#181 / Very Liberal

I recently made a new Facebook Friend, and immediately noted that her political designation was "Very Liberal." I pretty much identify with that description, so I clicked on the "Very Liberal" link I found on her "Info" tab. I was pleased to see that there is a whole Facebook page for those Facebook patrons who like to describe themselves in those "Very Liberal" terms.

The image here is the image that Facebook uses to provide some graphic representation of what Facebook thinks about that "Very Liberal" ideology. The painting is entitled Pulling Down The Statue of King George, and was painted in 1859 by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel. Based on my "No ... King" sentiments, I think they have the right picture for me.

The official Facebook description of the "Very Liberal" category is as follows:

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis) is a political ideology or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and the free exercise of religion.

Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as nobility, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.

With the exception of "capitalism," about which I reserve judgment, I think they've got me!

#180 / Another Two Worlds Picture

This double-framed picture depicts Manhattan Island in 2009 - and in 1609. Or such is the conceit. I found the image in a June 24, 2012 posting on the Facebook page maintained by a group that calls itself Universe Explorers. I think this image well illustrates the fact that we live, most immediately, in a world that we create ourselves, and that the world that we create is built "in," and "on," (and may even seem to displace entirely) the world of Nature that remains the necessary foundation for all we do.

For those who love New York City, as I do, there is an incredible power and majesty in what humans have created on Manhattan Island. We call the real estate that we create "development," and differentiate our "improvements" from the "land" itself. Check a property tax bill to see what I mean; those are our categories.

And maybe our creative efforts really have "developed" and "improved" the Manhattan Island of 1609. Or maybe not. Things are different on that island, certainly, because we have largely replaced a world of nature with a completely human world.

I maintain that it can be easy to forget our dependence on the natural world if we focus our celebratory attention too much on the world and the works that we create. It is easy to forget that we remain, ultimately, dependent on the world of nature.

The Two Worlds Picture I took in Machu Picchu shows that there is another way we might go about our city-building. That way of building, also made vivid in a photographic image, reminds us that we live within, and not apart from, Nature.

Such reminders, along the way, might have meant a different set of comparison images, with our New York City world of 2009 reflecting and retaining at least something of the world that came before us - the world upon which our lives depend.

#179 / Kilroy

I may be imagining it, but I somehow remember my father telling me the "Kilroy was here" story. My Dad did serve in World War II, and so that's not impossible. I heard the story somewhere, that's for sure, and it made a big impression on me. Wikipedia has a discussion about the story, and there are other embellishments and additions, too, for those who may not have heard about Kilroy and his ability to appear everywhere something important was going to happen - and to be there first.

The point of the story, at least to me, is that we are all Kilroys. Whoever we are, we end up "being there" when things of consequence are happening. We make our mark. When we write our name on the wall, on the sidewalk or the sign, it's our way to say that there was something important going on, and that we were involved.

It's a human thing.

And the gravestones
March on hills
To remind us the same.
I was here.
I was here before you.
And this is my name.

#178 / Forgiveness #2

Recently, I listened to one of "The Great Courses" in its audiobook format; namely, Why Evil Exists, with thirty-six different lectures on this topic being presented by Professor Charles Mathewes. Mathewes is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, and the most moving of the entire series of his lectures, for me, was his Lecture #23: "The American North and South - Holy War." This lecture focused on the thinking of both Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, and provided the most helpful and hopeful prescription for an effective way to overcome evil and its dominance in our lives and in our history.

Lincoln's lesson, in particular, taken from his Second Inaugural Address, was brilliantly presented by Mathewes. That one lecture was worth the price of the whole ensemble. In the end, Lincoln (like Arendt), without using the word, identified forgiveness as the foundational work necessary to allow our nation to begin again, anew, and to do something other than to retell, forever, the stories of the horrors done by both North and South, in our fratricidal combat:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

#177 / Forgiveness

I have recently discovered that The Hannah Arendt Center For Politics And Humanities at Bard College has a regular blog. Now I subscribe. You can, too.

On June 11, 2012, the Arendt blog entry was titled "The Alternative To Forgiveness," which Arendt has identified as "punishment."

In The Human Condition, Arendt positions punishment as an alternative to forgiveness ... All actions, Arendt argues, are necessarily unpredictable and irreversible. We cannot know with certainty what will happen as a result of our actions, nor can we undo them. These two uncomfortable facts about action might otherwise paralyze us from doing anything, but thankfully we have the ability to make promises about the uncertain future and to both seek and grant forgiveness, absolving past harms. Were it not for these faculties we would be unable to reconcile our own finite existence with the fundamental plurality of the human condition. Without forgiveness in particular, we would be forever "confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell."

