 run against Jimmy Carter, a sitting president of his own party. I don’t even blame Kennedy ? although many do ? for Carter’s subsequent defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. In 1979, Jimmy Carter threatened: “If Kennedy runs, I’ll whip his ass.” Kennedy let Carter whip his ass, and that’s unforgivable. Though friends and foes alike salute Kennedy’s legislative record, those bills are mere footnotes to the dominant US trend of the past 40 years, a huge ass-whipping for liberals. The Americans With Disabilities Act, No Children Left Behind and the Occupational Safety and Health Act don’t stack up to a single Clarence Thomas or Rush Limbaugh that Kennedy helped create. Kennedy was the leading light on the left during an era when liberals got whipped in every battle that mattered, a loser of historic proportion.

Kennedy didn’t just fail to stem the rightward tide, he helped power it. Through his own personal misconduct, from cheating at Harvard to Chappaquiddick to his binge with William Kennedy Smith of blue-dot rape trial fame, Kennedy exemplified the privileged irresponsibility that fueled the rightwing revolution.

The Kennedy name was said to be magical among liberals, but it became even more effective for conservatives. The mere mention of Ted Kennedy on any issue was enough to open rightwing wallets. For every dollar Kennedy raised for causes he supported, his name probably raised ten times more for causes he opposed. While portraying himself as a champion of the working class, Kennedy financed the movement that convinced millions of Joe the Plumbers to vote against their own interests.

Kennedy became a powerful symbol for his enemies of everything that was wrong with government, liberals, Democrats, and Washington, but failed to use his iconic position to inspire and move his allies. He was the one liberal politician of his time guaranteed a national audience whenever he spoke out. But Kennedy rarely chose to grasp that big stage to galvanize his side and move public opinion on key issues that defined the US over the past four decades.

Where was he on the George Bush the elder’s Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, the rightwing extremist whose lifetime appointment to the court will have a far greater impact than Kennedy and his brothers combined? When Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearings deteriorated into a circus with pubic hair on soda cans in the centre ring, where was Kennedy to tell the president and the country that it had to demand someone better? Actually, Kennedy was right there on the Senate Judiciary Committee, gagged by his own string of sexual peccadilloes.

When Thomas cast the vote that made the younger George Bush president, where was Kennedy to say it was wrong in a democracy for nine judges to order vote counting stopped? Where was Kennedy to express liberal outrage at this farce and to lead a movement to refuse to recognise Bush as president until the votes were counted? Why wasn’t he calling on fellow lawmakers to stand and turn their backs whenever they were confronted with this immorally-appointed president?

Well, Kennedy was too busy then crafting the flawed and under-funded No Children Left Behind Act that not only made public education less effective but gave the sham president legitimacy. After asserting Bush betrayed him, Kennedy went back to work again with that same administration on prescription drug coverage for seniors, only to see his support used to create a government handout for drug companies. Fool me twice….

Where was Kennedy’s call for liberals to take to the streets to protest the invasion of Iraq, as they had to end the war in Vietnam? Where was he on the erosion of civil liberties under George Bush? Where was he over the past 40 years on taking meaningful steps to end America’s dependence on imported oil and stop fouling the planet?

Most important, where was Kennedy on the decades-long slide starting with Reagan that transformed government’s mandate and public opinion about the very mission of America? Kennedy’s silence was deafening as Republicans and Democrats alike pandered to business and cut taxes on the wealthy, mocking his brother John’s clarion call in his inaugural speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

It’s deeply ironic that Kennedy dies in the midst of a national firestorm over healthcare reform, the cause that he hoped to make his crowning achievement. He leaves the issue mired in the lies and muddle that he didn’t challenge while it spread to poison the national debate. Senior citizens with their social security benefits and Medicare cards stand up at town hall meetings today demanding, “Keep government’s hands off my healthcare,” not only because of Fox News and rightwing radio, but because Ted Kennedy refused to use his mantle to refute the noise and nonsense on the right, leaving it instead of the likes of Al Franken.

Kennedy eschewed that national spotlight to become the consummate Capitol Hill insider. His accomplishments, while noteworthy and substantial, did nothing to counteract the nation’s lurch to the right. He chose to work in the comfortable, clubby confines of the Senate while his team desperately needed a public leader. Perhaps, given the times and trends (though with Watergate, Reagan and his hoodlums, 9/11 and Iraq, the Democrats certainly have had some cards to play), Kennedy drew a Mission: Impossible ? but unlike the fictional agents, Kennedy chose not to accept his mission.

