Alec Dubro writes: Let’s
get something straight about green industry: in its basic form it means
we all have to buy new stuff Ö lots of it. As an industrial policy that
will create jobs and increase spending, it’s pretty sound. As an
environmental policy, it’s largely a fraud.

Nowhere is it more disingenuous than the pursuit of the fuel-efficient
car. In their effort to stave off collapse of their industry, auto
executives have continually cited their efforts are building the
high-efficiency cars of the future. The problem is, there are no cars
of the future, and the looming catastrophe of global pollution,
including climate change, will never be solved by building more cars –
efficient or otherwise.

We’d desperately like to believe that there is a way to preserve our
car-centered civilization, while simultaneously placating the gods of
atmospheric warming. Even the president-elect believes it, and Obama
made fuel-efficient cars a central part of his energy policy. He
promised a $7,000 tax credit to hybrid car buyers, aiming for a million
plug-in hybrids, getting 150 mpg, by 2015. He wants to put an
additional million completely plug-in vehicles by the same year. And
he’s willing to federal funds up for research, or at least he was
before we lost all our money.

Even on its face, this seems like a tepid response to climate change.
At the moment there are upward of 250,000,000 registered vehicles in
the United States – more than there are licensed drivers. Converting
one percent or so of them to greater fuel efficiency is not likely to
do very much in the time needed to act. Nevertheless, the hope is that
introduction of a new generation of electric and semi-electric will
eventually lead to a replacement of our entire fleet of gas-guzzlers.
Maybe. But the bigger problem is that increasing fuel efficiency has
never led to an overall reduction in pollutants. In fact, efficiency
has always led to more production and consumption.

But there’s an even more profound problem with building more efficient
cars. In 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons discovered an
efficiency paradox: the more efficient you make machines, the more
energy they use. Why? Because the more efficient they are, the better
they are, the cheaper they are and more people buy them, and the more
they’ll use them. Now, that’s good for manufacturers and maybe good for
consumers, but if the problem is energy consumption or pollution, it’s
not good. (02/28/09)
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Ellen Brown writes: Moody’s credit rating agency is warning that the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating is at risk, because it has taken on so much debt that there are few creditors left to underwrite it.  Foreigners have bought as much as two-thirds of U.S. debt in recent years, but they could be doing much less purchasing of U.S. Treasury securities in the future, not so much out of a desire to chastise America as simply because they won’t have the funds to do it.  Oil prices have fallen off a cliff and the U.S. purchase of foreign exports has dried up, slashing the surpluses that those countries previously recycled back into U.S. Treasuries.  And domestic buyers of securities, to the extent that they can be found, will no doubt demand substantially higher returns than the rock-bottom interest rates at which Treasuries are available now.

Who, then, is left to buy the government’s debt and fund President Obama’s $900 billion stimulus package?  The taxpayers are obviously tapped out, so the money will have to be borrowed; but borrowed from whom?  The pool of available lenders is shrinking fast.  Morever, servicing the federal debt through private lenders imposes a crippling interest burden on the U.S. Treasury.  The interest tab was $412 billion in fiscal year 2008, or about one-third of the federal government’s total income from personal income taxes ($1,220 billion in 2008).  The taxpayers not only cannot afford the $900 billion; they cannot afford to increase their interest payments.  But what is the alternative?

How about turning to the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve itself?  The advantage for the government of borrowing from its own central bank is that this money is virtually free.  This is because the Federal Reserve rebates any interest it receives to the Treasury after deducting its costs, and the federal debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year.  Interest-free loans that are never paid off are basically free money.  In 2008, 85% of the interest collected by the Federal Reserve (or “Fed”) was returned to the Treasury.  The average interest rate on Treasury securities today is only about 3%; 15% of 3% is less than Ω% – such a negligible interest as to make the money nearly free.

The Fed does not have to worry about interest, because it does not actually have to acquire the money before lending it, and it knows the government will not default.  The Fed originates the money it lends, either on a printing press or with accounting entries.  It can purchase Treasury debt simply by writing credits into the “reserve account” of the seller’s bank, which then credits the seller’s account.  The Fed’s ability to write numbers into an account is obviously unlimited; but it has normally restricted its purchase of government securities to only so much as is necessary to provide the liquidity needed for banks to cash and clear checks.  Funding the government’s budget shortfall has usually been left to private lenders; but those loans are drying up, and servicing them is proving expensive.  Both this interest burden and the need to continually attract new lenders could be avoided by tapping into the government’s credit line at its own central bank. But wouldn’t that be dangerously inflationary?  Not in today’s economic climate, as will be shown.  And if the notion of funding the government through its own central bank seems too radical and unprecedented to be entertained, consider the radical moves the Fed has already been taking in the last year.  Without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, the Fed just “monetized” $1.2 trillion in private debt, turning commercial loans into money.  If private banks and private corporations now have multi-billion dollar credit lines with the Federal Reserve, then Congress should have one too.  In fact Congress, which gave the Fed its charter to create the national money supply, should have been the first in line. (02/28/09)
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Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry call to action: There are moments in a nation’s—and a
planet’s—history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in
order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push
for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are
writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C.
on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil
disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

• Coal-fired
  power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s
  James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our
  atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million co2—lies in
  stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.