Forgiveness can resolve the fact of irreversibility because, Arendt succinctly notes, it is able to put "an end to something that without interference could go on endlessly."

This observation essentially claims that forgiveness is "revolutionary" (in the way that Arendt consistently uses the term), because forgiveness can allow a whole new story to begin. Without forgiveness, the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we tell our children, will be nothing but the cyclical repetitions of the stories of all the insults and injuries that we have suffered in the past, however clothed those stories may be in new designs.

Unless we can free ourselves through forgiveness, our present existence is constrained and confined in the warp and woof of our own past actions, and of the past actions that have done us harm. It is only forgiveness - and forgiveness to the point of forgetting - that will allow us to escape that woven constraint of wrongs done and suffered, and that will permit us to move ahead, in new directions, and to make a new path.

#176 / The Gratitude Movement

A week ago Sunday, standing in line for takeout at my favorite Thai restaurant, I got to talking about "gratitude" with another takeout patron. We both agreed that you either "sweeten up," or "get sour," as you age, and we both preferred "gratitude" (and "sweetening up") as the correct response to the adversities and encouragements we find in life.

When I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle the very next morning, on Monday, June 18th, I found that we were part of a "gratitude movement" that I didn't even know existed. Click the image to read the story.

I did find one aspect of the story to be somewhat discouraging. A lot of attention was paid to what might be called the operational and individual "benefits" of gratitude. Better physical health, emotional and psychic stability, and a "bit of a competitive edge" were all cited.

Deciding how to conduct one's life based on how to maximize one's individual "benefit" is not exactly what I'd prescribe as my lesson for living well. This is the same approach that suggests that we shouldn't kill other species because maybe one of them will lead us to a cure for cancer.

Sometimes, you just do things because they are "right," benefits to oneself aside.

Being grateful for being alive seems to me to be one of those things.

Not driving other species into extinction seems like another such item. Good in itself, not just good for me!

#175 / Grassroots California

Quite a long time ago, now, a group of political friends and I started a group called "Grassroots California." The idea was pretty simple: establish real communications between and then mobilize progressive constituencies throughout the state to assume political power, and to turn California in a new direction.

This was going to be a politics based not on "party," but on a common commitment to a progressive agenda, with roots in local actions, and in local communities, and with local elected officials playing a key role.

As you might have noticed, that didn't happen.

Could have happened, though. Should have happened! The name is still available. It's still a good idea.

#174 /A Follower Problem?

A column by David Brooks, the New York Times pundit, ran in my hometown newspaper last Sunday. Brooks believes that we have a "follower problem." Here is an excerpt from the column, to show how Brooks sees it:

Those "Question Authority" bumper stickers no longer symbolize an attempt to distinguish just and unjust authority. They symbolize an attitude of opposing [all] authority.

Brooks may be right that the public is increasingly rejecting the very idea of "authority," and if you pay attention to politics, you can pretty clearly see why this may be true. I am not convinced that this problem with our politics comes from the "followers." Most of our so-called "leaders" are either compromised or comatose. Or both.

The thoughts about "authority" that I expressed in a blog posting in December 2010 haven't changed, but my commentary then didn't deal with the issue of "authority" within the political world, a world that we create, and the world that we most immediately inhabit.

In every context, including the political, "authority" does come from the root word "author," and in our political world we literally "write" our chosen realities into existence by enacting the laws that tell us, like a doctor's prescription, what we ought to do. To the degree that we actually follow these written prescriptions, we change reality accordingly. And the nice thing about our world is that the human laws we promulgate do not define what we "must" do, but what we "want to do." We can change our mind, and change direction, by changing the laws that guide our action, so as to attain whatever end we aim for. Anything is possible, within the world that we create. This is, in fact, the nature of the political "freedom" which we so rightly prize.

The limits on our authority (and this is the point I made in my earlier blog posting) are imposed by no human reality, but by the laws of the Natural World. In that world, which we did not and do not create, laws are not "prescriptions" that inform us what we "ought" to do, but are "descriptions" that tell us what must, inevitably, occur. We can't "break" the law of gravity, or any of the other natural laws. These are true constraints on human action, and they define the world upon which we ultimately depend, and the laws of which are beyond our control.

