Arizona beginning to look at long term sustainable water use policies

Arizona is a dry place, most of it's a desert. People have lived there for millennia and done so by understanding the environment and how to work with the environment. However westerners (us) in Arizona are flouting the natural ecosystem and it's most obvious in the water use patterns.

This is a good thing - for them to be studying water use on a 100 year time horizon.

Arizona's First Ever Statewide Study Projecting Water Use Praised by Conservation Group

Report Shows Need to Ensure Future Water Supplies, Protect Natural Resources

PHOENIX, Oct. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The first ever statewide report projecting Arizona's water supplies and demands over the next century is a key first step to "ensure that physical limits to water supplies don't limit Arizona's economic prosperity or the legacy of its natural resources," according to Environmental Defense Fund.

"This is the kind of forward-looking process that is needed for Arizona to ensure that it has secure water supplies for the future of its communities and natural resources, including its desert rivers and streams," said Jocelyn Gibbon, a Phoenix-based water law attorney for the Colorado River program at Environmental Defense Fund. "It also shows the need for a robust, well-funded Department of Water Resources to take a leadership role in developing creative solutions for the future. We need to ensure that physical limits to water supplies don't limit Arizona's economic prosperity or the legacy of natural resources that we leave to our kids."

The report, scheduled to be released today by the state's Water Resources Development Commission (WRDC) to the Arizona legislature, projects annual water use in the state could grow steadily from current levels of about 7.1 million acre-feet to between 9.9 to 10.6 million acre-feet per year in 2110, a jump of nearly 40 to 50 percent.

"Water is an essential element to Arizona's prosperity...It is clear that meeting the demand for additional water supplies in the 21st century requires inventive action to be taken and consideration of new ways to expand supplies," the report concludes. "Arizona must develop a broad portfolio of solutions to meet the myriad of challenges that are inherent in this diverse state. Finally, decisions must be made regarding what solutions will be most effective in discrete regions, how those solutions will be funded, and whether implementation of the solutions requires legislative changes."

Last year, the Arizona legislature passed House Bill 2661, which created the WRDC to assess the current and future water needs of Arizona.

The Commission's tasks include:

1. Considering the projected water needs of each Arizona county in the next 25, 50, and 100 years;
2. Identifying current and potential future supplies and the legal and technical issues associated with their development;
3. Identifying possible financing mechanisms for acquisition, treatment and delivery of water supplies; and
4. Making recommendations regarding further studies and evaluations.

The final report released today includes data and reports from five committees, recommendations related to future studies and evaluations, and the suggestion that the Commission continue to meet.

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) praised the Arizona Department of Water Resources and stakeholders for their efforts in developing the report information quickly and cooperatively under a tight deadline. EDF made particular mention of the work of the Environmental Working Group established by the Commission, which mapped and catalogued natural resources in Arizona that are dependent on water.

"The county-by-county inventory of natural resources dependent on water begins to illustrate how much the continued flow of water in rivers, streams, and other natural features means to the state," concluded Gibbon. "Arizona's incredibly rich and diverse ecosystems depend on reliable water supplies, as do communities across the state. We have a lot of work to do to prevent those supplies from being depleted."

The report identifies some next steps that could be taken towards planning for the state's water future, including evaluating the effectiveness of alternative water supply solutions for diverse areas of the state, and incorporating information about water for rivers and natural resources into future planning. The current report does not evaluate risks to these natural resources.

Environmental Defense Fund (edf.org), a leading national nonprofit organization, creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. EDF links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships. Visit us on Twitter @EveryDayFactoid and facebook.com/EnvDefenseFund.

Contacts:Jennifer Witherspoon, (415) 293-6067, Crowley, (202) 550-6524-c, Gibbon, (602) 510-4619-c,

SOURCE Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Defense Fund
Web Site: http://www.edf.org

The Oil Drum | There is plenty of oil but . . .

In many ways, the folks who say we a have lots of oil are correct. All one has to do is include the oil which is extremely expensive and slow to extract. Much of the cheap, easy-to-extract oil has already been removed. Economic theory says if/when prices rise our pocketbooks will dictate finding an alternative. The alternative will relieve price pressure on the oil causing the price of oil to drop. When oil prices rose, we found substitutes, but they were poor substitutes. Biofuels interfered with food supply; wind is a substitute for natural gas and coal in electricity production, but it is not as a transportation fuel, which is one of the things that we specifically expect to be short of.

Original Author: 

reikiman

Faces of Climate Change: Women on the Front Lines - MORE Magazine

Imagine having to walk six hours for a drink of water. Or being surrounded by so much rising water your ancestral homeland is sinking before your eyes. Or that the ice that has literally supported your community for untold generations is cracked, splitting and swallowing your loved ones, along with their way of life.

Original Author: 

reikiman

The potentially never-ending cost of email attachments

What's the cost of sending an attachment through e-mail? The cost to you is essentially free except that it's amortized into the cost of your internet access arrangement. But what's the real cost? And what's the cost of all attachments sent every day? This may seem like a trivial question, but as we move towards "cloud computing" and storing everything, including our e-mail, in the cloud it's worth thinking about what it means and the various effects of storing our email or pictures or videos or social history in the cloud.

The services to consider are gmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, hotmail.com, flikr.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, plus.google.com, etc, etc, etc, etc

But let's focus on email for the moment.

In my case I'm writing a book (it's almost done! famous last words of the book author) and the process was emailing chapters back and forth with my editors all the time. Each round of work on a chapter meant the editor sending an email, with the chapter attached, I work on it for awhile, then send a reply email with the chapter attached. The chapters are usually 1/2 megabyte in size so there's a megabyte of additional email storage required each time we exchange edits on a chapter. With 6 chapters (it's a short book) and several exchanges during the life of working on the book, we're talking about 20+ megabytes of total storage just for the attachments on the emails sent related to this book. And because this is related to a contract I signed, I'm likely to keep these emails archived for a long time to come. But in practice I'll probably never refer to them again.

