U.S. GOVERNMENT DROWNED IN BATHTUB!

Nashville’s municipal elections are over, and to nobody’s surprise, there were few surprises.  All incumbents save one were handily re-elected,including Jason Holleman,  and the measure to obstruct sale of the Fairgrounds to a private developer was passed by a truly impressive margin.  There will be five runoff elections in September, with participation likely to be even lower than the 20% turnout for this election.  May I point out that instant runoff voting,” a system in which people get to indicate a second choice as well as a first, ends the expense and bother of delayed runoff elections?  Just sayin’, as they say.

The one incumbent who failed to make the cut was Anna Page, a fairgrounds privatization advocate whose district just happens to include the fairgrounds.  She lost by twelve votes to Tony Tenpenny, who opposed redeveloping the fairgrounds but is, alas, a political conservative.  It’s funny how people can be in touch with reality in some ways, and out of touch in others–and I’m sure there are people who say that about me–or worse.  But….losing by only twelve votes.  Think about that.  I’m sure Ms. Page is.

I actually voted against the Fairgrounds amendment, but only because it seemed to require that auto racing continue at the Fairgrounds. I view automobile racing as one of the many modern equivalents of gladiator sports, as well as a prodigious waste of precious fossil fuels and a nasty source of pollution, so, while I was in sympathy with the overall aim of the preservationists, I couldn’t see voting for something that dumb.  But I don’t mind a bit that the measure passed.  The will of the people–to keep public property public–prevailed, at least in this case.

Nationally, we were not so lucky.  In spite of overwhelming popular sentiment for higher taxes on both wealthy corporations and wealthy real people, and growing questions about the wisdom of massive military spending, the debt ceiling deal our so-called government agreed to is a complete reverse-Robin Hood measure that shifts even more of this country’s dwindling wealth from the poor and middle class to the obscenely wealthy.

Grover Norquist is famous for saying he wants to “shrink the government down to the point where we can drown it in the bathtub.”  Well, folks, that’s what happened, and we didn’t even have to elect a Republican President to do it.  Mr. Hope and Change wrung his hands and tsk-tsked, but ultimately did nothing to stop it, like an abused wife who doesn’t like it when her husband beats the kids, but isn’t going to call the police on him.  After all, he says he’s sorry and gives the kids candy, doesn’t he?

In fact, you might be excused for thinking that Obama, deep down, wouldn’t mind getting rid of that pesky kid known as “government spending for the public good.”  Not so long ago, he appointed a commission to review Social Security and Medicare, and even his supporters complained that it seemed strangely stacked against our country’s already tattered social safety net.

But, before we get into the messy details, let’s back up and remember that Democrats and Republicans unquestioningly raised the debt ceiling for the Cheney/Bush junta seven times during the eight years of the junta’s rule, nearly doubling US debt–which stood at just under $6 trillion when Bill Clinton left office, and had ballooned to $11.3T by the time Cheney left office.  And did the Republicans insist on “fiscal responsibility” in exchange for those raises?

No.  Cheney cut taxes (mostly on the wealthy) twice, floated an unfunded, enormously expensive subsidy to the prescription drug industry disguised as a way to help Medicare recipients buy the drugs they are told they need, and burned nearly a trillion dollars in the bonfires called Iraq and Afghanistan, fires that the Obama administration has cheerfully continued to feed with our tax dollars and loans from the Chinese.

The Nobel Committee must be wondering if they can revoke a Nobel Peace Prize.

I digress–like every other real solution to America’s problems, ending our spending on foreign military adventures is “off the table.”

Back to the debt ceiling/budget cuts question–the point is, that it was completely disingenuous, if not outright hypocritical, of the Republicans to suddenly stand up for “fiscal responsibility” around the issue of raising the debt ceiling.  It has never been tied to budget cuts before–and we’re talking 74 raises in the debt ceiling since 1962–that’s quite a precedent, so it’s no wonder  many of Obama’s liberal supporters were flabbergasted when he failed to challenge the Republicans on this, and instead played right into their hands.  You start to suspect he’s secretly one of them.

Look at his record.  He didn’t prosecute anybody on Wall Street for the crash–in fact, the Wall Street firms that triggered the crash are among his strongest supporters, and their executives became his closest advisers.  By contrast,  when the Savings and Loan bubble burst twenty years ago, thousands of bankers went to jail, over a financial peccadillo that was a fraction the size of the 2008 mess–$160 billion for the S&L’s,  $7.7 trillion for the subprime bubble.  Do the math–the 2008 crash was 48 times bigger than the S&L crash, and nobody went to jail.   Can’t say the bankers didn’t learn a thing or two in twenty years!  To cap it off, not only did Obama continue Bush’s policy of bailouts for the Wall Street firms who milked the economy, his program to help individuals who were losing their homes because they had been suckered into unrepayable mortgages turned out to be a useless piece of window dressing.

There’s the war crimes issue.  Obama not only took a pass on prosecuting Bush officials for atrocities they were clearly responsible for under international law, he continued and expanded those policies, including the assassination of American citizens who might be terrorists–but only ones who are out of the country, so far, so far as we know-.  What part of “innocent until proven guilty” and “right to a fair trial” does our government not understand?

When Bradley Manning tried to blow the whistle on our government’s criminal behavior, the Obama administration just put him in jail and tortured him.   Trial?  Manana.  What part of “a right to a speedy trial” does our government not understand?   And of course, Manning is only one of many who have been persecuted by this “hope and change” guy for the thoughtcrime of hoping to change questionable government behavior.

But it’s not like Obama has changed.  In one of his first Senate speeches, on the question of whether to investigate voting irregularities in Ohio that cost John Kerry the election, Obama asserted that he believed Bush had won the election fair and square and there was no need for the Senate to look into the matter, thus stiffing the Congressional Black Caucus.  That should have been enough to sink him right there, but no……

Obama wasted no time in putting GMO-pusher Monsatan–excuse me, Monsanto–in charge of the nation’s food supply by appointing Monsanto shill Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture.  Again, a totally Republican move–let the corporations run the government–”what’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”  Right.  But gee, Michelle has an organic garden at the White House–say it again, boys and girls:  “Window dressing.”

Our increasingly erratic climate is another crucial issue on which Obama’s approach has been to continue Republican policy, but with a kinder, gentler spin.  In spite of the Deepwater Horizon mess, his administration has approved the even more dangerous step of offshore drilling north of Alaska. In spite of Fukushima (not to mention Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island!), he remains committed to serious expansion of nuclear power.  After acting like he was going to slow down coal mining, which every responsible environmental scientist agrees needs to happen to keep the planet from going completely haywire, his administration has kept on approving mountain top removal mining, just like Bush (and Clinton) before him.  At Copenhagen, according to Albert Bates, who was there, Obama sabotaged the possibility of a real agreement and spun it like he had accomplished something.  This stands in sharp contrast to the Cheney-Bush approach, of course–they just sneered and hoisted the bird.  Some people loved it and some people hated it–but you know, the same is true of the public’s reaction to Obama–it’s just that the demographics of the lovers and haters has flipped.

It’s ironic–Obama is giving the Republicans everything they want, but can’t get when they’re in power.  Well, OK, abortion is still relatively legal and they said they weren’t going to defend the Defense of (Heterosexual-exclusive) Marriage Act–but ultimately, that’s just more window-dressing–and besides, they’re deporting  an Australian man who’s legally married to another man and citing DOMA as the reason.  Oh gee, they’ve declared that health insurance has to cover women’s’ birth control?  Great, if you can afford insurance–and, by the way, another subsidy for the pill-pushers.

Let’s take a music break–here’s a little James McMurtry for ya…a song called “God Bless America.”

So, the Republicans are on a roll.  They’re going to make sure that we don’t levy any taxes on wealthy Americans, whom they have renamed “job creators,” even though these so-called “job creators” haven’t created any jobs to speak of, lately, and in fact have been abolishing every American job they can possibly outsource for the last twenty-five years.  Rich people are “job creators”?  Can you say “big lie,” boys and girls?  How about “doublespeak”?

And reducing the debt by reducing taxes is another kind of double speak–the rate at which the government taxes the wealthy and big corporations has effectively declined by two-thirds over the last fifty years. Instead of raising money from taxation, the government generates income by selling treasury bonds, often to the rich people it used to tax.  This has the effect of reversing the cash flow–instead of corporate/high earner taxes going to help fund government operations, taxes from the middle class go to pay off the government’s debt to the wealthy.  In other words,cutting taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans drives the government deeper into debt–debt that will have to be paid off by the middle class, under the tax regime that has been imposed on us.