Within the "political" realm, it would be, as Brooks warns, a kind of folly to suggest that there should be no "authority" whatsoever. When analyzed, any such claim is really a statement that we cannot, in fact, be the "authors" of our own future. And this is not true. The momentum of past choices carries us forward, but if we wish to change, and to seek some new destination, we can in fact do that. To do so, however, we need to acknowledge the "authority" of politics to chart a new course. We administer a new "prescription" by "authoring" the laws that will send us in a different direction.

Just "following" the so-called "leadership" of those now in positions of political power will not lead to a right prescription for the ills that afflict us. We definitely need to "question" the authority that is charting our current course. The "authority" that we must recognize is not the so-called "authority" of our current crop of political "leaders." What we need to reaffirm and rely upon is our own authority over the world we make ourselves. In other words, we need a politics that stems from a collective authorship of a new set of prescriptions to guide our actions.

We do make a mistake if we believe that "authority" is bad and must be rejected. The opposite is the case. But it is our own authority we must uphold, which means our own engagement in and commitment to a politics of "self-government."

#173 / One With Everything

The Dalai Lama went into a pizza shop.
"What can I get you," the attendant asked?
"Well," said the Dalai Lama,
"Can you make me one with everything?"

This stupid joke was actually told to the Dalai Lama himself, by an Australian news reader. You can see it on YouTube.

It seems clear to me that we truly are "one with everything," in an ultimate sense (including all those microbes), but we have uniquely separated ourselves from the larger Creation. We live most immediately in a world of our own making.

It's embarrassing, sometimes, when we get an inkling of just how far out of touch we are with the more profound realities that surround us.

As I hope that Australian news reader finally figured out.

#172 / Together

We are in this life "together," and while we are "individuals," of course, we misunderstand our actual situation if we forget that focusing on our individual existence is just one way of looking at things. There is definitely another angle from which to see reality. We are part of a greater whole.

It also turns out, based on the latest science, that we are "together" with a lot more life than we generally realize. According to an article that appeared in the June 14, 2012 edition of the Wall Street Journal, our physical bodies are sharing space with literally trillions of microbes. In fact, the microbes outnumber our human cells by a factor of something like ten to one.

So, we are not just individuals, and, as for the world we create, we are not "alone" there, either. We live within a Natural World that is not only outside us, but inside us, too. Like those trillions of microbes. That world pervades everything, and is the ultimate repository of the real.

We forget that at our peril.

#171 / We Are Not Alone

Walter Sullivan spent most of his career as a science writer for the New York Times. Among his books is We Are Not Alone, which Wikipedia identifies as a "bestseller about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."

I, personally, don't think there is a lot of value in searching the reaches of the Universe for "extraterrestrial intelligence." Instead of spending billions of dollars looking for intelligence somewhere else, I'd suggest trying to develop our own intelligence, right here on Planet Earth.

I do like Sullivan's title, though: "We Are Not Alone." That strikes me as correct.

Right here, on Planet Earth, we are together through life (which just happens to be the title of a Bob Dylan album released in 2009).

It is always good to listen to Bob Dylan. That's an intelligent thing to do.

It would also be intelligent to keep remembering that we are not just a bunch of individuals. As Dylan hints, we are in this together.

#170 / Mad Men

Mad Men is about advertising. And it is about Don Draper, the central figure, and about who he really is.

This season, Mad Men implicitly equated advertising with prostitution. If you are willing to prostitute yourself, and bring in a new account, you'll make partner in the firm.

I found most poignant the very final scene this season (pictured), when a pair of pretty women in a bar posed this question to Don: "Are you alone?"

That's a question for each one of us.

I don't think the answer has to be "yes."

#169 / Paper Promises

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks like Paper Promises should go on my "books to read" list. I found the review in The Nation to be quite compelling. 

 

One of the lessons of the book, as I understand it from the review, is that the world's economies are unlikely (and in fact unable) to "grow" themselves out of their current debt status, which means that a "default" on those debts is inevitably coming. 

 

I have never been a big fan of debt, and believe that our addiction to debt has, in fact, been one of the main drivers of the destruction of the world environment, as we are enabled to "consume" more than we can actually afford, and certainly more than is good for us. In my view, the only excuse for going into debt (which means spending more than you earn) is if the money you borrow is used for a genuine investment in future productivity, and/or for the purchase of something (like a primary residence) that is essential for social stability and good health. 

