Dispatch from the Copenhagen Climate Summit

Entering the second week of the Copenhagen climate negotiations, several things are clear. Firstly, the negotiations are very confusing and close to deadlocked. At a time when all countries need to stand together to face the global threat of the climate crisis, many nations are still using every tactic they can to avoid and delay reducing their own greenhouse gas pollution, while asking everyone else to take the burden. Worse still, our leaders are tossing blame back and forth in an endless cycle – rather than focusing on what is required for the world as a whole.

An additional complication has been that this week, civil society’s access to the conference center will be dramatically limited (only 90 of the 20,000 accredited civil society delegates, people like me, will be allowed to enter the Bella Center on Friday). This is bringing up hard questions about citizen access to decision-making on climate change and is helping build momentum behind a counter-UN “People’s Assembly” that will take place on Wednesday.

Secondly, it is clear that the time for intellectual argument regarding climate change is over. The climate crisis is a moral issue. Slavery didn’t end because of compelling economic arguments. Women didn’t claim the right to vote with scientific data. These moral struggles were won because people, like us, finally listened to the still, small voice that perks up when something is amiss, and then took action to right the wrong.

When one person breaks something and a different person gets in trouble for it, it is wrong. It’s unfair. This is a cross-cultural principle and this is precisely what is happening with climate change. The communities least responsible for greenhouse gas pollution are the communities that are at the highest risk from the effects of climate change. As it stands, we are being warned by scientists, economists, even the U.S. military, that millions will lose their lives due to preventable and involuntary hunger, disease and conflict resulting from greenhouse gas pollution. If we don’t act to remedy this state of affairs, we are complicit in this crime against humanity.

On Thursday, Dec. 17, a global action called Hunger for Survival, will lead the way in cutting through the endless back-and-forth to sound a moral call to action. Inspired by the members of Climate Justice Fast!, now on their 41^st day without food, thousands of people from around the world, including President Mohommed Nasheed of the Maldives, world-renowned physicist and environmental justice advocate Vandana Shiva, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mary Robinson, will unite in a day of fasting and reflection on climate justice.

While fasters will be calling for moral action from our different governments, the fast is also an expression of collective commitment to examining our own lifestyles and priorities. It is an expression of our desire to challenge the idea that excess is virtuous, and use our daily economic and political choices to reward those who promote nourishing and life-sustaining policies, rather than those who abuse the planet and its people.

Gandhi used fasting as a tool to unseat the British Empire's powerful grip over India. The American, English and Irish women suffragists used it to gain the right to vote. When people unite behind an intention, and seal it with fasting, history shows that powerful things happen. If you would like to join the fast, please visit www.climatejusticefast.com.

Struggles for justice are often aided by government intervention. To those who decry such intervention, I say, if we don’t want the expansion of government mandate, then let’s not wait on the government to mandate us doing the right thing.

Regarding this point, here is some good news: the third thing that is clear here in Copenhagen is that the best solutions to climate change are coming from regular people who are not waiting around on government to mandate doing the right thing. All around the world, people are realizing that economic failure, environmental and health crises, and spiritual confusion and dissatisfaction are all connected. People from Lexington to Hong Kong are taking action to put control of food and energy production back into the capable hands of local communities, to strengthen local businesses, and to forward the process of healing the divisions within our communities and between humanity and our home. These people are the real climate champions. My deep and abiding gratitude to you all.

Climate Justice Fast! enters fourth week without food

Seven climate justice activists from around the world have entered the fourth week of a water-only hunger strike, having gone totally without food since November 6. They have been joined by hundreds of solidarity fasters, from 22 different countries, including Romania, Honduras, and the Central African Republic.

Recent announcements from world leaders – including President Obama – indicate that a legally-binding international climate treaty won’t be signed at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen this December.

The members of the ’Climate Justice Fast!’ remain resolute, insisting that both world leaders and the global public must use the much-anticipated summit as an opportunity ‘to shift away from business-as-usual and start addressing the root causes of the climate crisis – fossil fuels, overconsumption, and a socio-economic paradigm that rewards abuse and exploitation of people and the planet.’

Anna Keenan, a 23 year-old Physics graduate from Australia and one of the key organizers of Climate Justice Fast! explains, “I am doing this hunger-strike because I am inspired by the philosophy of Albert Einstein – that problems can't be solved at the level of awareness that created them.”

“In order to solve the climate crisis, we must challenge the assumptions that fossil fuels are ‘cheap’ forms of energy, that infinite economic expansion on a finite planet is possible, and that people and places are expendable commodities.”

Diane Wilson, a 61-year old fisherwoman from Texas who is participating in the strike, adds that “by rectifying the root causes of climate change, we are confident that our political demands – like commitments from wealthy, high-emitting countries to reduce the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere to 350 ppm and to pledge 195 billion USD per year for adaptation efforts in countries most vulnerable to climate change – will be met as well.”

As the global hunger strike enters its fourth week, the diverse members of Climate Justice Fast! show no sign of abandoning their fasts or easing their moral call for immediate, effective action on climate change.

The hunger strikers intend to fast at least until the end of the Copenhagen talks, which conclude on December 18. A number of the hunger strikers will be present inside the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Something I cannot name

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I – I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

My eyes go a little watery when I consider the distance it seems I’ve traveled in four years, miles and miles of heart wanderings, mind meanderings, and foot marches. Many of the pit stops made along the way – Madagascar, the Hague, the United Nations, Congress, TIME magazine – seem a little surreal to me now, living quietly on a homestead in North Carolina. I am proud of myself though, because in recalling each of these pit stops, I am reminded that in the past four years, I have faced down some of my angriest fears, asked many of the questions that make me feel most vulnerable, and weathered some uncomfortable forms of resistance in doing these things rather publicly.

