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"It's always refreshing to have a speaker who has the experience and passion for making the world a better place. Both of you complement each other in your message and I commend you for being able to do that individually and as a couple. Tom's presentation revealed
the "real issues" going on in
our world today with regard to the Power Structures and
Control Tactics that are virtually hidden from the common
public. I commend Tom and his life-long quest to
make the truth be known." "Thanks for
your impassioned and thought-provoking
talk yesterday at church. You gave me a number of things
to really think about, and I appreciate it greatly. Judy's hilarious
spin on serious topics was wonderful as well." Tom's speech delivered to the Unitarian
Universalist Church in Spartanburg, South Carolina, August 26, 2001 and in Columbia, South Carolina on September 2, 2001 Our earth is experiencing something "new," something which promises to change our world forever. Some current trends our planet is experiencing are:
This "something new" is Homo Sapiens, and specifically in the most
recent millennium. In every environment, in every type of ecosystem, our species
has moved in ,changed the décor. In this century, the earth’s surface has warmed nearly one and a quarter degrees Fahrenheit. The ten warmest years ever have all occurred in the last fifteen. The world scientific consensus holds human activity responsible. Although climate scientists differ on the exact rate of change, most agree that over the next century, the planet will warm faster than ever before recorded, resulting in far-reaching ecological stress, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and damage to human health. Many believe these impacts are already being felt. Last year in the United States, extreme heat caused massive wildfires in Florida and crop damage throughout the South. Guyana experienced severe drought, Indonesia, devastating fires, China record floods that left over three thousand dead. Off the coast of southern California, zooplankton, a key link in the aquatic food chain, have declined a stunning seventy percent in the last two decades. In the course of the last century, Alpine glaciers have last almost fifty percent of their ice. Spring now arrives a full week earlier to the Northern Hemisphere than it did just twenty years ago. As you think of yourself as more and more a part of a larger system, you will begin to recognize a profound truth: everything that lives is an inextricable part of a larger ecosystem. One implication of being a part of the whole is that none of us are isolated or can isolate the impact of our being here. We have an effect on the world around us, for better or for worse, and must be accountable for it. But there is an inverse implication in being part of the larger system as well: all our efforts can be magnified when they are joined together with the efforts of others. Part of the task of living mindfully, of living as an informed and insightful environmental citizen, is the restoration and preservation of the commons. UU’s have a role to play in this process, but UU’s must remember that ours is a very small movement, and we can be vastly more effective if we work together with many other members of our communities. Sustainable communities will not arise out of the isolated, inwardly-focused actions of a few groups. Attention must also be paid to the larger systems that control our large human settlements, particularly our large cities. Seeing ourselves as an inextricable part of that larger system is also necessary. Voluntary simplicity by itself is not enough; we need voluntary interdependence. Of all the ways we can improve the quality of our diet and the health of the
planet at the same time, moving toward vegetarianism is the most significant.
The cultivation of plants (seeds, legumes, leafy vegetables, roots and fruits),
if done appropriately, is far more efficient for feeding the earth’s
population that the raising of animals for food. Plant agriculture can also be
more benign to the soil, water systems and air, while the business of raising,
slaughtering, and processing animals on a large scale is very harmful, using up
huge amounts of land, depleting the soil and polluting the land and water table.