 

Borrowing money as a way to facilitate consumption you couldn't afford on your current income can only lead to over-consumption and the impoverishment of future generations. It also leads to what is sometimes dramatically called "debt slavery," which is an actual condition affecting most people today. It is also a condition affecting most societies. 

 

Coggan apparently "blows the whistle" on the kind of debt that is untethered to any tangible reality. It's musical chairs. And when the music stops, only 1% of the people get to sit down. 

 

Luckily, we can do something about that! But we better change the rules pretty quick. Right now, no banker is left behind. And that is not my idea of fair.

 

 

#168 / Crellin

Crellin, Maryland is just one of the communities featured in a new documentary by Santa Cruz filmmaker Bob Gliner. Crellin has a population of something like 250 people. The store that is pictured shows up in the film, and continues to play a central role in this small community. Not as great a role as the Crellin Elementary School, however, which won the U.S. Green School Award in 2007, and which is a major focus of Gliner’s documentary. Also featured in the film are Watsonville High School, and schools in Massachusetts, South Dakota, and Oregon.

Gliner is an award winning producer with more than 30 programs to his credit. His primary focus is social problems and social change, both inside the United States and throughout the world. He has shot programs in such disparate locales as Russia, Macedonia, Viet Nam, India, Tanzania, Israel, Ecuador, and Cuba. Gliner is also a professor of sociology at San Jose State University.

Schools That Change Communities is Gliner’s latest documentary, and it tells a powerful story about the ability of our schools to be a major force for social change and economic revitalization. It’s a one-hour film that is inspiring not only for its “message of hope,” but because it is truly a documentary. The film not only shows what “could be done.” It shows what is being done, and has been done.

It documents, in fact, what must be done.

Copies of Schools That Change Communities are available for purchase online.

Recommended for teachers.

Recommended for everyone.

#167 / Velvet

From Wikipedia:

In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946. The term Velvet Revolution [to denominate this event] was coined by Rita Klímová, the dissidents' English translator, who later became the new non-Communist regime's ambassador to the United States. The term was used internationally to describe the revolution, although the Czech side also used the term internally. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Slovakia used the term Gentle Revolution, the term that Slovaks used for the revolution from the beginning. The Czech Republic continues to refer to the event as the Velvet Revolution.

The American Revolution, often down rated among those revolutions that ushered in our modern era, was aimed at creating a whole new order in history and the world. At least, that is the way that Hannah Arendt has explained it. For me, her book On Revolution continues to be the last word on what revolution is really all about - or what it really ought to be about. She wasn't alive to see what happened in Czechoslovakia, but I bet she would have been pleased.

I am rather partial to revolution, right about now. Ever more so.

Velvet sounds good.

#166 / Havel #2

Václav Havel, who died in December of last year, was a playwright and a politician. For a time, he was the President of Czechoslovakia, and later of the Czech Republic, but Havel is best remembered for having led “the Velvet Revolution,” in 1989, which toppled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

I have written about Havel before; in fact, more than once. Last Friday, a week ago, this quotation from Havel appeared in my email inbox, thanks to Transition Santa Cruz:

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart ... It is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

I particularly agree with Havel that hope is “not prognostication.” Predictions and prognostications are always based on the idea that reality is something that “happens to us,” something that we might predict, with some luck; that we can track and document. In fact, “reality” emerges from the actions we take ourselves. If we are “hopeful,” rather than filled with doom and gloom, it is because we know that his attitude, this orientation of the spirit, is something that “makes sense.”

It makes sense, to me, to recognize our ability to change what we do, and thus to change the world.

That’s what Transition Santa Cruz advises, too. That’s why they sent supporters the Havel quote.

#165 / Doom And Gloom

Some of my friends think I am a "doom and gloom" kind of guy.

Maybe I am.

I do regularly advertise the many problems that we confront, and I do suggest that they are "serious."

Maybe that is enough to justify the "doom and gloom" label.

My basic proposition, however, is NOT that we are "doomed." Quite the opposite. I believe that we live most immediately in a world that we create ourselves, and that our power to change this human reality is plenary. There are no "inevitabilities" in the world we create. Anything is possible.

Literally.

Of course, "anything" can mean "bad things," as well as "good things." We can make both our "dreams" and our "nightmares" come true.

It's up to us.

