November 1-8, 2009

Dear Friends and Family,

[Three pages of personal biographic narrative deleted]

Now for this installment of my rant, Field Notes from the Handbasket, about issues and events
that I thought worth sharing. These rants do not contain most of the additions I have made to my
107 chapters in proto-books and essays-in-progress (08 Nov = 1393 pages); or the organic
inspection reports, E-mail correspondence about water and sewer, environmental, housing and
planning issues, the Relocalization Network Coordinators’, International Organic Inspectors
Association, Moab Progressive Area Network, Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions Forums, et al,
some of which have also been produced during a typical month. The 36 planks and chapters of
The Renewable Deal, plus my paper on global warming, can be accessed at
<earthrestoration.net>.

Local columnist Ollie Harris says that after retirement he has slid ever deeper into
“decraptitude.”

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV ON U.S. CORPORATE CAPITALISM: “The current model does not
need adjusting, it needs replacing.”

“The time has come to strike the right balance between the government and the market, for
integrating social and environmental factors and demilitarising the economy.”

“...a new model will emerge, one that will emphasize public needs and public good, such as a
cleaner environment, well-functioning infrastructure and public transport, sound education and
health systems and affordable housing.”

Man who run ahead of car get tired.

Man who run behind car get exhausted.
-Contemporary Confuscious

ECONOMICS WATCH: (1) HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGES: A FAILED

EXPERIMENT: Texas, Florida, North Carolina and California have already tried providing
health insurance to all citizens through establishing health insurance exchanges, which some
Congresscritters have been touting as an alternative to a national health insurance public option.
All failed and closed up due to cherry-picking of lower risk customers by health insurors outside
the exchanges, leaving a high-risk pool of people as customers for the exchanges.

EW(2): UNEMPLOYMENT: As of October, 2009, 14 states and the District of Colombia have
unemployment rates near or over 10%. Unemployment statistics are steady or worse among 31
states compared to prior months, while 19 states enjoy improvement as of October.

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While in Oklahoma I read that state revenues for the fiscal year that started 1 Jul 09 are 26%
below budget projections, even though Oklahoma’s unemployment rate is the 5th lowest among
the 50 states as of October.

EW(3): CRUDE OIL INVENTORIES V. PRICE: Crude oil inventories hit 339 million barrels
worldwide as of October 16, up 31 million barrels from October of 2008. Oil was trading at
above $80 a barrel on 21 Oct due to the weak dollar, which is now at 1.5 Euros to one dollar on
exchanges - reportedly the worst ratio ever. Not so long ago the dollar and Euro were at par in
value, and before that the Euro was worth less than a dollar in exchange.

EW(4): The 2008 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s 2008
“Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries” found that the United States had the
highest income inequality among all OECD member nations (38 industrialized countries).
OECD’s report says U.S. wealth inequality is even more extreme than income inequality. No
other nation moved more towards inequality in income from 2000-2008 than the U.S.

EW(5): ‘TOO LITTLE OF A GOOD THING” is the title of Paul Krugman’s 2 Nov 09 Op-Ed in
the New York Times. “The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k
a. the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it
would. But that’s also the bad news - because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus
was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes
drastically, we’re looking at many years of high unemployment.”

Krugman says the stimulus did “break the vicious circle of economic decline.” “Last week’s
G.D.P. report showed the economy growing again, at a better-than-expected annual rate of 3.5
percent. As Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com put it in recent testimony, ‘The stimulus is
doing what it was supposed to do: short-circuit the recession and spur recovery.’” Krugman
observes that G.D.P. grew an average of 3.7% during Clinton’s eight years in office; and at the
current rate of growth, unemployment is projected to fall at only one half a percent a year.

