Folks,

Here is another positive example of everyday people making a difference.

A group of ten friends in San Francisco made a compact between them not to buy anything new in 2006, except for food and the bare necessities for health and safety. They have mostly succeeded, and were featured in several newspaper stories, like the one below.

For Christmas, they’re either eschewing gifts, or making gifts, or finding good used stuff, and wrapping it up in newspaper and other paper that would otherwise have been put in the bin. I love this example, because it shows that, especially at Christmas, one can step out of the intense consumerism and still have a perfectly enjoyable holiday, with or without the gift-giving.

For my part, I haven’t gone quite that far, but I have succeeded in finally convincing my family (after years of trying) to limit the gift-giving to the kids (under 15 yrs) and spouses. I can’t tell you what an immense relief it has been not to have to do all that shopping, and spend money I can’t afford to spend, not to mention staying off the roads and out of the stores. It has turned a holiday that I had started to regard with anxiety and dread, back into what it should have been all along: a positive and relaxed time to enjoy the company of family, full stop!

So if you’ve been running around like a madman, singing under your breath “It’s the most stressful time of the year…,” maybe you want to stop a minute and consider those examples. You might be surprised at how willing your family and friends are to follow suit. You do have the right to be a person, and not just a “consumer.”

May your holiday season be filled with joy, companionship, and relaxation!

–C

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/17/AR2006121701122_pf.html

Nothing New Here — And That’s the Point
In California, 10 Friends Eschew Consumer Culture to Live Secondhand

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 18, 2006; A01

SAN FRANCISCO — In the living room, the group gathers to share inspirational stories about the joy of finding just the right previously owned shower curtain. To the uninitiated, these people appear almost normal, at least in a San Francisco kind of way. But upon closer inspection, you see it: Nothing in this house, nothing on their bodies, none of their products — nothing is new. Everything is used.

For these people, recycling wasn’t enough. Composting wasn’t a challenge anymore. No, they wanted much more of much less.

Attention holiday shoppers! These people haven’t bought anything new in 352 days — and counting. These 10 friends vowed last year not to purchase a single new thing in 2006 — except food, the bare necessities for health and safety (toilet paper, brake fluid) and, thankfully, underwear, and maybe socks (they’re still debating whether new socks are okay).

Everything else they bought secondhand. They bartered or borrowed. Recycled. Re-gifted. Reused. Where? Thrift stores and swap meets, friends and Dumpsters, and the Internet, from Craigslist to the Freecycle Network, which includes 3,843 communities and 2.8 million members giving away stuff to one another.

These people purchased old sheets this year. Tonight’s vegetarian feast was cooked in a hand-me-down Crock-Pot. Christmas presents? They’re making them, or — shudders — they don’t give them.

They call their little initiative “the Compact,” which they say has something to do with the Mayflower and the Pilgrim pledge to live for the greater good, save the planet, renew their souls, etc. And although these modern “Compactors” say they never intended to spark a mini-movement or appear on the “Today” show, that is exactly what has happened.

Since the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about them in February, their story of not buying has appeared on media outlets around the world — everything from Yoga Journal to Martha Stewart’s Body + Soul to the London Times. Even Oprah’s producers called.

It appears they’ve pinched a nerve. Perhaps, the Compactors suggest, many people have the same feeling that the mall just isn’t working for them anymore.

“We’re just rarefied middle-class San Francisco greenies having a conversation about consumption and sustainability,” says John Perry, a marketing executive with a high-tech firm, and one of the founding Compactors. “But suddenly, we decide we’re not going to buy a bunch of new stuff for a year? And that’s international news? Doesn’t that say something?”

Their user group on Yahoo has grown to 1,800 registered members, representing SubCompact cells operating across the country (including Washington), and around the planet. So they apparently live among us, biding their time, quietly not buying, like some kind of Fifth Column of . . . Shakers.

