City's Economy Revives So It Ousts Its Homeless

          They’re calling Columbia, South Carolina, “the new Southern hot spot.” It’s buzzing with new business. The coveted economic revival has arrived.

 So naturally it’s time to get rid of the homeless. They blemish the pretty cityscape.

            New York Times staffer Alan Blinder reported the eviction story and noted that homelessness in the county rose 43 percent in the last two years. He stated that some of the county’s roughly 1,500 unfortunates idle on Columbia’s streets and frighten some citizens.

Mr. Blinder quoted luggage store owner Richard Balser, who said:

            “People are afraid to get out of their cars when they see a homeless person. They haven’t been a problem. They just scare people.”   

            As the city’s conservative city fathers and business leaders see it, the best remedy for the situation is to shoo the derelicts out of town--and maybe set up a shelter some 15 miles away.

            The city council voted unanimously for the eviction. They apparently dismissed entirely the protest of Jaja Akair, one of the rootless ones. Mr. Akair told the council:

            “You’ve got to get to the root of the problem—why we’re homeless. You can’t just knock us to the side like we’re a piece of meat or a piece of paper.”

            Now, you might regard Columbia’s action as cruel disregard for vulnerable and needy fellow citizens. You might conclude Columbians failed to consider the moral implications of their decision.

            And you’d be right.

The Columbians have done this when lack of morality among our leaders at all government levels has become an issue among academic and religious leaders. They note the disregard for the “common good”—or “people’s good”—that’s so glaring especially in the Halls of the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures.

            In recent months articles on the common good have appeared widely. The 57-year old Evangelical Christian publication Christianity Today has run an article and similar articles appeared in Time Magazine’s on-line edition, in the Seattle Times, in Jim Wallis’ evangelical Sojourner Magazine, and even in the publication of the Organic Consumers Association.

            The “common good” concept has been around for thousands of years. Put most simply, the phrase refers to policies, actions, or items the citizens of a city, state, or nation, say, would recognize as desirable and beneficial for everyone.

Aristotle is more precise. A common good, he stated, is “a good proper to and attainable only by a community, yet individually shared by its individuals.”

The once ancient and widely accepted concept was seldom discussed prior to the GOP takeover in 2001. In 1999 Political Scientist Thomas W. Smith of Villanova University wrote in the American Political Science Review:

“Talk about the common good has been all but abandoned. In the twentieth Century only Catholic social and political theory still clings to the concept.”

Professor Smith noted that the common good was “a central problem in political theory” because it provided a way to distinguish between a politician’s personal interests and the interests of the community.

It also provides a way for a group of politicians like Columbia’s city council or GOP Tea Partiers to distinguish between their collective interests and the public’s interest.

 As if they cared.

True, people disagree on what is “good” or what is good for a community and shared by each individual.

The practical way to overcome that hitch is follow the urgings of philosophers John Mill and Jeremy Bentham. In essence they said it is right to do the maximum good for the most people.

It’s even easier to adopt a rule we all know: Do to others what you would want done to you—the “Golden Rule.”

If state governors followed that rule they wouldn’t bar their state’s poor from the health care mandated by Obamacare. Were national and state legislators to follow that rule they would raise the minimum wage, preserve food stamps, and absolutely resist shutting down the government.

But back to Columbia, SC.

You might ask what its citizens could do about their homeless brethren.

That’s simple. Help them.

                                                             ----Gus Gribbin

Note: Mr. Alan Blinder’s New York Times article appeared on Monday, August 26, 2013.

 

"Sustainability's" Great ! But What's Sustainable?

            A new word has sashayed into popular use. It’ soft slinky syllables are inviting— increasingly irresistible to advertisers, manufacturers, grocers, scientists, and especially environmentalists. They rush to embrace its six vowels and eight consonants.

            Let’s face it, the word is hip—which is an old fashioned slang for “in style,”  “voguish,”  “with it,” and, ah, “so cooool.” In other words, utterly seductive.

      

      The word is sustainable—just as its popularity seems to be.

            Now the ideas underlying the term “sustainability” are not only good they’re really important.      

            Trouble is it’s hard to figure out what the word means in its different usages.

            Sure, you can look up the meaning and it seems remarkably clear. The Miriam Webster Dictionary states:

            “Sustainability: 1. Capable of being sustained. 2. a: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged…b:  of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods.”

            Dictonary.com explains sustainability as “1. The ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed. 2. Environmental Science, the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance.”

