Ocean Power Can Be a Global Warming Cure

By Neil Peirce, Stateline.org Posted on August 9, 2006,
http://www.alternet.org/story/39755/

How shall we ever slake our ever-growing demand for electricity? Even as concerns about global warming escalate, are we doomed to create more of the same old polluting, coal- and oil-dependent power plants? Or can common sense -- and some radically new technologies -- serve us better?

There’s much talk of wind and solar power. But how about the oceans and their massive tidal and current patterns? Driven by the gravitational force of the sun and the moon, tides and currents represent a source that’s as infinite and everlasting as any force on earth.

A major pilot demonstration seems ready to launch in San Francisco Bay, where an immense tidal flow enters and exits every day at a narrow point of the Golden Gate. A gigantic energy-collection device vaguely reminiscent of a Ferris wheel, with a number of fins (or “wings”) to capture the power of the rapidly passing tides, will be lowered from a barge anchored in the narrows. Using maglev technology, it will produce electrical energy that can then be transmitted to shore by cable.

If the San Francisco experiment works, the way could be opened to vast “farms” of underwater energy generators, operating below the ocean surface off Florida’s Atlantic Coast and along such shorelines as New England and the Pacific Northwest. A major early target could be in the Gulf Stream as it flows between Florida and Bermuda, where the 6.1-mile-per-hour current is 23,000 times the magnitude of the river flow at Niagara Falls.

Dan Power, the former Air Force engineering officer who is president of Oceana Energy, a firm recently organized to develop tidal current power systems, says it’s too early to project the percentage of power needs the new technology could deliver. But along America’s heavily populated coasts, tidal currents could, he believes, become “a major future power source.”

First comes the next year focused on the San Francisco experiment, as Oceana works with engineers of the U.S. Navy’s Hydromechanics Directorate, local utilities and governments to model, test and install the pioneering generator at the Golden Gate.

 Contrast that with last week’s estimate that over 150 coal-powered power plants, most powered by dirty, last-generation technologies, are now being planned by U.S. energy companies. The estimate, by U.S. PIRG, the national association of state Public Interest Research Groups, is based chiefly on information from the U.S. Energy Department. Already, quantities of the coal-fired plants are being announced, including 11 by TXU Corp. in Texas alone.

What will be the impact of all the new plants? A stunning 10 percent increase in U.S. global warming emissions, U.S. PIRG estimates -- at the very moment the United States, now responsible for over 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, should be reversing course, leading rather than hindering worldwide efforts to avert potentially catastrophic global climate change in this century.

Yet applying the same $137 billion the energy companies plan for coal-fired plants to energy conservation, U.S. PIRG calculates, would reduce our energy demand by 19 percent in 2025 -- obviating the need for all the new plants. Comparable investment in wind farms or solar power could also go far to obviate the need for the new coal plants (only 16 percent of which are projected to use new coal gasification technology).

But now comes ocean tidal power recovery -- a technology that Power claims is so benign it wouldn’t even impact fish life.

In one sense the idea of tapping tidal energy isn't new; even Ben Franklin, on his trans-Atlantic voyages, noticed the current and speculated on converting its power for human purpose. But not until recent advances in magnets as well as plastics that can protect underwater metal devices from corrosion has the technology become feasible.

Enter the 20-year-old Climate Institute, an early truth-teller on the perils of global warming. Several of its leaders -- Dan Power, President John Topping, environmentalist and businessman William Nitze, and former steel company executive Joe Cannon -- decided the institute’s powerful research and advocacy weren’t enough, that there was no substitute for real-world, economically feasible alternatives to fossil fuels. And that ocean tidal power, the hydraulic energy in the globe's waters, constituted a massive untapped potential.

So in 2005, they formed the for-profit Oceana Energy to do the hard work -- gathering new scientific data, pushing the engineering, recruiting capital and enlisting allies -- to harvest the freely flowing hydraulic energy in the globe’s waters.

One is tempted to liken energy competition to a David and Goliath story -- new upstarts, struggling for capital and market acceptance, against the entrenched fossil-fuel industries whose political clout delivers them more than $25 billion in federal subsidies each year.