• Even
  if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still
  be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and
  releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need
  to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic
  virtue.

• Coal is filthy at its source. Much of
  the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky,
  where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff;
  they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human
  communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control
  relationship between humans and the rest of creation.

• Coal
  smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired
  power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to
  the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that
  breathes, including forests.

The industry
claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a
lie. But it’s a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do
not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make
our point. We don’t come to such a step lightly. We have written and
testified and organized politically to make this point for many years,
and while in recent months there has been real progress against new
coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our
electricity from coal continues unabated. It’s time to make clear that
we can’t safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has
come to do more–we hear President Barack Obama’s call for a movement
for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate
Al Gore’s call for creative non-violence outside coal plants. As part
of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our
nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of
coal in the future to help save the planet’s atmosphere. This is a hard
thing to ask, because it’s their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in
March will be to say that we’re willing to make some sacrifices
ourselves, even if it’s only a trip to the jail.

With
any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that
it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you
need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will
be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration,
carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our
dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people,
people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of
Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to
breathe the smoke from the plant. (02/28/09)
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Chip Ward writes: Common to sudden catastrophes is the shock of finding the world upside
down. The water is suddenly on top instead of under; the rumbling earth
swallows houses and spits out lava; the mud wall slides down from
above; the flames roar up; the wind spins; the tower topples. In an
instant, everything is broken and nothing works. What you relied upon
is gone.

The destruction of the World Trade Center towers was that kind of deep
disturbance, even if it was man-made. The shock of 9/11 was so profound
that we thought it would define the twenty-first century, and even now
it’s hard for any event to match the immediacy, the drama, the sheer
horror of that single autumn day. When the smoke cleared we learned
that we had never really been quarantined from the epidemic of
planetary violence that, until 9/11, was always “over there.” Suddenly,
the shocking violence most of us only witnessed on our television
screens had blown back to our very doorstep. Our world shifted over
night. Fear reigned. It became our ideology. It became their means of controlling us. It was called “homeland security.”

In the second big shock of the young century, seven years later, Wall
Street collapsed. Although a few wise voices had warned us it could
happen, we didn’t see that one coming either. If 9/11 put an American
sense of physical safety to flight, the meltdown of casino capitalism took away our economic security.

The debris from economic earthquakes may appear less obvious — being
failed institutions rather than twisted beams — but the damage
couldn’t be more real. All that wealth incinerated almost overnight
translates into lost jobs, lost homes, lost businesses, lost
retirements, lost health care, lost education, lost options, lost
dreams. Shredded investments and failed businesses mean that struggle,
diminishment, indignity, anxiety, anger, defeat, depression, stress,
and hardship will stalk us for years to come. What we once counted on
is just as gone as any house or community washed away or burned to the
ground. Like 9/11, the economic disaster shook the ground we walked on.
This time, stress joined fear.

On 9/11, towers crashed to the ground. In this recent crisis, an entire empire of belief went down.

What do you do when your system fails? Start over, sure; but look,
we’re stuck with a lot of it. The institutions and agencies that were
the instruments of the debacle are still with us and we’re hard pressed
to invent new ones. Wal-Mart is still with us. So is Exxon. So is the
Federal Reserve. So is the Department of Homeland Security. And the
agencies we look to for rescue are populated with the incompetent and
demoralized bureaucrats of George W. Bush’s two terms.

There are termites in the walls. Much of the movement that elected
Barack Obama will be devoted to reforming that given world. But
remember that, when any mature system — be it a forest loaded with
fuel or an economy loaded with debt — collapses, enormous amounts of
energy are released. Capturing that energy and directing it in new ways
is the opportunity that lurks in the midst of this crisis.

The future — the sustainable future where we survive — will not be
created by those who invented the world we have just lost and are
reluctantly giving it up, while salvaging as much of their privilege
from the ruins as they can. It will be invented by people who have only
each other to lose and understand that, in the coming era of chaos,
collapse, and reconstruction, we will find support, security, comfort,
and solutions within the context of communities — on the ground,
online, overlapping, and emerging. While Washington salvages the past,
citizens in unlikely places like Detroit and Moab, Utah, are building
the future. Thinking Globally and Acting Locally has never rung truer. “Think
security, act locally” will also be true and real security will be
homegrown, not “homeland.” (02/28/09)
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BBC Killing Science — The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has showcased some of its new inventions as part of its Defence Technology Plan. It is the first time the MoD has unveiled its long-term research needs and demonstrated new technology.