The online Compact community ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact) spends enormous amounts of typing-time discussing things most Americans probably do not. Such as how to make soap. Or whether a mousetrap counts as a safety necessity. Or how to explain to your children that Santa Claus traffics in used toys.

“And people hate us for it? Like it drives them nuts?” This is Shawn Rosenmoss, an environmental engineer in the original San Francisco group. Some have called the Compactors un-American, anti-capitalist, eco-freak poseurs whose defiant act of not-consuming, if it caught on, would destroy the economy and our way of life.

Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters magazine, who advocates taking a 24-hour timeout of the consumer merry-go-round, has promoted Buy Nothing Day since 1992, urging citizens to resist the urge to splurge on the day after Thanksgiving, the kickoff to the holiday shopping spree.

Lasn claims that millions of people have stopped shopping on Buy Nothing Day, although he admits there is no way to know for sure. But Lasn does know that Internet discussion about the movement has grown, and so, too, the backlash — against the backlash.

“I go on talk radio shows, and I’m amazed by the anger of some people, the Chamber of Commerce president who calls up and says, ‘You’re trying to ruin the economy,’ ” Lasn says. “I sympathize. I know you have to pay your rent, but try to take the larger view. We consume three times more than we did right after World War II. These things are connected.”

“I think it upsets people because it seems like we’re making a value judgment about them,” says Rosenmoss, who has two children. “When we’re simply trying to bring less . . . into our house.”

What are the rules to this particular game? “People are really into the rules,” Perry says, “as if it were a game, which it kind of is. I like that part of it. Figuring out how to do what I need to do without running out and buying something.”

The rules are simple — and flexible. The original Compactors decided they would get to vote on anything in the gray areas.

One member recalls asking permission to purchase a new toilet brush, contending that it was a health issue. Overruled. How about a new house key? Allowed. New tubes of shampoo, toothpaste, sunscreen are okay, but skin bronzer would be frowned upon.

At the potluck supper, the family dog is playing with a toy, which looks like a ball of yarn. Technically, it is new, and thus a Compact breaker. “But if she eats it,” points out Rachel Kesel, a professional dog walker, “then it’s food.”

“We all have our little weaknesses,” says Kate Boyd, a schoolteacher and set designer. Her challenge was getting used bicycle shoes, plus a used helmet and pump. Three buys through Craigslist through three sellers. “It was more of a hassle than going to the bike store,” she says, but more interesting, too. “You get to meet new people.”

The greatest challenge of the Compact? “The strangest things,” Perry explains. For example, he cannot find used shoe polish.

Then there are modern dilemmas. Is it better to buy a battery (allowed, if recycled and rechargeable) for a cellular phone for $70 or just have the company give you a new free phone if you switch providers?

Clothes? Easy, they say. Vintage stores. Consignment shops. Or more down-market, your Goodwill, your Salvation Army. Or your own closet, likely filled with outfits.

Toys? The easiest. Perry and his partner, Rob Picciotto, a high school language teacher, have two adopted children. “I take Ben to Target sometimes and we’ll play with the toys and then leave,” Picciotto says. The kid seems happy.

“I broke down and bought a drill bit,” Rosenmoss says. The Compactors nod their heads. “I just wanted it and I needed and I did it.” The group members understand. They’ve had their drill-bit moments.

But not a lot of them. Asked what they bought that broke the Compact, the list was not long: some sneakers, the drill bit, a map, and for Sarah Pelmas and her newlywed husband, Matt Eddy (fellow Compactors), some energy-efficient windows for the house renovation. The 1920s house, they remind us, was purchased used. Indeed, they painted it with recycled paint.

“By being so strict with yourself, you learn to take a deep breath,” Kesel says.

“You learn to do away with the impatience.” Boyd says, “You see that the craving will pass.”

One Compactor points out that the group’s members are not really denying themselves much. Boyd says that, for example, by buying less new, “I drink way better wine now.” Also allowed: services. So they could buy a massage if they wanted to. They can go to movies, theater, concerts, museums, bars, music clubs and restaurants. They can fly, drive (and buy gas), stay in hotels.