Yup, 20+ megabytes of data storage that's likely to remain in my email for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time but unlikely to ever be used.

That may seem like a tiny amount and maybe you're concerned about my sanity. But first, as you see here gmail is kind enough to tell me that I have 1.5GB of email stored in this account. Second, just how many email customers does Google have? It's not just gmail but the other services I mentioned above, and the model to store "everything" for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time.

The cloud computing providers have done a good job of hiding the effect or impact of storing our digital online stuff. Before services like gmail.com or mail.yahoo.com we had an email client on our personal computer and that email client stored email on the computers hard drive. We directly paid the cost of keeping email around through buying a large-enough hard drive in the computer, remembering to back up the computer, and pulling our hair out when the computer dies and we hadn't backed up the computer. It's not just email, it's the other things, pictures, documents, spreadsheets, etc.

Cloud computing is the new wave of the Internet (gmail.com, mail.yahoo.com, hotmail.com, flikr.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, plus.google.com, etc, etc, etc, etc) and one thing these services offer us is freedom from maintaining our own machines. We just use services over the Internet to access our stuff, rather than storing our stuff on our own machine. Not only do we not have to pay for a fancy machine just to do email and a few pictures, we can trust the cloud to store our stuff for us.

But cloud computing doesn't come for free, and it carries an environmental impact.

It may be called "the cloud" but that doesn't mean its a white puffy thing up in the sky with no actual substance. Trust me, "the cloud" is constructed of computers and routers and cables and racks and air conditioning in colocation facilities around the planet.

Every email attachment that's stored for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time but unlikely to ever be used represents the cloud infrastructure becoming bigger. Because of this book and the chapters sent back and forth, Google will be holding an additional 20+ megabytes of data inside my gmail account. So what, you might say, I'm well under the 7GB storage limit they gave me, what's the big deal! The big deal is in the aggregate, the cost of all the email being stored, and the ever-increasing storage requirements to store "the cloud".

For example, every tweet ever uttered is stored in twitter.com's infrastructure. Plus all those tweets are being sent to partners such as the Library of Congress. How many tweets are twittered every day? And as a result to the traffic twitter.com carries, how much additional data storage units are they buying per day?

The data storage units are, well, disk drives in a "storage array" plus some sort of backup system. Perhaps the backup system is a second storage array, and maybe a third storage array. Maybe instead it's tape drives with data stored on digital tape. To run a stable robust service that the public will trust to reliably store their stuff for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time, the service provider has to build in redundancy and the ability to recover from failures. What if the main storage array dies taking with it all of twitter.com's tweets? What would be the loss to society of all those tweets vanishing in a cloud of electronic smoke? Hence, twitter.com has to have a system in place for recovering as many tweets as possible and quickly getting back to the job of facilitating the twitter.com conversation.

The same can be said for the other cloud services. Facebook stores all the old conversations and interactions even though they make it incredibly impossibly difficult to access them. Flikr, Youtube, etc, store all sorts of videos and pictures for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time. That video you shot of a cute cat doing something strange, by uploading it to Youtube you obligated Google to maintaining an extra 20+ Megabytes of storage (video files are big) for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time.

Each unit of computing infrastructure consumes electricity, not just to run the machine but to power the air conditioning unit keeping the machines cool. It's said that cooling is the biggest energy cost of running the Internet.

Each unit of computing infrastructure is built out of metal, plastic and various other materials including some that are exceedingly rare.

In other words the cloud isn't free, and the cloud will have a growing environmental impact. The electricity and other resources required to run the cloud is not free, and it's polluting our environment.

The Oil Drum | There is plenty of oil but . . .

In many ways, the folks who say we a have lots of oil are correct. All one has to do is include the oil which is extremely expensive and slow to extract. Much of the cheap, easy-to-extract oil has already been removed. Economic theory says if/when prices rise our pocketbooks will dictate finding an alternative. The alternative will relieve price pressure on the oil causing the price of oil to drop. When oil prices rose, we found substitutes, but they were poor substitutes. Biofuels interfered with food supply; wind is a substitute for natural gas and coal in electricity production, but it is not as a transportation fuel, which is one of the things that we specifically expect to be short of.

Article Reference: 

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6041?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ca...

Links: 

http://delicious.com/reikiman/7gen

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

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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.

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

Links: 

Making Tea (on youtube)

TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume

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What is the extent of responsibility we have when we buy a thing? In this podcast I suggest we have a lot of responsibility over the cradle-to-grave effects over the thing we buy, as well as the packaging that comes with the thing. Our purchases set in motion a bewildering array of activities aimed at fulfilling the desire we expressed through that purchase. Bags are made so we can carry home the purchase, the gizmo is made, the packaging to hold the gizmo is made, trucks and airplanes and cargo ships are made, forests are cut down, minerals mined, and on and on, all so we can have a plethora of stuff in the stores to buy.

This evening I went to the store to buy a few kitchen gizmos. Each were packaged primarily in cardboard boxes but then came the question at the counter, "Do you want this in a bag?" At least he asked, often the clerks don't ask and just start getting a bag ready causing me to say "I don't need a bag" but this time the number of items was enough to actually need a bag. But the whole situation brought my mind back to a common line of thinking. I'm responsible, now, for the existence of that bag, and what the heck do I do with that bag once I've used it to carry things home?

Maybe this seems overly anal to think that, hey, I'm responsible for the manufacture of this bag. But if I hadn't allowed the clerk to put those gizmos into the bag, then the store would have used one fewer bag that day, and their weekly purchase of bags would have been smaller. In other words because the gizmos were put in a plastic bag the store had to buy another bag to replace the one I used, something for which I am clearly directly responsible.