“What I keep hearing from Washington is one of two arguments: either (1) the stimulus has
failed, unemployment is still rising, so we shouldn’t do any more, or (2) the stimulus has
succeeded, G.D.P. is growing, so we don’t need to do any more. The truth, which is that the
stimulus was too little of a good thing - that it helped, but it wasn’t big enough - seems to be too
complicated for an era of sound-bite politics.” Krugman points out that a continuation of a
depressed economy causes businesses to slash investment spending: in physical infrastructure
such as plants and equipment, and in “intangibles” such as product development and worker
training. “This will hurt the economy’s potential for years to come.”

“Deficit hawks like to complain that today’s young people will end up having to pay higher taxes
to service the debt we’re running up right now. But anyone who really cared about the prospects
of young Americans would be pushing for much more job creation, since the burden of high
unemployment falls disproportionately on young workers - and those who enter the work force
in years of high unemployment suffer permanent career damage, never catching up with those

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who graduated in better times.”

EW(6): HEALTH “INSURANCE”: A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE is the title by Bioethicist

Jacob M. Appel, M.D., in the 6 Nov 09 Huffington Post. Dr. Appel begins by agreeing that
guaranteeing health care to uninsured Americans is a “moral imperative.” “However, relying on
private insurers to serve these individuals is about as prudent as hiring a band of pedophiles to
run a national childcare program. Anyone who has worked as a healthcare provider long
enough, and has been paying attention, eventually comes to recognize private health ‘insurance’
is a large-scale criminal endeavor - part Ponzi scheme, part extortion racket - that consistently
exploits patients at their most vulnerable moments. In short, private health insurance is the sort
of predatory enterprise, like payday lending and loan-sharking, that should be criminalized.”

“Health insurance, as the late political historian Edward Beiser pointed out in his seminal 1994
article “The Emperor’s New Scrubs,” is a misnomer. The principle behind traditional insurance
is the distribution of risk. For example, the odds of my home burning down are quite low. The
odds of any other home burning in my community are similarly low. However, the odds of some
home in our community burning are reasonably high, so we all pay into a reserve fund - ‘fire
insurance’ - and whoever suffers the misfortune of a home-burning collects the pot. This
‘pooling of risk’ is a staple of most high school economics classes.

However, health ‘insurance’ does not follow this model, because, over the course of time, nearly
all of us will suffer bodily ills that cause us to draw funds from the collective till. So what we
are doing, by paying for private insurance, is having a third party manage our healthcare dollars
for us until we’re ready to use them. In return, this third party banks the interest and skims a
profit off the top, employing an army of paper-pushing middlemen to manage our contributions.
The very act of calling these healthcare middlemen ‘insurers’ buys into the false belief that
Aetna and Oxford are protecting us against rare occurrences, rather than merely serving as
money-managers for our healthcare dollars....once consumers view these corporations merely as
money managers, few sane people would ever invest at interest rates of zero for such low
payouts at term.”
“Most people in this country who do have private health insurance are happy with their coverage
- until they actually attempt to use it. Once they face a medical emergency, however, they soon
discover that the unspoken policy of many insurers is to deny as many claims as possible, often
on legally or medically implausible grounds, until the patient or his family give up.”

“Opponents of a national health care insurance plan often lambaste the straw-man of having
public officials determine which procedures will be available to the sick and dying. In contrast,
they would have us believe that those determinations are presently made by individual doctors
serving the needs of their patients. As a physician, I can assure them that those decisions are
actually rendered by low-level employees at large healthcare conglomerates. None of these ‘no
men’ have medical degrees; many lack a college education or even a basic understanding of
human biology. Their sole job in the world is to deny coverage until pressured into doing
otherwise.” The ability of insured people to sue their insurance company over coverage “is
about as realistic as telling the passengers aboard the Titanic that they have a right to sue for

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more lifeboats.” “Given the choice between American public servants determining my coverage
or private, box-checking lackeys working out of out-sourced shell offices in India, I’d side with
the shortcomings of American bureaucracy any day. So would most Americans. That is why
Medicare, which follows exactly such a public model, remains so popular.”

