i was going to support you

For the last few days, I thought bailing the auto industry out wasn’t such a bad idea. First, if we can give $900 Billion in a bailout to Wall Street, I thought for sure we could give $25 Billion to the car manufacturers.

My one rule: green up the industry.

Well, my support just went away. It seems that EACH of the three CEO’s made the decision to use their own private jets to get to Washington. How can I expect this group of people to support a green movement? HA! Aside from the fact that they could have made some efforts to trim back their personal budgets prior to see if that would be beneficial in filling their bank accounts…but to beg the American public for money when they show up clearly announcing that they have more than enough, is vulgarity at its best!

Sherman asked the CEOs if they were willing to sell their jets on Wednesday and fly back to Detroit on a commercial flight. “Let the record show no hands went up,” Sherman said.

But in all seriousness does this surprise you? Why would you think that a member of this American “corportacracy” would for a second think of someone other them him or herself?

I think the fortunate thing about this is that they were exposed before we were duped. Too bad that didn’t happen before we gave away $900 Billion.

You can find an article about it HERE, via Reuters.

vroom, vroom

When many of us think about what we can do about climate change, we go to obvious: lightbulbs, recycle, bring a bag, short shower. We demand of our government to invest in clean energy and protect lands.

However, in light of the rumblings of a auto industry bailout, I think an article from The Economist, is an important read: A Survey of Cars in Emerging Markets

We forget that with a growing population comes a growing demand for goods and the infrastructure to match. So what is going to happen when more people want more cars?

…the IMF have calculated that the number of cars worldwide will grow from 600m in 2005 to 2.9 billion in 2050. By 2030, they believe, China’s car fleet will have overtaken America’s (which itself will have increased by 60%), and by 2050 China will have almost as many cars as the entire world has today. India will be catching up fast, with a fleet of 367m, 45 times the number on its congested roads today.

Cars made up an estimated 6.3% of all global emissions in 2000. Eight years later, you know that number is higher and climbing.

This is why it is so important for a green initiative to be built into any auto bailout that either the Bush or Obama Adminstrations would consider. If the estimated car purchase growth becomes reality without a major push to reduce emissions and create fuel efficient, hybrid, or electric cars, we can assume that any net positive effect in other green initiatives will be negated due to autos, alone.

In a way, we should hope for a continued rise in fuel prices, so the desire to own an automobile is lessened.

Read the article, it is very interesting.

money, money, money

One aspect of the bailout bill is that the US Treasury will have to print much of the money that we agreed to hand out to the banks. A few months ago, I researched the life cycle of producing cold hard cash to determine if it were “green”.

I decided to republish that article just as a friendly reminder that money does not grow on trees. In all honesty, it grows on a GMO cotton bush. Anyway, the article is below.

have you ever thought about the process of making money. And, I don’t mean how to increase the value in your checking account. I am referring to the process of actually making cold hard cash.

I had never thought about it until Ali… he asked for the credit, I’m giving it to him….mentioned it to me and broke down some of the steps of the process. Of course, my ears perked up and I decided to research it. We all think we know the process… ink, paper, printing, cutting, distribution. But let’s look at it from a carbon footprint point of view.

PAPER

I think researching this provided the most interesting bit of information for me. The actual note is made up of 75% cotton and 25% linen. I bet your first thought is that you are happy we aren’t cutting down trees. Ha! Linen is somewhat ecologically okay. It is made from flax, and is labor intensive to manufacture. However, in order to get the longest possible fibers it is hand harvested and it uses bacteria, not chemicals, to decompose the pectin present and free the fibers. These fibers are then woven into cloth and used accordingly. Given the rest of the data I found, let’s say this is the “cleanest” part of making money.

Cotton….what a very different story. I am not even sure where to start on this because I was in such shock when I started researching it.
1.) 80% of cotton production starts with GMO, Monsanto seeds. YOU GET THIS, RIGHT! If you do not support GMO, how it affects farmers, the EPA policies created in support of Monsanto and you make every effort to not financially support this company or comparable companies….TOO BAD! By spending cash you give to Monsanto and the like.
2.) Cotton is one of the top four largest industrialized agricultural industries, behind corn and soy, slightly above canola. U.S produces 19.2 million, 480 lb bales of cotton per year.
3.) It takes 20,000 liters of water to make 1kg of cotton. This is the equivalent to one t-shirt and one pair of jeans.
4.) 2.4% of agriculture is cotton, but it uses 24% of the world’s use of insecticide and 11% of world’s use of pesticide
5.) The agricultural process is bad to the environment through drainage practices and leaching into the soil, application of pesticides, extensive irrigation, dam construction for the irrigation.
6.) 73% of irrigated land comes from fresh water withdrawl. This is pumping water from clean sources to water the crops.
7.) In return, run off to adjacent water sources (wetlands, streams, lakes) contains pesticides, salts, fertilizers, all of which is contaminating out fresh water ecosystems and causing extinction of marine life.
8.) The impact of cotton growing destroys the soil and after time must be abandoned for new locations, leaving acres and acres of dead zones.
9.) 25,000 cotton growers in the US are subsidized at $2 billion per year.
10.) The equipment used is a cotton harvester which costs the farmer $150,000 to purchase. It holds 120 gallons worth of fuel.
11.) Undisclosed amount of labor costs, the fuel those laborers use to get to and from work, the medical issues because the cotton harvesters are dangerous.