And, it doesn't stop there. It's of course not just the bag but also the gizmos I bought as well as the packaging the gizmos were contained in.

The responsibility includes the full lifetime of the gizmo, the packaging, the bags, and all the materials that went into making all those things. The gizmo you buy in the store would not exist unless all those materials were mined and manufactured into gizmos, packaging and bags.

The gizmo, the packaging and the bag, they all will eventually be disposed somewhere. They'll wear out or something and you'll want to throw the thing away. For example the plastic bag isn't terribly useful so most people wad up their bags and throw them in the trash. I tend to use whatever plastic bags I receive as trash can liners instead of buying normal trash bags.

The plastic bag is an interesting artifact. The plastic doesn't break down readily so assuming it ends up in a landfill it'll stay in that form for who knows how many thousands of years. Ponder that for a moment .. the bag I received tonight, I used it once to carry those gizmos home, I'll use it again as a trash can liner, and then it'll be taking up space in a landfull for a thousand years or more. How completely NUTS is that???

TechnoSanity #34: Our collective responsibility as consumers for the things we consume

What to do with my old Haier HDT18PA countertop dishwasher? e-waste concerns

I've had this HDT18PA dishwasher for a few years. The space crunch in a small cottage in downtown mountain view caused me to get this compact dishwasher. It fits with the idea of living in a house no bigger than one needs, to use appliances that are no bigger than one needs. The reasoning goes that if we can get our life accomplished with smaller scale housing and other gizmos smaller scale house, that it would make a positive environmental impact by reducing the negative impact of our life.

However this phase of the saga of my HDT18PA is illustrative of some problems with modern gizmos. Namely - gizmos one might buy in an effort to save energy, live with less impact, etc, can negate the hoped for savings by breaking earlier than desired.

The HDT18PA dishwasher worked well for seven years or so. It provided nearly flawless service, the only quibble I have with it is its small size means it doesn't work well for large items like the big frying pan or with large pots. Those however are easily washed in the sink anyway. There are several models of Portable Dishwashers (on amazon.com) on the market, I just happened to have bought this one.

While browsing (recently) the portable dishwasher pages on amazon.com I noticed several customers grumbled that theirs leaked like crazy. This was true for several brands and models. This is what happened with my HDT18PA - after 7 years, that is.

I noticed, hey, the floor is wet. Noticed, hey, there's a bunch of water coming out the bottom of the dishwasher. Hey, why isn't it making huge sparks and electrocuting itself to have all that water pouring out? Yeah, that's the amazing part of this episode is the amount of water pouring out of the dishwasher without any electrical malfunction.

My first step was to take it apart to see if it could be fixed. In retrospect that was a long waste of time but it does illustrate a desirable thing to do. Why aren't more appliances fixable by regular people? And why isn't it more commonplace to repair gizmos rather than just throw them away to get a new one? I'll talk further below about the repair attempts.

This particular gizmo was purchased to aid my quest to be greener than average. But here I am only 7 years later having replaced it (the upright HDT18PA above is the new one) and looking at how to properly dispose of it. Ideally appliances like dishwashers will last essentially forever and 7 years is a short lifetime.

One unfortunate aspect is that the parts for HDT18PA's are unavailable. I searched through several parts catalogs online. There is an amazing set of appliance parts stores online some of whom have parts diagrams to help you know you're picking the correct part etc. Unfortunately parts for the HDT18PA have been discontinued. The repair would have been very easy to fix (as can be seen below) if the replacement part were buyable. Unfortunately the part wasn't available.

I found a used HDT18PA on eBay (the new one pictured above) and had an idea to strip the old one of any useful parts. But that raised the question of how to dispose of the carcass of the old HDT18PA.

My local area includes Palo Alto and Mountain View, both of which have enough green conscious people that there are excellent e-waste recycling programs. Here's a bit that I found while searching:-

Green Citizen is a commercial e-waste recycling business with several locations in the area. They have services for recycling "electronics" but don't make it clear whether they include "appliances" in the category of "electronics". If they were to accept my old dishwasher it would have cost me $0.50 per pound which would have been a $20 or so fee. BTW the Green Citizen website has some excellent resources about e-waste etc.

eRecycle.org is a general information site about e-waste. The information is extensive and excellent. They have a search thingymajig to help you find a recycling facility, but the categories you search for does not include appliances like this. The categories include several kinds of computers, TV or computer displays, PDA's, etc. This is why I asked above whether the definition of "electronics" includes appliances of this sort.

Recycle Works is a program of San Mateo County. It has a bunch of information about programs and whatnot. It includes a search widget to aid finding a recycling program, and their search thingymajig includes a category for small appliances. The search results include not just safe disposal locations but places to donate the gizmo so others can directly reuse it.

The City of Palo Alto Recycling Center is excellent and does take a variety of things like appliances. I've emailed them a query about accepting my dishwasher and they've not responded yet.

Mountain View's e-Waste program is also excellent. As that is where I live, I called them up for information. Turns out as a Mtn View resident I can, three times a year, schedule for disposal of large items. They'll take it somewhere for safe disposal. This is the choice I've taken. Just put it on the curb next to the trash and they send around a special truck for pickup.

I asked on twitter what to do and got back a couple responses. One was if it still has life in it (this doesn't) that Freecycle is an excellent way to hand the object off to someone else. Other ideas like this is the places Green Citizen recommended like Goodwill or other charity organizations. Another place would be the "Free" section of Craigslist.

Repair attempts

Can't find a picture of the malfunctioning part, but here's a picture of one of the repair attempts.