The Republicans have made it clear, and the Obama administration has pretty much agreed, that cuts to the military portion of our budget–which is about half of it–are off the table.  But, somehow, in spite of the fact that it’s supposed to be funded independently of the main part of the government’s budget, Social Security is on the table.  Services offered by Medicare and Medicaid are likely to be cut–without any attempt to limit the profits of the pharmaceutical and illness care industries, even though that’s a major factor in increased medical costs.  The Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Education, and all Health and Human Services programs will likely be given a serious trimming.  Bottom line:  if you’re poor or middle class, and need help, there’s going to be a lot less help available–medically, educationally, and environmentally.

I have often been, and continue to be, sharply critical of the conduct of many of these government agencies.  They tend to be corporate-friendly, heavy-handed, and resistant to radical innovation–but they need to be reformed, not abolished or hamstrung.  Simply shutting them down will result in a tidal wave of corporate abuse of the environment, shoddy treatment of American citizens–the latest food contamination news is that Cargill has had to recall 36 million pounds of ground turkey, while the FDA was busy sending in armed storm troopers to arrest the head of a small raw-food co-op whose products hadn’t made anyone sick.  In a better world, it would be the head of Cargill who was getting perp-walked, and those who wish to produce or drink raw milk would be free to do so without fear of arrest.  And, of course, in an even better world, there would be no Cargill and we would all live within a few miles of a producing dairy cow and some free-range turkeys.  But we’re not there yet.  I hope I live to see the day!

That last paragraph reminds me of one of my pet peeves–the fact that Americans are far more often referred to as “consumers” than as “citizens.”  We need to change that meme.  “Consumers” implies a level of passivity–a “consumer” brings to mind the image of an overgrown baby suckling at a corporate bottle.  (Corporate persons do not have teats, after all!) and periodically needing to have its poop taken care of.  “Citizens,” on the other hand, participate actively in civic life, take care of their own poop and take care not to take any poop from the government OR private industry.  I would have a lot less problem with the Tea Party if they were as hard on corporations as they are on the government.  But, at this point, the Tea Party is a puppet of corporations who want to use populist outrage to smash the only thing standing in the way of corporate domination of America.  Barack Obama, alas, is not enough of a David to stand up to this Goliath.

And that gets us back to–what can we do about the orgy of destruction that the Republicans and their Democrat enablers have unleashed on the country?  One thing we can do is to challenge it, every step of the way–politically, legally, and by where we spend our money and how we spend our time.

Politically, there has been a noticeable uptick in interest in the Green Party, as the illusion of difference between Democrats and Republicans becomes plainer to more people.  Legally, the situation is somewhat daunting, due to Democratic complicity in the Republicans’ appointment of outright fascists to the courts and the Republicans’ unhesitating blockage of any even slightly-liberal-leaning Democrats to those positions, but some legal redress of grievances is still possible.

We need to remember the example of Vaclav Havel, who started out as a beatnik-hippie poet, courageously defending his right to own Velvet Underground records and publish weird poetry against the Monolithic, All-Powerful, Communist State, and, who, over the course of twenty years, sparked a revolutionary change in the outlook of the people of the former Communist bloc that ultimately toppled a once-monolithic, all-powerful state.  If they could do it, so can we.

At the personal level, the level of our own time and our own money, it’s important to cultivate skills of self-reliance, to simplify our lives, and help our friends do the same.  Everybody has different innate talents and developed skills, and, just as “it takes a village to raise a child,” it takes a couple of hundred real, live, fully-present people to make a village.  That looks to me like where we’re headed.  I’m not sure how we’ll get there.  But that’s what makes life interesting, isn’t it?

music:  Velvet Underground, “White Light/White Heat”

A WAKE-UP CALL

There was no earthquake.  There was no tornado.  There was no hurricane boiling up from the Gulf.  And Wolf Creek Dam didn’t even break.  It was just, as the Army Corps of Engineers put it, “a thousand-year flood.”

And suddenly, life came to a screeching, splashing halt here in middle Tennessee.  Interstate highways were closed and impassible.  The electricity went out over large parts of town.  There was no way to pump gasoline, if you could get anywhere, and grocery stores, their freezers, coolers, and cash registers disabled, closed down as tons of food. albeit only a three-day supply for the city,  spoiled.  Rising waters overwhelmed one of the city’s water treatment plants and came within a foot of flooding the other before starting to recede.

Up where I live, we were lucky.  Our homestead is at the head of a hollow, so although on Saturday and Sunday  we had a whitewater stream rushing down the dirt road that leads up our hill, damaging the road and washing away material we had stockpiled to expand our garden, the water quickly moved on and we have only had to deal witht the relative inconveniences of a 14-hour electrical outage and an intermittent supply of city tap water.

Things have been much more dire elsewhere.  Just a mile downstream from us, White’s Creek has expanded across its floodplain, inundating houses.  Here’s a quote from a friend who lives along the Harpeth:

Beth and I just got back from a 2 hour canoe ride to assess the damage to our place and to the neighbors…Hundreds of our neighbors no longer have houses to come home to. We paddled across the big lake to Beech Bend Subdivision where every house was at least partly submerged along with their cars and trucks. The Harpeth was taking the shortest route by cutting off Beech Bend and running a strong current right through the yards and houses. People had to wade quickly out and had no time to gather anything. We ferried a man back to his house from the shore so he could get his skidoo out of the garage. It barely fit between the water and the top of the door. You could hear the sound of a broken water main inside. He tried to wade  through the house in chest deep water to retrieve his wallet but said his bed was pinned against the ceiling and he couldn’t get to it. A National Guard helicopter was buzzing us, probably thinking we were looters, but they didn’t shoot. A cop back on the shore said that a kayak had just flipped over a few blocks away and the people had to be rescued. He said we had better leave quickly or the authorities would probably not let us get back out. So we stroked hard for home, the current strong between every house.

Except for the fact that the authorities didn’t shoot (hey, my friends are white!), it sounds like New Orleans, doesn’t it?

As an aside, I think the May family should be very grateful that they were stopped from building Maytown, because this flood would have washed it all away.  How ’bout it, Jack?  But, I digress…..

Cassandras like me and Albert Bates (Albert much more emphatically than I, to be sure) have been warning local governments for years that we are woefully unprepared for disaster.  Our police, fire departments, and hospitals have little or nothing in the way of long-term backup for motor fuel or electricity.  Maybe this brief, but dramatic interlude will bring official Nashville to its senses.

The IPCC has warned that one consequence of global warming will be more intense storms, and more of them.  What just happened in Nashville has been termed “a thousand-year storm,” but I have an uneasy feeling that we will see its equal, or worse, a lot sooner than the thirty-first century, quite possibly in the next decade or two.  Maybe even next year.

My eighty-year old neighbor, who has lived in this hollow just about all her life, said she had never seen it rain like that before.  “Is God punishing us for being bad?” she asked my wife.   I would have to say it’s not some God out there that’s punishing us, but this is a fate we are bringing on ourselves.  Can we wake up enough to stop before it’s too late?  Or is it too late already?

music:  The Band, “Look Out Cleveland“

METRO COUNCIL SHOOTS DOWN CHICKENS

After the high-stakes drama of the Bell’s Bend hearings,the Planning Commission meeting about the proposed chicken ordinance earlier this month was practically a love feast.  Hardly anybody, it seems, had a bad word to say about the birds.  One commissioner reminisced about turning his no-longer baby duck loose in Shelby Park.   Andrea LeQuire enthused about chicken tractors she had seen while visiting west coast urban gardens.  Citizens came forward to testify that hens are so quiet that they had had chickens for years and their neighbors only found out when they offered to share surplus eggs with them.   Sure, Jason Holleman’s bill, based on a Cleveland ordinance,  needed a few adjustments–as another commissioner pointed out, “six quail is not a lot of quail, but six turkeys is a lot of turkeys.” Regulations about the minimum size of the home site that can have chickens, the maximum number of birds allowed, and coop placement might need a little adjustment, but nothing too difficult.

Besides, Metro Council generally passes anything the Planning Commission recommends, right?

Councilman Holleman, in a phone interview, told me he had consulted with Councilman Paul Burch, who, along with Councilman Jim Gotto, was sponsoring a bill to completely ban chickens in the Urban Services District (anyplace your garbage gets picked up by the city, basically), and that it had seemed that Burch and Gotto would go along with a bill that simply set strict limits on domestic fowl.  Much to his surprise, Burch and Gotto did not vote for Holleman’s bill, and it was defeated, 15-20, setting the stage for the Gotto-Burch bill to be voted on at the next Metro Council Meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 15.