With the new truths of global warming transforming the human environment and economics, the Davids will eventually triumph. But soon enough?

FAIR USE NOTICE:
Mike's Blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues of environmental and humanitarian significance.

I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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The following reprint is from Informed Comment, the website of Juan Cole.

One Ring to Rule Them

The wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon does not make any sense. Why bomb roads, roads, bridges, ports, fuel depots in Sunni and Christian areas that have nothing to do with Shiite Hizbullah in the deep south? And, why was Hizbullah's rocket capability so crucial that it provoked Israel to this orgy of destruction? Most of the rockets were small katyushas with limited range and were highly inaccurate. They were an annoyance in the Occupied Golan Heights, especially the Lebanese-owned Shebaa Farms area. Hizbullah had killed 6 Israeli civilians since 2000. For this you would destroy a whole country?

It doesn't make any sense.

Moreover, the Lebanese government elected last year was pro-American! Why risk causing it to fall by hitting the whole country so hard?

And, why was Condi Rice's reaction to the capture of two Israeli soldiers and Israel's wholesale destruction of little Lebanon that these were the "birth pangs" of the "New Middle East"? How did she know so early on that this war would be so wideranging? And, how could a little border dispute in the Levant signal such an elephantine baby's advent? Isn't it because she had, like Tony Blair, been briefed about the likelihood of a war by the Israelis, or maybe collaborated with them in the plans, and also conceived of it in much larger strategic terms?

I've had a message from a European reader that leads me to consider a Peak Oil Theory of the US-Israeli war on Lebanon (and by proxy on Iran). I say, "consider" the "theory" because this is a thought experiment. I put it on the table to see if it can be knocked down, the way you would preliminary hypotheses in a science experiment.

The European reader writes:

'When I was in Portugal I also watched a presentation by a guy who works for the ministry of energy in that country, a certain [JFR].

He started his presentation with the growing need for oil in China and India. He stressed that China wants to become the 'workshop' of the world and India the 'office' of the world. both economies contributed combined some 44% to world economy growth during 2001-2004. He compared the USA, Japan, India and China to giant whales constantly eating fish. They had no fish near them so they started to move. He explained that the Persian Gulf is the 'fish ground', the 'gas station' of the world.

Later on he explained the . . . hypothesis . . . that says demand for oil will continue to grow. also for natural gas, which is even better than oil. Sadly the existing production is getting smaller, these fields are getting emptied. [One oil major] seems to believe that the gap between demand and existing production will become so large by 2015 that economic growth cannot continue. Yet there is hope on the horizon.

JFR strongly denied that there is going to be an oil peak. He says, and the oil multis seem to agree with him [- my link, JRC], that there is more than enough untouched oil and natural gas. The stupid thing: it is further to the east. Partly in Russia, but most of all, in Iran.

JFR explained to the astonished audience that Iran was the most valuable country on the planet. They have one of the biggest holdings of gas and oil reserves in the world. second in gas, second in oil. On top of that they have direct access to the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Caspian Sea what makes them a potential platform for the distribution of oil and gas to South Asia, Europe and East Asia. JFR called Iran 'the prize' . . .

The disaster in Lebanon actually was also part of JFR's presentation. He explained that the US government is 100% convinced, fanatically and completely convinced, that both, Hamas and Hizballah are creatures of Iran and that Iran uses them to undermine US goals in the region . . .

The presentation got kind of freaky then. He said the US government wanted to stop state-controlled Iranian or Chinese (or Indian) companies from controlling the oil. JFR says the US Government is convinced that this battle will decide the future of the world. It sounded like he was talking about 'the one ring' in lord of the rings. he who controls Iran controls them all. '

JFR is exaggerating Iran's reserves, but it is very important that some EU analysts see things this way. They are in contact with their American counterparts, and may be reflecting a wider North Atlantic view and speaking more openly than is common in Washington.

It is true that Iran's regime is hostile to US corporate and investment interests. Iran itself has substantial energy resources, many of them undeveloped, but they are locked up by state-owned Iranian companies.

Iran is astride the Oil Gulf, which has the majority of the world's proven gas and petroleum reserves. Iran has a silkworm missile capability that could interfere with oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz. It also has emerged as the most influential country in oil-rich South Iraq, which is, like Iran, Shiite Muslim.