There is a "limit," however, on our ability to shape reality. This limit is imposed by the laws of the world of Nature, the world we don't create, and the world upon which we are ultimately dependent.

I send out periodic warnings about the truly dangerous problems we are ignoring (global warming, for instance). The message, though, is not that we are inevitably "doomed."

The message is that we had better start paying attention to the world of Nature, and to the limits it imposes, and should start making different choices in the world that we both create and control.

This "tipping point" thing is real.

So is our ability to make genuine changes in what we do.

Even "radical" changes.

Imagine that!!

#164 / Another Angle

I really liked an article in Santa Cruz Patch, published on June 7th. Click here, or on the image, to read the article:

A video camera catches what looks like the most violent police shooting ever.

A man is walking away from a uniformed officer outside a convenience store and the cop takes aim and fires into the man's back. If it were shown to a jury, it would only take minutes to convict the cop.

"What do you think of that?" asks Sgt. Mike Harms, a Santa Cruz Police officer in charge of community relations, after he shows the first tape.

The 20 community members who are taking the Santa Cruz Police Department's Citizen's Academy are fishing for words or silent. It looks like an egregious crime by a cop and no one in the heart of the police station on Center Street really wants to say what they are thinking.

"Wait a minute," he says, and pulls up a second film of the same shooting from a different angle.

This time we see that the man walking away has a pistol in his hand we couldn't see in the other tape. He's pointed it at another cop off to the side and and is clearly homicidal.

If anything, the cop waited too long to shoot him, we see this time. Amazing the difference an angle can make.

This story reminds me of the "figure and ground" illusion.

We need to be a little skeptical about what "reality" actually is. Sometimes, our first impression isn't adequate. A lot depends on the angle from which we're looking.

#163 / Change Reagent

If we are going to talk about change, and assign responsibility and recognition, maybe we should think about the category of "change reagents."

A "reagent" is a "substance or mixture for use in chemical analysis or other reactions."

What I like about "reagent" idea is that the word includes a kind of collective reference. It is not "individuals" who make real change in this world we create. It is the "mixture" of us all. We create this world together.

No one has to wear a badge.

We do have to get involved. We need to "mix it up."

#162 / Change Agent

I am not a big fan of the "change agent" title, particularly when it is self-applied. Like when your business card has "Change Agent" as the title of your position. Or when you pin a "Change Agent" badge on your lapel.

The resident guru at Toolbox.com says a "change agent is someone who alters human capability or organizational systems to achieve a higher degree of output or self actualization." To my mind, that definition is veering towards the gobbledegook end of the spectrum.

Men and women who have helped inspire and make positive changes in our world deserve appreciation. But I don't remember having heard that Rosa Parks, or Dolores Huerta, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Cesar Chavez, or Martin Luther King, Jr. ever handed out a business card with that "Change Agent" designation.

#161 / Turning The Calendar Page

I have been interested in the Mayan Calendar and its possible prediction of the "end of the world" for some time. Click here, or on the image, for another person's ruminations on this topic.

According to what I read in the Honolulu Star Advertiser, new archeological discoveries indicate that the Mayan Calendar doesn't really "end" on December 21, 2012 after all.

Whew! That's a relief!!

Nonetheless, whatever the Mayan Calendar may say (or not), I don't think that we human beings and our civilization are actually "off the hook." There is still a lot to worry about, when we consider how far we are pushing the natural world, upon which we and our civilization do, ultimately, depend.

#160 / Solar Scorecard

Everyone knows that "solar is good," right? Well, I'm thinking that a predisposition to support "solar" is not a good reason to dispense with the "precautionary principle."

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition agrees. That is why they have published a "Solar Scorecard," which is worth review.

Whether it's high-speed rail or the development of solar energy, we need to take that "precautionary" approach.

SVTC "believes that we still have time to ensure that the PV sector is safe for the environment, workers, and communities." It is not automatic that the development of photovoltaic panels will happen in a way that respects the natural environment, just as the development of massive solar power generating plants in the desert is not automatically "good" for the world of nature.

What we do within our world (and even our most positive efforts within that world) can have negative impacts on the natural world - the world on which we ultimately depend.

#159 / Altamont

Ken Alex, currently the head of the Governor's Office of Planning and Research, was recently quoted in the San Jose Mercury News, as follows:

When you mention Altamont people think of three things: the Rolling Stones, the Hell's Angels and windmills. Today, we're going to talk about windmills.