And so on, and so on, and so on. And, we haven’t even started printing the money!

Not much to be found about the ink except that it is a magnetic, oil based ink.

PRINTING

The process of printing money is called Intaglio printing. It requires large equipment that is made out of metals and plastic. The metals are copper and zinc and used in the printing presses. The make plates with the image of the currency out of these metals, ink is placed on these plates and the paper runs by them to get the print. The plastic, as we know, is an oil based product.

There is an international law that allows each country to hold a monopoly on the production of their currency. Why do I mention this? Because we purchase our Intaglio printing machine, and the plates with the IMPRINT OF OUR MONEY, from China. Yep. China has the image of our money so they can make the printing presses we use. We pay them $30,000 per machine.

Now, we can factor in the cost of the two Bureau for Engraving and Printing locations. We have one in D.C. and one in Fort Worth. There is the cost of the two facilities:
1.) Resources needed for building Fort Worth and upgrades to D.C. facilities.
2.) Running the plant for money production on two shifts, five days a week; include labor costs as well as cost of running high speed presses for 18hrs/day.
3.) air conditioning/heating costs
4.) electricity costs
5.) employees and their respective carbon impact on the Earth
6.) Resources needed to store notes at controlled temperature

TRANSPORTATION

The money has to get from B.E.P into your hands, right?

Consider fuel costs and usage to get from each location to the Reserve Banks around the country.

1 round trip flight to a destination under 2hrs uses 500lbs of CO2
1 round trip flight to a destination about equal to 4hrs uses 1250lbs of CO2
1 round trip flight to a destination greater than 4hrs uses 2000lbs of CO2

That’s just the flying portion. You can also calculate the fuel costs and usage of driving the money in armored trucks. Keep in mind that these are not transportation vehicles for humans… this is not carpooling. This is paper.

BANKS

I can’t even begin to calculate the carbon footprint of a bank. First off, I have no idea how many banks exist in the U.S. and much of this will be generalization based off the bank I use. Most are probably, at minimum, 2000 sq ft. They more than likely have the air conditioning/heating units on close to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They employ, on the average, 25 people per branch who each drive their own cars and park in lots, that I view as a waste of usable land. At least at the bank I use, it is not even a covered parking lot, and is a black top, which I know is contributing to the increased heat of the Earth.

All of this to keep money in circulation. I haven’t even started researching coins, except to know that it costs us 3 pennies to make 1 penny.

Here is the life expectancy of our money:
$1……. 21 months
$5……..16 months
$10……18 months
$20……24 months
$50……55 months
$100…..89 months

This is based on our current population. The more people we have, the more money will be needed and therefore production will have to increase.

The US Treasury estimates that it cost 6.2cents per note to make our money last year. This is a cost of $571 Million dollars per year. TO MAKE MONEY!!

I am not by any means saying that we should all stop using cash. I would never want to guess what that could do to our infrastructure. I would also never want to limit the poor of our country that run their lives mainly on cash and not credit or debit cards. But in the interest of each of us being educated and making wise decisions about even the smallest things we can do to impact our carbon footprint, I felt this was an interesting exercise in breaking down a fundamental need of each American.

Maybe, now, when you go to the ATM, or pull out your wallet to purchase something, you will look at that piece of paper in a different way. Maybe you will see it as a GMO seed contributing to a corporation you choose not to support. Maybe you will see it as a product made by China. Maybe you will see it as the fuel cost to get it from the treasury to your pocket. I don’t care. I just think we need to start seeing it differently.

Some links:
information on environmental impact of cotton

yearly production of money

i want to ride my bicycle… I want to ride my bike

Oh my gosh darnit…. I just found out one thing I like about the bailout bill.

I want the disclaimer to be that it still riles me, to no end, that our government had to add a whole lot of pig to make this thing signable. I dislike the special interest groups that are getting a pat on the back because Wall Street fucked up.

That being said… I like that I will get a piece of the pat on the back. It seems as though cyclists can get $20 a week for riding their bikes to and from work. YAY! So what that it begins after 2008. It begins. Click HERE for article.

stupid media

I am so sick and tired of the media still calling it the “$700 billion Bailout Bill”… cause guess what…. it is the $800+ BILLION BAILOUT BILL.

In order to get it passed… you know to save the country and the world from a financial meltdown… we had to pad it even more because our lawmakers refused to sign it unless their special interests were met. Just remember… you hired ‘em, I beg you to fire ‘em.

Some additions:

# $2 million tax benefit for makers of wooden arrows for children (uh….??)
# $100 million tax break to benefit auto racetrack owners (f*#king Nascar vote)
# $192 million in rebates on excise taxes for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry (I guess when it all hits the fan, we will need to be numb)
# $148 million in tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers (WHAT?…)

HERE is a great clip from The Daily Show

there’s a whole in my bucket, dear henry

I started writing this essay immediately after the defeat of the first Bailout Bill. I have since revised parts, but if there seems to be anything “old news”, understand that I may not have kept up with the hundreds of news items about this topic over the last few days. I still think this is a hugely important topic and essay. So, here it is… enjoy!

