Valerie L'Herrou's Open Salon Blog

Ethanol: still a pipe dream

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:04:33 -0400

Back in 2007, George Loper published a post I wrote calling ethanol a "pipe dream" (it doesn't seem to be up on the site any longer since he migrated to a new server). I was reminded of it this week when I heard a story on NPR about how the ethanol industry has continued to grow despite the growing evidence that it is not the answer to our energy problems. In fact, not only is corn ethanol not environmentally better than gasoline--there is evidence that its environmental impacts are worse. Whether cellulosic ethanol would be better than corn is unknown, since that has never taken off--in fact, there are no commercial cellulosic ethanol plants. However, it seems highly doubtful--many of the same problems inherent in corn ethanol production would be true of cellulosic as well. (There is a commercial cellulosic ethanol plant currently in the works, apparently--in Mississippi, which can ill-afford the losses it will sustain in supporting this enterprise, which seems doomed to fail before it starts).

The fact of the matter is, large-scale agribusiness farming as currently practiced is not environmentally sustainable. The damage caused by large-scale agriculture is arguably justified in food production (at least till we figure out something better), because we need to eat (I'm ignoring locavorism here, y'all, because it's not necessarily better for the planet overall, and can't feed everyone). But how can we possibly rationalize the scale of environmental damage in service of fuel production--when the whole alleged purpose behind bio-fuels is to limit environmental damage?

As a society, we need to learn to start doing cost/benefit analyses which take into account ALL factors, before we jump into new ventures with all our feet. As it is, we are driven by only one factor--profit--which would be great, as profit is a great motivator, except for one thing: that corporations are expert in passing off the costs to someone else: the environment, the poor, the taxpayers (in the form of subsidies), the future. Industry can look hugely profitable, if the true costs are not factored in. This is true of every industry, but since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we as a society have not cared to look behind the screen. Only small clusters of nuts--luddites, tree-huggers--have ever served as our Cassandras, dismissed as Chicken Littles.

The solution(s) to our energy problems will include many bumps in the road, and before we end up in that magic future of nuclear fusion or osmotic power we will take many wrong paths... of which ethanol is one. But getting there before we've made our entire world unliveable is why energy diversification and conservation are so important now.

Here's what I wrote about ethanol in 2007:

The current espousal by politicians of ethanol reminds me of a scene in the film "Napoleon Dynamite." Napoleon's equally-geeky friend, Pedro, is running for class president. Napoleon suggests his campaign slogan: vote for me and your wildest dreams will come true.

Biomass energy is a wild dream: not sustainable on a large scale, partly because the need to use fossil fuels to power the huge machines that will harvest and process biomass fues for our cars means there's likely insignificant net gain in energy--and perhaps even a loss (I'd be interested in seeing what is counted in the 25% gain Al indicates). And, the carbon that is stored in plants is released into the atmosphere when it's burned, so there's no net saving of pollution, either. Yes, as Al Weed rightly says, biofuels release fewer VOCs, but not necessarily less carbon.

In addition, we would be harming our soils, which has farmers scared: in a recent profile in the New Yorker, Barack Obama spoke to some farmers who were questioning him about growing switchgrass for ethanol. They pointed out the need to put waste organic matter back into the soil--something it took decades for modern farmers to realize was important. But corn ethanol production requires farmers to strip the land of all organic matter. While cellulosic ethanol, using switchgrass, as Al Weed's analysis suggests, may be more sustainable than corn, as it's a perennial and therefore won't be entirely stripped away, there still has to be something going back into the soil. Finally, people would suffer: while the increase in food prices if American farmers turn to growing biofuels instead of food may only affect Americans somewhat, they will affect poor people the world over greatly.

I think there is one way in which cellulosic fuels could be sustainable, and also provide the benefits of ensuring American farms stay in business, while not consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels to make a small amount of biofuels: horsepower. While people may scoff, actual horsepower is far more efficient than modern farming methods, if the measurement is number of calories expended for each calorie produced (food or fuel)--because the use of fossil fuels is, essentially, cheating--using large amounts of calories stored up over millennia (which have historically been very cheap, but we're seeing the end of that). Horses also provide waste materials for the soil (and can run on unprocessed switchgrass). However, using horsepower is labor intensive, and farmers already can't find the help they need (and our current drive to get rid of undocumented workers means there will be an even greater shortage of agricultural labor).

Cutting America's energy consumption, rather than searching frantically for another, "greener" source of fuel, is vital, not only to make us less dependent on foreign oil, but for reducing pollution, and slowing the rapid changes in climate. This will have to be done the hard way--by making actual changes in the way we live, and the way our machines use energy. Either that, or we are going to have to accept nuclear power. Nothing else will meet our current energy demands without fouling our environment. We just can't have it both ways.