This plastic objects performs a tube-like function. It's made of two pieces of plastic fused together and it forms a channel that carries water from a pipe that comes up the back of the dishwasher, sending that water to the top sprayer. It's a pretty ingenious way to make the dishwasher more compact but it unfortunately can break easily. In this case the two halves split a little, allowing water to leak out in massive quantities.

The amazing part is again, the water leaking from this top tube was pouring over some of the wiring and not causing any electrical mishaps. That to me says some good things about Haier's design.

What I tried was several ways of gluing this together. The hope was to get this part sealed up so it wouldn't leak, put the dishwasher back together, and get another seven years use out of it. No joy even after trying several kinds of glue which promised they were extra strong, or would weld plastic together, or were for plumbing use.

This is the gap which had to be filled. The black tube on the left comes up the back of the dishwasher, and the plastic thingymajig connects from the black tube to that hole in the middle. One idea I had was to simply block the tube and not use the upper sprayer at all. However after having watched this dishwasher in action several times, it's amazing how much pressure builds in the upper tube. The reason all the repair attempts failed was because of the high pressure. Most would work for awhile then spring a leak somewhere. The zip ties in the earlier picture were an attempt to hold it together with all that pressure. Nothing worked.

The new one in place being happily used. But given that I know parts for this have been discontinued, I'll be surprised if this one lasts very long. Fortunately I already know what to do with it once it dies and is unrepairable.

Review: Flow: For Love of Water (2007)

An astonishingly wide-ranging film. An informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests. The story is about water supply, and it covers the global scale of this problem. A little-covered problem all around the world is the delivery of fresh clean water to everybody, the overtaxing of existing water systems, etc. Water is a core human need e.g. we die within two days if we do not have water, and there are many diseases that can be carried in water.

The movie builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question 'CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?'

One of the transformations covered in this movie is the privatization and commercialism of the water system. All around the world local water systems are being bought up by transnational corporations like Vivendi and Nestle, who then find ways to do corporate profiteering on the back of the core human need for water. For example they're demanding the poorest of the poor pay a few cents for each jug of water, money they can't afford to spend. And in many cases as they cannot afford the commercial water they go down to the local river to get water, but the local river is polluted, full of sewage or industrial waste, they get sick and die.

Around the world there are protests against this system and the protesters are portrayed as believing themselves to be in a life or death struggle. For example a village in India is shown where a Coca-Cola plant was in operation across the street, they described their water as "tasting bad" ever since the plant opened, and they conducted a daily protest for two years against the plant. Eventually the plant was forced to be shut down.

Those are the kinds of things the movie shows. On the flip side from those problems a value is repeated over and over - our cultural tradition is that water, like air, cannot be owned.

For example a case in Michigan has Nestle operating a bottling plant where they are pumping ground water from dozens of wells in the area. Over 400,000 gallons per day of water pumped and bottled for sale. As a land owner they have a right, so the movie says, to use the water from their land. But clearly the "right of use" doctrine wasn't conceived to be conducted at such a large scale. The protesters in that case explain "right of use" as not conveying ownership.

The movie has a huge flaw in the form of an unstated corollary problem. Population growth.

Population growth is a large factor in driving the increase in water use. In 1900 the world human population was around 1 billion people, today it's around 6-7 billion people and rapidly growing.

Obviously whatever water purification and delivery system existed in 1900 has to have become overtaxed by the population growth. Of course more water systems have been built in the intervening years. My point is that to accommodate population growth the water purification and delivery systems have to increase in scale to match.

Most of the movie is living with rural farming communities. People who have mechanical pumps and are accustomed to carrying a jug to a river or well to fetch water. With 6.5x the number of people plus all the industrial increases since 1900 obviously the amount of toxics in the water will have increased since 1900. A local community who could adequately get water from their local well in 1900 needs something else today to accommodate increased population and increased need to purify the toxic stuff out of the water.

The movie says nothing about these problems. This makes the movie very interesting, and full of stunning visuals, but very deeply flawed.

The Twitter Death Machine

Twitter is this new phenomena that is raging across the world wide web. It is a massive interactive chat system, at least that seems to have been its original intention. They call it "microblogging" which means that each posting is minimized in size (140 characters or less). The brilliant thing is it is easy to "follow" people and there are several other social aspects to the system which makes it possible to create communities of interest. With the rising popularity of twitter there are some working on gaming twitters system for financial game. One of the more successful systems is the "Twitter Traffic Machine" which is an automated system to build up huge followings for the sole purpose of squirting advertising at them and gaining revenue. While the Twitter Traffic Machine is a brilliantly conceived Internet Marketing system, it is also contributing to global warming and other negative environmental impacts. To explain I will reveal how the Twitter Traffic Machine works. I used the title "Twitter Death Machine" because TTM is an example of the growth of the Internet causing more and more server systems to exist in order to handle the traffic load on the Internet. What's nefarious about the Twitter Traffic Machine is how much of the traffic it generates is machines talking to machines with no human benefit from the data those machines generate. As one who advocates for green web hosting and green computing the growing environmental impact of the Internet concerns me deeply.

The Twitter Traffic Machine relies on these automated systems:

• A twitter account which you set up to look convincing and appealing to the audience you wish to reach
• An automated system to generate relevant content, tweeting it into the account (Google Alerts plus twitterfeed.com)
• An automated system to searching for and following other accounts tweeting with certain keywords of interest to the audience you wish to reach (twollow.com)
• An automated system automatically managing which accounts to follow, such as autofollowing any accounts that follow your account and unfollowing any accounts that unfollow yours (tweetlater.com)
• An automated system to send advertisement(s) for a product or service (tweetlater.com)

I've just set up the system on a couple accounts and it appears to be working. As a method of marketing a message, the idea is a brilliant one that promises an automated method to build a large following. However...