Iran is no credible military threat to the United States, though US warmongers are always depicting it as such, rather as they manufactured ramshackle 4th-world Iraq into a dire military menace to the US, allowing for a war of choice to be fought against it.

The regime in Iran has not gone away despite decades of hostility toward it by Washington, and despite the latter's policy of "containment." As a result, US petroleum corporations are denied significant opportunities for investment in the Iranian petroleum sector. Worse, Iran has made a big energy deal with China and is negotiating with India. As those two countries emerge as the superpowers of the 21st century, they will attempt to lock up Gulf petroleum and gas in proprietary contracts.

(Since it is already coming up in the comments, I should note that the "fungibility" (easy exchange) of oil is less important in the new environment than it used to be. US petroleum companies would like to go back to actually owning fields in the Middle East, since there are big profits to be made if you get to decide when you take it out of the ground. As Chinese and Indian competition for the increasingly scarce resource heats up, exclusive contracts will be struck. When I floated the fungibility of petroleum as a reason for which the Iraq War could not be only about oil, at a talk at Columbia's Earth Institute last year, Jeffrey Sachs surprised me by disagreeing with me. In our new environment, oil is becoming a commodity over which it really does make sense to fight for control.)

In a worst case scenario, Washington would like to retain the option of military action against Iran, so as to gain access to its resources and deny them to rivals. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, however, that option will be foreclosed. Iran may not be trying for a weapon, and if it is, it could not get one before about 2016. But if it had a nuclear weapon, it would be off limits to US attack, and its anti-American regime could not only lock up Iranian gas and oil for the rest of the century by making sweetheart deals with China. It also might begin to exercise a sway over the small energy-producing countries of the Middle East. (The oil interest would explain the mystery of why Washington just does not care that Pakistan has the Bomb; Pakistan has nothing Washington wants and so there was no need to preserve the military option in its regard.)

Even an Iranian nuke, of course, would not be an immediate threat to the US, in the absence of ICBMs. But the major US ally in the Middle East, Israel, would be vulnerable to a retaliatory Iranian strike if the US took military action against Iran in order to overthrow the regime and gain the proprietary deals for themselves.

In the short term, Iran was protected by another ace in the hole. It had a client in the Levant, Lebanon's Hizbullah, and had given it a few silkworm rockets, which could theoretically hit Israeli nuclear and chemical facilities. Hizbullah increasingly organizes the Lebanese Shiites, and the Lebanese Shiites will in the next ten to twenty years emerge as a majority in Lebanon, giving Iran a commercial hub on the Mediterranean.

China and India could get Iran, and Iran could get Lebanon, and as non-OPEC energy production decreases, the US and Israel could find themselves out in the cold on the energy front.

As for Iran, the DOE says this:

' Iran's largest non-associated natural gas field is South Pars, geologically an extension of Qatar's North Field. Current estimates are that South Pars contains 280 Tcf or more (some estimates go as high as 500 Tcf) of natural gas, of which a large fraction will be recoverable, and over 17 billion barrels of liquids. Development of South Pars is Iran's largest energy project, already having attracted around $15 billion in investment. Natural gas from South Pars largely is slated to be shipped north via the planned 56-inch, 300-mile, $500 million, IGAT-3 pipeline, as well as planned IGAT-4 and IGAT-5 lines. Gas also will be reinjected to boost oil output at the mature Agha Jari oil field, and possibly the Ahwaz and Mansouri fields. Besides condensate production and reinjection/enhanced oil recovery, South Pars natural gas also is intended for export, by pipeline and also possibly by liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker. Sales from South Pars could earn Iran as much as $11 billion per year over 30 years, according to Iran's Oil Ministry. '

and this is why Iran's reserves are even more important:

' The Persian Gulf contains 715 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, representing over half (57%) of the world's oil reserves, and 2,462 Tcf of natural gas reserves (45% of the world total). Also, at the end of 2003, Persian Gulf countries maintained about 22.9 million bbl/d of oil production capacity, or 32% of the world total. Perhaps even more significantly, the Persian Gulf countries normally maintains almost all of the world's excess oil production capacity. As of early September 2004, excess world oil production capacity was only about 0.5-1.0 million bbl/d, all of which was located in Saudi Arabia.'