I am all with Ken Alex on the windmills. As reported in the Mercury, the "repowering" of the windmills located in the Altamont Pass is a real and positive step ahead for alternative energy - and for the bird life that was being decimated by the older versions of the wind power machines that are so visible to those who use the Altamont pass to go from the Bay Area to the Central Valley.

I do want to indicate that there is another topic that the word "Altamont" brings to mind, or at least to my mind: namely, the failure of the proposed high-speed rail project to make its Bay Area to Central Valley connection through the high-traffic corridor of the Altamont Pass, where it could be located. The California High-Speed Rail Authority has been adamant that it wants to make that connection through Pacheco Pass, which is longer and more expensive. The Pacheco Pass route, apparently, has a feature that the Authority thinks of as an "advantage." As opposed to the Altamont Pass option, which would relieve existing conditions of traffic gridlock, the Pacheco Pass route would stimulate new development in the Los Baños area, thus benefiting land speculators. As the illustration below depicts, if you "follow the lights" you can see that Pacheco Pass is growth inducing, while the Altamont Pass would serve the needs of existing residents and businesses.

My note to Ken Alex: when you next think of "Altamont," put this other topic on your "Altamont" reference list, too.

#158 / Exhausted

The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is the most powerful environmental law currently on the books. And it is under attack.

CEQA only works when ordinary people get involved and utilize its provisions. The Planning and Conservation League Foundation has published a nice Community Guide To CEQA that gives those without any CEQA experience a good understanding of how the process works, and how to begin to utilize this law effectively. PCLF has also published an inspiring book called Everyday Heroes that documents the positive impacts that CEQA has had throughout its 40+ year history.

There is no official body that supervises CEQA compliance, and that ensures that local and state governmental agencies actually carry through with the "CEQA Three-Step" process, as the law mandates. CEQA is enforced by citizen lawsuits, and there is an important "exhaustion" requirement that is a condition precedent to any such citizen litigation.

Those who would like to participate in the CEQA process, and to make use of the considerable power that CEQA provides to ordinary persons, vis a vis their government, needs to "exhaust" issues that they may want to raise later. That means that you need to raise all the issues that you care about before you go to court, so you can demonstrate to the court that you have "exhausted your administrative remedies" prior to filing a lawsuit.

The power of CEQA, in other words, is available only to those persons who actively participate in the governmental process!

Don't stay home when those governmental bodies start voting on things you care about. Your ability to do something about any bad decision they make demands that you be "exhausted" first!

#157 / Mammoth

The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is the state's most powerful environmental law. Unfortunately, CEQA is under attack in the State Legislature, with both the Governor and individual members of the Legislature seeking to exempt significant projects from its "Three-Step" process.

The most recent example is the Governor's outrageous proposal to shield his problematic high-speed rail project from the kind of "stop and think" review that might illuminate a lot of environmental and other problems with a project that has a rather undeserved "green" reputation.

In fact, the Governor's effort to shield the proposed high-speed rail project from CEQA is just one example of what seems to be a growing trend. Last legislative session, big sports stadiums were given special CEQA treatment. The idea seems to be that if the project "sounds good" it should be exempt from the kind of public review that just might raise uncomfortable questions.

The true strength of CEQA, historically, is founded on a 1972 California Supreme Court decision called Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors of Mono County. That decision held that CEQA applies to all governmental actions that "might" have a significant adverse impact on the environment. Clearly, projects directly carried out by the government (like the proposed high-speed rail project) were covered by the law from the start, but what the California Supreme Court made clear, and what has made all the difference for the California environment, is that governmental decisions about whether or not to give a permit to a private developer are also decisions for which CEQA review is required.

The developers have never gotten over the Friends of Mammoth decision, and they have been fighting CEQA ever since. Unless the public speaks up now, they may succeed in undermining a law that has empowered ordinary people vis a vis their government, and that helped protect and preserve the natural environment, upon which all our works and creations ultimately depend.

#156 / CEQA's Three Step Process

Last week, I made a presentation to a class at UCSC, speaking about "The CEQA Experience."

The "CEQA experience" can be something like what the image here portrays, though depicting CEQA as a combatant against developers would only tell a very small part of the CEQA story. (Incidentally, as with virtually all the posts I make to this blog, if you click on the image, you will be connected to its origin on the web).

I prefer to think of CEQA as a "good government" statute - one that makes our governmental agencies "stop and think" before they act. It is also a law that gives real power to ordinary people, vis a vis their government. That's what the "CEQA Three-Step" is all about.