What happens when two of these machines detects one another? Two twitter traffic machines may be programmed to target accounts showing an interest in golf courses. Both would be locating content having to do with golf courses, and tweeting that content. Because the model is to find other accounts tweeting on the targeted subject (golf courses) the two accounts would follow each other. Since it appears there are a large number of twitter traffic machines being operated, it appears many of these accounts are robotically choosing to follow each other.

There appears to be a flood of automated tweeting traffic generators. Maybe it's the accounts my accounts are following but I'm seeing a lot of traffic consisting of article titles with links to news or blog sites. Further many are the same title from different accounts generally leading to the same article. Given the large number of solicitations I've received concerning the Twitter Traffic Machine, it's clear many people are setting up their own TTM's. Even if they're not following the precise TTM model, the value of automated content generation is pretty obvious and it's pretty trivial to set up a system to autotweet automatically generated content. I had worked it out on my own several months ago on the electric vehicle news and information portal I run.

I'm receiving many follows on my accounts from accounts focused on Internet Marketing or other topics totally off-topic to my accounts. These look like an automated seek-accounts-and-follow-them process with the strategy to follow as many other accounts as possible. It's well understood that a large percentage of people who are followed will reciprocate with following the account which followed theirs.

This makes for a growing number of twitter accounts operated by robots. Further it's likely many of them are not monitored by humans. I'm seeing many twitter accounts following 20,000 or more other accounts, which would be a crushing load of twitter traffic for anybody monitoring those accounts. Heck, I have two accounts following a very modest 2-300 accounts each, and find it impossible to keep up with that traffic flow.

An ominous question here is how many of the accounts following a given account are themselves operated by robots?

Every transaction on the Internet creates a requirement for the Internet infrastructure to transmit those transactions. Hence the more Internet traffic which exists, the more Internet infrastructure which much exist, and there is a direct correlation of Internet infrastructure to resources (energy and materials) consumed to build and operate the Internet. This growing level of traffic aimed at Twitter and services related to running twitter traffic machines is contributing to more transactions on the Internet. Therefore twitter traffic machines contribute to ever-increasing resources consumed by the Internet, and directly contributes to global warming and other side effects of resource consumption.

The measure I would apply to this is, does the expenditure of resources lead to human benefit? The expenditure of resources from robots talking to robots with zero human benefit is, to me, a waste. It's just as wasteful as the SPAM flooding my email, or the junk mail arriving via the post office every day. These get dumped immediately and they all consume resources to generate the SPAM. It would be better for all of us if the SPAM did not exist in the first place, to avoid consuming the resources required to create and transmit SPAM.

The twitter traffic machines aren't necessarily generating SPAM. It's possible that in some cases real people are gaining real value from following these robot controlled accounts. Especially if a given TTM operator is doing a sparklingly good job generating useful and relevant content. However I hope to have made it clear some portion of the robotic Twitter traffic is simply consumed by other robots, and that there is a growing web of Internet services adding "value" to the Twitter. Some portion of this traffic is wasted in a similar fashion that SPAM is a waste, in that no human being is gaining any positive benefit from robots talking to robots.

$100 a barrel for oil?

Wake-up call to U.S. on oil?: Discusses a current worry that the fighting in the Middle East could cause the price for oil to become $100 per barrel. I think that's a very realistic concern, if we think about what's happened with the oil prices over the last couple years. The tensions in the Middle East have served to push up the price.

But that's not the only influence causing the oil prices to be so high as they are today.

There's growing oil demand from both India and China. Both countries are in a massive growth period, due to modernization of their economic activity.

There's the continuing rise in world oil demand, regardless of growth in India or China.

There's the peak oil consideration where it looks like world oil production capacity is going to soon reach a peak. Once the oil production peak is reached the price is inexorably going to go up.

The Chicago Tribune article is flawed by looking only at the immediate issue, and the immediate cause for oil price increases. If we think about those three effects, the price for oil is only going to rise. And once the oil production peak is reached, the price for oil is going to increase dramatically.

Re: Why the chicken crossed the ocean -- twice

This is one of those deals which makes you scratch your head ... Why the chicken crossed the ocean -- twice ... the idea is that uncooked chickens will be shipped to China, from the U.S., cooked, packaged, and then shipped back to the U.S.

The article describes this as a politically motivated deal with China.

But I see it as an abysmal move in terms of sustainability. It's bad enough we get food shipped all over the world as it is, because that drives more use of oil and contributes to the baddening of our food. In order for food to remain safe as it's shipped across the world, it has to be buried in various preservative chemicals, or harvested when it's still unripe, etc.

Building pressure for a world war to secure oil supplies?

What are we fighting in Iraq for? What are we fighting in Afghanistan for? Why are we threatening Iran?

Think it's about ephemeral things such as establishing democracy and freedom? Think again. There are dozens of freedom-hating countries around the world that we don't threaten with our military. Some of those freedom hating countries had their leaders installed by the U.S. We aren't threatening those countries, only the ones in the Middle East.

This article outlines the growing danger of a world war fought to secure oil supplies: A battle for oil could set the world aflame International powers will do everything to protect their access to dwindling resources. We are mad not to have an alternative strategy (Will Hutton, Sunday April 30, 2006, The Observer)

The key piece is twofold. First is the incontrovertible fact that the U.S. and China both have very little domestic oil supplies. What has allowed our modern societies to flourish isn't technology, it's that the technology has cheap energy to drive it. We could have the same dazzling array of technology, but if the energy to drive the technology wasn't available the technology would be useless. And, this is a situation we all may be facing in a few years.

The U.S. imports over 60% of its oil needs. In the 1970's there were two oil embargo crisis, at a time when the U.S. imported only 35% of its oil needs, and which drove the U.S. into a recession. What would happen today if the supply of oil to the U.S. were to dry up?

At the same time China is experiencing rapid economic growth, which is in turn causing rapid growth in its energy demands.