Over this distance, the essential message of my advocacy – that is to say, my life – changed several times. It is now changing again, and I know the shifting is far from finished. It is borne of a collection of recent intellectual, emotional, and spiritual encounters. I have a difficult time articulating where I think I’m headed. Language seems inadequate. I keep waiting for the inspired moment, when clarity will dawn and I can finally explain myself and explain the hunches that constitute my current rationale for decision-making. I have to frequently remind myself that though I can’t describe the full scope of the systems, correspondences, and connections that I sense, I am complete, I am sufficient in this moment. The words will come, if they need to.

I know at the very least, though I can’t describe its full profile, that I’m seeking the wisdom of the mater: the intuitive, the spontaneous, the emotive, the connotative, the mystical, the cyclical, the material, the peripheral, the lunar (which will not burn your eyes), the wet, dusky north face, the sinistr southpaw, Said’s Oriental, Beauvoir’s Other, the raw Goat milk drinkers (who don’t wipe their mouths), the unsanctioned elixir-mixers, the illiterate priestess-bards of the wilderness, joyful old folks with their wrinkled, dirty fists in the air holding militant carrots, hyper-sensitized infants hearing colors and tasting noises as I no longer can. I’m seeking that which the Industrial, alienated mind, the self-designated ontological core around which 'lesser-developed' beings orbit, has discredited as base instinct, mocked as madness, dismissed as irrationality, ignored as un-testable, maligned as evil, and scorned as simple-minded, weak, and imitative. I’m seeking the wisdom of all the beings fighting desperately to reclaim their legitimacy and their agency: that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for it because I suspect that it will reveal, in ways more profound and complete than previous explanations I’ve been offered, why humanity turned so savagely upon the breast that nourishes us, instructions as to how to heal the innumerable (and terrifying) divisions and imbalances within and among ourselves and our neighbor species, and a picture of what my life needs to look like in order for me to be an agent of genuine reconciliation between, in broadest terms, the yin and the yang.

I haven’t come up with a slogan for what I’m seeking. I don’t know how to sell it to an Affluenza-stricken, comfort-over-conscience, machismo-obsessed audience. I haven’t figured out how to monetize it, commodify it, list deliverables for a campaign to promote it, or wrangle it into a headline, Congressional bill or UN negotiating text. I haven’t found a serious graduate program that offers a PhD in it. To be frank though, these ‘traditional’ means of delivering messages, assigning value, establishing norms, and gaining insight seem to contradict its very essence.

Though I can’t tell you what the hell it is, I feel like I’m contradicting it less than I used to (contradicting it less, I presume, is one step closer to finding it). For one, on the homestead, I feel like I’m living on a saner and healthier scale. While I still make my forays into the Industrial world through international conference calls and reading the UNFCCC negotiating text like a bedtime story, my days are extraordinarily different from those led by most of my ‘colleagues’. Victories are raising the hoop house or saving the cherry tomato plants or watching the kale babies grow. Disasters are named powdery mildew and scaly leg mites (on the chickens, not on me). Good fun is lighting the burn pile or potlucks at neighbors or going swimming in the pond. The homestead reminds me (and I hope reminds my many exhausted peers) that being an agent of change doesn’t mean sacrificing my physical, mental, and emotional health. Secondly, my fingernails have dirt under them and a lot of my pants now have grass stains on them; I’m particularly gleeful about these things. I’m using mind and body in tandem, moreover, in inauspicious ways that aren’t interesting to the media. Thirdly, I have found something – plants and the rhythm of the earth – on which I must defer to the experience of my mother and grandmothers and ancestors. We have found the common, neutral ground where we can meet, where I can be taught and they can teach, where we’re all empowered (although this common ground, right now, is on telephone, since I’m in North Carolina and they’re still in Kentucky).

Each of these things is evidence of reconciliation in some form or fashion, and each has hummed a few bars of the larger theme that I’m trying to hear. But they are only a few of many, and I suspect there are still many changes that have yet to work themselves out within the listener. So, please, hold these words here only very loosely and apply to them an ample margin of error. As Alice said, “I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly.”

Military Robots and the Future of War

"Mankind's 5000 year old monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down in our very lifetime."

A brilliant, but disturbing, description of the role of robotics within modern military operations and the general dehumanization of warfare generally.

Imaginal Cells and the Body Politic

A lovely metaphor for the transformations of our time.  Author unknown.

When a caterpillar nears its transformation time, it begins to eat ravenously, consuming everything in sight.  The caterpillar body then becomes heavy, outgrowing its own skin many times, until it is too bloated to move. Attaching to a branch (upside down, we might add, where everything is turned on its head) it forms a chrysalis — an enclosing shell that limits the caterpillar’s freedom for the duration of the transformation.

 

Within the chrysalis a miracle occurs. Tiny cells, that biologists actually call “imaginal cells,” begin to appear. These cells are wholly different from caterpillar cells, carrying different information, vibrating to a different frequency – the frequency of the emerging butterfly. At first, the caterpillar’s immune system perceives these new cells as enemies, and attacks them, much as new ideas in science, medicine, politics, and social behavior are viciously denounced by the powers now considered mainstream. But the imaginal cells are not deterred.  They continue to appear, in even greater numbers, recognizing each other, bonding together, until the new cells are numerous enough to organize into clumps. When enough cells have formed to make structures along the new organizational lines, the caterpillar’s immune system is overwhelmed. The caterpillar body then become a nutritious soup for the growth of the butterfly.