            Both those explanations seem straightforward enough.

 But what do you make of the announcement over the food store loud speaker urging, “Shoppers, check out our sustainable products?”

Are potatoes sustainable? Beets? Eggs? Would you say tomatoes can be used without being depleted or permanently damaged? Not around our house.

The Center for a Sustainable Economy offers a lengthy online “Ecological Footprint Quiz.” The curious can answer the questions to get an idea of how big a chunk of earth’s resources the quiz-taker is using. It can be shocking. Even if you drive a fuel efficient hybrid, turn out the lights when not in use, and use the dishwasher only when it’s chock full, you can end up feeling like a parasite—especially if you’re notified, “If everyone on the planet lived [your] lifestyle, we would need 4.34 earths.”

The quiz asks about income level, size of home and grounds, type of car owned, and such. The questions become frustrating when they ask about sustainability though. How do you answer when asked if your home employs sustainable materials and if your house is built of sustainable materials?

Is concrete sustainable? How about brick, cedar siding, roofing shingles, flagstone, glass, steel, aluminum? Which are or aren’t “sustainable.”?

Certainly building a mud hut with thatched roof is likely to do little damage to the environment. But surely many environmentally conscious folks would opt not to exercise that option.

Some smart vendors are helping us to determine what’s sustainable and what might not be. At a tile store, for instance, some of the lovely ceramic, quartz, granite, marble and glass tiles have little green stickers on them to indicate they’re “sustainable.” But why? Why do they have, “the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance”?

Without knowing the answer, should we take it on faith that we’ll be more environmentally virtuous if we buy the stickered tiles? I guess so. It would be unheard of for any marketer to deceive us.

Another thing:

The various levels of government—national, state, county, city—have or are creating “Sustainability Offices” or departments. They have big ambitions.

Consider Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability. The way the office describes itself is similar to the way the other Sustainability Offices do. For instance, it has a “Baltimore Sustainability Plan,” and the Office “integrates sustainability into City government operations….”

Wow. That’s certainly commendable. But some wiseacres might think the explanation’s vague.

What we need truly need is a sustainable way to incorporate some specificity and caution in the way marketers and others use this newly ubiquitous buzz word. Otherwise we’re likely to see the word has the quality of being harmful and confusing in our attempts to understand environmental protection.

                                                                                          ----Gus Gribbin

 

The Land Fries;Trees Blaze! Does Congress Care? Take a Guess

Let’s sympathize with optimists who hope Republican wackos in the U.S. House of Representatives will finally act for the common good.

 Because there is new hope-draining evidence they won’t.

The latest Far Right craziness comes in press reports that Congressional Republicans have drafted legislation that would cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by 34 percent. GOPers want to eliminate the newly announced rules for lowering greenhouse emissions and they would slice Fish and Wildlife Service funding in half.

Incredibly, the Republicans want to gut the Protection Agency’s clean water grant program, reducing funding by 83 percent.

This news comes as drought devastates crops in the west, as scientists warn clean water supplies are threatened, and as media reports explain New England fishermen are going broke and jobless because fishing has been severely restricted. Fishing has been limited because water heated by global warming has driven cod fish and other species from traditional fishing grounds. The government is trying to salvage what’s left of the fisheries.  

Think of the western drought--suspend your possible distaste for statistics, and check out the figures below.

 The authoritative U.S. Drought Monitor report, dated July 23, 2013, states:

“…The drought is far from over in the Southwest, with 80 percent of the topsoil short or very short of moisture in Colorado and New Mexico, 74 percent so rated in Oregon, and over 60 percent that dry in Utah. As of July 21, the United States Department of Agriculture reported pasture and range land [is] in poor to very poor condition for 95 percent of California, 79 percent in Arizona and New Mexico, 70 percent in Nevada and 64 percent of Colorado.

“Drier and warmer than normal weather further dried out soils in the northern states of the West…. This week began with only four large wildfires burning in the Northwest, but it ended with firefighters battling over a dozen.”

In a New York Times Op Ed piece, Gary Paul Nabhan, research scientist at the University of Arizona’s Southwest Center, explained why such numbers are important. He pointed out that the Western states are a cornerstone of the American food supply and continued:

            “People living outside the region seldom recognize [the West’s] immense contribution to American agriculture: roughly 40 percent of the net farm income for the country normally comes from the 17 Western states; cattle and sheep production make up a significant part of that, as do salad greens, dry beans, onions, melons hops, barley, wheat and citrus fruits.”