These alone are adequate reasons to adopt a vegetarian diet or at least modify
one’s diet in that direction. Other reasons people become vegetarians include
the health benefits (lower cholesterol and fat, fewer toxins and hormones), and
the concern for animals that are often raised in cruel, abusive and unsanitary
conditions. We have to recognize that every event and manifestation of nature is "design," that to live within the laws of nature means to express our human intention as an interdependent species, aware and grateful that we are at the mercy of sacred forces larger than ourselves, and that we obey these laws in order to honor the scared in each other and all things. We must come to peace with and accept our place in the natural world. Since the precise number of species is unavailable, it is impossible to know with certainty how many species are going extinct at a given time. However, current thought is that 17,000 to 30,000 extinctions take place each year, while some estimates range up to 100,000 This current "mass extinction" is a result of human activity. Let me state this again: human activity is causing mass extinctions on our planet the likes of which have not been seen since the dinosaurs died. Three human activities particularly endanger species: hunting, introduction of alien species to new ecosystems, and the destruction and fragmentation of habitat. This last activity has been especially damaging: human activity has significantly changed 1/3 to ½ of the habitats of the planet’s land. In the U.S., over 50% of wetland habitats have disappeared at human hands in the last 200 years. "While the experts views are numerous, many observers expect 30 to 50 percent of terrestrial species to disappear in the next century or two. If it happens, it will be the sixth great extinction event in earth’s history, far faster than any previous one, and unique in its cause." The cause is us. Environmental and social justice issues are often intertwined. Social ills such as war and poverty have often led to environmental degradation and environmental degradation has often contributed to social problems such as economic injustice and world hunger. Overpopulation forces people to live off of marginally supportive land, increasing cycles of environmental degradation and "natural" disasters such as droughts and crop failures caused by overuse of the land. Living in environmentally marginal situations also encourages people to have many children as their only form of "social security" in old age, continuing the negative feedback loop. The poor, the young, the old, and working women have often suffered disproportionately because of waste and pollution. These are people who often have very little social and political influence in the modern world. Developing nations suffer environmental, social and economic ills while providing the developed nations with raw materials and finished products. However, such inequitable conditions are not limited to developing nations. In the U.S. and Canada, indigenous peoples and their lifestyles are trampled under national quests for "development"; inner city disadvantaged populations are powerless to resist becoming dumping grounds for wastes from the dominant culture; and the rural poor are left with prisons and confined animal feeding operations as sources of "economic development." The United States' civic Religion of Mammon worship has created increasingly disturbing disparities of resources among our people. On Labor Day 2001, we find that:
In the period since 1950, (human) population has increased at roughly 10,000 times the pace that prevailed before the first invention of agriculture, and 50 to 100 times the pace that followed. In the last 500 years, the world population has increased twelve-fold , from 500 million to over 6 billion. Our population has doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion in the last 40 years. We currently have an annual growth rate of 1.33%, which means an additional 78 million people born every year. The conventional political wisdom of the late twentieth century places precious little faith in people’s will and courage to leap beyond the boundaries of their own selfishness. I don’t accept that view. When people first learn about the warming of the planet, most of them react with fear but with a strong desire to act. What stops them is not a lack of will or concern, but rather the absence of a channel for their energy. It is not too late for us to prevent the destruction of the planet we love so
much. A fundamental shift is necessary from the domination of nature to
accepting that we are part of nature ourselves. We need to think in terms of
ecosystem integrity rather that profit and loss, and make corporations and
governments accountable to the people and the planet. More than anything else we need to become more involved in the democratic
process. "While Congress and the country have been debating high-profile environmental issues, like whether to drill for oil in the Arctic, President Bush has been quietly filling key subcabinet posts with conservative activists and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers criticizing the laws they are now sworn to uphold." Unlike his father, who reached into academia and even the environmental community for some of his appointments, Mr. Bush seems determined to return to the Reagan era, when ideologues like James Watt ran the Interior Department and most of the important regulatory jobs were filled with representatives of the businesses being regulated. According to Geneva Overholser in the Boston Globe: "WE USED TO be better at idealism, as a new book on Eleanor Roosevelt's remarkable work in international human rights makes clear. It also leaves you wondering: What the dickens would she have made of the United States losing a seat on the very commission she helped found 47 years ago?" "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," by Mary Ann Glendon, came out just as the United States was finding itself for the first time without a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission. There was the sizable dose of "we'll show you" -a feeling among many nations that the American colossus