 

When the butterfly is ready to hatch, the chrysalis becomes transparent.  The need for restriction has been outgrown. Yet the struggle toward freedom has an organic timing.  Were the chrysalis opened too soon, the butterfly would die.  As the butterfly emerges, it opens its “right wing” and its “left wing,” and then flies away to dance among the flowers.

 

The awakening of the global heart results from transforming the body politic from the unconscious, over-consuming bloat of the caterpillar into a creature of exquisite beauty, grace, and freedom. This coming of age process takes us to a new mythic reality, a larger story, ripe with meaning and direction. It takes us from the naïve egocentricity of childhood into a larger reality of interdependent reciprocity. It is not a passage that ends in the gray grimness of adult responsibility, denying the colorful spirituality of childhood innocence. Rather, it is a reclaiming of wholeness that denies little, and embraces all.

 

 

Catalysts for the Coalescence of Consciousness

The awakening of consciousness happens first in individuals.  It is a shift from third chakra, ego-based consciousness to fourth chakra, relational consciousness, a shift from I to We.  It is a realization that we are in this together, that we are interdependent, integral agents, part of a larger unity that needs each of us as individual agents. This awakening could result from spiritual practices such as yoga or meditation, psychotherapy, workshop experiences, disenchantment from one’s “normal” life, or any manner of doorways through which we awaken from the trance of consumption and exploitation to a higher vision of perpetual reciprocity, compassion, and unity. At first such individuals might feel alone or isolated; they might be misunderstood or even attacked by others for their strange ideas.

When these individuals find others of like mind, they are strengthened and reinforced. They feel less alone, more empowered, and inspired. They literally “vibrate” at a higher frequency.  They catalyze each other. This is how the imaginal cells come together, organize amongst themselves and become centers of awakening in the new body politic.

 

 

 

On the Disorienting and Abrupt Character of Video Skype

Walking away, 

You slowly fade and become the earth and sky.

I know you will slide off the horizon 

at some moment, but it will be indistinguishable from

the one before or after.

And while my heart aches

I feel like the pace at which we move apart

is just.

These days, continuous spectrums 

of presence and absence

have gone discrete. 

You live in machines

and I turn you on and off, and

with a precise-enough instrument

I can determine the exact time at which 

Your voice and your face vanish.

These days, there is no slipping away;

There is only sudden death. 

It is a threat to the color grey, imagination, rainbows,

all that is in the business of blurring lines

and uncovering wholeness.

But I should not forget my own message.

I should not neglect the natural and obvious corollary:

The miracle of the unexpected resurrection. 

i freely assumed
the debt of [inter]dependency
and have found myself unshackled.

when i stopped rerouting earth webs
i found that rivers flow when and where the ought
and thirst is satisfied.

when i stopped damming heart channels
i found that lovers meet when and where they ought
and hunger abates.

when i stopped manipulating my story
i found that revolutions happen when and where they ought
and balance returns.

Whose Side Am I On?

I am writing from a country far, far away.

Because I can't give you the name of this nation, I will tell you a little bit about it.

It is a poor country. By that, I mean it has a GDP of roughly $17 billion (US, PPP) and since the 1960s, has been accumulating exorbitant amounts of debt to fund infrastructure development, poverty relief programs, etc. It is, as they say, "underdeveloped" or "developing". Some people think that the latter is a more polite, more encouraging choice of nomenclature. Because I am of the opinion that the terms mean the same thing, and because I don't like the implication of that thing – namely, that Aristotle's Great Chain of Being is still a vital force in our language and our minds – I will use the term "Third World". If you read to the end of this essay, you will understand why I choose this title, despite the fact that it has fallen out of favor with the academic establishment.

I am in a Third World country. Objectively, that means that it is debt-ridden; its creditors include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and bilateral donors like USAID and DFID. In exchange for the forgiveness of said debt (or, some would argue, to continue being eligible for loans), it is implementing structural adjustment programs (privatizing and deregulating industry, opening borders to international investment, "tightening the national belt" through cuts to social programs). It has a booming population that is rapidly urbanizing. Roughly eighty percent of the swelling population is engaged in the informal sector (economic activities that are not taxed, like subsistence agriculture or selling second-hand clothes in the street). Despite being overwhelmingly agrarian, it is trying to attract industry (or perhaps, 'reluctantly submitting to industry') by participating in the "Race to the Bottom": allowing foreign companies to enjoy the cheap labor force and vast mineral resources with as few pesky regulations as possible so that I, the ever-loyal consumer, can buy my jeans for $29.99 at the Fayette Mall.

Open to debate is whether or not this country's Third World status is also a function of its citizens' non-European heritage or if that is purely coincidental. It is also a former colony, another characteristic that is shared by a suspicious number of Third World countries.

What do these things mean? They mean that four-fifths of the population live on the equivalent of $2 a day or less. To address two common responses to this statistic: indeed, one should remember that this is a country where many people grow their own food and build their own shelters, tempering the need for paper currency. However, to reiterate, the country is urbanizing with a speed that decries its reputation for a leisurely pace. And granted, the purchasing power of $2 is greater here – best case scenario, the exchange rate is 1:1700(national currency), meaning that the average citizen makes ends meet on 102,000 NC per month. By way of comparison, I just rented a modest studio apartment for 130,000 NC a month in the capital, a deal that by every one's account is impossibly ideal; a deal that was secured only because of personal connections I had established due to my privileged status as a white foreigner. One hundred and thirty thousand NC for housing alone for one month. I have, in addition, over 500,000 NC for food and pleasure for the month of April.