Non-OPEC production will decline sharply in coming years, increasing the importance of the Persian Gulf region. The point about excess capacity is this: The US in 2005 produced over 7 million barrels of petroleum a day, but consumes all of it, and then imports two times that from abroad (using nearly 22 million barrels a day in 2005). So US petroleum is essentially off the market. But Saudi Arabia produces 9.5 million barrels a day and exports over 7 million of that. It doesn't use it all up at home. Even now, the excess production is in the Gulf, and that excess production will become more important over time.

It may be that that hawks are thinking this way: Destroy Lebanon, and destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran's strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India have special access to Iran and the Gulf.

The second American Century ensues. The "New Middle East" means the "American Middle East."

And it all starts with the destruction of Lebanon.

More wars to come, in this scenario, since hitting Lebanon was like hitting a politician's bodyguard. You don't kill a bodyguard just to kill the bodyguard. It is phase I of a bigger operation.

If the theory is even remotely correct, then global warming is not the only danger in continuing to rely so heavily on hydrocarbons for energy. Green energy--wind, sun, geothermal-- is all around us and does not require any wars to obtain it. Indeed, if we had spent as much on alternative energy research as we have already spent on the Iraq War, we'd be much closer to affordable solar. A choice lies ahead: hydrocarbons, a 20 foot rise in sea level, and a praetorian state. Or we could go green and maybe keep our republic and tame militarism.

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The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
By David Korten Yes! Magazine Summer 2006 Issue

as Posted on Truthout

By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?

A Defining Choice
We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced US economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

A Turn From Life
According to cultural historian Riane Eisler, early humans evolved within a cultural and institutional frame of Earth Community. They organized to meet their needs by cooperating with life rather than by dominating it. Then some 5,000 years ago, beginning in Mesopotamia, our ancestors made a tragic turn from Earth Community to Empire. They turned away from a reverence for the generative power of life - represented by female gods or nature spirits - to a reverence for hierarchy and the power of the sword - represented by distant, usually male, gods. The wisdom of the elder and the priestess gave way to the arbitrary rule of the powerful, often ruthless, king.

Paying the Price
The peoples of the dominant human societies lost their sense of attachment to the living earth, and societies became divided between the rulers and the ruled, exploiters and exploited. The brutal competition for power created a relentless play-or-die, rule-or-be-ruled dynamic of violence and oppression and served to elevate the most ruthless to the highest positions of power. Since the fateful turn, the major portion of the resources available to human societies has been diverted from meeting the needs of life to supporting the military forces, prisons, palaces, temples, and patronage for retainers and propagandists on which the system of domination in turn depends. Great civilizations built by ambitious rulers fell to successive waves of corruption and conquest.

The primary institutional form of Empire has morphed from the city-state to the nation-state to the global corporation, but the underlying pattern of domination remains. It is axiomatic: for a few to be on top, many must be on the bottom. The powerful control and institutionalize the processes by which it will be decided who enjoys the privilege and who pays the price, a choice that commonly results in arbitrarily excluding from power whole groups of persons based on race and gender.

Troubling Truths
Herein lies a crucial insight. If we look for the source of the social pathologies increasingly evident in our culture, we find they have a common origin in the dominator relations of Empire that have survived largely intact in spite of the democratic reforms of the past two centuries. The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and environmental destruction that have plagued human societies for 5,000 years, and have now brought us to the brink of a potential terminal crisis, all flow from this common source. Freeing ourselves from these pathologies depends on a common solution - replacing the underlying dominator cultures and institutions of Empire with the partnership cultures and institutions of Earth Community. Unfortunately, we cannot look to imperial powerholders to lead the way.

Beyond Denial
History shows that as empires crumble the ruling elites become ever more corrupt and ruthless in their drive to secure their own power - a dynamic now playing out in the United States. We Americans base our identity in large measure on the myth that our nation has always embodied the highest principles of democracy, and is devoted to spreading peace and justice to the world.