Renowned as an orator, it’s fitting that Kennedy’s best known words have come in tragedy and defeat. There’s this beautiful tribute in his eulogy for Robert Kennedy: “As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: ‘Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say, why not?’”

After Carter whipped his ass, Kennedy told the 1980 Democratic national convention: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the dream will never die.” In his electrifying appearance at last year’s Democratic party convention in Denver, the stricken Kennedy, whose early support helped Barack Obama secure the presidential nomination, said, “The work begins anew, the hope rises anew, the dream lives on.”

Because of Kennedy’s own failures and flaws, despite nearly half a century in the Senate, so much of what he stood for remains nothing more than dreams.

An earlier version of this article appeared in Asia Times Online.

For those of you who don’t know, my older brother “Gene” is a 28 years of service Army veteran.  He is a retired Sgt. Mjr. the highest enlisted (E-9), was in Special Forces for 17 of those years, did covert military operations for 13 of those 17 years.  When he retired, he spent the last six months of service at Fr. Bragg writing technical manuals for the work that he did, which is still classified so I don’t know much about it.  His tours included Costa Rica, Pakistan, Alaska (north of Arctic Circle), east Africa, and numerous other “missions” that I am not aware of.

Gene is also very concerned about Global Warming/Climate Change.  He has seen the changes first hand during his career.   He has seen retreating glaciers, melting perma-frost, snow capped mountains losing their snow caps, and dwindling water supplies in many areas of the planet.  We have both seen the changes in climate both in our native Florida, and in the mountains of western North Carolina (where he now lives).  The summers in North Carolina are now much hotter than they were when we were children.  I remind him that three times as many people live on the earth as when we were kids, and all of them use fossil fuel, especially here in the United States.

Neither of us are fans of Fox News, but this latest round of lies coming from them has just about sent us both to the brink.  I’ve seen the documentary “Out Foxed” and understand that much of the “information” Fox provides is “spin” and commentary, not factual news.   The fear mongering over health care, climate change, and continuous spewing of lies into the living rooms of millions of viewers is irresponsible journalism at it’s worst.

My brother wrote this eMail to them recently, referring to them as the “Propaganda Network:

 Hello.  I am a 100% service connected disabled retired combat veteran.  Since President Obama began his campaign and has become President I can relate 3 issues that give favor to him as to Disabled Veterans.

1. President Obama supports full concurrent receipt of disabled military retirees military retirement and VA disability pay.  At present on those of us who are fully 100% or being paid at the 100% rate under the unemployable clause are getting full concurrent receipt.  The rest 50% or higher are still having it phased in while those below still have not such legislation.

2. President Obama supported what is now law on the New enhanced GI Bill brought forth by 2 tour combat Vietnam veteran Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.

3. President Obama has asked for a 16 billion increase in this years VA budget, the most in over 30 years.

Yet now that he tries to help the 40 million Americans who have not health insurance, all kinds of half truths, distortions, deception, and out and out lies are being told reference this.  I know many disabled combat veterans who are between   50 and 70 % disabled who simply cannot work no can they afford a supplement to their Medicare A&B. Therefore they really have nothing outside the VA which while doing all it can with the resources it has which is not always enough to meet the need.

Yet your so called “news” network allows Sean Hannity to have his own biased radio talk show and then present himself on Fox news as a radio reporter.  

This is wrong and I do not know why this is allowed.  In the days of Walter Cronkite, Charles Collingwood, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Edward R. Murrow, Qunten Renalds, and others this would not have been allowed.

In short your News network is only there to support greedy CEO’s and industries who have not the people’s best interests at heart, but increasing their greedy bank accounts such as Big Oil, Big Coal, Many in the Health Care industry, and others.

This shows that with enough money any large corporation can buy off many in Congress and also buy their own propaganda New network, radio shows, and internet web sites.Yet Fox news tries to put on a front that they stand behind the American working person.

This is totally false.  Your network is a total disgrace to all the American veterans who have given their lives in the service of their country.It is my sincere hope that someday you be uncovered for who you really are.  You stand against everything that makes and has made this country great and are a total disgrace to yourselves, your families, the United States of America, and mankind.

