Good Morning!
It's in the 60's today in Oakland, bright and sunny with a slight chill. I'm cozily wrapped up in a blanket on the couch catching up on the news from yesterday. I love these days!
Oil Spill Commission: Yesterday was the first day of a two day hearing by the Oil Spill Commission. Johanna at Gulf Restoration Network wrote a fantastic blog about it. You can listen to day two here. But learn from my actions from yesterday, don't listen to it editing a report. Not helpful. PBS news has a good segment on yesterday's findings.
The main finding . . . no instance was found that someone or three people made a calculated decision of money over safety. That sounds soooo familiar. Oh right, its the same thing communities being poisoned by polluting facilities are told when they realize they are being poisoned by the polluting facility in their community. Another thing that is important to know is that the commission wasn't given subpoena orders. They weren't allowed to look at classified information that any party didn't just provide to them. I bet that is comforting to those 11 families and millions of people impacted by the 87 days of leaking oil into their lifesource. None of the three companies involved were even legally required to participate, contribute fully or partially in the investigation.
Chickens: My Aunt Opal and Uncle Harvey recently started raising chickens. They are kind of adorable. The chickens and the aunt and uncle.
Prop 23 and Why We Must Beat Climate Change at the State Level: On the ballot in California last week was Prop 23. A proposition funded by Texas oil companies to stop those crazy Californians from continuing to create an alternative energy economy. A lot of environmentalists are providing their assessment of why this measure was beaten when the climate bill in DC was eviscerated by oil lobbyists earlier this year. NRDC says . . . Grist provides one of the best assessments I've seen yet. It really goes into detail about why we aren't going to win in Washington until we win in California and New York and Florida and Kansas and etc.
I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm not the crazy one that has been saying all along that spending all that money in Copenhagen and Washington DC is a big fucking waste and the other side knows it. We are wasting valuable resources participating in these fruitless fights when we could be investing in iconic projects on the ground and training the workforce and passing local incentive policies to create the market we want ourselves. Maybe I'm not the insane one, maybe all those groups that refuse to learn the lessons of failure are the crazy ones.
Time for the next project . . .
Ciao
Renee
And for those of you who remember 1998.
Showing posts with label Gulf Coast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gulf Coast. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Het Best!
Yesterday, a group of us loud North Americans sat at lunch and recounted every detail our little brains could think of about the Jetblue "I've had it. I'm done." flight attendant. It's officially one of my all time favorite moments in this world.
If you haven't read everything you can read about it, check out the The Colbert Report's tribute.
Jetblue finally after three days of silence, came out with a statement. Basically, they said meh, we're so funny.
I wonder how Richard Branson would react to this happening one of Virgin's planes. I think Richard Branson because I'm currently reading his book "Business Striped Bare". It's excellent. Definitely one of the best business books I've read in a long time, maybe ever. He's pretty great, both in his approach to business, attention to details, having fun, and learning from your mistakes, and his sense of humor.
I was reading this book the other day at my favorite cafe on that street near the canal with the bikes. The one that H and I get terribly lost trying to find every single time we want to drink wit wine and cappuccinos with Cointreau all day long. This man who I had been listening on in of his conversation with two women at the table next to mine saw me reading Branson's book and offered a couple other entrepreneurial book suggestions. I was listening to him because (1) he sounded like an arrogant asshole and (2) he was interesting. Well, now I can't remember what those books were, but you are well aware of my constant reading of business books and magazines, so maybe I'll stumble across it regardless.
I'm on my way back to the states tomorrow afternoon. It's been an odd trip here. Lots of . . . well, lots of personal growth experienced actually. I had this incredible zen moment the other night, where many outstanding questions about my life and the people in it just clicked. I'm an odd bird, not sure if you have noticed and sometimes it sucks, but there isn't much I can about it all now, so I might as well enjoy the ride.
I'm on the hunt for new adventures, so if you have any ideas, pass them along. But the next couple months should be pretty intense. My dad and I are driving cross country starting on Saturday evening. I'm on a mission to visit Wyoming and all the rest of the states on I-80 I've never been to before! Then I might hop over to Louisiana for some volunteering with a small organization working on gulf coast restoration for a couple weeks and I'm planning a 350 event with a local Oakland organization. At least I'm going to try to convince them to do an event in Oakland. So those are two good adventures for the Fall I'm looking forward to.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then check this out. It's pretty easy to get involved. Just gather a bunch of your friends on October 10, 2010, take a picture, and try to do something to help your community mitigate the impacts of climate change. Since most of you that read this blog are from Florida or Louisiana, there's no excuse in not getting involved.