It seems to me the Council is “straining at gnats and swallowing camels” here–making trivial, hard-to-enforce rules instead of dealing with the many serious issues that face our city–and one of those issues is our lack of a viable local food supply.  If Burch-Gotto passes, it will constitute a giant step backwards.  A whole lot of otherwise law-abiding citizens will become outlaws, and even more law-abiding citizens will be prevented from doing something to feed themselves.  In fact, we can now say,

“IF CHICKENS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE CHICKENS!”

Please join me in contacting Metro Council and urging the defeat of the Burch-Gotto  chicken ban (which is up for consideration this Tuesday, Sept. 15, at 6:30 PM!) and a reconsideration of the urban bird issue.  You can find Metro Council contact info online at http://www.nashville.gov/council/feedback.aspx

Here’s my letter:

I am extremely disappointed that Metro Council defeated a bill that would have legalized and regulated the keeping of small fowl in the Urban Services District.  I hope you do not go on to pass the Burch-Gotto bill which will create an outright ban on keeping birds in the USD.

Such a move would create a problem where none exists.  There is no history of complaints about chickens; in fact, many urban chicken-keepers have already testified that their neighbors only learned of their birds when they were told, and had not noticed any noise or smell coming from them.  Are we going to have a “chicken hot line” where people can turn in their neighbors for unauthorized fowl activity?   There’s a word for that, and it starts with “chicken” and ends with —t.  Are we really going to send codes or the police around to bust people for keeping chickens?   I think both city departments–not to mention Metro Council–have much more serious things to deal with.

I hope you will vote against the Burch-Gotto chicken ban and move to reconsider the Holleman-LaLonde proposal.  Please let me know your thoughts on this matter.

Sincerely yours,

Martin Holsinger

to be continued….

music:  Rufus Thomas, “Funky Chicken“

NASHBUCKS AND A WHOLE LOT MORE

I’m sorry I missed the chance to report first hand on Metro Council shooting down the chicken proposal, but at least I had a good excuse.  I was working on another front to create a saner future here in Nashville.   Something almost as basic as local food–local money.  Hey, food will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no food, y’know?

In case you haven’t been following the story (and the mainstream media don’t want anybody following it, believe me), the US dollar is rapidly being turned into funny money.  That’s another story, and I’m going to talk about it a little later in the show, but right now, let’s talk about a different problem with money:  how come there’s plenty of it to keep bankers living in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, but it’s hard to find financing for community gardens, small-scale home improvements/alternate energy conversions, environmental improvements and cleanups, neighborhood businesses, and other projects that would actually make the daily lives of us common folk a little easier?

This has to do with the circulation of currency in a community.  If the only places you can spend money are chain stores, then what happens to your money is that, after the employees are paid (as little as possible, in most cases), the rest of the money goes to those who produced the goods (usually China, these days) and then what’s left goes to the stockholders of the company, who are mostly located elsewhere, too, even if it’s not so far afield as China.  In this model, currency doesn’t really circulate so much as it gets sucked out of circulation.  And OK, a little bit of it does trickle back down, but most of it gets sucked up.  The income and assets of the wealthiest 5% of Americans has been growing, even as the economy tanks.

On the other hand, locally owned businesses do not ship as much money as possible out of their communities.  This enables more money to circulate locally–and the more times money circulates through a community, the more work it does, which translates out to more happening in the community–not just more commerce, but more community.  Unfortunately, big companies and their so-called “economies of scale” have played havoc with locally-owned business.  I have seen the devastation that Walmart, for example, brings to small towns.  Those “low, low prices” turn out to be very expensive in the greater scheme of things–but that’s “an externality” for Walmart, or any other big company.  The damage they do in the communities where they impose themselves is not their problem.  By law, they are supposed to suck up all the money they possibly can and give as much of it as they possibly can to their stockholders.

So, what can we do about this sucky situation?

One of my teachers used to like to point out that most human attention is devoted to sex, food, and money, and that straightening out our relationships with these core concerns is essential to societal, as well as personal, transformation.  We have had a sexual revolution going on for several decades now, with some success,  and the local food movement is on the way to changing how and what we eat.  Local currency opens up the third, stabilizing leg of a saner society:  it begins to change the way we treat money, labor, investment, and, ultimately, the whole environment.

That’s a tall order.  Practically speaking, what can we, here in Nashville, start to do?

The folks at the Common Good Bank, based in Massachusetts, have done their best to come up with a good business model for creating a local currency.  Rick DeVoe and Susan Shann are bringing this movement to Nashville,  looking for 50 depositors, a store willing to act as an ATM, and five–only five! local merchants who will accept what is tentatively being called “Nashbucks” here in Davidson County.  From this humble beginning, they believe they can create a combination credit union/bank that will use its assets to invest in community projects and dedicate any profits it generates to benefit local non-profits.   The bank will be run democratically, with all depositors having a say in investment and policy decisions.

What does “local currency” have to do with this?  Well, first of all, by definition, it stays in the community.  “Money” is a form of energy.  Energy that stays in the community…energizes the community.  Second, it can be created locally in response to local needs.  The fact that banks can loan ten dollars for every dollar of deposits they have can be used to blow real estate bubbles, or it can be used to create viable local communities. Again, “money” that is local, rather than national, legal tender will tend to stay local.  By definition, it can’t be sucked into the multinational vortex.

William Spademan, who started Common Good Bank (which is applying for, but has yet to be granted, a bank charter)  likes to say that Common Good is “a social mission with a bank” rather than “a bank with a social mission,” and his terminology and long range vision confirm that.  On the “vision” page of Commongood’s website, Spademan offers the following:

For many of us, life is very good. Still, we share a vision for a better world:

a world where everyone is guaranteed adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, and fulfilling work;

a world where land, air, water, the beauty of nature and the wealth we have created are protected and used carefully for our common good;

a world where community and cooperation are at the center of our lives, where we care about and take care of each and every one of us, delighting in our diversity;

a world where decisions are made by everyone, for everyone’s benefit;

a world without pollution, weapons, injustice, poverty, disease, misery, obscene consumption, corrupt governments and unrestrained corporations;

a world at peace.

Our current economic system works against that vision, benefiting some people while leaving others miserable and desperate. Common good banks are a way to achieve our shared vision a little bit at a time, but very quickly, with immediate benefits for everyone, starting right here, right now.

Statements like that are straight out of the Green Party’s vision.  And that’s the thing about the Green Party vision:  it’s not copyrighted, or patented, and it couldn’t be, because it’s what everybody wants in their heart of hearts.  It’s just going to crop up everywhere, like new grass in the Spring.

Our local group, “The Fellowship of the Commons,” has created a new word:  “integritism.”  Here’s their definition:

integritism – [1] a political philosophy advocating individual integrity in the public sphere and a direct, participatory and inclusive form of democracy [2] collective efforts to convey the commons in a whole and unimpaired condition to future generations.

Again, this new word, “integritism,” resonates strongly with me.  “Integrity”  beats “the audacity of hope” and “change you can believe in” in my book.  The “hope and change” guy has been sadly lacking in integrity, from  backing the Bush bailout to backing down on single-payer health care to  backstabbing Van Jones.   Oh, well Van, friends like that you don’t need.  But I digress….

On a page entitled “Spirit and Covenants,”  (not words commonly associated with banking!) they explain their name thus:

We call ourselves a “Fellowship” because we are doing something unique for a political organization. To us, this isn’t just a campaign of like-minded individuals who agree on an agenda. We are asking something more because something more is needed. A fellowship has an added sense of belonging and camaraderie that also suggests a higher order of commitment and obligation. This is reflected in our determination to rise above the usual machinations and manipulations we’ve all come to expect from politics. We will do this by rebuilding trust, from within and without, one person at a time.

“One person at a time”….something I’ve been saying on this show for years.   It’s so gratifying to meet somebody else who has independently grasped the same truth…but wait, there’s more…just as they have defined “fellowship” in ringing terms, so do they define “commons“:

The Commons courses through us and around us, to us from the past and from us to the future. It is a gift from the universe meant to be universal; bequeathed to us by billions of years of extraordinary cosmic and biological evolution, as well as thousands of years of individual and concerted human enterprise. It is precious in its most minute expressions and awesome in its majesty. Each and every manifestation, writ large or small, has not only value by its usefulness, but more importantly, if part of nature, an inherent worth and right to exist without being interfered with, a freedom to be and to become.

We speak of the air, of the water, of the soil, and we speak of language itself. Mathematics and medicine; mice, music and e-mail; the carbon cycle and the bicycle; eco-systems and systems of justice; democracy; photographs and photosynthesis; footballs, philosophy, farmers’ markets, stock markets; hardwoods and hard-drives; wheels and whales. We did not earn these things, we inherited them. Taken together they constitute a wealth immeasurable.