Mr. Nabhan wrote that the recent heat wave has imperiled every crop from apricots and barley to wheat and zucchini. He reported that Idaho potato yields have been “knocked back.” Such setbacks mean the quality and quantity of various foods will be affected and prices are likely to rise again as they did in 2012, the hottest year in American history. Moreover, wrote Mr. Nabhan, “The Western drought, which has persisted for the last few years, has already diminished both surface water and ground water supplies and increased energy costs, because of all the water that has to be pumped in from elsewhere.”

Mr. Nabhan is hardly the only scientist and informed citizen warning of problems global warming-spawned heat and drought cause.  The reality is that the nation faces serious, fundamental problems—the kind we expect our legislators to study and attempt to solve.

What we don’t expect is for a group of uncaring, single-issue, selfish congressmen to try and slash the funds of government agencies and programs combatting threats to our food and water supplies.

Americans have a lot on their minds simply trying to make a living and eke a little fun from life.  Nonetheless, it’s time for them to carve out time to check the true state of the nation and its threats. When—and if—they ever do, they’ll toss the far right saboteurs out of Congress.

                                                                           ---Gus Gribbin

Note: Mr. Nabhan’s article appeared on July 22, 2013.

Worrisome Climate Worries Too Few

            We check weather predictions often. When meteorologists tell us the weather will turn ugly, we prepare.  We follow their advice when they urge us to take shelter because a tornado or hurricane approaches

 That’s what we normally do.

Remarkably, although climate scientists tell us the weather—or climate—is turning ugly big time and warn us to prepare, we don’t. Or won’t.

 We’re not acting normally.                                    

On June 20, The New York Times’ John Broder  reported that President Obama has ordered new rules for limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing electric power plants. They are the facilities that release the most climate-damaging emissions, yet they were not covered in earlier regulations.

As you’d expect, Republican legislators object to Mr. Obama’s plan.  However, they’ll have to scramble to thwart it. Congressional approval isn’t needed.

The President’s welcome action aside, a big question lingers. Why isn’t the public demanding more action to curb the increasing damage from our corrupted climate?

After all, Yale Climate Communications Project pollsters have discovered that 58 percent of Americans believe in global warming-caused climate change. In the April survey, six in ten Americans reported they believe global warming made 2012 the warmest year on record, caused more severe storms, and worsened the Midwest and Great Plains drought. Two out of three contend U.S. weather has been “worse” in recent years.

So why do so few clamor for action?  It helps to consider how Americans react to the climate issue.

In a 2012 study, Yale’s Climate Project pollsters calculated Americans’ climate change beliefs. They found that 16 percent of Americans are “alarmed” by climate change. Twenty-nine 29 percent are “concerned,” and 25 percent “cautious,” meaning they  sort of believes in climate change, but they’re not sure and aren’t worried about it.

Nine percent admit being “disengaged.”  Such folks give little if any thought the climate issue. To them personally, it’s no problem. The disengaged, “tend to have the lowest education and income levels of the six groups,” the report explains.

Next come 13 percent who are “doubtful.” If climate change is happening, the doubters say it’s caused solely by nature doing her thing. They disagree with 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists who say mankind is largely responsible.

Finally we have the “dismissives,” the deniers.

 At eight percent dismissives form the smallest but most vocal group. They insist global warming is a liberals’ myth. Many call it a “hoax” and oppose any action to deal with the phantom threat. Republican Senators James Inhofe (SC), Tom Coburn (OK), and Mitch McConnell (KY) fall in this group along with 36 of their GOP colleagues. All have voted against efforts to curb climate-change.

The determined opposition of deniers may be one reason the 58 percent tend to inaction. The opposition seems too stiff to overcome.

Then too, the climate problem may seem too huge to cope with. After all, how can an individual do anything about it?

It’s clear the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere creates much if not most climate damage. But how many can switch to pollution-lessening hybrid or electric cars and push lawnmowers? How many business travelers will take trains rather than planes--if they could find trains going their way?

It’s easy to feel inadequate and ignore an earth-sized problem. It’s easy to slough off farmers’ laments that droughts have become longer, storms more intense, floods more damaging, and weather more quirky.

 Unless you’re a bargeman, bulk-cargo shipper, fisherman, or environmentalist it’s easy to dismiss concerns that the Great Lakes and Mississippi River have become shallower, that changing fishing grounds cause lower catches, and that 968 fish species plus animals like sponges, jellyfish, and corals have fled their habitats seeking cooler waters. Others are just dying.