“From an ethical point of view, the real question is not whether there should be a ‘public option’
but whether there should be a ‘private option.’...I have little doubt the day will soon arrive when
CEOs of health ‘insurers’ are dragged before Congress to face the same sort of interrogation at
which war profiteers were grilled by the Truman Commission in the 1940s and to which the
Waxman hearings subjected Big Tobacco in the 1990s....To put it bluntly, private health
‘insurers’ sell an enormous sour lemon: a product that does not and cannot work. The best
solution - as radical as it may sound - might be to criminalize such enterprises entirely.”

EW(7): RECESSION IMPACT ON SENIOR EMPLOYMENT: An additional 6.7 million

people have become unemployed since the recession began in 2008. Citizens 55 and older who
lose their existing jobs are out of work 28.6 weeks on average, according to an AARP survey.

EW(8): HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY CLAIMS DENIAL: Medical debt caused 62% of
personal-bankruptcy filings in 2007; three-quarters of the filers had health insurance coverage.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that one claim in seven made under the employer health
plans that it oversees in initially denied - about 200 million claims out of 1.4 billion. Kansas
Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger says, “We think some companies are probably counting
on the hassle factor, [so] that people pay out of their own pockets.” In Connecticut, one of 46
states with procedures for the independent review of health insurance claim denials, about half of
appeals of denials are successful. Kevin Lembo, Connecticut’s health care advocate, says
patients appeal too few denials. “Ninety-six percent walk away,” he observes. Jennifer C. Jaff,
director of Advocacy for Patients with Chronic Illness, says her organization wins 80% of health
insurance denial appeals. This leads her to conclude: “Insurance companies are denying claims
way too often.”

POLITICAL WATCH: (1) BACHMANN TO OBAMA: GIVE BACK NOBEL PRIZE:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who makes Ann Coulter seem restrained and Sarah Palin
rational and well-informed, is leading the lunatic brigade in demanding President Obama give
his Nobel Peace Prize back to those socialists in Norway - otherwise he “proves” he is the anti-
Christ. (No, I’m not making any of this up...)

In case you were wondering, the Nobel committee stated that it was awarding the Nobel Peace
Prize to President Obama due to Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international
diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” I also imagine they wanted to poke a stick in the
eye of the U.S. Repugnicans. All my foreign correspondents cannot believe the suicidal
stupidity being displayed by those opposing what they see as common-sense, utterly necessary
policy initiatives by Obama upon the success of which the survival of the U.S. as a first-world
nation depends.

Richard Lance Christie 08 Nov 09 rant, page 4

PW(2): “TEA BAGGERS THE NEW GOP” Legendary hard-right activist and direct-mail fund-
raiser Richard Viguerie - who spent eight years arguing Dick Cheney and George Bush were too
liberal - crows that “Tea party activists are the new GOP.” The national party is pushing
nomination of candidates like Sarah Palin in order to make moderate Republicans, who might
commit the sin of voting with Democrats, extinct.

The result of this strategy can be seen in the New York 23rd Congressional District race. A
Republican has represented this district in Congress since 1847. The voters of the district are
overwhelmingly moderate “pocketbook” Republicans, more affluent, educated and less obese
than the Republican party base in former slave states. The New York State Republican Pzrty
nominated Dede Scozzafava, a moderate who is positive towards gay rights, does not oppose
abortion, has sympathy for the plight of the unemployed in the recession, and has support from
organized labor. Scozzafava was a shoo-in for election in the 23rd, until then former House
Majority Leader Dick Armey and his Club for Growth, Sarah Palin, Tea Party and Town Hall
activists, et al, published a series of brutal attacks against Scozzafava. They put their support
behind Doug Hoffman, a suitably reactionary candidate running on the Conservative Party ticket.
Scozzafava had her financial support dry up and polls showed her running third against
Democrat Bill Owens (who had never run for office before) and Hoffman. She dropped out of
the race and endorsed Owens, saying Owens would build upon previous 23rd District
representative, moderate Republican John McHugh’s, legacy in Congress.