What we must understand and take the measure of is ourselves, if we are to convey the Commons forward to the generations that follow, relatively intact. So much life and possibility has been damaged already by ignorance, greed and shortsightedness, and much more is threatened. The critical institutions of man, of which we all share ownership and stewardship duties, are not responding to the deepening crises enveloping both people and the natural world – they must be rethought and reformed. We have right now an unprecedented responsibility, unasked of generations past.

Some things we own individually, as it should be, but the greatest of things, these things described here as part of our Commons, belong to all of humanity. We are not only owners of these treasures but also their trustees; and not only to our children and their children, but to all the myriad forms of life that now depend on our good judgment and good deeds, many for their very survival.

Their proposal for actually accomplishing this is to establish boards of trustees for the various divisions of the natural world that are our common wealth–the air, the water, the earth, the trees, and to empower these trustees to safeguard the integrity of what we so egocentrically refer to as “resources.”  Well, I don’t share the optimism that leads them to posit that kind of governance–I think nature is going to take us down a few pegs over the next several decades and centuries, down to the place where potential human interference with the climate will once again be puny.  Honestly, though, I’d rather be wrong about that, and if I am, if we succeed in maintaining a cohesive global culture through the changes that are hitting us, having somebody be the Lorax and speak for the trees is a damn good idea.  And if we get whittled back down to walking distance-sized political units again, it’s still a damn good idea.

I’m not sure I’ve made the case for why locally-issued currency is an important part of this economic revolution, but I suspect that local currency, like sex and certain visionary substances, makes much more sense in the experience than in the logical explanation.  Check out smallisbeautiful.org and www.berkshares.org for words on this from those who are experienced.

Meanwhile, here and now in Nashville, Rick and Susan are looking for fifty people and five stores–a small beginning, indeed, for the task that “The Fellowship of the Commons” has set out to achieve is every bit as daunting in its own, real-life way as the mission of the “Fellowship of the Ring” whose name it strangely echoes.   But I think it is important to  start small at the same time as we aim high, because small is the sane way to start–you and me, one on one–we have had too much “bigness” in our culture, and we  are all poorer and more alienated for it.  If you want to keep up with–and join in–this effort here in Nashville, check out http://fellowshipofthecommons.org/ I can tell you right now that the next meeting is at Richland Library, on Charlotte Ave., Tuesday Sept. 15 from 6 to 8 PM.  The next economy won’t come into existence without you and me making it happen.  Here’s a place to start.

music:  John Lennon, “Power to the People”

MAYBETOWN CENTER, R.I.P.?

Was there any one argument that tipped the balance for the Planning Commission?  There were so many good ones.  Call it “a death of a thousand cuts.”

At the June 25th Planning Commission meeting, witness after witness stood to give a different reason why Maytown is a bad idea.

Councilwoman Megan Barry pointed out that including Maytown Center in the neighborhood plan, at the developer’s behest, after a long series of open meetings spent developing a holistic, rural vision for Bell’s Bend, was a violation of the community’s good faith and trust and would seriously damage the Commission’s credibility when it came to working up other neighborhood plans.

Councilman Frank Harrison expressed concern that the infrastructure development involved would take Metro’s energy away from existing priorities at a time when money is tight.

Councilman Eric Cole cited the “great degree of risk” involved in the plan, pointing out that

“if it fails it leaves behind a string of massive infrastructure ‘improvements’ that benefit nobody—it will scar the landscape and we will pay the consequences for generations.”

Councilman Jason Holleman echoed Eric Cole’s concerns and elaborated on them, arguing that the real cost to the city had not been determined and that there were “too many unresolved puzzle pieces,” such as how much road widening, how many homes and businesses would need to be taken by eminent domain?  How much would all that cost?  And, of course, how would the cash-strapped city pay for it, with Maytown’s promised boost to the city’s revenues not coming for fifteen or twenty years?

Councilman Lonnell Matthews argued ineptly for the plan, drawing laughter when he insisted, “We have to put the cart before the horse.”  Oops.  About all he or the others who would later speak out for it could say was that it was “bold” and would “provide jobs.”  This seems to me to be a kind of wishful hoping for a return to the bubble economy, when we could borrow money to pay people to build things and call it economic growth.  Those days are very, very over, even if a lot of people haven’t realized it yet.  Denial…hopefully, it’s the first stage in a journey of acceptance, and not a permanent state of psychosis….but I digress.

Tony G and Melvin Johnson did a pro-Maytown presentation, waving all the tired buzzwords of jobs and growth as if it were still 2007, and then it was time for the opposition to make more points.

David Briley led off.  joking that there are so many unknowns involved in the project that perhaps we should call it “Maybetown Center.”  He noted that there were only two corporate relocations in the whole country last year, that the developer of Cool Springs, often cited as the example Maytown is following, is in bankruptcy, and that neither the state economic development people nor the mayor had endorsed the project.  “Nobody from the city is here to say ‘this makes sense’, ” he pointed out.

Urban planner David Eisenstadt said that the “benefits” of Maytown were “highly speculative,” and that the numbers presented to the planning commission in a University of Tennessee study  were based on the developer’s figures, not on independent numbers, and were inconsistent with the city’s actual real estate market, business cycle, and population settlement patterns.

Kay Swartz identified herself as “a career aviator” and pointed out that Maytown would be directly in the approach pattern for Tune airport, which would create a hazard for approaching aircraft, noise complaints for Maytown residents, and necessitate special urban-area training for all pilots who use Tune, which is Nashville’s preferred private aviation hub because it can be approached without flying over any urban areas.  The image of an airplane crashing into one of the highrises  was, if unmentioned, on everybody’s mind.   “If Maytown were already built, would you locate an airport where Tune is?” she concluded.  Implication:  no.

Several residents of neighborhoods on the south bank of the Cumberland talked about the negative impact the proposal would have where they live, and complained that the Planning Commission had apparently held up approval of their neighborhood plans in order to improve Maytown’s chances  “because if our area plans were in place, this proposal would never go through.”  More eroded credibility.

Robert Brant of the Metro Parks and Greenways Commission decried the proposed four-lane road through Bell’s Bend Park, saying that Planning Commission head Rick Bernhardt had assured him that there would be no road through the Park…still more eroded credibility.

A realtor pointed out that the cost of doing business in Maytown was going to be high enough to make it noncompetitive–that two major projects in downtown Nashville had recently gone into receivership, and that,  in spite of cutting prices from $32 to $22 per square foot, there’s still a lot of empty space in the new Pinnacle Building, while the cost of office space in Maytown was projected at between $30-$40 per square foot.  The high cost of the May property came back to bite them again later, when Sumter Camp addressed the fear that rejection of Maytown would lead to 500 tract homes being built instead by doing the math and pointing out that the land cost to the Mays  (around $14K per acre) virtually insured that they could not build competitively priced tract homes at the tip of Bell’s Bend, miles from gas stations and food stores–even if there were still a market for tract homes, which there isn’t.

A number of TSU alumni had spoken in favor of the project, due to the carrot offered to the school in exchange for support, but one alum broke ranks to observe that, no matter what the developer was promising, once the zoning changes had been made, there would be no way to enforce the “agreements” that had been made.

And so, one nail after another was driven into Maytown’s coffin.  I left as the hour got late, but I am sure someone parsed Maytown’s claim that they would “preserve” 900 acres, noting that that 900 acre figure included up to

6 “estate homes,” each on 5 acres.

227 acres of corporate campuses.

103 acres of “ball fields, tennis courts or other similar recreational amenities” and “future schools, churches, fire stations and similar uses.”

200 acres of floodplain for the TSU agricultural center

In addition, a certain part will be reserved for a “future marina and related development.”

If you do the math, that list adds up to about 600 of those 900 “preserved” acres, and a chunk of the remaining 300 is under a power line.  What was I saying about trust, credibility, and promises?

Well, the upshot of it all was that the Planning Commission voted 5-4 not to approve Maytown, “because it is not in accordance with the Area Plan,” which was a diplomatic way not to call Tony G. and Jack May a couple of shameless hucksters.  At Metro Council last night, it all ended “not with a bang, but a whimper,” as Lonnell Matthews asked for the proposal to be “indefinitely deferred.”  As the economy worsens, the likelihood of resurrection diminishes.  I think we can all breathe a big sigh of relief.

Well, them’s the facts.  Rural preservationists take on developers and send ‘em packing.  Hallelujah, a happy ending! But–what’s my “deep green perspective” on the whole affair?