He added this in a note to me:  I am up to it with Fox News and all the others who keep sending me this bull s**t anti Obama and the health plan stuff.  One Congressman got up in the Congress and was lambasting it all and accused Obama’s administration of penalizing the 80% who have health insurance for the 40% who have not “EARNED” health insurance.  I guess some of my combat veteran friends who can’t afford health insurance didn’t earn it.  I think they earned it far more than that a** hole who I doubt ever was in service, must less combat. 

Fox News, is is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an ultra “right wing” Republican.  He has made Fox  network his personal mouthpiece for the agenda of greed, the fossil fuel cartel, make the United States into a third world country, destroy the middle class, etc.  These are the same people who gutted the treasury and the country for the last 8 years.  They are trying to stir up confusion and lies to defeat the “public OPTION” (not mandate) for health care that is now in congress.

Their motto “Fair and Balanced” is the first lie they perpetrate, they are neither.

You can add some comments to this if you like, just press the “Comments/No Comments” link at the bottom.

A friend sent him this link from the Sierra Club for a petition, you might want to sign it as well.

https://secure2.convio.net/sierra/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=2837&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr001=63ykz0n755.app224a 

Our president offered a very dignified and gracious greeting to the Islamic world for the beginning of Ramadan, explaining that it is a month long season of fasting, prayer and dignified celebration of the revealing of the Holy Koran to the prophet Mohammed.

While some may respond to this with shock, anger or other negative response, I am personally very pleased that our president has made this gesture of respect towards the Islamic community, a community which for too long has been perceived as being at odds with American values.

My personal experience of Islamic people has been overwhelmingly respectful, gracious, and I have experienced them as deeply spiritual people, who constantly hold their relationship with God at the center of their lives.  Generally they are gracious and humble people, filled with thanksgiving, and always open to being hospitable with strangers in their midst.  It is sad that our previous administration played upon fears and exploited the actions of a very few Muslims, and used their actions as an excuse to demonize an entire religion.

As a Gay man who is also a Christian,  I am painfully aware of how religious extremists in any religion can taint what the outside world sees regarding the entire religion.  The so-called militant clerics in Islam have about as much sanction in the larger faith as Pat Robertson, or the late Jerry Falwell had among main stream Christians.  I would not want all Christians to be judged by the actions and words of a few literalist angry judgmental men, and I suspect it is equally ignorant to cast the majority of Muslims, who are peace loving people, in with the words and deeds of a small and misguided group of angry people.

So, here is the video, and afterward is a Wikipedia link about Ramadan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK9ThwtxzfY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan

Living in a Constant State of Fear

Our community (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Trans, Queer) has a lot going on right now.  The lingering question of marriage rights, of the right to serve in the Armed Forces without fear, the ongoing storms of constantly having our dignity and humanity questioned and brought to a vote in ballot initiatives loom over our lives as constant unwanted companions.   It’s been 32 years since 1977, when Anita Bryant launched the first “Anti-Gay” ballot initiative in Miami Florida, and that 32 years has been marked by dozens of ballot initiatives, most of which our community has lost.  The recent loss of marriage in California underscores our status as “half citizens”, they want our tax money, but they don’t want us to be free.

Add those things to the list of the more daily issues like public display of affection, how to address a partner in public (saying “Honey” out loud in the store) and our significant numbers who are married to women, but seek “NSA action” on the side, and it’s easy to demonstrate that our lives are more complicated than those who live in the mainstream.

I believe that all gay men grow up and live in a constant state of fear.  Fear  of discovery, fear of rejection, fear of physical violence, the list goes on and on.   Many of us can “pass” for straight, but the constant fear of being discovered never really goes away.  That constant fear significantly affects our self-esteem and our ability to fight back against those who want us to shut up and go away.

In my private practice, as well as in the social services agencies I’ve worked in, the story is always the same, smart handsome men, who work very hard to “fit in”, often at the cost of our own sense of self, who wonder why we feel empty inside and either self medicate with drugs and alcohol, and/or are taking prescribed anti-depressants.  A recent story on ABC News centered on how the use of Anti-Depressant drugs in this country has doubled in the last decade.  How many of us have swelled those numbers?

At the height of the HIV plague, before there were the current medicines that slow down the progress of the virus, two actions groups emerged among the dying,  those who knew they only had a couple of years left to live.

The first was “Act Up”, with it’s mantra, “Silence equals death / Action equals life.”  The second was “Queer Nation” whose slogan was “We’re Queer, We’re here, We’re fabulous, Get used to it.”

