Radical Avenue

T. Boone Pickens has finally seen the light. Al Gore and the Sierra Club were correct all along in their assessment of America’s need to invest in alternative energy sources. As Pickens’s new clean energy commercials emphasize, our increasing dependence on foreign oil has lead to an enormous transfer of wealth from the United States to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

Oil Intoxication
The Oil Companies got drunk during the Bush presidency, just like Wall Street. And now our addiction to sweet crude has left us in such a sorry state that seasonal price fluctuations send tremors throughout our entire economy. According to lifetime oil man Pickens, it’s a problem we can’t drill our way out of.

McCain/Bush Offer More Drilling
Apparently the Bush/McCain team never got the Pickens memo. Mr. Pickens says that more drilling will not break our dependence on foreign oil. This calls into question Republican sponsorship of new drilling off our coasts and in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve. Instead Pickens favors heavy investment in alternative energy, like wind and solar power.

Pickens v. McCain
Despite his lifelong support of Republicans, Pickens obviously believes that President Bush will never deal effectively with the current crisis. His commercials clearly state that energy policy has to be a priority for the next president and Congress. He could have said that it can’t wait until the election, but he did not.

The senior senator from Arizona must be seething as he watches Pickens publicly advocate progressive energy solutions. John McCain’s energy policy is identical to George Bush’s in almost every detail and looks ineffectual when compared to the Pickens plan.

Good news. Here in California, the Building Standards Commission has adopted new residential construction codes intended to cut water usage and increase energy efficiency in new homes. The Commission intends to phase in these new “green” standards over the next three years.

This may not seem like much at first blush. The use of energy saving devices in and around the home is commonplace. But governments have been slow to adopt energy and water savings targets as part of new home building standards. A state regulatory agency has now finally acknowledged the need to explicitly require energy efficiency in new homes.

Influential real estate development groups lobby state governments heavily, and California is no exception. However many developers support green building standards in part because it helps boost their credentials as responsible public citizens. Perhaps standards which require fire resistant new homes in heavily forested areas will be the next step in selling this public interest first approach.

Unregulated Market: Tinderbox Homes
Real estate developers looking to make a quick buck in an unregulated market build new homes using the cheapest materials available. Then they market these homes as rustic log cabins in the country. After a firestorm blows through, homeowners are left with broken dreams and piles of smoldering rubble.

Incentive Driven Market: Fire Proof Homes
States should offer tax incentives to builders who use fire resistant materials in roofs and walls of new homes. Maintaining clear defensible space around homes in fire prone areas is still only a recommendation. Allowing unscrupulous builders to prey on unsuspecting customers hurts taxpayers and reputable real estate developers alike. It’s time to expect new homes built in the wilderness to withstand most wildfires.

Peer down from the ninety ninth floor of an urban skyscraper and commuters look like little bugs. Every day thousands of worker bees cram into giant steel buildings to produce a little honey for their favorite customers. Unfortunately there’s never enough room on the narrow downtown streets to deliver all of these go getters to the hive on time. Enter mass transit.

Commuting daily from an outlying community into downtown will test anyone’s patience. Traffic crawls along at a snail’s pace. Parking is expensive. And with sky high fuel prices, every extra mile behind the wheel pinches the budget a little more. All of these obstacles are making mass transit an attractive option for a growing number of workers.

It makes sense to have parking structures and transit centers along the freeways out in the suburbs. Trains and buses can efficiently transport several people at once. Trains often run on electricity and buses on natural gas, so these vehicles generate less pollution.

Alternative fuel filling stations cost a lot to build right now. But buses make strong candidates for alternative fuels because they follow the same daily route and can refuel at the same pump every night.

GM, Honda and BMW have all begun selling hydrogen powered cars to a few well heeled customers in southern California. Large suburban transit centers would be ideal locations for hydrogen refueling stations. It would allow commuters to drive their hydrogen powered vehicles to the train station every day and fill up on the way home, thereby substantially reducing air pollution from automobile emissions. Welcome the future.

mass transit, trains, buses, hydrogen powered vehicles

Mathematically inclined historians may calculate for decades before finding the right equation to fully assess the Bush presidency. While measuring the gap between the federal budget surplus Bush inherited and the massive deficit he will leave behind is a start, those numbers merely hint at the burdens that this president will pass along to future generations. Here is an initial attempt to quantify the damage.

Woodrow Wilson – Empire dreams
Like Bush, Wilson never accepted responsibility for the failings of his administration, but instead blamed his political opponents in Congress for hurting the country by blocking his initiatives. Woodrow Wilson had an expansive view of US influence in the world and would have understood the sentiment behind Bush’s plan to create a “beacon of hope” through democracy in Iraq. Wilson’s grandiose plans were never realized. The beacon in Iraq is still a little dim.

Herbert Hoover – Poor get poorer
Bush’s philosophy on government closely resembles President Hoover’s hands off approach to regulating industry. The disparity between rich and poor is greater now than at any time since the Hoover years. Isn’t that what got Louis XVI into trouble?

James Buchanan – Fiddling while Rome burns
The original bubble boy, President Buchanan managed to anger both northern and southern politicians prior to the countries descent into civil war. Rather than aggressively respond to South Carolina’s secession from the United States, Buchanan argued that the Constitution did not allow the federal government to coerce a state into submission.

In the last months of his presidency, Buchanan retreated to his country home and left a broken nation behind for his successor to deal with. Buchanan was followed in office by a lanky lawyer from Illinois.

George W. Bush, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, James Buchanan

American politicians like to promote democracy as a polished gemstone behind a plate glass window at the jewelry store, rather than as a diamond in the rough still encrusted in stone. A country’s decision to embrace democratic reform is only the first step in a long, arduous process of political reconciliation. Real democracy requires consensus building among people who disagree about almost everything.

When a country selects its political leaders through legitimate elections, other countries must deal with whomever the citizens choose. In the long run this is preferable to totalitarian governments, where power only transfers from one group to another through violence. If all political organizations in a country agree to peaceful exchanges of power based on elections, it indicates that the nation is ready for long term political stability.

Bolivia
President Evo Morales has encountered a bit of headwind in his sail towards political reform in Bolivia. Over half of Bolivia’s regional governors have rejected a vote on whether they should stay in office and instead are calling for early general elections.

Last week Tarija became the fourth province to vote for greater independence from the central government. The war of words seems likely to continue for a while. At least these skirmishes are decided by results from the ballot box.

Kosovo
In a similar rebuke of national solidarity, Kosovo’s minority Serbs have assembled their own parliament in the northern town of Mitrovica, rather than assent to the terms of Kosovo’s new constitution. It may be hard to envision how this separate parliament will govern effectively, but it’s easy to see that plenty of animosity remains in this part of Europe.

Democracy, Bolivia, Evo Morales, Kosovo