This was a classic case of the craziness that ensues from adherence to the twin legal fictions of “land ownership” and “profit.”  These are concepts that we take for granted, hardly realizing the depth and complexity of the problems they have engendered in our society.  I think they are a form of mental illness that we need to cure ourselves of, individually and collectively–individually through personal reflection and reconditioning, and collectively by revising our laws to end these impositions on the planet and our fellow humans.

We live in a radical fundamentalist materialist society in which no thing is sacred–not the air we breathe or the water we drink, not the land we walk on or the voluptuous curves of a young woman’s body or the perspective that comes with advancing age.  The abstraction of financial profit is the only sacred point in our culture, and all must give way to an individual’s right to financial gain.  Everything must be monetized in the cultural and legal web we have woven for ourselves–land, education, food, child care, sex and any other simple pleasure you can think of, have no “value” unless they are monetized, commercialized, and turned into tawdry imitations of their true, free selves.

Thus, our culture views “undeveloped”  land as a blank slate, valuable only for its ability to be turned into something else for the benefit of its human owners.  In this view,he deer, foxes, bald eagles, herons, field mice, fence lizards and lillies of the field who inhabit “undeveloped” land have no legal rights, no claim of ownership, no “right to life,” to steal a phrase from our so-called “fundamentalist” Christian bretheren.

And so the vote against Maytown Center was not so much a victory for those of us who fought against it (and Maytown proponents were correct in observing that most of us don’t live on Bell’s Bend) as it was a victory for the natural world, a victory for the right of the trees to be left alone.

I don’t want to get my hopes up too far–but maybe, just maybe, Maytown Center was the Pickett’s charge of radical fundamentalist materialism.  Maybe, just maybe, this was a turning point.  Maybe, just maybe, we have crossed the pass and are beginning our gentle descent into a saner future.  May it be so.

Maybetown Center, R.I.P.–but I will keep watch on your grave to make sure you stay dead.

music:  David Rovics, “The Commons“

TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

(note: I have sent this letter to Mayor Dean, Megan Barry, Diane Neighbors, Jerry Maynard, Emily Evans, and Jason Holleman, and I will post their replies as they come in and make this a basis for a story on my July radio show.)

Dear

We live on the northwest side of Nashville. It gets pretty dark here at night, and when we look to the north or west we can actually see quite a few stars. My wife and I really enjoy this.

Recently, while driving on nearby Briley Parkway, I noticed that streetlights are being installed. I had no idea this was happening and would certainly have done my best to nip it in the bud if anybody had informed me, but the erection of the poles was the first notice I had–I had seen crews installing wire earlier, but didn’t grasp what it was for.

I am not happy about this for aesthetic reasons–it will erode our view of the stars–but it galls me for practical ones as well. There are streetlights all along Ashland City Highway, Clarksville Pike, and White’s Creek Pike, but there is almost no traffic on these roads, and very little late night traffic on Briley Parkway, either. At a time when the city’s budget is stretched to the breaking point, when we are considering closing Metro General Hospital and other vital services in the city’s social safety net, why are we spending who knows how much money lighting empty roads, and now, on Briley Parkway, spending even more to light yet another empty road?

Our tax bill is one of our biggest expenses–we pay more in property taxes than we spend on our electric bill over the course of a year, and I do not appreciate seeing our money wasted in this way, especially “in light” of the communication I recently received from the Mayor’s office, urging me to sign a pledge to conserve electricity, among other things. If the city wants us to be frugal, why doesn’t it set an example instead of being profligate?

There are larger issues involved, too–the electrical generation that keeps those lights burning contributes to global warming, as well as air pollution here in Nashville ( As I understand it, the coal-burning plants that supply most of our electricity are upwind from Nashville on the Tennessee River.), and I also think we are probably very near the end of the era of private automobiles, and should not be doing things to further accommodate and encourage them. Most people, unfortunately, are pretty ignorant of these possibilities, but I am mentioning them to you because I think you have some understanding of what’s going on. For short-term political purposes, the economic argument will have to suffice.

So, what can be done? Is there a way that we, as a city, can do what our parents tried to train us to do and turn the lights off when everybody leaves the room? I have wondered if it would be possible to install some kind of motion sensors on streetlights, so they would only light up if a vehicle was approaching, but a friend tells me that the kind of lamps used for street lighting do not lend themselves to being turned off and on a lot.

As an aside, maybe the city could require or encourage motion sensors on “security lights.” If they only came on when triggered, that would actually add to the security they offer, save a lot of electricity, and cut down the night-time glare that blinds us to the stars. Another possibility would be to follow the same protocol with streetlights in low traffic areas that the city uses with low-demand traffic lights. Just as these traffic lights turn into blinking caution/stop lights between 11PM and 6AM, maybe we could turn these underutilized streetlights off during those same hours. This is a compromise for me, but it might make sense to enough people to get some traction as a proposal.

Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely yours

P.S. Full disclosure–As you may be aware, I have a radio show and blog, and write for the Nashville Free Press. I am planning on posting your response on my blog, and possibly using it in my radio show and NFP column, so if there is anything you would like to tell me “off the record,” please indicate that clearly and I will respect your wishes.

It has now been nearly a month since I sent this letter, and I must say I am disappointed to have received only one reply, from my own councilman, Lonnell Matthews, who said

I understand your concern, and I am not going to pretend to be an engineer in my response. I would like to preface my statement by saying that three of the routes; Ashland City Hwy., Clarksville Hwy., and Briley Pky.; that you have mentioned are state routes and they have the jurisdiction over any work or improvements completed on this route. I would encourage you to contact your state representative with your concerns. I will guess that the installation of lights are a preventive measure, to avoid any accident that could occur due to limited vision on Briley Pky. I will forward your concerns to Representative Gilmore and Senator Harper.

Need I add that I have not heard from them, either? But I did call TDOT, and found out that the streetlights in question are not their responsibility, but the city’s, and also that one of my surmises was wrong, in a good news/bad news kind of way: the posts on Briley Parkway will not hold streetlights, but surveillance cameras.  No, Briley Parkway is not a hotbed of terrorism or crime. It’s part of the “Smartway” program, which is responsible for those lighted signs on the road that tell you how badly the traffic ahead is snarled. Cost? According to TDOT’s website,

The yearly cost to operate an urban system is about $1.3 million annually. In contrast to building a roadway, deployment of TDOT SmartWay costs about $500,000 per mile compared to $2.5 million per mile to build a single lane of new roadway.

So it’s just chump change, really, and TDOT sez it is “not used to catch speeders,” so there. Just five hundred grand per mile, just a mil and a third a year to run it. As if we are all going to be driving cars forever. The kind of thing our kids will look at in thirty years and say, angrily, if not hungrily, “You did WHAT with your money and energy?!”

My inquiry on streetlights and security lights led me to an engineer for Nashville Electric Service, who informed me that there are 65,000 security lights in Nashville and 110,000 streetlights. They are mandated on all streets in the urban services district, and are installed by petition (and paid for by the petitioners) in outlying parts of the county.  Who decided to put the lights on the highways in my neighborhood?  Who pays for them?  I’m guessing it’s the city, not the neighborhood, although, given how common it is for people to be afraid of the dark, I’m sure there was general approval of the installation.

I had a lengthy phone conversation with another  NES engineer,  Nick Thompson, who gave me precise financial and electrical numbers for Nashville’s streetlights, but the numbers I will be using for security lights are somewhat conjectural.

Security lights come in wattages from 100 to 1,000, and in sodium and metal halide bulbs. The average size for them is about 340 watts. The cost averages sixteen dollars per month per light, which multiplies out to a million bucks a month, twelve million a year.

Total annual draw for street lights is 45 megawatts, which, divided by the number of street lights, 110,000, yields an average of slightly over 400 watts per light, which just happens to be the size streetlight found on the empty, rural roads around here that first aroused my curiosity.  These lights, Nick informed me, cost $10.63 per month to operate, which is within a dollar of (and slightly higher than) my ballpark estimate of $10 per month per light.  I feel proud of myself.  Nick also told me that Nashville spends a total of about $250,000 a month to keep them on.  Full disclosure:  I over-estimated that number by a factor of four.

And my original question, the cost of rural streetlights on empty highways?  Rural streetlight density is twenty-five per mile.  That totals approximately two hundred and fifty dollars per mile per month, three thousand dollars per mile per year.  For the three roads I mentioned in my letter, which total about twenty miles of right-of-way, the bill would then run to about sixty thousand dollars a year.  Not much money in the greater scheme of things, I admit, but more money than I’ve ever earned in a year by a factor of about three.