I lived in Los Angeles at the time, and one of the direct impacts of these two movements was the explosion of gay men and lesbians into mainstream media.  Basically, closeted men who had led quiet and comfortable lives working as producers and directors, lost patience with the status quo and decided to rock the boat before they died.  Their actions led to the emergence of gay characters in virtually every aspect of media, television, film, etc.  These people decided to go out with dignity, instead of quiet patience that somehow “things would change” on their own.

So now I’m living here in Portland and the status quo includes such attributes as “patience”, “understanding” and being orderly and reserved.   People want change, but seem to think that someone else will make it happen, not us.

And I have a steady stream of people in my practice who have been depressed for years.

In this day of anti-depressant drugs, and the belief that depression is “a chemical imbalance in the brain” a couple of basic truths have been lost.  The first is that depression is “anger turned inward.”  If we can’t express our anger when we are being assaulted (physically or emotionally) then we “stuff it” and get sick, physically, mentally or both. 

The second truth is that if you torment an animal repeatedly, it’s brain chemistry WILL become imbalanced in order to accommodate the ongoing torment.  Part of that accommodation is to create a defense mechanism that makes it okay to live in fear. 

We have become experts at denying some basic, and very liberating truths about who we are.  We also have a very hard time fighting back, which is the most exhilarating and liberating thing any of us can do.

I have a very simple question I ask myself whenever I need to decide how to deal with a situation that involves my dignity.  “Do “straight” people have to do this?”

If the answer is “No”, then I don’t do it either.  Life is too short to spend it in half misery, being a half person, in a half world, so that the people who hate us can continue to feel comfortable hating us.

Edward “Ed” Garren, MA, LMFT

One of my favorite quotes from a very famous Floridian, pulitzer prize winner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

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 If there can be such a thing as instinctual memory, the consciousness of land and water must lie deeper in the core of us than any knowledge of our fellow beings.

We were bred of the earth before we were born of our mothers.  Once born we can live without our mothers, or fathers, or any other kin, or any friend, or human love.

We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in man’s heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

author of “The Yearling”

from her memoirs “Cross Creek”

From the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/g-8-failure-reflects-us-f_b_228597.html

Dr. James Hansen

Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Posted: July 9, 2009 10:33 AM

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change

Jim Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen.

It didn’t take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama’s agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked:

The world’s major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

Of course, emission targets in 2050 have limited practical meaning — present leaders will be dead or doddering by then — so these differences may be patched up. The important point is that other nations are unlikely to make real concessions on emissions if the United States is not addressing the climate matter seriously.

With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it’s no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon.

I share that conclusion, and have explained why to members of Congress before and will again at aCapitol Hill briefing on July 13. Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth’s remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.

The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, the highest level in 600,000 years and more than 100 ppm higher than the amount at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Burning just the oil and gas sitting in known fields will drive atmospheric CO2 well over 400 ppm and ignite a devil’s cauldron of melted icecaps, bubbling permafrost, and combustible forests from which there will be no turning back. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, we have a chance to bring CO2 back to 350 ppm and still lower through agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.

The essential step, then, is to phase out coal emissions over the next two decades. And to declare off limits artificial high-carbon fuels such as tar sands and shale while moving to phase out dependence on conventional petroleum as well.

This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won’t get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.

For all its “green” aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like “cap-and-trade” scheme. Here are a few of the bill’s egregious flaws:

• It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.

 

• It sets meager targets — 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year’s level — and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious “offsets,” by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.

 

 

• Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, “has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives.”

 

 

• It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, “businesses and households won’t be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense,” thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.

There is an alternative, of course, and that is a carbon fee, applied at the source (mine or port of entry) that rises continually. I prefer the “fee-and-dividend” version of this approach in which all revenues are returned to the public on an equal, per capita basis, so those with below-average carbon footprints come out ahead.

A carbon fee-and-dividend would be an economic stimulus and boon for the public. By the time the fee reached the equivalent of $1/gallon of gasoline ($115/ton of CO2) the rebate in the United States would be $2000-3000 per adult or $6000-9000 for a family with two children.

Fee-and-dividend would work hand-in-glove with new building, appliance, and vehicle efficiency standards. A rising carbon fee is the best enforcement mechanism for building standards, and it provides an incentive to move to ever higher energy efficiencies and carbon-free energy sources. As engineering and cultural tipping points are reached, the phase-over to post-fossil energy sources will accelerate. Tar sands and shale would be dead and there would be no need to drill Earth’s pristine extremes for the last drops of oil.

Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I’m naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let’s pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.

The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It’s less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.

Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died this week, suffered for 40 years — as did our country — from his failure to turn back from a failed policy. As grave as the blunders of the Vietnam War were, the consequences of a failed climate policy will be more severe by orders of magnitude.

With the Senate debate over climate now beginning, there is still time to turn back from cap-and-trade and toward fee-and-dividend. We need to start now. Without political leadership creating a truly viable policy like a carbon fee, not only won’t we get meaningful climate legislation through the Senate, we won’t be able to create the concerted approach we need globally to prevent catastrophic climate change.

 I read the story in the Oregonian, and then the legions of comments after, mostly disgraceful, negative, mean spirited stuff, all hidden behind monikers and “post names”, never the real identity of the person.   A link to the article is below:

 http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/07/challenge_may_follow_renaming.html

This is what I wrote as my comment, and as always, I used my real name.  Please feel free to comment, here or at the Oregonian article comment section.

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Street names get changed all over from time to time.  In the county I grew up in, which has grown significantly in the 35 years since I left, the entire county (actually the entire state) switched to a “central grid” street numbering scheme because the old RFD system of Route numbers and Box numbers gave no clue as to where the house actually sits.  Emergency services could find the house quickly, nor could anyone else without elaborate directions.  This didn’t just happen in Florida, but all over the country, even the remote mountain cabin my brother lives in (in the mountains of western North Carolina).

So the 303 E. Bougainvillia of my childhood (and until I was in my early 50s) has now become a five numbered address in the NE section of the county, and my brother’s home, which was for decades, Route 6, box 355, Burnesville NC, is now 627 Winter Star Road.

I know people don’t like change.  My only point is, it happens.  One of the reasons I had suggested “Division” as the choice is that absolutely no one, even a friend in his 70s, a Portland native, who was a county planner his whole life, can tell me how and why Division got it’s name.  Who was Division?  Why Division?  What did it divide?  No one seems to know.My choice was Division, though Grand or Broadway would have made more sense too.  But the “hoopla” about any of those streets forced it over to 39th.

This “majority” thing is tricky.  We actually live in a Constitutional Republic, not a pure “Democracy”.  Will of the majority can be very brutal at times.  I grew up in the civil rights era, and I can assure you that white people everywhere were not at all willing to consider the issues of non white people.  Some of the most brutally racist events in history occurred in Chicago, Boston, and yes, here in Portland.

As a gay man, who has had my existence, dignity, humanity and civil rights put on a ballot measure every two or four years for over 30 years (my entire adult life), and then I get to see the percentages of people who hate me when the ballots are counted, I can assure you that not all things should be determined by majority rule.

As someone who is not a native to the region, who was born in a state with a Spanish name, in a city with a Spanish name, and lived another 22 years in a city with a Spanish name, I find all of this objection sadly provincial at best, and disgustingly racist at worst.

Within days of John Kennedy’s assassination, Grand Central Blvd. in Tampa Florida, which was the main street through the heart of the city (much like Burnside here) was changed to Kennedy Blvd.  The only people who objected were the ones who thought his getting shot was a good idea.

None of we whites in the south wanted integration.  But a couple of years later, most of us realized what idiots we’d been for having made such a fuss.  The rest died with a hardened heart.  Is that what some of you will do?  Stay angry because the world has changed and you don’t like it?  Carry that grudge till you die?

One of the reasons integration had to happen was that national and international business would never relocate to a segregated area.  Look at the south now, an economic powerhouse, because it changed.  Long held traditions, in a region which is the most “historically oriented” region in America, realized that some traditions are not worth keeping.

Cesar Chavez made a difference, and not just for Latino people, what he did, and stood for affected us all, he fought against abusive use of pesticides on produce, and civil rights for GLBTQ people, something he championed decades ago when it was not popular to do so.

Every time you bring produce home from the store you are benefitting from his work.

Our city does not need a reputation as a back water, provincial place.  That’s how we lose opportunities. Displaying a progressive posture, yes, with a street named after Mr. Chavez, helps us attract businesses and jobs of the future.

I’m truly sorry that this is so difficult for some people here, but all this spewing of ignorance and narrow mindedness simply demonstrate why the name change needed to happen.

Ed Garren

www.edgarren.us