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Making tea is such a simple thing isn't it? Or, is it? Where do the tea leaves come from and what is the environmental impact of growing the tea? Where does the paper for the tea bag come from, what is the environmental impact of that? What about limited water resources? Is the tea shipped across the planet?
Many tea makers attempt to appeal to green consciousness with fair trade practices, or claiming to grow the tea sustainably, etc. All that is laudible, but then they ship the tea thousands of miles and the environmental impact of the globalized shipping probably destroys several times over the gains from the sustainable farming practice.
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In the waning days of the Bush Administration they released a draft Continental Shelf 5-year program meant to cover 2010-2015. The current program runs from 2007-2012 and it's curious that there's an overlap. The overlap means that the Bush Administration sped up the 5-year planning process by a couple years. Under the normal schedule the next 5-year plan would have covered the years 2012-2017. To support putting the new plan together the Department of the Interior is holding a series of public hearings, and the following is based on the San Francisco hearing on April 16, 2009.
At stake is oil and gas drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. You may recall a slogan in the 2008 Presidential Election was "Drill Baby Drill, Drill Here, Drill Now" as if drilling for more oil is what will solve the energy woes faced by the U.S. The U.S. is importing nearly 70% of the oil we use and of course the money spent on that oil undermines the U.S. economy (balance of trade), and is a national security matter (the oil rich countries have power over the U.S.). The Conservative Republican answer is to drill for oil. However anybody who's looked at the data realizes there is very little oil involved, and that it will take decades before the oil can come to market.
It's clear the attendees were overwhelmingly taking a different attitude about the problem. Over and over the presenters and question askers gave a different strategy than "Drill Now, Drill Here". Instead they overwhelmingly opposed drilling for new oil, and advocated instead use of renewable energy. Rather than spend the money on oil drilling rigs etc, spend the money on new technologies.
It's clear that a big event in their mind is the Santa Barbara oil spill in the 1960's. That oil spill put an image in everybody's mind of spoiled beaches, dead birds, etc. FWIW The attendees were overwhelmingly Californians.
The NIMBY aspect of this strikes me. California cities are overwhelmingly designed around the use of CARS and TRUCKS to move around the cities. Overwhelmingly those vehicles require fossil fuels to move around. Hence that oil has to come from somewhere and to deny the possibility of drilling for oil off the California coast means pushing the oil infrastructure fueling California's cars is conducted in someone else's back yard.
At least most of them advocated tying a shift to renewable energy resources combined with a ban on further oil drilling. Tying the two together is more honest than simply denying further oil drilling. However for the most part renewable energy resources are not in the forum of liquid fuels, but in the form of electricity. To continue supporting transportation systems through a renewable fuel is going to mean electrically driven transportation.
Some data presented.. while big oil spills are thankfully rare, there are small spills all the time. It's estimated there are 2 million gallons per year of small oil spills.
Offshore drilling comes with higher risk of disasters. The further offshore the bigger the risk. Off the Pacific coast the oil fields thought to exist are in deep water, and there are doubts over the possibility to safely drill in those deep waters. Further oil drilling causes the release of mercury and other contaminants, simply from the drilling platform.
One of the proposed locations is in an ocean upwelling zone off the Northern California Coast. Upwelling zones are vital places of abundant sea life where upward ocean currents carry nutrients to the surface feeding an abundant array of life. Allowing oil drilling to occur in that upwelling zone would convert it into a dead zone.
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This is a presentation given by Naomi Klein equating the financial meltdown of August/September/October 2008 with her general thesis of the Shock Doctrine of Disaster Capitalism. This thesis cuts to the heart of the reshaping of whole societies, using disasters as a means to justify enacting societal changes which would normally be untenable but under the influence of some kind of disaster societies are more agreeable to suggestions they would not normally accept. This idea is not new, other writers have discussed the same pattern. After a stunning disaster the society is in shock, and into that moment of widespread shock the leader steps in and says "I have a plan" and offers to save the day.
What's different in Naomi Klein's thesis is the agenda.. namely of using disasters, sometimes natural sometimes invented, to push an agenda of corporatization of everything and corporate control of everything.
This is a rebroadcast of a radio program produced for Free Radio Santa Cruz 101fm of Naomi Klein talking at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz Ca. on Oct 17, 2008
FRSC coverage of the sold out event includes the short documentary "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein and Alfonso Cuarón Watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSF0e6oO_tw
The event was put on by the awesome folks at the Resource Center for Nonviolence and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Introduction by Bill Monning music by: Thievery Corporation.
Naomi's Book: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