Ethanol is an expensive, non-sustainable pipedream, an attempt to prop up the current, non-sustainable American lifestyle while ignoring reality. No one wants to speak the unpopular truth: we've been borrowing from the future too long. Now the future is almost here, and we're about to see what our profligacy has cost us.

Pretext and The Man

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:04:28 -0400

Or, how the Supreme Court is nullifying the Fourth Amendment while keeping the world safe from people who may (or may not, actually, as it turned out) owe a fine.

The US Supreme Court last week ruled, in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington, that anyone being arrested--for the slightest, most inconsequential thing, or even by mistake, as in this case (Florence, a finance director for a car dealership, was stopped while driving his family and arrested on a mistakenly-issued warrant for a fine he had already paid) -- can be not only strip-searched, but subjected to a body-cavity search. The rationale: safety.

I do actually agree that it is reasonable, for all of Justice Kennedy's stated reasons, that persons entering into the prison population be subjected to such a search. (Actually, they should probably go further and do, you know, a full X-ray, or even CT scan. After all, people not only hide things in their body cavities, they sometimes hide them inside their bodies.) But prison is different from jail. Many people being temporarily held in jails have not been found guilty of any crime. Being arrested and being convicted are two different things. And plenty of people (including Florence) are arrested mistakenly, or for something innocuous.

To strip-search people being temporarily detained goes way beyond any legitimate government interest. Any sort of search, of course, implicates the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches. The jurisprudence regarding searches is clear--probable cause to believe that the person has committed a crime is needed. Florence argued that an additional level of probable cause is needed before an invasive search--not just a strip search, understand, but an invasive body-cavity search--could be performed; in other words, that the searching officers need probable cause to believe that a person is likely hiding some contraband or weapons in a sensitive place before these can be searched.

I don't think Florence was correct as far as applying the probable-cause standard in this sort of instance, but I agree with Breyer's dissent: there needs to be some basis other than a general safety rationale (a rationale, you know, is a reason that doesn't necessarily have to have a rational basis). Using an existing standard that is lower than probable cause--reasonable suspicion--seems to me to balance the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches with the public interest in safety.

There are two issues to consider here: First, the Fourth Amendment rights of someone who is incarcerated are basically non-existent: body cavity searches are routinely done on persons entering into prison populations, for the safety of other inmates as well as of the corrections officers (and arguably, as Kennedy stated, of the searchees). Prisoners in solitary confinement in high-security facilities are subject to body-cavity searches every time they leave their cells. But people in prison have no "reasonable" expectation of privacy when it comes to searches that have a legitimate purpose. So, no individual reason--much less probable cause-- is needed in those instances; but when someone is only in custody temporarily, how can the government's interest in safety outweigh the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches (never mind the right to privacy, which is, after all, only a penumbral right in any case)?

Second, when does the level of legitimate government interest in safety rise to the level to justify an invasive body search? Because you don't want to leave that to the discretion of people who don't understand the Fourth Amendment. As an example, take the tiny county of Buckingham, Virginia (population 17,150), which is clearly ahead of the curve here: they've been doing unjustified body-cavity searches since 2005! (moral of that story: never give a small sheriff's department technology (sniffer dog) that they don't know how to use, or more power than they know how to control). The Buckingham searches, without probable cause OR safety justification, would clearly be illegal even after the SCOTUS ruling, as no one had been arrested, and safety was not at issue--this was just an attempt to find drugs. But the SCOTUS ruling appears to give unprecedented, abusable power to police--saying hey, officer, Deputy Barney, whoever--have at it. Search any body part you want, anywhere, any time. Just say you're concerned about safety.

The scariest thing about this ruling is that it continues the current trend toward the erosion of the Fourth Amendment (with the exception of the recent, anomalous GPS ruling, which probably has more to do with the out-of-touch justices' antagonism toward technology than any desire to maintain 4th amendment protections). SCOTUS seems almost bent upon protecting police pretext -- about which we should all be very afraid.

(Ironic timing that the Supreme Court would hand down this ruling, applying the rational basis test (even as it seems to undercut one of our most basic rights), at the same time as they are questioning Congress' power under the Commerce Clause to further a legitimate public interest in public health.)

