The Cost of Doing Business

What is the cost of production? Is it labor + materials + safety + environmental regulation?

Free trade is not really free unless all countries competing have the same requirements. So buying a cheap bracelet from China, where underage workers toil with toxic chemicals working 12 hour days in factories separated from their families, while the back of the plant jettisons leftovers from the manufacturing process into streams that may flow into the Yangzte River..

Compare this with an American jewelry shop paying its workers a fair minimum wage with benefits who are able to go home at night to their families, protected from toxics by an environmental health & safety regime who can show up unannounced and inspect factory conditions and fine and regulate and even shut down unsafe plants. A factory that is required to follow environmental regulations regarding safe disposal of toxic waste products. And who faces penalties likewise for failure to adhere to the regulation.

What about the oil companies of the world?

Of the 4 costs of production, which have they had to pay? OK - cost of labor, ok cost of materials for production. But what about all the tax writeoffs they receive to "write off" their expensive exploration costs. Then there are the other two factors, that one would assume an American (or a British) company would be obligated by: safety, environmental laws.

I think we can say safety was not Job 1 (or even Job 27) when witnessing the continued unfolding of the BP Gulf disaster. Environmental regulation - when their "backup plan" was a cut and paste including protection of marine life including walruses (thank you Senator Markey for stating this to the American public).

In Oregon I thought we were going to get tough on prosecuting environmental crimes. OK so the Gulf is not Oregon, and our Attorney General's tough environmental lawyer flamed out. Well there are laws - and maybe if I can't send email to my friend in the Louisiana bayou cause he is out trying to get berm to protect the shoreline, maybe I have a personal right of action here. Isn't that possible under the Clean Water Act?

What if the citizens of the U.S. all got together and filed a class action lawsuit. If one of our membership is harmed, isn't that an affront to all of us?

It is time for oil companies to pay their full cost of doing business. They have gotten away with cutting out 2 or more of the costs of production for far too long, and now the planet will suffer the consequences.

My Siberian Umbrella

Rain streaks across the cracked windshield of my car streaming down I-5. Endless spring really summer but when its in the 40's at night its like a non-season.

I tried being a "true Oregonian" today and walking without an umbrella. Can't say I like it much. I prefer my trusty Siberian umbrella, which was left behind by a 7th grade Russian exchange student, literally from Siberia, back in the day (90's day). It is industrial strength and yet beautiful. I am convinced it will last forever and I haven't lost it yet which never happens to me.

Does rain falling naturally, without banging into a machine constructed around a (hybrid!) internal combustion engine, or seen by human eyes on cultivated straight furrows of crops, fall in a less linear pattern?

I was thinking about Russia today as my colleagues were bantering about the Gulf. Will it ever recover? This is not an "existential BP" issue only, as Interior Secretary Salazar has said. This is an issue for: fishermen whose livelihoods (and identities) are likely lost forever, a region known for seafood and hospitality, a nation that supposedly climbed out of the industrial revolution to the more evolved post-industrial society.

Well here we are, ravaging the Gulf as Russia ravaged its environment cranking out tanks during the Cold War.

And we won't even have any beautiful flowered umbrellas to show for it. Only dead shrimp and greasy pelicans.

Enter the Law of the Sea

Today on cspan - National Press Club - University of Virginia - Center for Oceans Law & Policy

What is our obligation for the common sea? The countries of: Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, and the US of A - what do we have in common? None of us have signed the international Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Globalism is here. Are we a terrorist state?
Why is it BP's responsibility to shoulder all costs for {the Gulf cleanup, remuneration to fisherman for loss of livelihood, shore cleanup}..?

Didn't U.S. policy run rampant to encourage drilling, oil consumption without regard to environmental or worker consequence? Our tax laws have incentivized oil development, construction of our interstate highway system, has enabled Hummers, SUVs, and exurbs.

We sip oil as we sip water, like we are the only privileged nation on the planet, privileged individuals, who have a right.

It is time (long past time, but still) to join the global community.

SUVs - just say no. Hummers - just say no. Signing the international Law of the Sea convention - just say yes.

To Obama: fuel efficient standards you brought out today - wonderful (I'm sorry it has taken a crisis to do it, but I am glad nonetheless). Please continue to do whats right for the planet. Not for U.S. oil drillers and the Hummer manufacturers. Your attempt to pander to the Republicans to get them on board with a comprehensive energy bill - nevermind that.

Comprehensive energy legislation is one of those "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" things you speak of.

So ok - do it step at a time. Today - fuel standards. Tomorrow - ocean treaty.

Topic for tomorrow - water consumption as if the rest of the world matters.

A Bolt in the Road

One hundred years ago (1910) the road I walked across was not there. A bolt, greasy, fallen from a truck, lies there.

Oil. BP. Coal. Massey Energy. Cars. Toyota. What do all these things have in common. Besides their appearing at Congressional hearings today.

Our energy policy, our transportation methods, are killing the planet, killing workers, killing drivers.

Is there another path? Why didn't Henry Ford foresee where all this would lead - carbon building in the atmosphere choking our civilization, U.S. businesses out of control - fighting regulation so long and so hard that they finally gain the upper hand and government tries to - like a parent who has let his kids have parties all weekend while he goes off to play golf in Bermuda - come home and re-engage the parenting. Will it work? Can we strive for regulation that is meaningful without choking innovation and creativity?

I don't blame Henry Ford and his assembly line. No one can foresee where wind and solar energy will be one-hundred years from now.

But, one-hundred years from now, when my great-great-granddaughter finds a filamint from a solar panel that came down in a storm lying on the bike lane, I wonder what she will think?