Once a governmental agency has determined that a proposed project "might" have a significant adverse environmental impact, the agency is required to prepare an Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, and to consider that informational document before making a decision on the proposed project. CEQA also has a "substantive mandate." If it is feasible to eliminate or reduce the negative environmental impacts identified in an EIR, the governmental agency is required by CEQA to take action to do just that.

The "CEQA Three Step" is the process by which an Environmental Impact Report is prepared: (1) The agency prepares a "Draft" EIR, describing the project that it is proposing to carry out; (2) Any person is allowed to comment on the Draft EIR; (3) The governmental agency proposing the project must provide a substantive response to every substantive comment made. The "Final" EIR is the Draft EIR, plus the comments received, plus the responses to the comments. This "Final" EIR is what the agency must consider before approving the project, and this is the document that will establish whether or not there is a "substantive mandate" that requires the agency to make modifications to what was originally proposed.

The courts review agency compliance with this three-step CEQA process. And here's where the power of ordinary persons to affect governmental actions comes in. The courts have been VERY clear that the agencies cannot "blow off" substantive comments made by the public. Therefore, if a comment raises a serious question or concern the government MUST address that question or concern in a substantive and serious way. If the government doesn't do that, the courts have been very good about invalidating any EIR that has not provided an adequate and substantive response to a serious question or concern, or to new information that has been submitted through the public comment process. If the court finds that the agency has not dealt substantively with substantive questions, concerns, and suggestions that come to the agency through the CEQA process, the court will reverse any decision made on the basis of such an inadequate EIR, and force the governmental agency to go back and do an adequate job.

Thanks to this "CEQA Three-Step" process, ordinary people have a real ability to get governmental staff and consultants actually to work for them, and to deal seriously with their suggestions and concerns. If the governmental agency doesn't respond substantively to any substantive comment, it is putting its decision-making process in jeopardy of reversal.

Thanks to the "CEQA Three-Step," in other words, ordinary people have an opportunity to make the government "do it right." To achieve that result, however, we do have to get involved (seriously and substantively involved) ourselves!

#155 / Chimes Of Freedom

I was pretty pleased to see that President Obama has honored Bob Dylan with one of those Presidential Medals of Freedom. This is the highest civilian award given out in the United States, and it is not handed out that often. Here is a list of past recipients, if you would like to browse.

Apparently, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is considered to be more or less the American equivalent of a knighthood. That would place Bob Dylan on a par with Paul McCartney, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1997. Actually, if I had to choose (and luckily I don't), I think I'd give the Nod to Bob.

Meantime, while knighthood equivalents come and go, Bob Dylan is still out there singing, still on the road, and still "heading for another joint." Once in a while he sings one of my favorites, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding). If he had sung that song in the White House, then the honors would have been going both ways, and it does contain some lines that every President needs to hear, no matter how good that President is doing:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

#154 / You Read It Right

As announced in yesterday's newspaper, Governor Jerry Brown is going to ask the State Legislature to pass special state legislation to exempt the proposed high-speed rail project, the largest infrastructure project ever proposed in California history, from the kind of environmental review that every other significant project has to undergo. That is correct. You read it right.

Dan Richard is the Chairperson of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the state agency in charge, and is the man that Governor Brown has made his personal "point person" on high-speed rail. Richard absolutely promised the State Senate, in official testimony, that he and the Governor would never ask for any such special treatment under CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act). You can watch him make that promise to an official State Senate hearing on May 15th, by clicking this link:

We have never and we will never come to you and ask you to mess with the CEQA requirements for the project level.

Well, if you read the news article, you know that Dan Richard and the Governor lied.

I have been deeply engaged in working on high-speed rail issues on behalf of residents of the San Francisco Peninsula and farmers in the Central Valley. Both groups have tried their very hardest to have the state "do it right" where high-speed rail is concerned. During the three years I have been personally involved, the High-Speed Rail Authority has consistently "done it wrong." The Legislative Analyst's Office, the State Auditor, and the Authority's own Peer Review Group have repeatedly pointed out that the Authority has mismanaged the project, and has failed and refused to deal with significant financial, environmental, and community impact issues. I know, from my personal involvement, that the proposed project will absolutely have these bad environmental impacts (unless CEQA is applied to require alternative approaches and mitigations):

• Unnecessary destruction of farmlands and wetlands
  
• Increased air pollution in the Central Valley
  
• Growth inducing impacts to benefit land speculators
  
• Significant (though possibly avoidable) impacts in urban communities
• Increased (not reduced) greenhouse gas emissions
  

CEQA is a "stop and think" statute. It is outrageous that the Governor would seek a modification of this incredibly important environmental law to jam through a project with such massive negative impacts, without going through the process that might result in alternative approaches and mitigations that could result in a project that lives up to its "green" reputation - a reputation that is absolutely not deserved by the current project design.