Now, follow me through a little more math. The lights we are discussing burn an average of twelve hours a day, from dark ’till dawn, so I estimate that our sixty-five thousand security lights require approximately eleven megawatts of electricity per year, while our city’s hundred and ten thousand streetlights, according to Nick, pull forty-five megawatts. So that’s a total of about fifty-five megawatts–only a drop in the bucket, really, when you consider that Nashville burned through nearly thirteen million megawatts of electricity last year.  Compared to that,  what does the energy for those miles of streetlights burning all night on empty roads amount to?  Peanuts! What’s my problem?

“A million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” Everett Dirksen is reputed to have joked, back in the days when Republicans had some integrity. (not that Democrats have much these days, either!)  And that  attitude is what’s at work here. To me, our casualness about this amount of electricity indicates how spoiled we are and how far we have to fall.   “The American Way of Life Is Not Negotiable,” our government insists, no matter who’s in charge, and rural streetlights are part of it.  These lights, so casually kept on all night in the name of safety and security, are one of the thousands of ways we are trapped by our own expectations, snared in a net of false needs, slowly strangling not only ourselves but the whole world and generations yet unborn for the sake of luxury undreamed of even a century ago.

My proposal that we could turn off even some of these lights is nowhere taken seriously.  The American way of life is not negotiable, dammit!  As a country, we are cluelessly drifting into a catastrophe that will permanently put out all our lights. If we would only take the initiative to shut a few of them off voluntarily, it could be the first step on a path that might give us a chance of averting the worst of what otherwise awaits us. But we’re just too damn comfortable. …for now.

music: The Doors, “When the Music‘s Over (Turn Out the Lights)”

STEPPING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Last month, I suggested that, rather than pursue the chimeras of Maytown and the Convention Center, Nashvilleans would be better served by taking the suggestions of the” Mayor’s Green Ribbon Committee” and running with them.  Much to my delight, that’s just what Metro Councilman Jason Holleman is doing.

The step he is proposing is a no-brainer, really, and I was surprised to learn that it needs to be taken, but–get this: for the last fifty years, it has been illegal to have a community garden in Nashville .  It doesn’t matter if you own the land and it’s an open field, you can’t legally farm it in the urban services district.  And, even if you live on the property and just have a garden, it is illegal for you to sell your produce.  Gee…I thought the only produce that was illegal to sell was the kind people grow in closets…but it turns out that the criminal agricultural population is not restricted to pot growers…all the urban community gardens springing up around Nashville–and there are more and more of them–are illegal.  We are fortunate that Metro has not sent out the paddy wagons and bulldozers to round up these criminal gardeners and turn their paradises back into parking lots.

Holleman’s bill is co-sponsored by Kristine LaLonde, Emily Evans, Erik Cole, Mike Jameson, Bo Mitchell, Megan Barry, Jerry Maynard, Sandra Moore, Erica Gilmore, and Darren Jernigen. Remember those names–these are the  Metro Council members who have at least a clue about where this country is headed.  Councilman Holleman told me in an email that his proposal has attracted “questions about the details, but no negative feedback.” In other words, there’s a strong likelihood that it will pass.

One hair that the bill splits is that, while it legalizes the sale of produce grown in the city, which will allow  gardeners to support and expand their operations, it does not allow “farm stands” at gardens in residential neighborhoods.  In other words, you can’t have a stash of picked tomatoes sitting there waiting for customers.  Gardeners must take their produce elsewhere and sell it, or contract with people through consumer-supported agriculture-type arrangements.  My guess is that this barrier will increasingly, and informally, be breached.

The bill does not permit raising livestock in the city, which I think is another prohibition that will soon fall.   Currently, if you have a few rabbits, chickens, or pigeons in your backyard, you have to be able to pass them off as “pets”–but who’s going to notice where your breakfast egg comes from, or complain if one of your “pets” disappears and ends up on the dinner table?  Is this what the National Animal Identification System is intended to enforce?

“Mrs. Jones, we’re from Animal Control and we noticed that the transponder on one of your chickens went dead yesterday.  Here’s our search warrant–why don’t you just tell us: where’s the body?”  Yeah, right…

Backyard animal raising is a more complex issue, in some ways, because animals, unlike plants, sometimes make noises and create odors that are annoying to neighbors. Perhaps the way to deal with this would be to allow people to keep animals if all or most of a neighborhood is in agreement. It’s certainly worth discussing. What do you think, Metro Council members? Are you ready for the next bold step in local food security?

Now, besides food production, another tightly regulated part of the American urban scene is housing, which in our economic model is privately owned, or often privately owed rather than owned.  As the economy has begun to stumble (and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!), many people have fallen behind in their house payments or been unable to come up with their rent money and been evicted, frequently resulting, at first, in perfectly good houses standing empty.  I say “at first” because often these empty houses are broken into and stripped of anything salvageable, such as copper pipes.  They then become derelict shells that all too often get bulldozed, since we’re not yet desperate enough for building materials to take them apart stud by stud.  Soon come, soon come.

But meanwhile, the stupid logic of private property dictates that these houses must stand empty while their former occupants, already unable to afford  to keep a roof over their heads, have to seek shelter elsewhere.  Many move in with friends and relatives, which is kind of  good, since one of the things we as a culture need to relearn is how to get along with each other and share close quarters, but that’s a lesson better learned voluntarily.  Some people who are evicted don’t have family or friends who can make room for them, and become homeless.

We can contrast this peculiar behavior with what happened during the breakdown of the Soviet Union.  Since all housing was government owned, people were not made homeless due to their inability to earn money.

Or we can contrast it with the third world, where, from Sao Paulo to Calcutta, the poor scavenge together shelter from whatever they can find, and create vast cities-within-cities.  Whenever homeless people in the US start to do that, the codes department soon shows up with a bulldozer and “cleans it up.”  Property rights and appearances are still paramount in America.  They trump compassion every time.

It would be great if we could change that and allow people a little freedom to create a roof over their heads if we as a community are otherwise unable to provide them with one.  That’s a big step down the road from legalizing community gardens, and I don’t expect Councilman Holliman to propose it next month or even next year, but we are going to have to start examining all the ways in which unreasonable expectations create unsolvable problems–whether in the area of food, housing, or personal behavior–and don’t get me started on that topic!

Hopefully enough people will realize that it’s easier and more compassionate to change our expectations and relax the law than it is to try and keep a tight rein on  things and create criminals ex nihilo.  We’ve got enough real problems to deal with already.

music:  Incredible String Band, “Big Ted“

ARE THE DECK CHAIRS RECYCLABLE?

So, on the appointed evening, the wife and I rolled down out of our hollow and across the bridge to Looby Library and Community Center for the Great Green Ribbon Meeting.  The lot was full of cars, and we felt cheered by the prospect of a big turnout, but when we entered the basketball court, which was laid out with chairs and tables in expectation of a turnout of a hundred or so, it was pretty much us and the visibly concerned committee members.  Whatever people were flocking to the Looby Center for last Thursday night, it wasn’t concern for the future of Nashville.  Cindy and I were the only people signed up to speak.

Just as the meeting was set to begin, a small flush of people entered the room, maybe thirty-five in all. Quite a few were old friends from the Bioregional Council or Bell’s Bend; but, here in the heart of Nashville’s ghetto, there were only two black faces.

The meeting began with “citizen input”–and three more people had signed up. I stood up first and talked about the importance of local food, how there are areas, some owned by metro and some owned privately, that could be turned into community gardens or local CSA’s, because whatever development was going to happen there, it probably isn’t going to happen for a good long time, and with people losing jobs, helping people get a start in small farming covers a lot of bases–food sustainability, local economy, putting people to work.  I brought up my estimation that it would take five thousand CSA’s to feed Nashville, and emphasized that the city needs to be more open to allowing individuals to raise small animals for food in their backyards, because man does not live by salad alone….I wish I’d thought of that line in time!  I said something about putting motion sensors on security lights and turning off streetlights in low-traffic, non-residential areas, like out where I live–Clarksville Pike, Ashland City Highway, and White’s Creek Pike are lit up all night long, when the traffic frequency approaches one vehicle per hour.  Firing up all those sodium vapor lights costs a pretty penny, and guess whose taxes pay for them?

I also talked about disaster preparedness, how nobody wants the worst, but we need to prepare for it anyway by having a hospital that can at least function minimally if the grid goes down, and by having a one-month fuel reserve for emergency vehicles and a city fleet of solar-powered electric cars, fire trucks, and ambulances.  The Green Ribbon crew took notes and looked interested.  I was amazed at how much I managed to pack into four minutes, even if I did forget to say anything about lawnmowers and mandatory mowing.