The article discusses China's role in both the Sudan/Darfur fiasco, and the showdown against Iran. In both cases China has made oil deals with the countries in question, and at the same time are expected to veto any UN Security Council actions against those countries. Further, Iran and China have an oil deal, part of which is shipping oil from Iran to China via a pipeline through Central Asia. Such a pipeline is a strategic move that would keep the U.S. from enforcing anything against that oil, because our Navy is useless in reaching Central Asia.

The coming world oil disruptions

I was in my young teens in the early 1970's when the oil embargo was used against the U.S. In the second oil embargo I was in college. Those two events really affected me and is what's driving me today to study energy supplies.

Stanford EMF: 80% Probability of Major Oil Disruption in Next Ten Years covers a study done by Hillard Huntington, Executive Director Energy Modeling Forum (EMF), Stanford University, which discusses the probabilities of another oil disruption.

Thinking about it now, this shouldn't be surprising. For example we are threatening Iran right now which could easily turn into a major oil disruption. And generally speaking, OPEC did it before (staging oil disruptions) so why wouldn't they do it again?

The thing that's really alarming is what the effect would be.

In the 1970's the recessions we had then were likely triggered by the oil embargo's. Those oil embargo's caused the price of oil to rise pretty high. Remember Carter's Windfall Profits Tax? President Enron nor Vice President Halliburton nor Secretary of State Chevron are likely to push for such a tax, but we have the same conditions today that occurred in the 1970's that prompted that tax.

In the 1970's the U.S. imported 35% of its' oil needs. Today we import 70% of our oil needs. If there were another oil disruption today, the effect on the U.S. would be far more dramatic than the effect in the 1970's.

Ganging up on General Motors

General Motors has launched what is probably an ill-advised marketing website. At chevyapprentice.com/ they have a contest in which you can make a commercial for the 2007 Chevy Tahoe. The best commercial wins something.

However, what's happening is a bunch of people making activist type commercials.

Rather than something extolling the SUV, they're instead talking about global warming, destroyed environment and, in one case, a memorial from one brother to another who was sent to Iraq to fight for oil.

The site is very easy to use, and creating an advertisement is very simple. They offer some typical video clips of the type you see in car commercials, and they offer some sound tracks. You simply drag the clips into the order you want, and enter text to overlay on the clips.

Their web site is an example of a new kind of marketing activity. The Internet is allowing for greater ease in building "community" of a sort, where web sites serve as a meeting place for people to share with one another. In this case they are hoping for people to go COOL, make commercials, and share them with their friends. This should build a word-of-mouth viral spread of awareness over the web site. The gain they'll have is from their brand and logo being put in front of more eyeballs.

We don't know how many of the people using this site to make activist commercials versus SUV-loving commercials.

Here's some pointers collecting the advertisements people have made.

GM SUV spoofed by environmentalists

Video: Oops! Chevy gets trashed in commercial contest

One of the commercials I made

TreeHugger: Make Your Own SUV Ad

MOBJECTIVIST: Last gasp of a dying organization

Sustainablog: 'Chevy Apprentice' Becomes Activism Tool

Eco Blogger Call to Action: Make your own Chevy Advert

Network-Centric Advocacy: You MUST try This: Culture Jam Chevy and Global Warming: Sloganator II

Chevy Ads : Network Culture Jamming the Apprentice (whack at Trump, GM and SUVs)

Peak oil, fearism, and our future

Consider this article: Energy refugee fleeing $100-a-barrel oil .. "Around the time of the first oil shock in 1973, columnist Art Buchwald penned a satirical column about what life without cheap oil would be like in the 1990s. One day, a father and son go out for their first drive in weeks because fuel costs $8.50 a gallon. 'I feel like a steak,' says the father to his son. And the boy asks, 'Dad, what's a steak?' ... To many Americans, the approaching petroleum calamity remains invisible, but not to my pal John P. Like so many others, he rolled into Arizona from the Midwest a few decades ago bent on fleeing an assortment of ecological and environmental abuses in favor of adventure, clean air, cheap energy and abundant water.... 'You might say that I was an environmental refugee,' the steely-eyed, onetime congressional candidate and former big-time river guide said as he sipped some simple black coffee on the outskirts of Sedona not far from his hideaway in Rim Rock.... 'I always figured that I'd stay here until the managed-care guys came to take me away.'... But my pal has changed his mind. 'See that price?' he said, pointing to a gas station sign advertising fuel for $2.50 a gallon. 'There have been warnings galore, but we've to fix the energy levees, so to speak. That's the last time you'll see it that low; denial about our oil addiction trumps any 12-step program. We are out of here because here in the red rocks and in so many other places, inconvenient facts about energy and water are taboo; oil is headed for $100-a-barrel oil, just the least shock will do it: a tanker blown in the Persian Gulf, a refinery sabotaged.'..." And with that he's planning to move to Idaho to escape the coming fuel catastrophe.

This kind of story just reminds me of one thing. Survivalists. In the 1990's they were escaping the y2k problem. Earlier they were escaping nuclear war. Today there's scares about bird flu, terrorists, peak oil, etc.

Now, I'm very interested in this peak oil scenario. This scenario certainly looks very realistic and I am very concerned about when will it happen.

But ... let's consider the psychological/emotional/spiritual component to this.

What we have is a scary story. People like John P quoted above are taking the fear in that story, and living that fear as if its true, taking drastic actions out of fear.

Ask yourself, if you are having fear, if you are in so much fear you're terrified of the future, how does that affect the range of actions you can take? Doesn't this trigger the fight or flight reflex, causing it to become a survival issue? And, sure enough, there is a lot of evidence with the peak oil scenario that make it look like the survival of our society is at stake.

One of the things that is true about fear is it limits your vision. Your limited vision can see fewer possible solutions.