could use some consciousness-raising. George W. Bush's America would make the world go away. Even in friendly capitals these days, it is common to hear the United States referred to as a rogue state. Our previous three presidents have contributed to this perception, breaking international law to attack Nicaragua, to invade Panama, and to bomb Libya and Sudan, to name a few examples. The Bush administration has cemented our reputation. We are seen as the playground bully, insisting that we are a special case, that international norms don't apply to us, that others must obey rules while we obey only when it suits us. In March, for example, we renounced the Kyoto Protocol, signed by the United States and nearly every other nation in the world, all agreeing to mandatory reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases thought to cause the warming of the Earth's atmosphere. The U.S. accounts for 30 percent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions (the entire European Union emits 22 percent). Compromise was on the horizon. Nevertheless, President Bush rejected the protocol this spring, arguing that it would put too heavy a burden on our economy, and declared the agreement dead. In Bonn, our envoy was booed as 178 other nations went on to reach consensus. Not long after, the Bush administration effectively killed the proposed enforcement mechanism for the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention. The Bush administration opposed it because the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries had argued that facility inspections might expose industrial secrets of U.S. companies. (Other nations with sophisticated industrial corporations in the same sector weren't intimidated.) Of the 56 nations at the meeting in Geneva, the United States was the sole voice in opposition. The grounds for our objections stunned those in attendance--we had argued in favor of facility inspections for years. The White House also has decided not to ask the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty barring nuclear weapons tests, and we may not bother to send a representative to a UN conference this fall aimed at formulating strategies to accelerate the test ban treaty's institution. . The administration has shown no support for the Land Mine Treaty, which has been ratified by more than 140 nations who recognize that the weapon maims and kills people long after the soldiers have left. Almost 50 years ago, the United States led the world in its efforts to prosecute individuals for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Today, we like to see war criminals prosecuted as long as they are not American. Even before he took office, Bush announced that he would not ask the Senate to ratify the 1998 Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court. Our enthusiasm for the death penalty also separates us from our allies and demonstrates our willingness to ignore international norms and treaties. We stand only with Somalia in our refusal to ratify the Convention on Rights of the Child, an agreement aimed at protecting children's right to life, liberty, education and health care. The United States objects to the convention's expectation that signatories would have to work toward the elimination of the death penalty for juvenile offenders. We also fail to abide by the requirements of the Vienna Convention on Consular Rights, an agreement guaranteeing that foreign citizens will be immediately informed of their right to communicate with their consulate upon arrest. This is a right that Americans expect overseas, but we feel no need to reciprocate. In the last eight years, we have executed 15 foreign nationals without extending them their rights under the convention. The Bush administration believes that, as the world's sole superpower, more is asked of us, so we are not on equal footing with other nations. We should not, therefore, be bound by the same rules. This casual treatment of international agreements and norms seems remarkably short-sighted. Treaties and the agencies created by them allow us to accomplish some of the most basic tasks of daily life. Sending letters abroad, avoiding collisions in shipping lanes and in air space, feeling safe from smallpox--all of these are the results of international agreements. Can we afford the loss of bargaining power that results from this behavior? How can we protest extra-judicial killings, torture or prison conditions in Mexico when we execute a Mexican whose rights have been ignored? Why should China reform its human-rights policy at our request when we follow international norms only when it suits us? How can we speak with any moral force about children's issues when we are one of two nations in the world that has not ratified the Convention on Rights of the Child? How can we demand facility inspections in Iraq and not allow them here? If we are so unwilling to compromise and abide by international norms, and so willing to ignore or rescind our agreements, can we not expect other nations to learn by our example? This licensing of bad behavior may indeed be the worst of it. Iraq's Saddam Hussein can ignore agreements because we do. The United States was once known for providing inspiration for the rule of law. Are we now providing comfort for the rogues?