But there has always been tension between America's high ideals and its reality as a modern version of Empire. The freedom promised by the Bill of Rights contrasts starkly with the enshrinement of slavery elsewhere in the original articles of the Constitution. The protection of property, an idea central to the American dream, stands in contradiction to the fact that our nation was built on land taken by force from Native Americans. Although we consider the vote to be the hallmark of our democracy, it took nearly 200 years before that right was extended to all citizens.

Americans acculturated to the ideals of America find it difficult to comprehend what our rulers are doing, most of which is at odds with notions of egalitarianism, justice, and democracy. Within the frame of historical reality, it is perfectly clear: they are playing out the endgame of Empire, seeking to consolidate power through increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic policies.

Wise choices necessarily rest on a foundation of truth. The Great Turning depends on awakening to deep truths long denied. Cultural Turning The Great Turning begins with a cultural and spiritual awakening - a turning in cultural values from money and material excess to life and spiritual fulfillment, from a belief in our limitations to a belief in our possibilities, and from fearing our differences to rejoicing in our diversity. It requires reframing the cultural stories by which we define our human nature, purpose, and possibilities.

Economic Turning
The values shift of the cultural turning leads us to redefine wealth - to measure it by the health of our families, communities, and natural environment. It leads us from policies that raise those at the top to policies that raise those at the bottom, from hoarding to sharing, from concentrated to distributed ownership, and from the rights of ownership to the responsibilities of stewardship.

Political Turning
The economic turning creates the necessary conditions for a turn from a one-dollar, one-vote democracy to a one-person, one-vote democracy, from passive to active citizenship, from competition for individual advantage to cooperation for mutual advantage, from retributive justice to restorative justice, and from social order by coercion to social order by mutual responsibility and accountability.

Global Awakening
Empire's true believers maintain that the inherent flaws in our human nature lead to a natural propensity to greed, violence, and lust for power. Social order and material progress depend, therefore, on imposing elite rule and market discipline to channel these dark tendencies to positive ends. Psychologists who study the developmental pathways of the individual consciousness observe a more complex reality. Just as we grow up in our physical capacities and potential given proper physical nourishment and exercise, we also grow up in the capacities and potential of our consciousness, given proper social and emotional nourishment and exercise.

Over a lifetime, those who enjoy the requisite emotional support traverse a pathway from the narcissistic, undifferentiated magical consciousness of the newborn to the fully mature, inclusive, and multidimensional spiritual consciousness of the wise elder. The lower, more narcissistic, orders of consciousness are perfectly normal for young children, but become sociopathic in adults and are easily encouraged and manipulated by advertisers and demagogues. The higher orders of consciousness are a necessary foundation of mature democracy. Perhaps Empire's greatest tragedy is that its cultures and institutions systematically suppress our progress to the higher orders of consciousness.

Given that Empire has prevailed for 5,000 years, a turn from Empire to Earth Community might seem a hopeless fantasy if not for the evidence from values surveys that a global awakening to the higher levels of human consciousness is already underway. This awakening is driven in part by a communications revolution that defies elite censorship and is breaking down the geographical barriers to intercultural exchange. The consequences of the awakening are manifest in the civil rights, women's, environmental, peace, and other social movements. These movements in turn gain energy from the growing leadership of women, communities of color, and indigenous peoples, and from a shift in the demographic balance in favor of older age groups more likely to have achieved the higher-order consciousness of the wise elder.

It is fortuitous that we humans have achieved the means to make a collective choice as a species to free ourselves from Empire's seemingly inexorable compete-or-die logic at the precise moment we face the imperative to do so. The speed at which institutional and technological advances have created possibilities wholly new to the human experience is stunning.

Just over 60 years ago, we created the United Nations, which, for all its imperfections, made it possible for the first time for representatives of all the world's nations and people to meet in a neutral space to resolve differences through dialogue rather than force of arms.

Less than 50 years ago, our species ventured into space to look back and see ourselves as one people sharing a common destiny on a living space ship.

In little more than 10 years our communications technologies have given us the ability, should we choose to use it, to link every human on the planet into a seamless web of nearly costless communication and cooperation.