Judith Levine, author of “Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping,” went really cold turkey in 2004 with her husband. The couple split their time between Brooklyn and Vermont. She applauds the Compactors, but says that not buying stuff for a year is only taking it halfway. Not going to the movies and restaurants for a year — now that’s cutting back.

Amazingly, the Compactors have all decided to renew their pledge for another year. There are, naturally, things they miss, and so they’ve decided to give themselves one day next month when they can buy a few things they really need new.

Like? “I need a drain snake,” Perry says. Is that not pitiful?

Pelmas is dying for new pillowcases. Used pillowcases, even this group agrees, are rather disgusting.

Lessons learned?

“We didn’t do this to save the world. We did this to improve the quality of our own lives,” Perry says. “And what we learned is that we all have a lot of more stuff than you think, and that you can get along on a lot less stuff than you can imagine.”

Staff writer Sonya Geis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Folks,

Building on the previous post about the CFR report, here’s a new article I wrote for Energy and Capital, about some radical developments at the government and policymaking levels that bode great things for the renewable energy sector.

–C

Renewable Energy Set to
Explode, with Government Backing

By Chris
Nelder

12/20/2006

A bomb went off
in the renewable energy world two months ago, but almost nobody heard it. And it
has stunning implications for the energy business, both the traditional
hydrocarbon side, and the renewable side.

Maybe it’s
because it was in the form of a 90-page policy paper from the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR)—the kind of stuff that makes a normal person’s mind wander, and
eyes glaze over, after a few minutes.

Well, I’m not a
normal person (ask anybody!). Despite its pedantic prose and lugubrious language
that only a policy wonk could love, I read it.

And after
reading it, you could have pushed me over with a feather. This is HUGELY
significant stuff. And yet, even today, two months after it was published, a
Google search on the title of the report yields a mere 300 references to it—all
of them, it seems, from peak oil blogs and related sites.

I found not one
mention from a single recognized media source. Newspaper, TV, major news
sites…nada.

The report is
entitled “National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency” and was written by a
special task force of the CFR. Now, if you don’t know much about the CFR, you
should stop and Google them right now, because they are part of the cabal that,
literally, runs the world. The elite of the elite. The power center of
government and business everywhere.

To demonstrate
the seriousness of the report, the task force was chaired by two former CIA
directors, James Schlesinger and John Deutch. (You may have come
across similar efforts by another former CIA Director, James Woolsey, who has
also made national energy security his personal ambition.)

Here are just a
few choice excerpts from the report (emphasis mine):

• [T]he U.S. government has failed to pay sufficient
  attention to energy in its conduct of foreign policy or to adopt a
  consistent approach to energy issues.


• The issues at stake intimately affect U.S. foreign
  policy, as well as the strength of the American economy and the state of the
  global environment. But most of the
  leverage potentially available to the United States is through domestic
  policy. Thus, the Independent Task Force devotes considerable attention to
  how oil consumption (or at least the
  growth in consumption) can be reduced and why and how energy issues must
  become better integrated with other aspects of U.S.
  foreign policy.


• The challenge over the next
  several decades is … to begin the
  transition to an economy that relies less on petroleum. The longer the delay,
  the greater will be the subsequent trauma. For the United
  States, with 4.6 percent of the world’s
  population using 25 percent of the world’s oil, the transition could be especially
  disruptive.


• The voices that espouse
  ‘‘energy independence’’ are doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a
  goal that is unachievable


• The central task for the next two decades must be to manage the
  consequences of dependence on oil, not to pretend the United
  States can eliminate it.


• [W]hile reducing U.S. oil imports is desirable, the
  underlying problem is the high and growing demand for oil
  worldwide.

Then they spent
considerable time debunking these widely-held “myths” about energy:

Myth #1:
The United States can be energy independent.

Myth #2:
Cutting oil imports will lower fuel prices.

Myth #3:
Large Western companies like Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron control the
price of oil.