While I don't believe that the five justices intend this decision to be used to humiliate arrestees, as Naomi Wolf asserts--this decision creates the opportunity for it to be used in this way: power-abusing people will now have the authority to humiliate to their hearts' content (see Joe Arpaio--no trips to Maricopa County for me, thanks--just in case I have, say, a broken taillight). AND, I fear it will have a chilling effect when people are contemplating the risks of civil disobedience. However, I do think that the five conservative justices are--as are many conservatives (while waving their "don't tread on me" flags)--too deferential to authority, and too willing to subject the rest of us to the abuse of power when they will not be affected by it (also too out of touch to know that your average fine-owing red-light runner is not carrying explosives in his rectum).

If, in fact, Naomi Wolf is right about government/law enforcement using this tactic specifically for the goal of humiliation (I spend a lot of time around police/corrections officers, and find most of them to be decent people, trying to do what's right--there are some bad apples, and whether or not those bad apples proliferate is a reflection on department leadership and prosecutors. That said, most police are experts on justifying pretextual stops) then it seems to me that the best way to protest this is for people to start taking off all their clothes immediately upon arrest, as did the prescient woman who took off her clothes when being arrested at Occupy Charlottesville... anticipating this decision, apparently.

How Bad is Pink Slime, Really?

Sun, 1 Apr 2012 22:04:30 -0400

Or, would a ground-up meat product treated with chemicals by another any other name smell as rank?

Yesterday, I was driving my son to an airport in another city so he could go visit grandparents. For lunch, we stopped on the way at a Dairy Queen, because we don't have one where we live, and I love chocolate malteds. We each got a hamburger, a malt--chocolate for me, banana for him (and yes, a banana malted is surprisingly good) and we shared a batch of onion rings.

As we continued down the highway, my son (for whom fast food of any kind is a special treat, and will eat anything called a hamburger) remarked that the hamburgers were not very good. And indeed, even by the standards of fast-food joints, they were not. It occurred to me that perhaps they were made with pink slime, and I nearly choked.

But then I thought of all the pink-slime burgers I've likely already consumed (even ones I've made myself, apparently) and I finished it, dry and tasteless as it was. I didn't die, or even get sick. And it occurred to me that my initial revulsion was based almost entirely upon the name, "pink slime."

Because, when it comes to processed meat products, I've eaten worse, as most of us have. Hot dogs? Sausage of any kind? Lunch meat? If you're not a vegetarian, or extremely strict about your diet, you've eaten far worse than pink slime. You've just not been aware of it--your disgust reaction wasn't triggered.

In fact, even if you don't eat ANY meat, you've likely eaten food processed with ammonium hydroxide, the chemical ingredient that makes pink slime seem particularly off-putting. It's in many products, even ones consumed by vegetarians--including baked goods, cheeses, and chocolates. Actually, ammonium is naturally occurring in many foods, and even in our own bodies. As it happens, the meat is processed with the ammonium to kill E. coli bacteria--the ammonium is not actually an ingredient in pink slime, as it is in many other foods. Given that you'd have to consume a lot of ammonium before you felt any ill effects, while E. coli can kill you pretty damn quickly, it doesn't seem unreasonable to treat the meat in this way.

But, it's gross! Icky left-over meat parts, ground up and exposed to ammonium gas to kill all those yucky germs--who wants to eat that? Hmm. Lots of people, apparently: let's see what you're ingesting if you eat a hog dog (other than, arguably, a high-end hot dog from your local over-priced meat market). Basically, the same stuff as pink slime--leftover bits of meat, ground up, and decontaminated using some combination of physical or chemical process--PLUS lots of other chemical stuff.

Actually, people all over the world have been eating ground-up meat scraps (and/or offal) for centuries, utilizing methods that may be viewed as more or less palatable or disgusting, depending upon your cultural origins: scrapple, various black puddings or blood sausages, white pudding, head cheese or souse, haggis, and even gefilte fish.

I do try to buy much of my meat locally, from responsible farmers. But I don't always (plus, its expensive). And while I eat the occasional hot dog or sausage, I really don't like headcheese, scrapple, or black pudding. Pink slime, despite its nasty name, appears to be safe, and not any more gross than some other things I may eat on occasion (including cochineal beetles).

The real issue here, it seems to me, is factory farming and slaughtering vs responsibly produced meat--that is, meat that is raised healthily without too much reliance on meat byproducts and antibiotics in the feed, slaughtered humanely, and processed safely. The trick is to do so in a way that allows meat to still be consumed by ordinary people, not just the one percent (why do you think people developed ways of eating offal in the first place?) Grinding up leftover bits and exposing them to a safe sterilizing agent: no big deal. Get a grip, people!