But in fact there is no easy way to the future. Even in a world convulsed by wars and terror, we must deal with the climate-change problem. And precisely because individuals can do little to address the problem, they have to take collective action.

Americans en masse must find the will and stamina to pester lawmakers into taking remedial action. Americans en masse must back politicians who have the good sense to back climate-change remedies.

If we don’t, it’s certain that someday there will be an event that galvanizes the pained attention of everyone then alive.

By then it will be too late.

                                                           ----Gus Gribbin

About storms, climate, fools, and ( yes) Senator Inhofe Again

            Abe Lincoln put it this way:

            “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

            How wonderfully Abe’s words apply to that marvel of Senatorial sagacity, James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican

            Surely you remember Mr. Inhofe?

He’s the Senate’s star climate change doubter and oil industry robot who claims climate change is a hoax. He calls climate scientists “conspirators.”

             Mr. Inhofe’s latest stunner came following the tragic tornado in Moore, a suburban town in the Senator’s home state.

             Because the Senator had orated against spending $50 billion in emergency funding for victims of Hurricane sandy, reporters asked if he would back such funding for Oklahoma’s victims. He said he would because:

 “That [Sandy relief spending] was totally different…. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place.  That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

            In other words, Oklahomans are more virtuous than New Yorkers, New Jerseyites, and other East Coast victims.

            That aside, Inhofe at least condescended to help the victims. The other Oklahoma Senator, Republican Tom Coburn, opposed emergency relief unless the expenditure was offset by cuts in other federal spending.

            There seems to be total denial among climate change deniers that emergency funding is likely to become even more common than it is. Not because of rip offs—though rip offs there may be—but because the rise in global temperatures warms the seas and generates more vicious storms.

            Of course, regardless of scientific studies and observable facts, Senator Inhofe and his ilk will remain unconvinced. As Benjamin Franklin observed, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

            Even so, there is more and more reason to be convinced.  Reporting on a recent report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA Today’s Doyle Rice wrote:

            “Global warming has already doubled the chance of storms like Katrina, according to the study, which was led by climate scientist Aslak Grinstsed of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.”

            The cheering news is that the number of climate change disbelievers has dwindled. The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication reports that between 2010 and 2012 the number of doubters dropped from 16 percent of the American population to 8 percent. At the same time the number of Americans ”alarmed” by climate change has climbed ten percent.

            Overall 63 percent of Americans believe in climate change and its effects, and the Yalies report that those who believe in global warming, “are more certain of their convictions than those who do not.”

            It’s not clear that Senator Inhofe was counted among those less certain “deniers.” Probably not. And given his coziness with Big Oil, he’s unlikely to waver especially since, as Yale studies indicate:

             “Half or more [of climate change believers] favor the elimination of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and oppose the elimination of subsidies to renewable energy companies.”

            As many see it, only a fool would oppose subsidizing renewable energy companies given the facts about the rise of carbon dioxide caused by fossil fuel and the damage it causes.

But as you may already know, Senator Inhofe has championed opposition  to renewable energy company subsidies while fighting for continues subsidies to oil companies.

                                                                                    ----Gus Gribbin

>         Doyle Rice’s USA Today article appeared on March 18, 2013.

Visit America's Past--Be Shocked and Amazed

            On a recent spring day, chattering youngsters ran helter-skelter over ground Captain John Smith trod some 400 years ago. The kids were likely having more fun than Smith and his fellow colonists ever did.

            The children frolicked at what’s now called “Historic Jamestown” where—on May 13, 1607—104 men and boys established a fort and planted the first viable English colony in the New World.

Some 400 newcomers soon joined that cluster of pioneers. They experienced dreadful hardship. Crops failed, Indians attacked, and the colonists began starving. They grew so desperate that some dug up and ate their dead neighbors’ bodies. Between 1609 and 1610 all but 60 died.

Startling, alarming Jamestown is one of three pivotal historical sites on Virginia’s coast. The other two are Williamsburg and Yorktown.

For those who might not recall and those who have not visited those sites even once, a brief explanation:

 Yorktown Battlefield is where colonial troops forced the surrender of England’s supposedly invincible forces in the Revolutionary War.  The American victory dealt the blow that finally forced caused England to grant the colonies their independence.

Colonial Williamsburg is the famous and popular restored eighteenth century city where, along with others, America’s first and third U.S. presidents plotted rebellion against England. Actors stage mini dramas in the old town’s sandy streets. The place exudes eighteenth century colonial culture.