What I'm trying to say is that you should pay very little heed to people who insist that the statistics are a bunch of rain-on-our-markets'-parade baloney. Things are unequivocally hard for the vast majority of people here, and increasingly so as they flock to metropolitan centers, seeking the gold promised them at the end of the proverbial rainbow.

They find it, alright. Problem is, it's inside of well-guarded family compounds, like the one in which I live; it's tied up on the lithe mannequins in the windows of boutiques which they aren't allowed to enter. Its baked into the pastries that are temptingly arranged behind glass counters according to impeccable Western aesthetic standards.

They find the gold: its just locked up, in a crystal safe. The transparency mocks them. Because they are wholly unequipped to crack the combination -- they do not speak the languages of power -- they remain on the periphery, faces pressed against the Swarovski, becoming increasingly despondent and desperate. But for some, despondency and desperation evolve into a lock-jawed bitterness at having been duped by the siren song of modernity. They become increasingly angry as I emerge, refreshed, from a popular spa, or from the hotel that still bears the name of a notorious colonial plantation lord, after my afternoon coffee and chocolate, or from the "green zone" (by which my roommates and I affectionately refer to our lodgings), freshly showered, en route to a meeting, certainly an important meeting, at the Carlton.

They are angry, the children who demand money, even those who cannot identify the emotion. They are angry and they are strong; they have grown up under conditions that have hardened their soles and sharpened their senses. They are strong because they have nothing to loose. By contrast, I am contemptibly weak, in body and heart, with my arch supports, miniature pharmacy, and fear of pain.

The only thing that is not weak is my mind, which is quick to point out the shameful inconsistencies in my behavior.

I have digressed.

This essay is not about my lack of moral fitness, or even this country, necessarily.

It's about Kentucky, my home. It's about the fact that this Third World country and Kentucky have more in common than one might suspect, good and bad: the wild disparity between rich and poor and the desire of the urban citizens to distance themselves in the eyes of outsiders from their rural brethren; the rowdy music and the fierce pride; the absentee landownership and the bids for industry, natural resource stripteases; the puzzling phenomenon of folks with means staying, purely out of something as antiquated as love of the land and community (do I need to point out that that is a joke?); the phenomenal creativity and energy of youthful resistance; the very histories themselves. All these things are shared, but I will focus on the first similarity to catch my attention: the mining industry.

There are certainly rays of sunshine in this godforsaken place. After a comprehensive revision of the 'outdated' national mining code (outdated because it smacked of socialism and nationalism, making exploitation difficult for international firms) between 1999 and 2005 under the expert guidance of a D.C.-based law firm, this country's mining sector was declared "open for business". The Heritage Foundation raved -- the chastity belt had been unlocked. This country's investment freedom score soared from 30 to 70 in this period -- largely because of the fact that "most sectors of the economy are open to 100 percent foreign ownership" (that's polite speak for absentee landownership). Since the completion of this "mining law modernization" process, all but 15% of subterranean exploration rights have been claimed by foreign conglomerates. The possibilities are endless. Just think -- in only a few brief years, this wretched, impoverished country will be making enough money, thanks to its shrewd utilization of la richesse de la terre and the invisible hand, to crack the crystal safe.

Just like Kentucky.

Just like Kentucky. With its poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy rates that are some of the bleakest in the nation. With upwards of 50% of children living below the poverty line in some counties and average income levels in others that are nearly half that of the national average. With it's hopeful reception of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, and his declaration of a "War on Poverty," and its subsequent realization, forty years later, that nothing has changed. With its uncertain hope that Massey is telling the truth this time with its assurances of wealth on the horizon and its reluctant acceptance of prevailing wisdom, which insists that there are no economic alternatives to coal for the backwards lot of Appalachia; with its Harlan Country insurgents of June, 1973; with its Martin County flood, 250 million gallons of coal slurry into our rivers and streams, 30 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon-Valdez disaster of 1989, declared by the EPA the worst environmental disaster in the recorded history of southeastern United States, and the media no where to be found; Kentucky, with its proud mothers who are intimidated by menacing coal trucks which circle their homes for days on end after they have been so presumptuous as to point out that the law exists to protect the consenting citizenry, not bloodless institutions that lack the faculties to make sound, ethical judgments, much less love or feel loyalty toward someone or something; Kentucky, with its achy, heart-breaky voices and mandolins and fiddles that I have failed to love enough, the sounds of obstinate joy in the face of impossible odds; sounds that explain my own life, perhaps better than I'll ever be able to understand.

This Third World country will arrive at wealth, influence, and most importantly, self-determination, just like Kentucky.

I promise.

What is the point of this? The point is that Kentucky might have more in common with the villagers, the naked pagans, of the country from which I write, than certain powers would like us to realize. The point is that the disempowerment of the Third World, which (news flash), with the globalization of markets, is no longer a respecter of national boundaries, relies on its incoherency and internal conflict. It relies on the dispossessed of southside Chicago and Southeast DC and Appalachia and Native American reservations and Tehran and Nairobi and Sarajevo and Beijing and Bangkok and Manila and Rabat and Baghdad and Beirut and Jerusalem all believing that they have nothing in common. It relies on the fortification of divisions and the stoking of hatred - cultural, ethnic, religious - between these groups.