Being a mother: the incredible amazingness

Wed, 12 May 2010 20:05:37 -0400

Being a mother is perhaps the most intense and transformative experience one can ever have. As with all intense and transformative experiences, it encompasses both joy and pain--sometimes simultaneously.

What has been most surprising to me, and what I most treasure, is the extraordinary intensity of the love one feels--surpassing anything previously felt--and, with that, the sometimes overwhelming expansiveness of the capacity to feel. The intensity of this love and emotionality can be painful, at times, but it makes one feel more deeply alive and connected to the universe. What is more difficult and painful--though something I still value--is the way in which being (and becoming) a mother lays one open, revealing all one's inadequacies, insecurities, fears, and failings.

Of course, the most joyous aspect of motherhood is just the fact of one's child's existence: watching your child grow, and become; sharing in the triumphs and agonies; and the many ways in which one's child's love is expressed and manifested--unquestioningly, unconditionally, and with such amazing trust.

The intensity of my love for my son caught me off-guard. It came all in a moment, overwhelming me, and yet at the same time relieving me of a secret fear I'd not been able to share with anyone.

While I was pregnant with my son, I had (among the many worries one has while pregnant) sometimes been concerned by all the talk about "bonding." How did this bonding thing work? It was so important, the books said, for mother and infant to bond in the first moments after birth. But what did that mean? I felt affection for the unknown child I was carrying, and delighted in the kicks, hiccuping, and startles at sudden noises that I felt from within. But who was this person? How would I feel about him or her when I held this infant in my arms? Would it be love at first sight? Or would it just be a baby, whom I would grow to love? What if I didn't?

My worry manifested in strange ways. I found myself asking my sister "what if my child is ugly?" (a bizarrely shallow concern to me now--but it seemed of paramount importance to me at the time), a reflection of my fear that I wouldn't bond, wouldn't be able to love my child. It seemed a strange fear to me even then, given that I'd been wanting a child for several years, and had suffered from a couple of miscarriages--one after three months of pregnancy, which was emotionally devastating, and made it difficult for me to celebrate being pregnant this time. My fear of becoming too emotionally invested in this pregnancy muted the intensity of my desire for a child, made me afraid to really believe that this longed-for being would ever really exist. Perhaps this self-protective emotional distancing increased my sense of detachment, as well as my fear that there was something wrong with me. The fear and detachment stayed even as I began to allow myself to believe I was actually carrying a healthy baby to term.

My son was born via ceasarean section, after 11 hours of labor--his head, it turns out, was just too big. The spinal anesthesia blocked my sensation of breathing, which panicked me: though apparently I was hyperventilating, I felt I couldn't breathe at all. Since a c-section baby needs oxygen immediately (the lungs aren't squeezed dry during the birth process), he was whisked away to an oxygen tent, while I was wheeled to a recovery room where I gradually regained sensation--and where I worried that I'd had absolutely no feelings of love toward the small being who had been briefly laid on my insensate breast while I gasped for the breath I felt I wasn't drawing. Was it too late? Had I missed those vital first seconds when "bonding" occurs?

My mother and nurses went back and forth between the nursery and recovery room with news of Apgar scores and the prognosis that he was "beautiful." But I felt nothing, except for a profound sense of my failure at the most basic female role--giving birth and nurturing a child. I wasn't able to birth a child in the way women had been doing for millennia--and even once the doctor had sliced me open to remove the child I couldn't birth, I felt no love for him.

Finally, I was able to wiggle my toes satisfactorily (despite the fact that I still could not feel them), had instructed the anesthesiologist that I was not going to take Demerol (I gave up on that one soon after), and I was wheeled into the nursery, to lie on my gurney beside the little clear plastic cradle that held my son. He was so beautiful, so helpless and perfect and real and alive. I felt a rush of love, so sudden and intense that I burst into tears. I couldn’t touch him, or even move, but I could talk to him, and I did: babbling to him in the way I used to talk to a frightened horse. I felt so relieved--the mysterious bonding had happened, all by itself, despite everything. I felt both love and pity for all the other babies in the nursery--for they were not as perfect and beautiful as mine. I lay next to him, watching him as my tears streamed down, and only vaguely remember anything else until we were together, nestled in a bed cranked into an awkward position to take the pressure off my stitches.

I felt sort of silly after--why did I worry so much about that? Of course, being a mother provides lots of opportunities for worry: is he eating enough--or too much? Is he too hot, or not warm enough? Do all babies make these faces? Does he show all the symptoms of this dreadful condition described in the latest baby book--or not? Is he crying because I ate broccoli last night, and will he stay awake all night if I drink coffee now?