— International arms sales grew 8 percent last year, to nearly $36.9 billion, with the United States further consolidating its stature as the supplier of choice, especially in developing countries, according to a new Congressional report. American manufacturers signed contracts for just under $18.6 billion, or about half of all weapons sold on the world market during 2000, with 68 percent of the American weapons bought by developing countries. Meanwhile-- The Senate Intelligence Committee is putting together a bill that would establish the country's first-ever official secrets act. It is a remarkable post-cold war paradox: At a time when the rest of the world is looking to America for leadership on openness, Congress would make it harder for Americans to know what their government is doing and would give aid and comfort to every tin-pot dictator who wants to claim "national security" as the reason to keep his citizens in the dark. Over 30 billion dollars a year is hidden from U.S. citizen/taxpayers in the "black budget" of the national security apparatus. The "national security apparatus" is all about the US military/industrial complex who "defend" the U.S. with their weapons and it’s patrons are big corporate defense contractors. The market for weapons is created by hate and fear and the question is whether any decisions or actions of this most lethal part of our government should be made in secrecy. How can it be our government if we don’t know what it’s doing? Our energy policy was also devised by members of the energy cartel and their brethren in the White House in secrecy and the GAO is having to take legal action to get transcripts of their meetings. Yet some intelligence committee members now seem to be saying: "Trust us; the damage from leaks is so great that we should restrict our First Amendment rights and chill the public debate over core issues of national security." That was a questionable argument during the cold war; it's an unsupportable one now. I leave you with two essays written and published this
spring. Another Energy Crisis???? By Tom Turnipseed The global energy cartel is imperiling the world's environment and economic stability in a greedy grab for profits that is empowered by a heavy investment of campaign contributions and corporate connections with media conglomerates. The energy cartel understands the world's dependency on their energy commodities such as fossil fuel, natural gas and nuclear. One of their top executives, Dick Cheney, is now Vice-President and the "Czar" for the energy policy of the United States. The evil empire of energy has used OPEC since its inception as a convenient shill to reduce the "supply" and drum-up the "price" of oil to create an "energy crisis" and an excuse to charge exorbitant prices for their products. In the 1970s I worked with a coalition of consumer groups that brought public awareness to the "energy crisis" rip-off by challenging rate hike requests and nuclear plant construction permits before the South Carolina Public Service Commission that regulates the electrical utilities in our state. The excuse for raising the price of electricity was the cost of fossil fuel, natural gas, and nuclear energy and was all blamed on the short "supply" and high "price" of "foreign oil" set by a bunch of Arabs and Africans in turbans and togas who "ruled" the OPEC nations. Remember OPEC causing the gasoline shortage? When President Jimmy Carter called for energy conservation and funding research for harnessing renewable energy sources such as wind, water and the sun, the powerful energy cartel helped him become a one-term President. Maybe that's why the Democratic political leadership hasn't gone all out in challenging Cheney's proposal to develop new domestic sources of oil, gas and coal and build new coal-fired and nuclear generating plants. Cheney dismissed conservation as "1970s era thinking" that could not get us out of what he called an "energy crisis". Cheney favors a government backed push to drill for oil and gas, including the protected areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Cheney expounds a "supply" oriented energy philosophy he learned at the Halliburton Corporation, the largest energy services corporation in the world, where he was the CEO for 5 years and holder of 45 million dollars of stock before he became George W. Bush's Vice-Presidential running mate. During Cheney's tenure, Halliburton received federal contracts and taxpayer insured loans totaling $3.8 billion. In 1998 Halliburton paid $8.1 billion for drilling and oil industry equipment supplier, Dresser Industries. Halliburton also owns Landmark Graphics Corp., suppliers of production information services and systems that help energy companies find, produce and manage oil and gas reservoirs and NUMAR Corp. that furnishes nuclear magnetic imaging to measure oil drilling. The most notorious Halliburton subsidiary is Kellogg, Brown and Root that builds offshore oil rigs, drills wells, and builds nuclear reactors while employing more than 20,000 people in more than 100 countries, including the OPEC nations. Brown and Root has been in the heavy construction business for more than 65 years and was a big U.S. military contractor in Vietnam and Kosovo with strong world-wide connections to CIA activities. As Bush's Presidential campaign set fund-raising records with hefty contributions from the energy business, OPEC began to raise the price of oil and, by the middle of 2000, energy prices began to affect business costs and the stock market. As the stock market nose-dived, energy companies' profits soared in the first quarter of 2001, with Exxon Mobil's profits up 44% from a year ago, enabling them to become the world's top revenue producer at $52.28 billion; Chevron's profits were up 57% for the first quarter; and Duke Energy's stock was up 12% in 2001 after rising 70% in value in 2000, partly from selling high priced electricity to "rolling blackout" stricken California. From my experience in opposing Duke's rate hike requests in South Carolina 25 years ago, I can vouch for their ability to make big bucks from energy. By pulling out of the Kyoto global warming agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming and increasingly volatile weather conditions and by pushing for domestic oil and gas drilling, the Bush-Cheney Administration have prioritized energy profits over the global environment. Energy's media connections make it difficult for the public to get an unbiased picture of the "energy crisis". General Electric Corp. owns NBC, CNBC and MSNBC and GE Nuclear Energy, who designed 91 nuclear reactors world-wide and are in the business of designing more. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch owns Fox; the nuclear intensive Westinghouse Corp., until recently, owned CBS. Such media influence and the fat "energy crisis" profits the energy companies can invest in campaign contributions make it even difficult for politicians to oppose the Administration's energy cartel juggernaut. Did God Bless Americans to Have More than Others and Steal From Future
Generations?