As I sit and watch the fallout of the defeat of the first Bailout Bill and the rise of the second, as described by the media, I can’t help but realize, once again, we the people are being cheated.

A few days ago, for the first time, in a long time, our elected officials voted to defeat the “bailout bill” because of the voice of the citizenry. For the week prior or so, their offices had been flooded with letters on a magnitude of 20 to one against the bailout bill. Whether the defeat was caused because of hurt feelings, or the “herd mentality” of freshman officials, by the sheer fact that it was defeated, the constitution seems to have been honored for the first time in eight years.

However as I watch the media cover this story, I can’t help but think that we, the citizens, now have to face a terrible, hurtful backlash. We are being told, outright, that we are unintelligent and naïve and didn’t understand what the bill was designed to do. We are being told that we are incapable of understanding the workings of Wall Street; therefore we should trust our leaders to make that decision for us.

I want to help you understand a simple fact. The defeat of this bill means that credit will be affected, i.e. it will not exist. But, please do not make any mistake about this, credit, despite what your “leaders” have told you, does NOT equal economy.

Credit is an extension of your purchasing power. And, hopefully the following will help to explain why your elected officials care so much about credit and why they are duping you into believing it is the same as economy.

Credit is essential to the survival of the upper class. They make things; cars, homes, clothing. Through marketing, they have made it desirable for you (the middle class) to own these things. Through supply and demand, the prices are inflated, therefore you can’t afford these items simply by working. Credit was created. You take a loan out to afford what you want to get. Since you have to pay this loan off with interest you have to keep working and working and working. The upper class has won because not only are they getting money from the inflated value of goods, but they are also getting money because of interest rates applied to the loan.

(A little side note: I do not believe that credit was created under malicious or conspiratory circumstances. Credit worked when you were going to the local mercantile to borrow seeds, which upon harvest, you would pay back. I think that it has evolved to be a plague on our society and a way to keep the lower classes separate and never equal to those “in charge”.)

So, going on…. because you are working, you pay taxes, often at an unfair rate as compared to that of the upper class. The upper class gets tax incentives and right-offs that you do not get, as well as the fact that there are more of “us” then “them”. Therefore, the influx of money going into our reserve is our money. Those taxes go towards the support of the lower class, our infrastructure, our programs, etc., etc. But once again, the upper class has effectively been relinquished of its responsibility to provide; they make what the middle class wants to buy, who works to afford those goods, which puts money into the system, which allows for the stipends given to the lower class. The middle class is, quite literally, the whole backbone keeping this country afloat.

Here is another thing that credit does… it falsely inflates the price of goods. The more “spending power” the middle class has, the more the price of things becomes artificially high. If everyone in this country could only pay for what they honestly could afford, which I do not think is a bad thing, then prices would reflect their true value. But, what good is that to the person who has made that item. They want an inflated value, so they can make more money. This is why they have an insatiable desire to keep credit in its place.

Credit and the all things associated with the economy have become a vicious circle. We buy things that we can’t afford, so we work and work and work, to pay those loans off that keep growing and growing because of interest rates, so we keep working and working and working. But without credit, we will still buy. We will still need food, we will still need clothing.

The reason the officials and Wall Street and others want you to panic is because, right now, the cost of goods will reflect their accurate value. This means, chances are, you will be able to afford them without taking out a loan. Without that loan, the banks and institutions won’t make money. Therefore the upper class won’t make as much money. This means, they will have to participate in the financial wherewithal of this country. They will not be able to sit under their golden umbrellas, oblivious to what is going on. This will disrupt their way of life and they want to hold on to that for as long as they can.

For the last eight years, our administration has been banking on our lack of attention to what is going on. They have been getting away, literally, with murder, based on the fact that we have been too busy to understand or care about anything other than ourselves. I do hold us, the citizenry, responsible for a portion of what is happening. And, I do not want this most recent condemnation to alter our new participation.

Ever since the bill was defeated, all I have heard on the news is that we don’t know what is going on; that we are ignorant. Do not fall for this trap. It is simply a way for us to stop paying attention again, so the elected officials can get away with more and keep their livelihood in place. This is the time when we are starting to pay attention again. This is a time when we are looking at our elected officials and reminding them that they are our employees after years of them being allowed to get away with whatever they wanted to. Of course they are going to fight us on this. Wouldn’t you? But don’t let that fool you into apathy, again. Let this be the light that let’s you see what is truly going on.

Probably today, the second bill will be passed in the Senate. In order to appease the Republicans, more tax right-offs have been written in for the big businesses. And, to appease the Democrats, more incentives for going green have been written in. I guess time will tell whether this bill is effective. In the meantime, the money we worked so hard for to fill the reserve is gone. There is no other “bailout” after this. In my opinion, the only thing that will save us, on a personal level, is to hold back on our desire to buy things. Or, if you are going to buy something, please consider only buying what you can afford.