The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a direct result of our oil addiction coupled with the drive-by drilling practices of pusher British Petroleum and their criminally negligent associates, has been consuming the attention of DailyKos.
The wreck list lingers over a blow by blow of the oil gusher, but as horrific as it is this is just a symptom, a symptom of our oil addition, our media's mishandling of important issues, and the inability of the stateless, egalitarian blogosphere to self organize and deal with pushing policy changes.
I've been talking about the need for change in our methods for a couple of years. I've been working on just that since we founded the Blog Workers Industrial Union. We've worked on political races and issues advocacy before, but this is the first campaign we've developed from scratch. I'm very curious to hear your opinions on both the solution and the methods.
Our problem, simply put, is that we're 4% of the world's population directly consuming 25% of the oil and indirectly using another 10% by having offshored our manufacturing jobs to the Far East. Nothing the United States of America does is worth a third of the world's liquid fuels in the eyes of the other 96% of humanity, America Exceptionalism not withstanding.
Oh, the United States is unique in many ways, but today it's that terminal uniqueness that propels drunks out of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and into early graves. We're drunk on oil, we've overdrawn the bank trying to get more, and our breaking and entering in an attempt to get at that last unworked supergiant field below the sands of Kurdistan has long since been raising eyebrows.
If oil is our drink coal would be the unfiltered climate cancer stick to go along with it. We've got mercury in our seas, we've got toxic coal ash floods, and no one wants to talk about the ppm to 13 ppm uranium going straight up the stack in some Asian coal fired power plants. Using this stuff is awful even before we start talking about the climate effects it has.
Rebuilding the rail infrastructure we had a century ago is the only workable solution to the problems we have in energy, the environment, and our economy.
The Railroad ReModelers Club came together to popularize and expand upon a solution; the Threshold 21 North America Model. The Threshold 21 modeling system, created by the Millennium Institute is a method to evaluate outcomes when complex policy changes are under consideration. Their own words best convey what it is that they do.
Our vision is of a world where society manages its economy equitably, in harmony with its life-supporting environment and within the available renewable natural resources.
Our mission is to help people and organizations enhance insight for decision-making in complex systems towards the development of a global sense of shared responsibility about our common future.
We accomplish this mission through:
Developing and disseminating advanced analytical tools that support prospective strategic planning dialogues at community, national and global levels.
Building a network of supporters and partners across the globe to inspire, promote, endow, and implement rational, integrated planning.
Increasing capacity among a broad range of partners to promote sustainable development using all modern tools and means of communication and establishing centers of excellence in System Dynamics and Threshold 21 around the world.
Applying the lessons learned to improve the efficiency of our activities and capacity to serve.
There are a number of Threshold 21 models out there, but the Threshold 21 North America model is the work Alan Drake, a consulting engineer who frequents The Oil Drum. This rail-centric basis for resolving our oil dependencies features things like a 38% reduction in domestic oil usage, we'll see a 25% growth in the economy due to transit oriented development, and as an aside we're going to need some tax changes; human who live in a society with mass transit rather than cars live about ten years longer due to all the walking and biking.
Alan has always said he wanted to expand on this model, both in terms of the systems it characterizes and those who are aware and backing the efforts required to meet the model's goals. There are a number of Threshold 21 Projects and you can find even more information on the Threshold 21 Timeline.
We need to expand upon this effort. We've not yet had anything on this effort go up on The Oil Drum, but given that Alan and I are involved that's just a matter of good writing. The Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs has agreed to publish a policy piece based on the National Renewable Ammonia Architecture and they already have a good bit of work done on transit for rural America. Perhaps once we get a little sharper on what we want to do they'll permit us some space for the policy need to accurately model our assumptions.
When we were in D.C. We met with the Union of Unemployed. This group is now 120,000 strong and pushing Hire US America, a 21 point federal direct jobs plan. 10% of the 700,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers are “riding the rails”, as Rick Sloan describes it. We believe they'll take a kindly (and we hope helpful) view of our efforts.
We have within the little band of founders direct, personal contact with the Sierra Club and United Steelworkers. We've talked just a little bit with the folks from their coalition, the BlueGreen Alliance, and we've got high hopes for their participation. I suppose it doesn't hurt that ISW President Leo Gerard became a Kossack not long after attending the blogging panel at the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit.
Kossack A. Siegel made sure Architecture 2030 was added and he does continuing yeoman duty in the pursuit of small things that will make big differences. Kossack RL Miller brought an amazing rolodex to the party. Kossack boatsie, a member of the advisory board for WiserEarth, where we've chosen to centralize our efforts, has been a most patient herder of cats. Kossack birdbrain64 is singing our praises in some surprising places. Kossack gmoke turned up just once for our Monday conference call, spoke for about sixty seconds flat, and made all the difference in the world. That was not the first time he has done such things. And Kossack BruceMcF is in a class all his own as far as expertise and focus on the transportation issue. I'm sure I'm forgetting many others who done and said things that were instrumental; my apologies if you ought to be on this list and you are not.
I sat down with the intent to explain all of it, how to go about getting the blogosphere, the twitterverse, and a couple of other corners of the online world to work in concert to make sweeping changes happen. This is already over 1,100 words and I can see I need to turn this into a series.