Owens won. As GOP strategist Paul Erickson said to The Washington Post, the 23rd District race
“...is entirely a battle over the definition and winning formula for Republican candidates going
into the midterm elections of 2010 and beyond.” Ever the shrewd strategist, former Republican
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (who had endorsed Scozzafava as “conservative enough” to be a
credible Republican) observed: “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment
around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people
without regard to local primaries and local choices.” Gingrich also said, “This makes life more
complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses,
they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-
election.” Republican strategist John Weaver, aide to John McCain, said, “Because of what’s
happened, we’re going to have some mischief-making, which is not positive for a party that
needs to really focus on other fundamentals in order to make a comeback.”

PW(3): NADER ON OBAMA: “He [Obama] doesn’t like conflict, he doesn’t like taking on the
corporate powers - he demonstrated that as senator of Illinois and Senator in the U.S. Senate. He
is what might be called a concessionary personality, a harmony ideology. In Washington, you
project that from the White House and the shark tank known as Congress will eat you alive.” -
Ralph Nader

PW(4): RICH LOWRY ON OBAMA: “The acid test of the White House inevitably exposes a
president’s character flaws: Nixon’s corrosive paranoia, Clinton’s self-destructive indiscipline,
Bush’s stubborn defensiveness. Obama in the crucible is displaying an oddly self-pitying
arrogance.”

Richard Lance Christie 08 Nov 09 rant, page 5

INTERESTING: (1) SPECIES THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION BY CLIMATE
CHANGE: The Center for Biological Diversity posted 350 species being threatened with
extinction by climate change on its website as part of 350.org’s October 24 climate change
action day.

I(2): BEETLE-KILLED FORESTS NOT FIRE HAZARD: The Center for Biological Diversity’s
Curt Bradley has published a study demonstrating that forests with many trees killed by beetles
and/or drought do not burn more severely than forests without many standing dead trees. This
undermines the rationale used by the Shrub administration for authorizing “salvage logging”
sales in forests that could not be legally logged otherwise because sustainable yield requirements
of the law could not be achieved. This salvage logging sale business has been a real burr under
my saddle: when I have analyzed a number of proposed salvage logging sales, it inevitably
turned out that most of the trees to be sold for logging in the sale were not harmed by fire, or
even in the areas of a national forest that wildfire had gone through.

I(3): JUNK MAIL: The average U.S. adult receives 41 pounds of postal junk mail every year.
<41pounds.org> can stop 80-95% of it from being sent to you. One-third of the non-profit’s
revenues goes to conservation biology causes.

I(4): WINDOWS 7.0: was released on 20 Oct. Geek Rescue ran it on 30 different computers of
various sizes and capacities, reporting it worked well and is the “best operating system since
Windows 2000" and a “true competitor” for the MacIntosh operating system from Apple - which
is damning with faint praise.

70% of all systems using Windows operating system are still using Windows XP, despite the
fact it is 8 years old, while Windows Vista was on 3% of IBM-clone computer systems running
Windows. This tells you how incredibly bad Windows Vista is. Even after Microsoft finally got
most of the really bad bugs patched in Vista, Vista was still a memory hog, a bag of buggy
bloatware beyond redemption. A pro-Microsoft review politely referred to Vista having “steep
hardware requirements” and suffering from “compatibility issues,” such that there was a lively
market in aftermarket conversions of computers delivered with Vista on them being backgraded
to run on Windows XP. To run Vista on any of my computers would have required I install
much more memory - like 3 megabytes or more - if I did not want to watch continents drift and
species evolve while the system booted.

Because Vista sucked dead rats, Apple’s share of the operating system market increased from
5% when Vista debuted to 11% today.