Already our new technological capability has made possible the interconnection of the millions of people who are learning to work as a dynamic, self-directing social organism that transcends boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality and functions as a shared conscience of the species. We call this social organism global civil society. On February 15, 2003, it brought more than 10 million people to the streets of the world's cities, towns, and villages to call for peace in the face of the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq. They accomplished this monumental collective action without a central organization, budget, or charismatic leader through social processes never before possible on such a scale. This was but a foretaste of the possibilities for radically new forms of partnership organization now within our reach.

Break the Silence, End the Isolation, Change the Story
We humans live by stories. The key to making a choice for Earth Community is recognizing that the foundation of Empire's power does not lie in its instruments of physical violence. It lies in Empire's ability to control the stories by which we define ourselves and our possibilities in order to perpetuate the myths on which the legitimacy of the dominator relations of Empire depend. To change the human future, we must change our defining stories.

Story Power
For 5,000 years, the ruling class has cultivated, rewarded, and amplified the voices of those storytellers whose stories affirm the righteousness of Empire and deny the higher-order potentials of our nature that would allow us to live with one another in peace and cooperation. There have always been those among us who sense the possibilities of Earth Community, but their stories have been marginalized or silenced by Empire's instruments of intimidation. The stories endlessly repeated by the scribes of Empire become the stories most believed. Stories of more hopeful possibilities go unheard or unheeded and those who discern the truth are unable to identify and support one another in the common cause of truth telling. Fortunately, the new communications technologies are breaking this pattern. As truth-tellers reach a wider audience, the myths of Empire become harder to maintain.

The struggle to define the prevailing cultural stories largely defines contemporary cultural politics in the United States. A far-right alliance of elitist corporate plutocrats and religious theocrats has gained control of the political discourse in the United States not by force of their numbers, which are relatively small, but by controlling the stories by which the prevailing culture defines the pathway to prosperity, security, and meaning. In each instance, the far right's favored versions of these stories affirm the dominator relations of Empire.

The imperial prosperity story says that an eternally growing economy benefits everyone. To grow the economy, we need wealthy people who can invest in enterprises that create jobs. Thus, we must support the wealthy by cutting their taxes and eliminating regulations that create barriers to accumulating wealth. We must also eliminate welfare programs in order to teach the poor the value of working hard at whatever wages the market offers.

The imperial security story tells of a dangerous world, filled with criminals, terrorists, and enemies. The only way to insure our safety is through major expenditures on the military and the police to maintain order by physical force.

The imperial meaning story reinforces the other two, featuring a God who rewards righteousness with wealth and power and mandates that they rule over the poor who justly suffer divine punishment for their sins.

These stories all serve to alienate us from the community of life and deny the positive potentials of our nature, while affirming the legitimacy of economic inequality, the use of physical force to maintain imperial order, and the special righteousness of those in power.

It is not enough, as many in the United States are doing, to debate the details of tax and education policies, budgets, war, and trade agreements in search of a positive political agenda. Nor is it enough to craft slogans with broad mass appeal aimed at winning the next election or policy debate. We must infuse the mainstream culture with stories of Earth Community. As the stories of Empire nurture a culture of domination, the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of partnership. They affirm the positive potentials of our human nature and show that realizing true prosperity, security, and meaning depends on creating vibrant, caring, interlinked communities that support all persons in realizing their full humanity. Sharing the joyful news of our human possibilities through word and action is perhaps the most important aspect of the Great Work of our time.

Changing the prevailing stories in the United States may be easier to accomplish than we might think. The apparent political divisions notwithstanding, US polling data reveal a startling degree of consensus on key issues. Eighty-three percent of Americans believe that as a society the United States is focused on the wrong priorities. Supermajorities want to see greater priority given to children, family, community, and a healthy environment. Americans also want a world that puts people ahead of profits, spiritual values ahead of financial values, and international cooperation ahead of international domination. These Earth Community values are in fact widely shared by both conservatives and liberals.

Our nation is on the wrong course not because Americans have the wrong values. It is on the wrong course because of remnant imperial institutions that give unaccountable power to a small alliance of right-wing extremists who call themselves conservative and claim to support family and community values, but whose preferred economic and social policies constitute a ruthless war against children, families, communities, and the environment.