For example John P is missing out on all sorts of solutions being developed in the world. Instead he's escaping to Idaho expecting the world he knows to collapse into bloodshed. No doubt he's going to stockpile food and guns and be prepared to be killing anybody who wants to take his survival, represented by the food and guns, away from him.

But what about the development of biofuels, of better solar energy systems, better wind energy systems, more reliable nuclear systems, vehicles available from the car companies that can burn non-fossil fuels, and more. He's not seeing them, because the fear doesn't allow it.

If you find yourself in fear, what can you do? There's a range of possibilities.

For example if you're unaware of your fear, you have little ability to navigate out of the fear. Instead it's more likely you'll take rash actions based on the limited vision your fear allows you to have.

The key is to learn to be aware when you are in fear, and to recognize the effects to yourself that come from being in fear.

Next, having the awareness of the fear and the effects is when you can choose differently. What I recommend is a prayer I've learned from Ron Roth: Peace to my thoughts, peace to my emotions, peace to my body, peace to the world. You can also meditate upon the divine presence such as repeating to yourself, and embodying, "come holy spirit, divine holy spirit".

Those practices are not the only ones which will help you come out of fear. They are what I do for myself.

Another thing I've learned is there are many problems, such as the peak oil issue, where my conscious mind, my ego, has no clue how to solve the problem. However, the divine mind does know the answer. The divine, or if you prefer the name 'God', created this universe and surely must have an idea or two of how we in this culture at this time on this planet can resolve the problems facing us.

I don't know what that answer is, but I do know that whatever it is has to happen through us. For 'God' to act in the world 'we' must take actions, because we are God's agents in the world.

What this leads to is an idea. Taking the prayer concept I described above, here's how you might apply it to a world situation like the peak oil scenario, the Iraq war, the impending war in Iran, etc.

First spend some time meditating upon the divine as I described above. Then shift to a prayer like "come holy spirit, peace to the people of Iraq, peace to the soldiers in Iraq, peace to the countries surrounding Iraq, peace to the leaders in Iraq, ...". It helps to visualize inside yourself peace flooding through Iraq.

Now, I should point out that true peace is not the cessation of war. I think of true peace as it is exemplified by forests. A forest has a life of its own which manifests and protects the systemic organization that is the forest. Stuff happens in forests, there are animals hunting for meals, they sometimes kill one another, there are ant colonies having wars with each other, etc. All that stuff is going on, but whatever it is the life of the forest is completely intertwined with all that stuff that's going on. Anything that happens is swallowed by the life force of the forest.

Which was a long way of saying, you can pray for something but let go of attachment to a specific result. Your ego mind may have brilliantly come up with the supposedly perfect solution, but God may have a completely different idea. As the old saying goes, if you want to hear God laugh tell her your plans.

Save the Rainforest! Buy a tree!

Here's an idea that ought to appeal to everyone. Rainforest Forever is selling trees in the Amazon rainforest. Or, more specifically, what they're selling is the timber rights. By buying up timber rights, you'll gaurantee some section of the rain forest does not get logged.

What you receive is a certificate and GPS coordinates for your tree.

Why should you care? Why should you buy protection for trees? Here's a few of the reasons they offer:

• The Rainforest Helps Us Breath
• The Rainforest has been shown to contain medicines that could heal the sick
• The Rainforest supports a huge abundance of life, and represents great biodiversity

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

This: What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis is perhaps the most important thing you could read to aid understanding the oil and energy problem. The oil and energy problem is very likely going to sink our modern way of life. Why? Because our way of life is utterly dependant on hugely extravagent energy use, facilitated by fossil fuels like oil and gas. Why is this a problem? Because the oil and gas are in limited supply, and relatively soon the oil and gas companies will be unable to supply the demand.

The other day I wrote a posting quoting an oil company economist saying not to worry, market forces will take care of it. Consider this effect of market forces:

Meanwhile, domestic gas bills, which rose by more than a third last year, are expected to rise even higher in the next few months. For many people, such fluctuations have lethal implications. Last winter, there were some 35,000 "excess winter deaths" in the UK, most of them attributable to old people not being able to keep warm enough; and last winter was a relatively mild one.

That's market forces at work. The price rises, people can't afford to stay warm, and 35,000 people die as a result. Yup, sorry about your grandma, but that's just market forces at work.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.

The article goes on from there to describe America's contribution to this mess. The U.S. domestic oil supply reached its peak output in 1970, and U.S. domestic oil production has only declined since, while U.S. oil demand has only climbed. "Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds of the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. " The U.S. could reduce demand by 5 million barrels of oil very easily by requiring an increase in fuel efficiency of only 2.5 gallons per mile. This would be easy for Detroit to achieve, but realistically speaking with President Enron and Vice President Halliburton in office is there a chance of that happening?

The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in 1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon. This at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles per gallon.

With this kind of trend, we are literally driving ourselves to oblivion.

The importance to this question lies with how is it going to be solved. No amount of economic free market theory will cover up the fact that what we have is a limited, and declining, resource. We will not have the luxury of waiting 6 million years for oil reserves to recover through geologic mechanisms. Instead, when the oil peaks and begins to run dry, the wars we're seeing now will seem tame in comparison.

If we are to avoid that fate, we must begin working on some alternative way of moving our butts from place to place. And it's not just transportation, it's our food supply. As the article says, agriculture is a huge user of oil if only because the Market Economy has resulted in most cities not having their own food production capacity, and instead relying on the ability to ship food from far remote places. How else can arctic cities have fresh fruit in the dead of winter???

It takes time to develop a new energy technology. A lot of time. Fortunately there are some alternative technologies being worked on, but they are all struggling with limited funding for research. Plus they all are suffering from a playing field shaped by market forces that are strongly favoring the entrenched fossil fuel resources.