Of course, just because the Governor "asks" the Legislature to do something doesn't mean that the Legislature will automatically do it. I can tell you, however, that the political pressures that the Governor is bringing to bear on members of the State Legislature are immense. If the public doesn't care, the Governor is going to get his way (and the CEQA modification he is looking for) no matter what he promised, and no matter what actually makes governmental and environmental good sense.

If you want to help ensure that there is an adequate environmental review of a project that "might" produce some positive benefits (though there is no identified funding for the project beyond the construction of a $6 billion dollar non-high-speed set of tracks across farmlands between Merced and Fresno), you should contact your State Senator and Assembly Member, and tell them to reject the Governor's request for a CEQA exemption for high-speed rail. You can find out who your elected state representatives are, if you don't know, by clicking right here.

If you really have energy to fight this "railroad" of the environmental process, contact any and all environmental groups that you may be a member of, and urge them officially to oppose this kind of CEQA exemption. Sierra Club California is doing a great job standing up for CEQA. Most other environmental groups are remaining silent, and are standing by the tracks watching the train go by.

Unfortunately, the proposed high-speed train project is a "train to nowhere." Complying with CEQA just "might" turn that train around.

#153 / The Marshmallow Effect*

In the 1960's and 1970's, a famous “marshmallow experiment” was carried out by researchers at Stanford University. 651 preschool-aged children were studied, with researchers examining the mental mechanisms that affect cognitive and emotional self-regulation.

The children were given a marshmallow and advised that if they waited to eat the marshmallow until the experimenter returned from an errand that would take about 15-20 minutes, the experimenter would give the child two marshmallows to eat.

One-third of the children ate the marshmallow almost immediately. One-third of the children waited some period of time, but ate the marshmallow before the experimenter returned. One-third of the children waited long enough to earn the second marshmallow.

In a longitudinal follow-up study, the same children were tested at 18 years of age. The children who ate the marshmallow immediately, labeled the low delayers, were compared to the children who waited to receive the enhanced reward, labeled the high delayers. Across a range of measured variables—including behavioral measures, cognitive measures, attention measures, social and relationship measures, physical health measures, stress measures, school attendance, school completion, early pregnancy, truancy, drug use, and criminal activity—low delayers performed less successfully.

Significantly, the high delayers scored, on average, 210 points higher on the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) in mathematics than the low delayers. The predictive variable was deemed the “strategic allocation of attention,” or the ability to self-distract. The findings are stable across cultures. Based on this research, ability to self-regulate is a better predictor of SAT score than Intelligence Quotient (IQ) or parent education or even economic status.

To cut to the chase: delayed gratification works, if you want a high SAT score in math!

Probably works in other areas, too!!

*The information in this post comes from the Tomorrow's Professor Blog.

#152 / The Swerve

The Swerve is a book by Stephen Greenblatt, who is John Cogan Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, and the general editor of The Norton Shakespeare. The Swerve is advertised as an account of "how the Renaissance began."

According to Greenblatt, the Renaissance began with the rediscovery of the long lost text of On The Nature of Things, a poem and philosophical treatise by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. According to Greenblatt, Lucretius argued that:

Everything is made of invisible particles.

The elementary particles of matter are eternal.

The elementary particles are infinite in number.

All particles are in motion in an infinite void.

Nature ceaselessly experiments.

Everything comes into being as a result of a "swerve."

The universe was not created for or about humans.

Human society began in a primitive battle for survival.

The soul dies.

There is no afterlife.

All organized religions are superstitious delusions.

Religions are invariably cruel.

There are no angels, demons, or ghosts.

The goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.

These thoughts do seem to reflect much of what our society has come to think of as "truth" in the modern world. According to Greenblatt, it all began with Lucretius, and Lucretius' thoughts came to light through the work of Poggio Bracciolini, the "Book Hunter" hero of Greenblatt's book.

Next off my bookshelf: Lucretius himself.