Jamestown is actually two distinct sites in the same park-like setting: “Historic Jamestown” and “Jamestown Settlement.”

Like Williamsburg, “Jamestown Settlement,” provides “living history” exhibits, costumed guides, and craft shows.  Each site offers entertaining films, recorded narratives and dioramas showing how events there fit into America’s story.

Historic Jamestown, though, is the history buff’s and archeologist’s delight. Visitors can see archeologists and their volunteers at work.

Rugged palisades show where the colonists’ initial fort stood. Crosses mark graves, and a lodge made of poles depicts the first colonists’ dormitory.

Historic Jamestown hammers home the reality and challenges facing the pioneer colonists. It also reveals to the unsuspecting the barbarity those Englishmen imported.

There is evidence, for instance, that at least one lawbreaker had been drawn and quartered, meaning he was tied to a horse and dragged to the execution site. He was then hanged until almost dead, and, while alive, cut open so the executioner could pull out his internal organs. Finally, horses were tied to each limp and the victim’s body was pulled apart.

Unlike the pious Pilgrims who settled Massachusetts to escape religious persecution, the Jamestown settlers were part of a business venture. They invaded the Indians’ domain and ultimately reaped vengeance.

Historic Jamestown presents a complex, often surprising but realistic tale of perseverance and greed that eventually mutated into the hard but genteel southern civilization neighboring Williamsburg exhibits.

The place shows that, whatever else you might say, America’s start was dramatic—and amazing.

                                                                        ----Gus Gribbin

 

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For Pope Francis--A Smile; a Frown

       Pope Francis made a number of bishops happy and a number of nuns sad recently.

            The bishops could rejoice in the news that the Pope appointed a panel of eight bishops from around the world to overhaul the secretive and some say scheming Vatican Curia.

            America’s nuns and their many Catholic and non-Catholic admirers and followers are saddened because the Pope reaffirmed his predecessor’s reprimand of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

 The Conference, an umbrella group, represents 80 percent of the nation’s 57,000 nuns—including the popular “Nuns on the Bus,” who toured the nation in June 2012. The small group of nuns stopped at food pantries, schools, homeless shelters, and health care facilities run by nuns to highlight the work they do. In effect they were protesting the Vatican’s criticism of them.

The protest apparently has had little effect. By Papal edict the Leadership Conference, will be subjected to a “program of reform,” a scary-sounding phrase with echoes of the Inquisition or the old Soviet Union.

            But about the bishops:

It has been widely reported that bishops over the globe have complained of the curia’s intransigence and controversial decisions and for blocking access to the Pope. The curia, a powerful clique of clerical bureaucrats, has for decades—even centuries—run the affairs of the church.  It was thought that the entrenched bureaucracy was too powerful to change.

 Until now.

The new task force that will consult with Pope Francis includes Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston and archbishops from Chile, India, Germany, Congo, Australia, and Honduras.  There is one holdover from the Curia, Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, the Vatican city-state’s administrative president.  The panel will hold its first meeting in October.

Reports in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the National Catholic Reporter state that the idea of such a taskforce was raised during the days before the election of the new Pope. But it apparently originated in the course of the Second Vatican Council that Pope John XXIII called for in 1959. The Council sessions ran from 1962 to 1965.

To the delight of Catholic “liberals” who applauded the changes encouraged by the Council, Pope Francis seems to agree with them.

 In a National Catholic Reporter story dated April 16, Thomas C. Fox wrote that Pope Francis recently called the Council “a beautiful work of the Holy Spirit.” In a homily, the Pope admonished those who “…don’t want to change,” adding,” what’s more, there are those who wish to turn the clock back.” He called such people “stubborn.”

It is difficult to reconcile the spirit of understanding and kindness Pope Francis has so far projected with his stand regarding the nuns.

Repression of the nuns, whose writings, speeches, and decisions regarding conference speakers will be scrutinized and censored, clashes with the openness and free speech cherished by U.S. citizens.

The nuns have been scolded for their “feminism.” This apparently refers to their reported tolerance for the notion that the Church should consider the ordination of women.

 Moreover in the most bizarre charge, the nuns were accused of focusing on caring for the sick, depraved, despised, and needy among us rather than challenging those who countenance abortion rights and gay marriage.

It’s hard to see those who do such good punished so harshly.

                                                                         ---Gus Gribbin