The point is that in 2000, Massey Energy was spun off of Fluor Corporation, a publicly owned Fortune 500, engineering, construction, and procurement firm that operates, directly or indirectly, in well over 25 countries, one of which is the country from which I write.

I won't bore you with a laundry list of examples of the ways in which the global pillars of government, finance, and commerce are intertwined...chances are, you've heard it before, and if I'm not careful, folks will start calling me a conspiracy theorist.

But there's no question that solidarity exists within the modern, globalized First Estate, to the degree that "inbred" might be a more appropriate term. By contrast, hatred and violence reign within the modern, globalized Third Estate. We call the hatred and violence racism, sexism, tribalism, sectarianism; we call it the East versus the West, the clash of civilizations, Muslim extremism, Christian fundamentalism, ecoterrorism. With all of these frightening -isms and fancy phrases, is it any surprise that we feel ourselves pitted against basically everyone else in the world, and that the feeling is mutual? Is it coincidence?

I could carry my point further, but I myself am frightened of where it might lead, I am frightened of pain. I myself am unprepared for the full implications of my point. So, I will sit here in the crystal safe, sipping my cafe au lait, savoring ganache; I will readjust my black-rimmed reading glasses and bangle bracelets and "ethnic" raw silk wrap; I will return to my dog-eared Kafka and Thoreau and Sartre and repeat rituals that confirm my seat in the 21st century salons. I will let you draw your own conclusions.

But, as for me, even as I try to quiet my mind with these symbolic acts of "progressivism", I know that the arm of history is long, but bends toward justice. I know that President Nkrumah of Ghana was not only demonstrating non-alignment when he used the phrase "Third World" - he was also invoking the spirit of the French Third Estate. I know that the underdogs of history ultimately give up trying to figure out the combination, quit playing by the rules given them, and simply take a sledgehammer to the crystal safe. All that it takes is the realization that they have numbers and the mandate of history on their side and nothing more left to lose.

And just as those (of us?) on the inside for so long saw no distinction between the individual hungry bellies -- Appalachian or Colombian or Thai or Congolese, milk that skin-and-bones cow dry -- the hungry bellies will make no distinction between those who use solar panels and those who do not.

So, if you have read this wishing that I had been referring specifically to "Eastern Kentucky" in the description of our state - if you, even as a 'progressive', felt a desire to distinguish yourself from Appalachia - I would reconsider. As the song goes, "Whose side [of the safe] are you on?"

Whose side am I on?

Guerrilla Tactics at Oil-Lease Auction

A little dated, but brilliant. December 2008.

LOS ANGELES -- Instead of joining his protester friends on the snowy sidewalk outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Salt Lake City, Tim DeChristopher took a seat inside. In a room milling with oil and gas men who knew one another by sight, he was the unknown in a red parka, registering as a bidder in an auction for the rights to drill on 149,000 acres of federal land. DeChristopher was handed a red paddle bearing the number 70.

Half an hour later, he was raising it.

"I leaned forward to one of my colleagues and said, 'This guy behind us is just running up the prices,' " said David Terry, a Salt Lake City oil-land man who routinely attends the BLM auctions. "And my friend said, 'Yeah, he's going to get stuck with a tract.' "

The University of Utah economics student got stuck with 13. Promising the federal government $1.8 million he does not have, DeChristopher emerged holding leases on 22,000 acres in the scenic southeast corner of Utah.

He might have gone home with more had federal agents not led him out of the room after he secured the rights to a dozen parcels in a row, finally just holding his paddle over his head, even between offers. The U.S. attorney is considering charges that a spokeswoman declined to specify.

Even before DeChristopher subverted the proceedings, the Dec. 19 auction sized up as one of the most controversial during the Bush administration, whose policies critics have characterized as a bonanza for oil and gas extraction on public land. Opponents of the policies said the 35,000 drilling permits issued over the past eight years reflected the boom in petroleum prices and the administration's zeal to accommodate the oil and gas industry, even on public lands deemed "special" because of their beauty or fragility.

"This whole business of 'Drill, baby, drill' totally ignored the fact that we are a well-drilled country," said Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society, noting that by the count of the oil-field services company Baker Hughes, more drill rigs are operating inside the United States than in the rest of the world combined. "BLM's oil and gas program has been just out of control."

The parcels that DeChristopher snapped up stand near two national parks and a national monument that environmentalists and the National Park Service warned might be endangered by drilling. The outrage, which rivaled the outcry over the BLM decision to lease atop Colorado's majestic Roan Plateau, was aggravated by the timing: The agency announced the Utah auction on Nov. 4 -- Election Day. Environmental groups answered with administrative filings and news conferences, including a National Press Club event featuring Robert Redford.

DeChristopher wanted to do more.

"I've been an environmentalist for pretty much all my life and done all the things that you're supposed to do that are supposed to lead toward change," DeChristopher said, accounting for action that, as he tells it, surprised even him. "I've marched and held signs. I've volunteered in national parks. I've written letters and signed petitions. I've sat down with my congressman, Jim Matheson, for a long time.

"Ultimately, I felt like those things were only mildly effective. And it was having a very tiny effect on a very large problem."

The guerrilla bidding did not go down well with the oil and gas regulars. The companies recommend parcels for the BLM to sell and can hold them for decades if they prevail at the quarterly auctions.

"If we'd have put it up for a vote in the room that day," said BLM spokeswoman Mary Wilson, "the other bidders might have put together a lynching party."