The distinctive human capacity for reflection and intentional choice carries a corresponding moral responsibility to care for one another and the planet. Indeed, our deepest desire is to live in loving relationships with one another. The hunger for loving families and communities is a powerful, but latent, unifying force and the potential foundation of a winning political coalition dedicated to creating societies that support every person in actualizing his or her highest potential.

In these turbulent and often frightening times, it is important to remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most exciting moment in the whole of the human experience. We have the opportunity to turn away from Empire and to embrace Earth Community as a conscious collective choice. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network.

This article draws from his newly released book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/greatturning for book excerpts, related articles, David's talks, and resources for action.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Mike Carrick's Blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is he endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

As America prepares for another Super Bowl, many will find it easy to look past the fractured landscape that is Detroit today.

Just before Christmas I was involved in an event to protest the mis-information campaign being waged by Exxon, against Global Warming, and I got a few nasty phone calls when my number hit certain mailing lists. One of the callers asked me if I was a "global warming fascist". I blew that off and went on with things.


A little later my friend Dennis posted an article about The Philosopher's Stone and it really got me thinking ...



The Peak Oil community is many things to many people, and I suppose there may be 'fascists' lurking about who see coming troubles as a chance to impose themselves upon us.

The Citizens Coal Council is a federation of 48 grassroots citizens groups and individuals who work for social and environmental justice.
The Citizens Coal Council and its members strive to:

• Protect people, homes, water, communities, and the environment from coal mining damage.
  
• Restore law and order by enforcing the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
  
• Help each other win our issues.

Well, folks ...

The game is ON.
We have just witnessed another salvo in the Resource Wars.

There can be no more overt use of energy as a political weapon than recent events in the Ukraine. If you caught The News Hour on Monday, you saw the discussion of Russia's cessation of natural gas to the Ukraine. There is some suggestion that Putin "overplayed" his hand ... but, nevertheless it happened.

While this appears to have blown over, it is a sure sign of things to come, and reflects who the dominant superpowers may be in the not so distant future.

“Our room is an ICICLE�. It gets NO winter sun.
- My hostess -

I’m sitting in a 3000 square foot house in Santa Clarita, California, a municipality built on a solid foundation of denial. The house sits in a canyon surrounded by other equally large palaces in what can only be called “typical� by today’s standards. Having parked my car in front of one of the three garage doors, I entered a home that would make a Rajah blush. To the left was the ‘Great Room’. We used to call them living rooms. However my living room did not have a ceiling that was twenty feet above my head, so I guess realtors needed a new name that reflected ‘grandeur’. Hence – the great room.

FRIENDS,

2005 was a great year, with many new friendships formed, much good work done, and an emerging sense of community that reaches from Vallejo to Willits, from Pacifica to Oakland, and beyond.

We have weathered changes in our electronic platforms, venues, and memberships, but a core group of dedicated and concerned individuals has continued to forge into this scary future together, and THAT'S HOW WE START.

Our members, through selfless donations of time, energy, and money, have helped to launch the Post Carbon Institute into a highly visible position that is respected and recognized by our colleagues in the fights for social justice, environmental protection, and restoration of the commons, worldwide.

As we discussed at the last couple of meetings, we'd like to start something new:

We are asking for volunteers to create a 15 minute summary of an issue relating to energy awareness. My idea was to start with a list of potetnial fuel sources, so that each of us could speak intelligently about the topic to our friends and neighbors, or when tabling.

Potential Topics:
- Wind Power (Lorin wants this one)
- Methane Hydrates
- Tar Sands (Mike wants this one)
- Shale Oil
- Nuclear
- Geo Thermal
- Tidal
- BioFuels (Dfridley)

This work could form the basis for a series of PDF files that we could hand out.

One of the first steps we should be taking to PROMOTE relocalization, is to IDENTIFY it.

Towards that end, should we not be creating Local Resource catalogs that identify where people can purchase local products?

As we begin this work, should we not have some CRITERIA that define what makes a business "relocalized"?

There will be degrees of independence, depending upon that tradecraft, but I would think we would want to grade businesses, much like we would Restaurants, with a Four Star rating, for example.

I would like to hear from others willing to begin these discussions, and ultimately this WORK, to encourage localization ion our communities.