Alright, I'm off.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
If you haven't read everything you can read about it, check out the The Colbert Report's tribute.
Jetblue finally after three days of silence, came out with a statement. Basically, they said meh, we're so funny.
I wonder how Richard Branson would react to this happening one of Virgin's planes. I think Richard Branson because I'm currently reading his book "Business Striped Bare". It's excellent. Definitely one of the best business books I've read in a long time, maybe ever. He's pretty great, both in his approach to business, attention to details, having fun, and learning from your mistakes, and his sense of humor.
I was reading this book the other day at my favorite cafe on that street near the canal with the bikes. The one that H and I get terribly lost trying to find every single time we want to drink wit wine and cappuccinos with Cointreau all day long. This man who I had been listening on in of his conversation with two women at the table next to mine saw me reading Branson's book and offered a couple other entrepreneurial book suggestions. I was listening to him because (1) he sounded like an arrogant asshole and (2) he was interesting. Well, now I can't remember what those books were, but you are well aware of my constant reading of business books and magazines, so maybe I'll stumble across it regardless.
I'm on my way back to the states tomorrow afternoon. It's been an odd trip here. Lots of . . . well, lots of personal growth experienced actually. I had this incredible zen moment the other night, where many outstanding questions about my life and the people in it just clicked. I'm an odd bird, not sure if you have noticed and sometimes it sucks, but there isn't much I can about it all now, so I might as well enjoy the ride.
I'm on the hunt for new adventures, so if you have any ideas, pass them along. But the next couple months should be pretty intense. My dad and I are driving cross country starting on Saturday evening. I'm on a mission to visit Wyoming and all the rest of the states on I-80 I've never been to before! Then I might hop over to Louisiana for some volunteering with a small organization working on gulf coast restoration for a couple weeks and I'm planning a 350 event with a local Oakland organization. At least I'm going to try to convince them to do an event in Oakland. So those are two good adventures for the Fall I'm looking forward to.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then check this out. It's pretty easy to get involved. Just gather a bunch of your friends on October 10, 2010, take a picture, and try to do something to help your community mitigate the impacts of climate change. Since most of you that read this blog are from Florida or Louisiana, there's no excuse in not getting involved.
Alright, I'm off.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
Thursday, July 8, 2010
A Security Blanket of Radicals and Revolution
Out of frustration of my own limited talent and experience, I am seeking the comfort of one my literary security blankets; Rules for Radicals. Though I have several that I often depend on -- anything Langston Hughes and Alice Walker, A River Runs Through It, To Kill A Mockingbird to name a few. On my trip into the city today, I began my 3rd reading of Rules for Radicals, though I often re-read highlighted passages when the need arises.
I'm at a bit of struggle on a couple fronts, but mostly the oil spill and its impacts to both the people of the gulf and the slow process of galvanizing support for the inevitable switch to cleaner energy. I am balancing in an odd position in which I don't believe I've found myself in before. In all my arguments with my friends and family over my beliefs, I never felt that I was challenging more than their intellectual understanding of an issue, but the ban on offshore drilling is a completely different animal. I am now challenging the identity of some of my family members. The very things that they wake up each morning to do and speak about and think about and provides them the resources to do the things they love.
I am confused. I am frustrated. I don't know the right answer or the right things to say or how to appropriately express love for the Blanchard identity and the need for revolution at the same time. And so I am seeking comfort in my literary security blankets.
pg: xix
"As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sesnse weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be -- it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be."
"If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up pyschological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich, unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out."
"Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future."
This last statement is where I stand still with a pregnant pause. Because if the people of the gulf right now, after Katrina, after Rita, after the recession, after 79 days of gushing oil into their homes, don't feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost that they still can't imagine a different economy, a different way of life where those working on the rigs, working in the offices of the oil and gas companies are part of the solutions to climate change, that the people like me, who ask if not this, then what, are the enemy to their family's happiness, then where are we in this battle, in this revolution?