Among some environmentalists, however, DeChristopher was hailed as a hero. A blogger helped set up a Web site, http://www.bidder70.org, and a pass-along e-mail request for $5 contributions turned into an online fund drive that, by Friday, raised the $45,000 that DeChristopher needed to pay the BLM in the hope of retaining a claim on the leases -- and improving his odds of avoiding jail.

The West Virginia native, 27, said he raised paddle No. 70 fully aware of the implications. It took him half an hour to screw up the courage to bid, he said, and another half-hour to start winning parcels.

"It came down to, if worse came to worse, I'd go to jail," DeChristopher said. "And I decided, yeah, I could live with that. . . .

"But seeing all the disastrous effects of climate change in our future, I didn't want to have to live with that."

His actions impressed Patrick Shea, a Salt Lake City lawyer who headed the BLM during the Clinton administration and who decided to represent DeChristopher.

"I interviewed him twice, just to make sure what I saw on the news was the real McCoy, and it was," Shea said. "He's really a very bright, upstanding and principled individual who was rightly upset about some of these leases being offered."

Along with a criminal defense attorney, Shea is working behind the scenes to persuade federal authorities to recognize DeChristopher's bidding as a well-intentioned political, rather than criminal, act.

"I didn't want to see somebody with that kind of virtue mangled by a Kafkaesque kind of system," Shea said. "I think responsible civil disobedience has been forgotten since the '60s and '70s."

If so, one reason might be reforms rooted in the activism of that era. Full-time advocates pointed out that the BLM auction was originally scheduled for two years earlier but that lawsuits from environmental groups forced the agency to first complete management plans required by federal statutes aimed at protecting the environment.

"It was a decision we got in August 2006 that held up the BLM for this long," said Steve Bloch, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "The fact that it took a sale at the last minute of the last hour is in large part due to the efforts we've been making."

Protests from the National Park Service also had an effect, persuading the BLM to pare its original offering of 360,000 acres by more than half. Bloch noted that all the parcels DeChristopher bought were among the 80 that conservation groups specifically sought to preserve. But the student said there was no particular strategy to his bids.

"It was more just based on me watching one parcel after another end up in the hands of developers, watching all those parcels go by and knowing that I could have stopped it," he said. In fact, the whole notion of registering as a bidder was something that DeChristopher said more or less popped into his head.

"I used to work for a company that one of its mottos was 'plan with spontaneity,' and that's how I approached this," he said.

By chance, the auction was held the same day as DeChristopher's final exam in his Current Economic Problems course; the test happened to include a question referring to the sale. It asked whether the final bids paid by oil and gas companies would reflect the "true cost" of the leases.

"And the answer they were looking for was 'No,' " DeChristopher said, listing a string of other costs that would flow from petroleum extraction, including the costs of health care and global-warming mitigation.

"That question was just something already in the back of my mind when I was driving up those oil prices, to reflect a little more of the true costs," he said.

Shea said the BLM appears divided on how to deal with DeChristopher. "If the hawks prevail, it will flow into a prosecution," he said. "If the doves prevail, it will be some kind of community service, I would hope."

DeChristopher, meanwhile, said he plans to hold on to the 22,000 acres as long as possible, if only to register impatience with what he sees as compromises that accommodate continued reliance on petroleum.

"I'd say the forces out to destroy the planet on the Bush-Cheney side have been fighting a lot harder than those out to protect it," he said.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

"And what there is to conquer...
has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate..."

One of these men is Wendell Berry. His words follow.


Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion-put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

In Gratitude

To my brothers and sisters
Of brittle bones and fallible flesh
Who,
Despite the nay-sayers,
the wish-scoffers,
the sunshine-blockers,
the song-stiflers,
the witch-hunters,
the better-days-doubters,
Grow their roots deep
In ancient soil solemnly tilled, generation upon generation, by the
sky-kissers,
the earth-listeners,
the freedom-ponderers,
the new-flavor-makers,
the fear-scatterers,
the masterpiece-inspirers:

Thank you for making me brave.

Self-Immolation

When I find myself resenting
That bipedal scourge: doubt,

I recall the Buddhist monk,
Saigon, 1963,
who in the busy thoroughfare,
With help from his robed brothers,
Solemnly doused himself with gasoline,
Silently, lit the match.

What could he do?
No gun, words, or vote?

He could sacrifice his mantle of tranquility.
"Drape this over the stooped and gently shaking shoulders of my shackled race.
I will not enter Nirvana until all things have been liberated.
I will take this cup."

A bold step into the ranks of the suffering,
Interrupting the cocktail conversations
of the cloistered, serene in our bored frivolity,
Living for our paper hats and cha-cha lines.

And then I see:
I too can set myself on fire,
Ignite myself with untoward knowledge,
Succumb to the solitary flames of impolite fact.

I can sacrifice my mantle of tranquility, crying out
"I have doubts! I don't know!"
In this, I abandon the intention of proselytization,
For in that I seek but my own vindication.
Instead I will make new magic: my intention
Is to love that which has been neglected,
To reconcile that which has been fractured,
Which I can do best with my gun unloaded,
My mouth closed,
My interests shelved,
But hands and feet moving,
Heart and mind in flames.

Today, we too can take this cup.

An agreement will come…but will it be (soon) enough?

Andy is a friend from Poznan. He is a Fulbright Fellow and was at the UNFCCC conference on behalf of Civic Exchange, a Hong-Kong based NGO, where he is a researcher. He wrote the following article reflecting on the December negotiations. I think is a wonderfully succinct statement of what was(n't) accomplished in Poland, the timbre of current conversations in Washington about climate change, and what it all means for Copenhagen.