Myth #4:
There’s plenty of low-cost oil ready to be tapped.

Myth #5:
Renewable energy and nuclear power can quickly reduce dependence on oil and
gas.

And finally,
they gave some policy objectives:

• Increase
efficiency of oil and gas use;

• Switch
from oil-derived products to alternatives;

•
Encourage supply of oil from sources outside the Persian
Gulf;

• Make the
oil and gas infrastructure more efficient and secure; and

• Increase
investment in new energy technologies.

They go on to
call specifically for increased government R&D backing of new energy
technologies, including higher fuel efficiency innovations, plug-in hybrids,
ethanol, synfuels, and advanced nuclear designs.

Wow. What a
bunch of tree-huggers those CIA guys are, huh?

In short, this
policy paper is an unequivocal affirmation of the reality and the significance
of peak oil. It is a sharp critique of hypocritical U.S.
foreign policy that pretends to be about freedom, while deploying its troops not
where freedom is threatened, but where there is oil.

And best of all,
it is a stirring call to action for the government to invest a lot of R&D
money, without regard for return on the
investment, in all kinds of fundamental energy alternatives and efficiency
technologies.

For a guy in the
renewable energy investing business, well, I could scarcely imagine a better
Christmas present.

But the CFR
isn’t the only organization that’s (finally) on point about energy policy. Here
are a couple of other news bites you might have missed:

• Eighty House Members signed a letter to President Bush seeking
  substantially higher funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency in the
  White House’s 2008 budget request. Meanwhile, energy consumers and producers,
  including six oil and gas trade associations, have formed “a coalition of
  coalitions,” called the “Energy Initiative,” to develop national energy policy
  recommendations.


• A panel of U.S. renewable energy industry experts recently
  estimated that the U.S. could produce, at a minimum, 25% of the country’s
  electrical energy requirement with renewable energy by 2025, making the
  “25X25″ proposal feasible, reasonable, and doable.”


• The European Commission will nearly double its target [to 20%] for
  the adoption of renewable energy in 2020, versus its [12%] goal for 2010.
  

To top it all
off, just yesterday, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, there was a
story entitled “Choke Points – As Threats to Oil Supply Grow, A General Says
U.S. Isn’t Ready,” wherein a former Air Force general, who was the deputy
commander of U.S. forces in Europe, Central Asia and Africa, was interviewed
about his continuing efforts to secure the supply lines of oil from the Caspian
Basin and the African coast. How’s this for a startler:

Back in
Washington,
Gen. Wald has joined forces with a movement that some are calling the “green
hawks.” Prominent former policy makers and retired armed-forces officers, they
argue that a tough military and foreign policy won’t be enough to ensure energy
security, and the only real solution
lies in changing consumption at home.

If the major
policymakers and military men in the U.S. are agreed that reducing
domestic consumption is the only solution, then surely, even the knuckleheads in
the Congress and the White House can’t be too far behind. It’s past time to
consign Cheney’s derision of energy conservation to the dustbin of history, and
start making some tracks to the future.

Finally, the
time has arrived to get our foreign policy objectives aligned with our energy
policy objectives, and come clean about our reasons for being in the Middle East. Let’s face it, their main export isn’t
broccoli, and when the CFR says it’s OK to admit that, it’s OK.

Finally, the
government seems ready to step up to the renewable energy challenge and deliver.
Almost exactly one year ago, the U.S. government laid off a
substantial fraction of the workforce at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory, citing budgetary constraints. Perhaps now we can put such idiocy
behind us for good.

Finally, we can
come clean about our hidden subsidies to the traditional hydrocarbon industries,
and start encouraging the right solutions, rather than the wrong ones. Big Oil
doesn’t need tax relief, even Bush has admitted that. It’s time to let the
Invisible Hand go to work on the real solutions we need.

I’m so excited
about the future of renewable energy, I can hardly sit still long enough to type
this. A new day is dawning. Let’s roll!