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

This: What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis is perhaps the most important thing you could read to aid understanding the oil and energy problem. The oil and energy problem is very likely going to sink our modern way of life. Why? Because our way of life is utterly dependant on hugely extravagent energy use, facilitated by fossil fuels like oil and gas. Why is this a problem? Because the oil and gas are in limited supply, and relatively soon the oil and gas companies will be unable to supply the demand.

The other day I wrote a posting quoting an oil company economist saying not to worry, market forces will take care of it. Consider this effect of market forces:

Meanwhile, domestic gas bills, which rose by more than a third last year, are expected to rise even higher in the next few months. For many people, such fluctuations have lethal implications. Last winter, there were some 35,000 "excess winter deaths" in the UK, most of them attributable to old people not being able to keep warm enough; and last winter was a relatively mild one.

That's market forces at work. The price rises, people can't afford to stay warm, and 35,000 people die as a result. Yup, sorry about your grandma, but that's just market forces at work.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.

The article goes on from there to describe America's contribution to this mess. The U.S. domestic oil supply reached its peak output in 1970, and U.S. domestic oil production has only declined since, while U.S. oil demand has only climbed. "Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds of the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. " The U.S. could reduce demand by 5 million barrels of oil very easily by requiring an increase in fuel efficiency of only 2.5 gallons per mile. This would be easy for Detroit to achieve, but realistically speaking with President Enron and Vice President Halliburton in office is there a chance of that happening?

The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in 1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon. This at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles per gallon.

With this kind of trend, we are literally driving ourselves to oblivion.

The importance to this question lies with how is it going to be solved. No amount of economic free market theory will cover up the fact that what we have is a limited, and declining, resource. We will not have the luxury of waiting 6 million years for oil reserves to recover through geologic mechanisms. Instead, when the oil peaks and begins to run dry, the wars we're seeing now will seem tame in comparison.

If we are to avoid that fate, we must begin working on some alternative way of moving our butts from place to place. And it's not just transportation, it's our food supply. As the article says, agriculture is a huge user of oil if only because the Market Economy has resulted in most cities not having their own food production capacity, and instead relying on the ability to ship food from far remote places. How else can arctic cities have fresh fruit in the dead of winter???

It takes time to develop a new energy technology. A lot of time. Fortunately there are some alternative technologies being worked on, but they are all struggling with limited funding for research. Plus they all are suffering from a playing field shaped by market forces that are strongly favoring the entrenched fossil fuel resources.

RIGZONE - U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API

This is meant to calm us? In U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API, an economist is quoted about near term oil supply and pricing worries. Namely, the U.S. is probably getting ready to beat up on Iran like we've been doing to Iraq. As I've pointed out in numerous postings, the Project for a New American Century (and the NEOCON's in general) have had this plan since at least 1992, to reshape the Middle East beginning with Iraq and moving on to either Syria or Iran (or both), toppling governments as they go and "installing" moderate democracies in their wake.

The current tough stance against both Iran and Syria fits right into that plan, regardless of how dangerous either country really is.

But back to this nutball economist and his attempt at psychological mass influencing of opinion.

In all likelihood it will be a tight market," said John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute. "But as long as the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies," he told reporters at a briefing, "I would not expect to see shortages."

... Felmy acknowledged that Saudi Arabia, the world's only producer with significant spare capacity, would not be able to totally fill the gap should Iranian flows stop and that U.S. motorists could experience spot shortages of fuel.

... We can see occasional gas lines and spot (supply) problems like we experienced right after Hurricane Katrina if the public panics but that was a real special situation," he said.

The context is that ... assuming some significant action is taken against Iran, then we can expect an oil supply disruption. Quite possibly Iran will become unable to export oil. Oil prices have been surging the last couple weeks because of that expectation.

So, when the economist says "the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies" ... well ... let me provide an interpretation.

• It means that oil products will become scarcer ...
• hence the price will go up ...
• hence once the price goes up, people will decrease their usage ...
• then with decreased usage, the demand will fall (some) and eventually the supply/demand equation will reach some equilibrium.

He says the same thing himself, but he's pussyfooting around the effect. It means disruption to our calm lives in the U.S. It means there will be a lot of angst this year, again, just like last year, over oil, gasoline prices, and "why won't the government do something about this". Just like last year.

Why won't the government do anything about this? Well, it's because the people re-elected that sleazeball corrupt President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron. That's why.

The government isn't about to do anything about this, because the government was bought and paid for by the oil industry. That's why.

Oh, and what should the government do about it anyway? The people in their grand lunacy are buying humongous SUV's that get 10 miles/gallon when there's a tailwind. In other words, the oil demand has only been going up, and up, and up, and up. So long as the U.S. demand for oil keeps going up the problem will only get worse and worse.

The fact is the U.S. has very little oil within its own territory. That means we have to look outside the U.S. for the majority of the oil we consume (aroundd 70% of our oil comes from foreign sources). Since oil is such a crucial part of the U.S. economy (we can hardly do anything without burning some oil), the supply of oil is absolutely essential to continuing life as we know it in this country.

That means, like it or not, that the government has to go to great lengths to ensure supplies of oil. Because without the oil the country will collapse.

And what are those great lengths? Try, for starters, to consider the purpose of invading Iraq.

The reasons given by the government for the war have all been shown to be poppycock, and what's worse is it's clear they were consciously lying to us and the world as they originally told us those stories. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about evil Saddam, etc. There's lots of WMD and evil dictators in the world which the U.S. is doing nothing about. Instead Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And Iran, the next target apparently, is right up there with its own large oil reserves.

The real solution is for the U.S. to permanently decrease its oil usage. But so long as President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron are in office don't expect that kind of wisdom to escape from the mouth of government.

Instead it's up to the people to do this on our own.