Cindy presented the idea of creating neighborhood councils that would come up with local solutions to local problems and ease the burden on metro courts and social services.  This was probably not what the panel was expecting to hear, but it takes more energy to maintain centralized infrastructure than it does to maintain decentralized infrastructure, whether you’re talking about water and electricity or codes and family court.

Next, a young lady got up and talked very earnestly about getting metro to quit using broad-spectrum pesticides to combat alleged mosquito outbreaks, especially since there has never been a problem with mosquito-borne illness in this area.  It was a neat feat of gymnastics to relate this to the topic of sustainability in Nashville, but she hooked it in to biodiversity, if memory serves.

Mack Pritchard was the next speaker.  He pointed out that Metro has a tendency to take parks and fill them with buildings–Looby Center, it seems, is in an area that was once called Buena Vista Park–and also emphasized the importance of finishing Nashville’s “Greenways” program so there is a network of walking/bicycling paths connecting all parts of the city.  He also mentioned “green streets” paving, which is a new, porous kind of pavement that allows rainwater to soak through into the ground instead of shunting it all off into storm sewers and overloading the system.

One of the two people of color in the room spoke next.  He was concerned about transportation.  “I ride the bus to work,” he said, “and have to transfer.  If the first bus I ride is a minute late, the second bus is gone and I have to wait a half hour for another one.  We need to do something about these kinds of things.”  Indeed, better public transportation was the first choice of more people than anything else in the committee’s poll, coming in at thirty percent, more than twice the runners up, increased recycling and “increased use of renewable energy,” and three times the next batch of answers, which included more local food, more open spaces, and green building incentives.

Next, it was the city’s turn to talk to us.  Jenna Smith, who runs the mayor’s office of sustainability, talked about how the city is instituting recyling in all its offices, encouraging its employees to ride the bus to work, insisting on LEED certification for all new metro buildings, getting ready to do a census of pollution sources, and, yes, Mack, finalizing plans to connect all the greenways.

Next, we broke up into small groups for brainstorming sessions, in which somebody from the Green Ribbon crew sat at each table and wrote down everybody’s suggestions, which were then taped to the wall.  We each were given three blue sticky circles, and asked to put them next to the three ideas we liked the best.  Well, I’m pretty shameless in some ways, so I voted for my own ideas, then found some sticky circles that had been abandoned and voted again.

Most of the ideas offered were, from my point of view, a little pathetic.  Just a little.  I mean, there’s nothing wrong with better bus service, outlawing plastic bags, having better parks, instituting “dark skies” lighting all over town (thanks, Manny Zeitlin!), encouraging recycling, outlawing unnecessary vehicle idling and the drivethrough windows that promote it.  It’s just that this is a form of bargaining:  “If I promise to be a good boy, can I please, please please pretty please keep my comfortable American Way of Life?”

I’m sorry, the answer is no.  It doesn’t matter if you make sure the deck chairs on the Titanic are made from recyclable materials that can be recycled once again when they are no longer functional deck chairs.  We have still hit an iceberg, water is still pouring in, and the ol’ Titanic is starting to list pretty badly and the hull is riding down in the water. To get off the metaphor, our credit is completely drawn out.  There’s nothing more to borrow against, and little likelihood of paying back what we owe already, as the black magic of compound interest pushes our national and individual debt further and further over our heads.  It isn’t just individual home buyers who are “under water,” folks, it’s the whole American three-ring circus.

The future is going to be nothing like the past we have always known, because we cannot afford to keep up the pretences that we have taken for granted all our lives.  I am doing my best to be materially, psychologically,  and spiritually prepared for this, and it still scares the hell out of me–but it’s also the great adventure I’ve always wanted.  Ready or not, here it comes.

TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE NASHVILLE

In June, Mayor Dean created a “Green Ribbon Committee on Environmental Sustainability” that is charged with coming up with an action plan that will “allow Nashville to remain one of the most livable cities in the United States.”  To further this goal, the Committee is having four open public meetings this week and next: on on Tuesday, Nov. 11th, at the Nashville Convention Center, rooms 209-210, from 5 to 7 PM; one on Thursday the 13th at Looby Library, 2301 Metrocenter Boulevard, also from five to seven; a third on Saturday, the 15th at Green Hills Library from 10AM to noon, and a final meeting Thursday, Nov. 20 at Mt View Elementary School, 3820 Murfreesboro Road, from five to seven PM.  I’m planning to go to the Looby meeting, which is closest to my home.

It’s all very well organized.  There are four subcommittees:  Natural Resources, Mobility, Energy & Building, and Public Involvement, Education and Outreach.  Each is charged with identifying three categories of improvement: “low hanging fruit” that could be implemented with no budgetary cost, changes that could be funded from next year’s budget, and programs that will need longer-term planning and financing.

I could be cynical about this.  I could ask how we could “remain” one of the most livable cities in the US when we aren’t on any list of “America’s most livable cities” that I could find, and say that I suspect that, with our pedestrian-unfriendly streets, blazing summer heat and humidity, limited public transportation, strangling traffic, and smog-inducing topography, we are among the least livable cities in the country.  On the other hand, we do have, in spite of NES’s best efforts, an “urban forest” to be proud of, and it does not get mind-numbingly cold and snowy the way it does in some parts of the country.

Anyway, here are some suggestions I will be making to the Green Ribbon folks.

In the realm of zoning and codes: allow people to keep small animals such as chickens, turkeys,  rabbits, guinea pigs, etc.,  at home, and to butcher them at home (currently, home butchering is illegal, to the best of my knowledge).  Owners with lots over a certain size ought to be able to keep larger animals, such as goats, sheep, pigs, or even cows.  This will go a long way towards encouraging food sustainability.  I’m a vegetarian, but I understand that a lot of people aren’t, and won’t be, and I also know how hard it is to raise a year’s worth of beans.  Also in the realm of food sustainability, individual and neighborhood gardens should be encouraged.  People should be encouraged to take down fences and create backyard commons, both for food production and as a form of community integration and organizing.

The lawn mowing ordinance should be repealed or modified to exempt lots above a certain size or distance from a house or public thoroughfare.  This will free people up to do more essential things and improve air quality–lawn mowers do not have catalytic converters and are a major source of urban/suburban pollution.

Another codes suggestion would be to waive non-hazardous codes requirements for owner-built-and-occupied structures, including the requirement that they be hooked to the water/sewer/electrical grid, clearing the way for more innovative housing solutions in Davidson County.  I think it is appropriate for the city to inject itself into building standards for commercial construction, but there ought to be a homeowner’s loophole.  Likewise, we need to loosen up about home businesses, although maybe there should be some limits.  For instance, we have a neighbor who has a lawnmower repair shop at his home, and so we get a lot of very annoying lawnmower noise; however, since we hope to buy his place some day, we’re not reporting him, ’cause we want to stay on his good side, and he’s a very old man, and what else would he do?  Perhaps the point that this illustrates is that flexibility and responsiveness to the local community are more important than enforcing the letter of the law.

On a totally different subject, there are a number of buried springs in Nashville, and I think these should be uncovered and turned into public fountains, both as neighborhood beauty spots and as a place to go to fill a bucket if the city water system ever goes down.  And, while we’re uncovering things, let’s also undertake burial of all the city’s electric lines, starting in the most wooded neighborhoods, where NES regularly has to cut a very ugly swath to keep the lines clear.

Another “green” undertaking I would suggest to the city is that it establish a one-month supply of fuel for city emergency vehicles.  As I reported in July, there is currently only a one-week supply of gas for Nashville’s fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars, which means they’d run out at about the same time as the city at large, which is likely right when we’d need such services the most.  (“NEED police?” my inner anarchist screams, but my inner elitist sniffs “Most people aren’t smart enough to make their own rules, so we’d better have some police around”  But I digress….)  Anyway, this gas backup should be supplemented with a program to create a pool of solar-electric charged city vehicles. Maybe it would be difficult to power a full-service ambulance on batteries, but you could at least get somebody to a solar panel/generator-powered hospital (and there’s another project!) in a hurry.

So those are some of my ideas.  They are based on the likelihood of collapse, and may sound a little strange to the commission.  I suspect many of them have not entertained the idea that our civilization with its multiple, highly complex inputs, could cease to function, even temporarily.  That’s the 900-pound gorilla in the room when we talk about sustainabilty.  Here’s hoping they acknowledge he’s present.  I’ll let you know next month.

music:  Kate Wolf, “These Times We’re Livin’ In”

CITY ON THE EDGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Here’s the full text of a memo that peak oil activist Albert Bates recently discussed with Nashville’s mayor Karl Dean, his aide, Jim Hester, and Jenna Smith, the city’s Environmental Sustainability Manager.  You can read Albert’s account of the meeting on his blog.