By Andy Stevenson

As a long-time follower but first-time observer of the UNFCCC negotiating process, I came to Poznan excited about promoting my organization’s work and meeting thousands of other ‘climate nerds’, but also aware that a number of factors would likely slow to a crawl ‘measurable, reportable, and verifiable’ progress on a future agreement.

During my first few days in Poznan the more pessimistic side of my brain was clearly winning. As expected, there was a lot of discussion about the global financial crisis.

‘If the US Congress (and other western countries) can mobilize 700 billion dollars overnight to bailout the banking industry, why does it take them two years to pass climate legislation, and why does the Adaptation Fund have only 100 million dollars?!’ was the exasperated cry from many Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) and other Least Developed Countries (LDCs). It was hard not to agree with them, but equally difficult to find signs that their message was being heard.

Although work plans were agreed upon and assembly documents of proposals were put forward, it is hard to find optimism in the progress on the Bali building blocks. There were still substantial gaps between developed and developing countries in all four areas, including interim targets, the framework for technology transfer and financing, and the nature of MRV commitments from developing countries. It seemed hard to believe that some developing countries were asking that they only be required to measurably, reportably, and verifiably spend all the money they are given. Thankfully more reasonable proposals such as a registry of national mitigation actions seemed to gain consensus.

Another expected stumbling block was the ‘lame-duck’ role of the US negotiators. Many observers had correctly recognized, however, that the change in administration on January 20^th is far less important than gauging the mood in the US Senate (and House). Several congressmen and staffers were in attendance and presented at side events on the status of legislation. It should be a promising sign that these were among the most well attended events in Poznan, but many observers walked away disappointed that very, very few specific details were given about what to expect over the coming year.

The staffers worked hard to temper sky-high expectations under the Obama administration, arguing that an agreement in Copenhagen could be reached even without a comprehensive climate bill passing before December, which seems unlikely. The tricky point here is that action in Congress will be proceeding along two interconnected fronts: a domestic cap-and-trade and renewable energy plan, and the ratification of the international treaty that binds the US to its commitments in Copenhagen.

The former will be relatively easy to come by, as it will be framed in terms of reducing dependence on foreign oil and include a number of goodies such as tax breaks and subsidies for burgeoning green industries. In addition, most of the key committees in congress for climate legislation will be taken over by ‘climate hands’ in the new administration. On the other side, staffers in Poznan pointed out that the treaty ratification will require convincing 67 of 100 Senators across party lines (it’s often extremely difficult to secure the 60 required for most legislation) that China and India are doing their fair share as well. The failure of Bill Clinton to secure this support before signing Kyoto was cited as a mistake that cannot be repeated.

This led me to ask the (seemingly very important) question ‘What specific type of commitments are most Senators looking for from developing countries?’ Although Chatham House rules prevent me from publishing their responses, they reminded me of the cryptic line from the US film ‘Field of Dreams’: ‘if you build it [China and India], they will come [the US]‘. While this may work in Hollywood, it will be a hard sell in Copenhagen. The message that I took away is that instead of a bold resolution from China or the US cementing the deal, it will be a tense back-and-forth, give-and-take negotiating process that will likely have the world on its toes right up to December 18^th next year.

My final note of pessimism came from the lack of connection between rhetoric and reality in the area of science. Although it was being repeated often in the corridors (including an inspiring event and publication by the Tallberg Foundation) the message that science has become even more serious than the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was not getting reflected in the text, aside from some promising discussion of new insurance and risk management mechanisms. I was disappointed by the lack of connection with or even mention of science (aside from dismissing its impracticality for governments) in several high-level reports. Although there are no easy answers, giving the ‘Voice of the Planet’ a stronger place at the negotiating table will be imperative going forward.

Despite these challenges, I couldn’t help but leave Poznan with a vague sense of optimism that is hard to pinpoint or define. Perhaps it was the frequent battle cry of ‘We must view the financial crisis as an opportunity, a chance to think even bigger, and not a setback!’ that finally seemed to be gaining some traction among several countries (including my own). In addition there was the ever-present, highly energized, and inspiring youth delegations. In Poznan I moved somewhat awkwardly between the more activist youth organizations (where I fit in terms of age) and the academic circles (where I fit in terms of experience). With the rapidly growing and highly credible international youth movement on climate and sustainability issues, the only question seems to be, will they (we) grow up and take power soon enough to solve this crisis?

Finally, having lived in China for the past 15 months, I (as well as many other delegates) couldn’t help but feel a sea change in the attitude of the Chinese government and negotiators, although it was not fully reflected in their official statements or positions. Through their presence at certain events and the seemingly increased freedom for Chinese academics to present innovative proposals, they seemed to be preparing to take on a stronger role in negotiations and actions (as they are with many international issues). The challenges will be to communicate with the rest of the world the significant steps China is already taking, and, through the international agreement, support their committed goals for energy efficiency and sustainable development.

Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps Lack Regulation

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: January 6, 2009

The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States — most of them unregulated and unmonitored — that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.

Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Projection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.

In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other “beneficial uses.” In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil’s ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic. The industry has promoted the reuse of coal combustion products because of the growing amount of them being produced each year — 131 million tons in 2007, up from less than 90 million tons in 1990.