After pulling the U.S. out of the global warming accord negotiations involving 180 nations, Bush has declared an "energy crisis" and is pushing an energy policy that will significantly increase the amount of carbon dioxide that causes global warming. His policy calls for burning more fossil fuels that create carbon dioxide and fails to take immediate steps to tighten fuel efficiency standards for automobiles although the average fuel economy for passenger vehicles is the worst it has been in 20 years. The plan downplays conservation, which could reduce growth in energy demand an estimated 20 to 47% according to experts, and renewable energy like solar and the wind, which will get a token one-tenth of 1% of our energy dollars. Bush is pushing a short-sighted and false prosperity based on the assumption that United States' citizens are somehow ordained by God to have more than our brothers and sisters throughout the world and that it is okay to steal from our children and grandchildren and future generations. Representing our fellow human beings throughout the world, Secretary General Annan said that a consensus of leading scientists from all nations have "carefully sifted the evidence and concluded that climate change is occurring, that human activities are among the main contributing factors and that we cannot wait any longer to take action." It is an issue of justice when a Pacific islander discovers that the rising sea level resulting from profligate energy use in the United States and the developed world will obliterate her low-lying nation within decades. Perhaps the greatest environmental justice issue is inter-generational theft. The Eighth Commandment says "Thou shall not steal", but every day that we live an ecologically unsustainable way of life we steal from our children and grandchildren. The energy policy Bush extols as the blessed American way of life is unsustainable. The Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy provided that "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." Today's money-oriented politicians seem oblivious to any future beyond the next election. The oil and gas industry gave a record $32.6 million in contributions to politics in the last election cycle with 78% of it going to President Bush's party. Did "God Bless America" to make a more wasteful and extravagant lifestyle a national civic religion and destroy other species at an unprecedented rate, or do we owe our descendants a duty of care? We must muster the compassion of the good Samaritan, not only to bandage the wounds of the stranger not of our tribe, but also to move us to care for our future generations. When I look into the eyes of my grandchildren I realize that our greatest responsibility is to conserve and preserve our exquisite eco-system for them and generations to come. Article read by Judy Turnipseed on August 26, and September 2, 2001, written by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Drill, Grill and Chill By Maureen Dowd We want big. We want fast. We want far. We want now. We want 345 horsepower in a V-8 engine and 15 miles per gallon on the highway. We drive behemoths. We drive them alone. This country was not built on H.O.V. lanes. We don’t have limits. We have liberties. If we don’t wear our seat belts, it doesn’t matter, because we have air bags. If the air bags don’t deploy, it doesn’t matter, because our cars are so beefy, we’ll never get bruised. If we need to widen the streets for our all-wheel drives, we will. If we need to reinforce all the bridges in the country, so that they don’t buckle and collapse, under our 5,800 pound S.U.V.’s, our engineers will do that. We’ll bake the earth. We’ll brown & serve it, sauté it, simmer it, sear it, fondue it, George-Foreman-grill it. (We invented the Foreman grill.) We might one day bring the earth to a boil and pull it like taffy. (We invented taffy.) If rising seas obliterate the coasts, our marine geologists will sculpt new ones and Hollywood will get bright new ideas for disaster movies. If we get charred by the sun, our dermatologists will replace our skin. If the globe gets warmer, we’ll turn up the air conditioning. (We invented air-conditioning.) We’ll drive faster in our gigantic, air-conditioned cars to the new beaches that our marine geologists create. We well let our power plants spew any chemicals we deem necessary to fire up our Interplaks, our Krups, our Black & Deckers and our Fujitsu Plasmavisions. We will drill for oil whenever and wherever we please. If tourists don’t like rigs off the coast of Florida, they can go fly fishing in Wyoming. We won’t be deterred by a few Artic terns. We don’t care about caribou. We don’t care for cardigans. Give us our 69 degrees, winter and summer. Let there be light – no timers, no freaky shaped long-life bulbs. (We invented the light bulb.) We want our refrigerator cold and our freezers colder. Bring on the freon. Banish those irritating toilets that restrict flow. When we flush, we flush all the way. We will perfect the dream of nuclear power. We will put our toxic waste wherever we want, whenever we waste it. We have whole states with nothing better to do than serve as ancestral burial grounds for our effluvium. It can fester in those wide open spaces for thousands of years. We will have the biggest, baddest missiles, and we will point them in any direction we like, across the galaxies, through eternity, forever and ever. We will thrust as many satellites as we want to in space, and we will surround them with a firewall of weapons for their protection. We will guarantee broadband and fast connections to the Internet. We will not permit anybody, anywhere, at any time to threaten the delivery of all the necessities to computers, Palm Pilots and BlackBerrys; stock quotes, sports scores, real estate listings, epicurean.com recipes, porn. (O.K., so we didn’t invent porn.) By arming space, and protecting satellites, we ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – our 500 TV channels drawn from the ether. We will secure the inalienable right of every citizen driving by himself in his big car to be guided by a global positioning system. Nobody should have to call in advance for directions to a party when the satellite can show the way. We will modify food in anyway we want and send it to any country we see fit at prices that we and we alone determine in the cargo ships we choose at the time we set. Our international banking arm – the World Bank and the I.M.F. – will support whatever dictatorships suit us best. We will fly up any coast of any nation on earth with any plane filled with any surveillance equipment and top guns that we possess. We will build superduperjumbo jets so Brobdingnagian that runways will be crushed under their weight at the most congested airports in the history of aviation. (We invented aviation.) We will buy, carry, conceal and shoot firearms whenever and wherever we want, as is our constitutionally guaranteed right. (We invented the Constitution.) We will kill any criminal we want, by lethal injection or electrocution. (We invented electricity.) We are America. |