Not to mention the many other opportunities for feeling inadequate--one can never be complacent, for there are always so many moments provided for self-recrimination: the fall out of the stroller; clipping fingernails for the first time and drawing blood; trying for hours to get a screaming infant to sleep, and knowing you just can’t take it anymore; spanking your child when you knew you’d never do that; not making cupcakes for school birthdays like all the other mothers; losing patience, sometimes unfairly--again and again.

And there’s nowhere to hide, when you are a mother. The potential for pain lurks around every corner, and it generalizes to all children: I can’t take scenes in movies, or even books, where children are harmed. A friend once told me that having a child was like taking your heart out of your body and letting it run around in the world by itself. Sometimes it seems like such an incredible risk--how can I let my child out of my sight for even a moment? Yet off he goes, to school, in cars--so dangerous!--and I’m inured to it now, enough, anyway, that I can stand it. And sometimes I even need to get away from him, and feel guilty for it.

Of course, the potential for joy is always present also: the preciousness; the amazingness of a first word or step; the sensuousness of chubby infant cheeks and baby smell; the shared moments of silliness, laughing till we’re too weak to stand; the sweetness of a sticky toddler kiss; the amazing wise-child perceptiveness; seeing the world through this new pair of eyes; or just watching his face stilled in sleep.

When my son was only a few days old, a song came on the radio about a mother seeing her grown son off into the world. I started to cry, ridiculous as it was, so many years away in the future. It’s not so many years now.

Being a mother, one finally understands all those times when your own mother told you to be careful: what a worry-wart! Or just snapped at you for no apparent reason: so unfair! Or ranted and raved because your clothes were all over the floor: who cares! --it’s my room. That’s you, now. You hear yourself saying things you swore you’d never say, doing things you were never going to do. But not all of them. You make your own mistakes, and succeed in your own ways. But you gain an appreciation for the difficulty, the impossible amazingness, the incredible gift it is to be a mother.

Gov. of the Confederacy: now with more disenfranchisement!

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:04:57 -0400

The announcement that McDonnell has decided to make it harder, not easier, for non-violent felons who have paid their debt to society to have their voting rights restored, reminds me that I responded two years ago to Republicans' charge that Democrats were in favor of voting-rights restoration because felons are largely Democrats. This, of course, is not true, though it is true that the impact of this disenfrachisement falls disproportionately on the black community. Republicans certainly have a vested interest in disenfranchising as many Democrats as they can... by whatever means they can. If they harm the African-Americans in the process, well, that's--what do they call it?--collateral damage. And it's all of a piece with his decision to make this Confederate History Month... surprised?

July, 2008

Virginia Republicans would make me laugh more if they didn't make me cry... but sometimes what they try to get away with is just so effin ridiculous! So, the latest is this--after years of complaining that Democrats are elitist "limousine liberals," now they're claiming that Democrats are welfare queens and felons.

First we have Del. Todd Gilbert's ridiculous statement regarding the restoration of voting rights for felons: "I don' t know a lot of young Republicans who end up being felons. Clearly the groups that are soliciting these felons to get their rights restored are predisposed to be in support of Obama, and I am sure this registration effort is designed to help their candidate." Gilbert is conveniently ignoring two important facts here: one, that activists have been trying to modernize Virginia's draconian rules regarding voting-rights restoration for some time (Warner streamlined the process considerably before anyone ever even heard of Obama); and two, that there are plenty of Republicans who are felons! Hey Del. Gilbert, ever hear of Ollie North? (oh, of course, excuse me, his convictions were overturned). Well, how 'bout good ol' Scooter LIbby? Sushi-eatin' Jack Abramoff? Rep. Bob Ney? Rep. Duke Cunningham? VA Repub party leader Ed Matricardi? Child-porn possessor/Republican presidential elector Parker J. Bena? Va Republican fundraiser (and Bob McDonnell campaign manager) Robin Vanderwall? (Now, there's a young republican for you, soliciting sex with minors over the internet!).

And finally, Felon-in-Chief GW Bush (oh pardon me, he was never convicted of cocaine possession, though he's all but admitted it... but he was arrested at least twice, and once convicted of DUI).

Then again, even if we're not felons, we must be on the dole, according to one of our favorite right-wing wacks, Del. Dave Albo: "My bet is that it's those who are on food stamps and government services who tend to be more Democratic."

So what happened to all the "limousine-liberal," "elitist" rhetoric? It didn't work, so they're trying a new wack--er, tack, I reckon. But guess what--this one won't work either... so back to the drawing board, guys!