Bet you didn’t know we had an Environmental Sustainability Manager here in Nashville!  Well, hey, we’ve got a Human Rights Commission, too, and they’re fully stocked with band aids and handkerchiefs, know what I mean?  As far as I can tell, that’s about the level of clout Jenna Smith enjoys.  This is a pro-business environment, by gum.  Got make Nashville safe for animated billboards!

Well, I’m digressing…the memo!  Here goes. 

MEMO TO: Jim Hester
FROM: Albert Bates
DATE: 22 Jun 08
SUBJECT: Nashville’s vulnerability

Nashville is just now beginning to experience the foreshocks of Peak Oil. World demand has exceeded world production with the result that prices for oil and gas have doubled in the past year and will likely more than double again in the next. We may see $200 per barrel oil by year’s end. $1000 per barrel oil is only seven to ten years away.

Nashville is more vulnerable than many similar cities its size because it has a much higher carbon footprint than average. A recent report from the Brookings Institution ranks Nashville 95th among 100 U.S. cities for per capita carbon emissions from transportation and residential energy use (3,222 metric tons/person). Only Louisville, Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Lexington are worse.

Metro areas with high density, compact development and rail transit offer more energy and carbon efficient lifestyles than more sprawling, auto-centric counterparts. From the standpoint of smart city planning for the turbulent next few years, Metro Nashville is strictly out of luck. Creating high density, compact development, alternative fueled buses and trolleys, and light rail transit will take years or decades and millions or billions, and given the economic effects of the bursting fossil fuel bubble, the declining dollar, and collapse of Metro’s tax base, the likelihood that resources will be available, on a sustained basis over the requisite time, is extremely unlikely. The State and Federal governments will also be in crisis, with far more demands than resources to meet them.

The seriousness of the situation cannot be overstated. Extreme weather or geological events, political and economic stagnation, or other factors could further exacerbate the dilemma.

(Albert doesn’t mention it, but Tennessee is overdue for a major earthquake on the New Madrid fault, which, although centered in West Tennessee, could still cause serious damage in the Nashville area, as well as cut road, pipeline, and rail transportation routes to the western U.S., where most of our food and oil comes from.)

Supplies of food, fuel, and other essentials arrive into the city primarily by semi-tractor trailers; to a lesser extent by rail, barge and air freight. All of these supply lines are prone to disruption in the event of a national liquid energy supply shortfall. Most are also especially vulnerable to labor strikes or the practical inability of workers to go to work.

Metro has 3 days supply of food for its population within city limits.

Three days.  Got that?  If you don’t have a few weeks worth of food stashed at home (in insect-proof containers–believe me, I learned about that the hard way!) and also, of course, a way to cook them, then you, too, could be up poop creek without a paddle.

If wholesale deliveries of gasoline and diesel stop, most service stations would run dry within one week, and sooner if people immediately fill up and hoard gasoline and diesel, as they already are beginning to. City buses do not have a strategic reserve, nor could they provide an immediate substitute for the commuter, school, and other transportation services now provided by private vehicles.

Police, fire, and emergency medical services do not have a strategic reserve, nor does the Tennessee National Guard. It is unlikely that any fuel availability crisis would be local, which means that National Guard resources will be required everywhere simultaneously.

(Got that?  Police, fire, emergency medical services, and the National Guard do not have a gas stash.  If we’re out, they’re out.)

Many other cities that are similarly situated have begun to examine their predicament and make belated but necessary moves to address their vulnerability. Among the options they have chosen to initiate on a crash basis:

• Tasking Emergency Services to prepare plans for sustained energy outages
• Expanding light rail and alternative transit — urging people to DRIVE LESS
• Engaging in regional rail and barge planning for more energy-efficient freight operations
• Stimulating energy efficient retrofitting, alternative energy installations, and recycling
• Issuing a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate land use, transportation, energy, food supply, emergency preparedness, and related areas
• Set an energy descent goal, such as 3% reduction of fossil fuel use per year, across the board
• Begin the process of gradually redesigning the city as a collection of urban villages so that residents can reduce their automobile dependence
• Develop and implement a public transit master plan
• Develop and implement a commercial freight delivery master plan
• Move Metro employees to a 4-day work-week and develop telecommute options
• Inaugurate car-share and ride-share services
• Provide start-up funding for the establishment of a Food Policy Council
• Develop and implement pedestrian and bicycle master plans.

Just at first pass, here are some direct actions the Mayor might take to get the ball rolling:

Office of Emergency Management

1. have a contingency for operating government in the sudden absence of gasoline
2. have a contingency for operating government with the periodic absence of electricity
3. have a contingency for operating government with unheated buildings
4. training and public education courses, workshops, events and films

Office of Community Development

1. have a contingency for city functioning with the periodic absence of electricity
2. planning for a business environment that lacks discretionary spending
3. develop a local currency
4. develop a micro-lending incubator system
5. training and public education courses

Office for Children and Youth

1. work with Education and Social Services to identify at risk children when school bus service is suspended or restricted
2. work with Health in designing home and neighborhood health delivery systems
3. training and public education courses

Agricultural Extension Services (George Kilgore)

1. provide organic agricultural and nutritional educational products to individuals and families so they can increase personal food and water supply and improve public health and welfare
2. create supplemental local emergency food supplies by growing and storing staples in many locations

(Storing staples? No, no, not the little metal thingies you use to fasten pieces of paper–grains and beans, dude!  We’re talking about getting beyond vegetable gardening here, talking about reintroducing subsistence farming….which is what most of mankind has done for thousands of years…we just had a little hundred-year break from it, that’s all, and now it’s ending…time to get back to work!)

Metro Soil and Water Conservation (John Leeman)

1. provide rainwater catchment and storage educational products to individuals and families so they can increase personal water supply and improve public health and welfare

2. create supplemental local emergency water supplies by capturing and storing water in many locations
3. drought and heat wave planning

City Planning Dept (Michael Skipper, Matt Meservy)

1. have a contingency for operating government with the periodic absence of electricity
2. have a contingency for moving people in the absence of gasoline
3. regulation of existing buildings with potentially unusable elevators or other services

Emergency Medical Services

1. strategic petroleum reserves
2. specialized training
3. develop neighborhood first responder system

Fire

1. strategic petroleum reserves
2. drought and heat wave planning
3. monitor supplemental local emergency water supplies

Corrections

1. strategic petroleum reserves
2. food and water reserves
3. pharmaceuticals

Education

1. Walkable/bicycle school distances
2. Buses restricted to handicapped, outer zone residents, high risk

Health Services

1. The Havana model – neighborhood based care
2. Strategic petroleum reserves for generators/power
3. Solar powered health modules
4. Home grown pharmaceuticals
5. Malnutrition – Nashville has less than 3-days supply of food
6. Rationing system

Law Enforcement

1. strategic petroleum reserves
2. special training
3. more bike patrols
4. replace select cars with golf carts, motorcycles, foot patrols
5. ground helicopters except for emergency operations

Social Services

1. special training
2. replace cars with golf carts, motorcycles, bicycles

Nashville Gas

1. Contingency plan for nationalization of services
2. Rationing system

Got all that?  “How to operate government with the periodic absence of electricity”?!  Now, maybe the electric grid going down is at the extreme end of things, but we are approaching the point of diminishing returns on the trucking business, as well as the airline business, and from what we have seen so far, things are happening faster than predicted…and yes, I know Y2K was supposed to do the same thing, but that was narrowly based on one computer program, and what we have now is widely based in a spectrum that runs from a flatlining real estate market to diminishing fuel supplies and increasing fuel prices to freakier weather to diminishing food supplies and increasing food prices to extremely tight credit to snowballing devaluation of the dollar….and, here in Nashville, we have a Metro Council that is more concerned about making sure English is the city’s official language than where next week’s meals are coming from.  Hey, guys, wake up!  The Mexicans are going home!  There’s no more work here!

I’m not kidding about Metro Council’s obliviousness on this issue.  Elsewhere in his story, Albert recounts Jim Hester’s appraisal of the Council:  five green votes, five that could be persuaded if they think the economics will work, and thirty-one people who are totally clueless and think the gravy train is just gonna keep on running.  This is a recipe for disaster.  The good news is that Albert Bates has just written a platform for anyone who wants to contest any of those 31 seats.  The bad news is, there’s not a moment to lose.

music: David Rovics:  When It All Comes Crashing Down