What have we accomplished at all in the discussion of climate change?
From where I stand the primary, most vocal advocates for change, for revolution are still the highly educated, the upper-middle class, the whites at the desks of the big enviros taking pictures and telling everyone else caught in the middle of their mortgage payments and their fear and the reality that this is all real, that we must find an answer today, that your mortgage payment is not the priority, that you are not more important than this Take Action email.
There are so many people who have been hanging on day to day that now will probably lose the last bit that they have because we have been so busy sitting at hip restaurants in Copenhagen polishing our rhetoric that we haven't gone to Broussard, Louisiana to hold a community meeting and ask the Blanchards to be part of finding the solution.
pg xxi:
"To asume that a political revolution can survive without the supporting base of a popular reformation is to ask for the impossible in politics."
pg: 19:
"Between the Haves and the Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores - the middle class. Torn between upholding the status quo to protect the little they have, yet wanting change so they can get more, they become split personalities. They could be described as social, economic, and political schizoids. Generally, they seek the safe way, where they can profit by change and yet not risk losing the little they have. . . . Thermopolitically they are tepid and rooted in inertia."
"Yet in the conflicting interest and contradictions within the Have-a-Little, Want Mores is the genesis of creativity. Out of this class have come, with few exceptions, the great world leaders of change. . . "
I find comfort in reading about and hearing about the radicals and revolutions that came before me. Because then I remember that revolution is possible. Though I still don't know what to say to my uncles and cousins who can't imagine who they are without the Gulf and the rigs.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
I'm at a bit of struggle on a couple fronts, but mostly the oil spill and its impacts to both the people of the gulf and the slow process of galvanizing support for the inevitable switch to cleaner energy. I am balancing in an odd position in which I don't believe I've found myself in before. In all my arguments with my friends and family over my beliefs, I never felt that I was challenging more than their intellectual understanding of an issue, but the ban on offshore drilling is a completely different animal. I am now challenging the identity of some of my family members. The very things that they wake up each morning to do and speak about and think about and provides them the resources to do the things they love.
I am confused. I am frustrated. I don't know the right answer or the right things to say or how to appropriately express love for the Blanchard identity and the need for revolution at the same time. And so I am seeking comfort in my literary security blankets.
pg: xix
"As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sesnse weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be -- it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be."
"If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up pyschological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich, unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out."
"Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future."
This last statement is where I stand still with a pregnant pause. Because if the people of the gulf right now, after Katrina, after Rita, after the recession, after 79 days of gushing oil into their homes, don't feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost that they still can't imagine a different economy, a different way of life where those working on the rigs, working in the offices of the oil and gas companies are part of the solutions to climate change, that the people like me, who ask if not this, then what, are the enemy to their family's happiness, then where are we in this battle, in this revolution?
What have we accomplished at all in the discussion of climate change?
From where I stand the primary, most vocal advocates for change, for revolution are still the highly educated, the upper-middle class, the whites at the desks of the big enviros taking pictures and telling everyone else caught in the middle of their mortgage payments and their fear and the reality that this is all real, that we must find an answer today, that your mortgage payment is not the priority, that you are not more important than this Take Action email.
There are so many people who have been hanging on day to day that now will probably lose the last bit that they have because we have been so busy sitting at hip restaurants in Copenhagen polishing our rhetoric that we haven't gone to Broussard, Louisiana to hold a community meeting and ask the Blanchards to be part of finding the solution.
pg xxi:
"To asume that a political revolution can survive without the supporting base of a popular reformation is to ask for the impossible in politics."
pg: 19:
"Between the Haves and the Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores - the middle class. Torn between upholding the status quo to protect the little they have, yet wanting change so they can get more, they become split personalities. They could be described as social, economic, and political schizoids. Generally, they seek the safe way, where they can profit by change and yet not risk losing the little they have. . . . Thermopolitically they are tepid and rooted in inertia."
"Yet in the conflicting interest and contradictions within the Have-a-Little, Want Mores is the genesis of creativity. Out of this class have come, with few exceptions, the great world leaders of change. . . "
I find comfort in reading about and hearing about the radicals and revolutions that came before me. Because then I remember that revolution is possible. Though I still don't know what to say to my uncles and cousins who can't imagine who they are without the Gulf and the rigs.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
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