The products are still in their early stages, although it is hoped many will go into service in the next few years. The MoD hopes to attract more future technology to address its combat needs. The products unveiled were the first in a number of submissions chosen by the MoD for further development. …

Saturn - the sensing and automotive tactical urban reconnaissance network - is a combination of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that not only examines the battlefield but, say the developers, can actively spot threats. The idea is that a platoon or company of soldiers would deploy both the ground and air vehicle to perform reconnaissance of a village or part of a town.

The UAV would fly over and spot vehicles or enemy troops moving in the open, while the UGV would roll up to a building, spot which windows were open, then look to see if anyone was behind them. The developers say the system would then try and differentiate between civilians and possible enemy contacts by looking to see if they were holding an object, such as a rifle or a rocket-propelled grenade. …

One of the problems flying helicopters in Afghanistan and Iraq is dust. The down-draught from the rotor blades can kick up huge clouds, blinding the pilots and making landing very hazardous. Teledyne is a device that uses microwaves to see through dust clouds, smoke and snow, making landings far easier. The developers plan to put Teledyne through full trials later this year. (02/28/09)
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BBC Medical Science – A team of scientists believe they may be able to transplant a voice box in such a way that the patient would not need to take anti-rejection drugs. Each year around 1,000 patients in the UK will lose their voice box - the larynx - because of cancer or trauma. The larynx creates and controls sound through muscle and cartilage interacting with the vocal cords. But when it is removed - in a procedure known as a laryngectomy - the patient is left with a permanent breathing hole in their neck.

The difficulty of restoring the complicated nerve and muscle functions has, to date, been beyond surgery. So the only option to them is to have an artificial voice, either through a vibrating machine they put on their throat, or placing a small device in a permanent breathing hole in their neck which is activated by putting their finger over the hole.

Tom Foot, from Weston-Super-Mare, uses this technique to talk. He lost his voice box because he used to smoke. He said: “The easiest part was recovering from the surgery. The most difficult bit is getting used to not being able to have meaningful conversations - and that it was a different voice, it wasn’t my voice.”

Despite years of research, there has only ever been one voice box transplant in the US, and the patient still needed to breathe through a hole in his neck. But now there is the possibility that improved stem cell technology could make it a possibility to develop a voice box for transplantation.

A similar technique was used last year to give Claudia Castillo an artificial windpipe. She was given a donated organ which was covered with her own stem cells to trick her body into thinking the organ was part of her. She can now live a normal life without having to take powerful anti-rejection drugs.

The international scientists behind the new project are now applying for funding to try to do the same thing with voice boxes. One of the team, Professor Anthony Hollander, from Bristol University, said they faced a big challenge. “In addition to windpipe tissue which will have to be created - the cartilage and the epithelium - we also have to create muscle because the voice box is a moving part and needs to move in co-ordination with breathing. We don’t yet have a good way of taking stem cells and creating muscle and we need to figure out exactly how to do that and then how to implant that muscle and have it co-ordinate with the moving voice box.” (02/28/09)
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BBC Anthropological Science – The earliest footprints showing evidence of modern human foot anatomy and gait have been unearthed in Kenya. The 1.5-million-year-old footprints display signs of a pronounced arch and short, aligned toes, in contrast to older footprints. The size and spacing of the Kenyan markings - attributed to Homo erectus - reflect the height, weight, and walking style of modern humans.

The findings have been published in the journal Science. The footprints are not the oldest belonging to a member of the human lineage. That title belongs to the 3.7 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis prints found in Laetoli, Tanzania, in 1978. Those prints, however, showed comparatively flat feet and a significantly higher angle between the big toe and the other toes, representative of a foot still adapted to grasping.

Exactly how that more ape-like foot developed into its modern version has remained unclear. The fossil record is distinctly lacking in foot and hand bones, according to lead author Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University, UK.

“The reason is that carnivores like to eat hands and feet,” Professor Bennett told BBC News. “Once the flesh is gone there’s a lot of little bones that don’t get preserved, so we know very little about the evolution of hands and feet on our ancestors.”

The footprints were found near Ileret in northern Kenya. The site, on a small hill, is made up of metres of sediment which the researchers carefully cleared away. What they found was two sets of footprints, one five metres deeper than the other, separated by sand, silt, and volcanic ash. The team dated the surrounding sediment by comparing it with well-known radioisotope-dated samples from the region, finding that the two layers of prints were made at least 10,000 years apart.

Another critical feature that the series of footprints makes clear is how Homo erectus walked. There is evidence of a heavy landing on the heel with weight transferred along the outer edge of the foot, progressing to the ball of the foot and lifting off with the toes.

“That’s very diagnostic of the modern style of walking, and the Laetoli prints don’t give that same character,” Professor Bennett said.

The finding is a critical clue for mapping out the evolution of modern humans, both in terms of physiology and also how H. erectus fared in its environment. H. erectus was a great leap in evolution, showing increased variety of diet and of habitat, and was the first Homo species to make the journey out of Africa. (02/28/09)
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