permaculture

[Misha Gale-Sinex <mgs2369@attbi.com>]

Howdy, all--

The Greening Earth Society is an astroturf organization. That is, a 
phony front group for fossil fuel industry points of view (it was 
formed by the Western Fuels Association) that poses as a grassroots 
environmental organization.

Greening Earth was exposed in John Stauber's and Sheldon Rampton's 
/Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and 
Gambles with your Future/ (Putnam/Tarcher, 2001). These are folks who 
also publish /PR Watch/.

Here's what ME3 had to say (Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy):
http://www.me3.org/issues/climate/greening.html

Here's Viridian's take:
http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/76-100/00078.html

Viridian is a design project by, I think, some old WELL folks 
(including Bruce Sterling).

Here is how Grist magazine exposed them about three years ago:
http://www.gristmagazine.com/busted/busted122099.stm


The problem with the carbon-in-soils equation from a human 
perspective is that we didn't evolve on this planet in an ecosystem 
where all that carbon was held in the soil. All that carbon was 
locked up deep down in the rock. For tens to hundreds of millions of 
years.

In the course of little more than 150 years, we have lifted it out of 
the earth's crust and put it into the atmosphere.

Sure, it may be possible to get the soil to uptake some amount of 
carbon...but don't expect the resulting chemistry to be amenable to 
human evolution. And as ever, humans are in a big-ass hurry, and 
expect the rest of creation to keep up with our clock-driven 
rush-fetish.

The Duke press release gets it pretty much right. There are limits to 
how much fossil matter living organisms can absorb, and at what pace. 
The most sane policies would act immediately to stop excavating 
below-ground carbon and seek alternatives--like the nearly limitless 
flows of photon, kinetic (wind and surf), and other energies. And 
would address from a cultural standpoint the hurry-sickness.

It ain't gonna happen. I came to that conclusion a couple years ago, 
consulting  with the folks at the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space 
Studies at Columbia (while I was at Redefining Progress).

Anyone who argues at this point that there will be no or only minor 
effects in excavating billions of tons of carbon out of the earth's 
crust and putting it into the atmosphere, decisively changing the 
composition of the atmosphere, has their head up their tailpipe, 
huffing methane.

You're aware that many older folks are boasting these days, "I'm 
spending my children's inheritance."


peace
mish













~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michele Gale-Sinex

Home office:            360-459-5683
Home office fax:                Same as above, phone first for enabling
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The First Rule of Holes is that when you are in one,
you should stop digging.  --Molly Ivins