The amount of coal ash has ballooned in part because of increased demand for electricity, but more because air pollution controls have improved. Contaminants and waste products that once spewed through the coal plants’ smokestacks are increasingly captured in the form of solid waste, held in huge piles in 46 states, near cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa, Fla., and on the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

Numerous studies have shown that the ash can leach toxic substances that can cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in humans, and can decimate fish, bird and frog populations in and around ash dumps, causing developmental problems like tadpoles born without teeth, or fish with severe spinal deformities.

“Your household garbage is managed much more consistently” than coal combustion waste, said Dr. Thomas A. Burke, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who testified on the health effects of coal ash before a Congressional subcommittee last year. “It’s such a large volume of waste, and it’s so essential to the country’s energy supply; it’s basically been a loophole in the country’s waste management strategy.”

As the E.P.A. has studied whether to regulate coal ash waste, the cases of drinking wells and surface water contaminated by leaching from the dumps or the use of the ash has swelled. In 2007, an E.P.A. report identified 63 sites in 26 states where the water was contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps, including three other Tennessee Valley Authority dumps. Environmental advocacy groups have submitted at least 17 additional cases that they say should be added to that list.

Just last week, a judge approved a $54 million class-action settlement against Constellation Power Generation after it had dumped coal ash for more than a decade in a sand and gravel pit near Gambrills, Md., about 20 miles south of Baltimore, contaminating wells. And Town of Pines, Ind., a hamlet about 40 miles east of Chicago, was declared a Superfund site after wells there were found to be contaminated by ash dumped in a landfill and used to make roads starting in 1983.

Contamination can be swift. In Chesapeake, Va., high levels of lead, arsenic and other contaminants were found last year in the groundwater beneath a golf course sculptured with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, the same type of coal ash involved in the Tennessee spill. The golf course opened in 2007.

State requirements for the handling of coal ash vary widely. Some states, like Alabama, do not regulate it at all, except by means of federally required water discharge permits. In Texas, the vast majority of coal ash is not considered a solid waste, according to a review of state regulations by environmental groups. There are no groundwater monitoring or engineering requirements for utilities that dump the ash on site, as most utilities do, the analysis says.

The lack of uniform regulation stems from the E.P.A.’s inaction on the issue, which it has been studying for 28 years. In 2000, the agency came close to designating coal ash a hazardous waste, but backpedaled in the face of an industry campaign that argued that tighter controls would cost it $5 billion a year. (In 2007, the Department of Energy estimated that it would cost $11 billion a year.) At the time, the E.P.A. said it would issue national regulations governing the disposal of coal ash as a nonhazardous waste, but it has not done so.

“We’re still working on coming up with those standards,” said Matthew Hale, director of the office of solid waste at the E.P.A. “We don’t have a schedule at this point.”

Last year, the agency invited public comment on new data on coal combustion wastes, including a finding that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.

If such regulations were issued, the agency could require that utilities dispose of dry ash in lined landfills, considered the most environmentally sound method of disposal, but also the most expensive. A 2006 federal report found that at least 45 percent of relatively new disposal sites did not use composite liners, the only kind that the E.P.A. says diminishes the leaching of cancer-causing metals to acceptable risk levels. The vast majority of older disposal sites are unlined.

Most coal ash is stored wet in ponds, like the one in Tennessee, almost always located on waterways because they need to take in and release water. But scientists say that the key to the safe disposal of coal ash is to keep it away from water, by putting dry ash into landfills with caps, linings and collection systems for contaminated water.

Environmentalists, scientists and other experts say that regulations could have prevented the Tennessee spill. Andrew Wittner, an economist who was working in the E.P.A.’s office of solid waste in 2000 when the issue of whether to designate coal ash as hazardous was being debated, said the agency came close to prohibiting ash ponds like the one at Kingston. “We were going to suggest that these materials not be wet-handled, and that existing surface impoundments should be drained,” Mr. Wittner said.

If storing coal ash were more expensive, environmental advocates say, utilities might be pushed to find more ways to recycle it safely. Experts say that some “beneficial uses” of coal ash can be just that, like substituting ash for cement in concrete, which binds the heavy metals and prevents them from leaching, or as a base for roads, where the ash is covered by an impermeable material. But using the ash as backfill or to level abandoned mines requires intensive study and monitoring, which environmentalists say is rarely done right.

The industry takes the position that states can regulate the disposal of coal ash on their own, and it has come up with a voluntary plan to close some gaps, like in the monitoring of older disposal sites.

“There probably isn’t a need for a comprehensive regulatory approach to coal ash in light of what the states have and our action plan,” said Jim Roewer, the executive director of the Utility Solid Wastes Activity Group.

Mr. Roewer said there was a trend toward dry ash disposal in lined landfills, though that trend was not identified in the 2006 federal report on disposal methods.

Environmentalists are skeptical of the industry’s voluntary self-policing plan and the states’ ability to tighten controls.

“The states have proven that they can’t regulate this waste adequately, and that’s seen in the damage that is occurring all over the United States,” said Lisa Evans, a former E.P.A. lawyer who now works on hazardous-waste issues for the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice. “If the states could regulate the industry appropriately, they would have done so by now.”

Utility companies are often aware of problems with their disposal system, Ms. Evans said, but they put off improvements because of the cost.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns the Kingston Fossil Plant, where the Tennessee spill occurred, tried for decades to fix leaks at its ash pond. In 2003, it considered switching to dry disposal, but balked at the estimated cost of $25 million, according to a report in The Knoxville News Sentinel. That is less than the cost of cleaning up an ash spill in Pennsylvania in 2005 that was a 10th of the size of the one in Tennessee.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 7, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.