Anyway, Windows 7.0 Home Premium is for sale for $120, “Professional” for $200, and
“Ultimate” for $220. There is also an “Enterprise” edition for big business systems. You have
to be careful to select the right version of Windows 7.0 for your system; Microsoft has an
Upgrade Advisor program to help you make the selection - a major variable is how much
memory your computer has. Windows 7.0 comes in a 32-bit and 64-bit system version. The
reviews say that Microsoft has fixed the very slow boot time that Vista suffered, even on

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machines with 4 meg of memory (Windows XP has a ball with one meg and can’t use more than
2.4 meg).

I’m not going to upgrade from Windows XP any time soon. I need the features that Windows 7.0
allegedly has (if they work) which Windows XP doesn’t have like a fish needs a bicycle.
Windows 7.0 allegedly handles networking and file sharing much more easily than Vista or XP.
L.T. reports the buzz among the computer geek community on the Internet two weeks after
commercial release is that Windows 7.0 is another bust. On the horizon is Google’s release of a
home computer operating system they are developing to compete with both Microsoft and
Apple’s. That should be interesting..

I(5): A NEW ENERGY SOURCE: “VIVOLEUM:” Yes Men Andrew Bichlbaum and Mike
Bonanno addressed Canada’s largest oil conference in 2007, posing as executives of ExxonMobil
and the National Petroleum Council. They announced a plan to convert the corpses of the
expected millions of victims of climate change into a fuel called “Vivoleum.”

I(6): POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH SYNDROME: In The Resiliency Advantage, Al Siebert

Ph.D. says “Resilient people convert misfortune into good luck and gain strength from adversity.”
They see negative evens as an opportunity to better themselves. Steven Southwick, M.D.,
psychiatry professor at Yale, calls this phenomenon “post-traumatic growth syndrome.”

I(7): AND THEY’RE MORE GRATIFYING, GRATEFUL, LOYAL, AND CLEAN: There are
roughly twice as many pets in American households as there are children under 18.

I(8): PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE BY AGE GROUP WHO SAY RELIGION IS VERY

IMPORTANT IN THEIR LIFE:
75+ 70%
65-74 62%
50-64 61%
30-49 54%
18-29 44%

I(9): 45% of Americans 75+ say their life turned out even better than they expected.

GOOD NEWS: (1) GREEN STURGEON CRITICAL HABITAT DESIGNATED: 8.6 million
acres in California, Oregon and Washington states has been designated critical habitat for the
recovery of the endangered North American green sturgeon. The sturgeon has been unchanged
for 200 million years. It’s numbers declined 90% between 2001 and 2006 due to loss of
spawning habitat. Rivers, estuaries, and coastal areas are designated for protection to restore the
sturgeon population. The designation is the result of a successful lawsuit under the Endangered
Species Act by the Center for Biological Diversity and others.

GN(2): FLORIDA PANTHER HABITAT ENDORSED: The Palm Beach Post has endorsed the
proposal to designate 3 million acres as a preserve for recovery of the Florida Panther as

Richard Lance Christie 08 Nov 09 rant, page 7

recommended by conservation biologists. The panther’s population has fallen to only about 100,
with a lack of genetic exchange. The proposed preserve would enable the panther population to
grow into three population groups with appropriate genetic diversity for survival.

GN(3): ARROYO TOAD HABITAT INITIATIVE: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
announced in early October that it intends to designate a 109,000-acre preserve for recovery of
the endangered arroyo toad, which has lost 75% of its historic range to human activity.

GN(4): BIGHORN SHEEP PROTECTED: The USFS has pulled domestic sheep off of three
high-altitude grazing allotments to prevent disease transmission to the endangered Sierra Nevada
bighorn sheep. I wrote a letter to the USFS on this issue a while back supporting this move.

GN(5): SAVAGE RAPIDS DAM DECOMMISSIONED: The week of October 7 the Savage
Rapids Dam on the Rogue River was taken down. Conservation biologists had identified the dam
as the biggest salmon-killer on the Rogue River.

GN(6): COURT REVERSES BUSH APPROVAL OF GMO SUGAR BEETS: In September a

federal court ruled the Bush administration illegally approved the market release of “Roundup
Ready” genetically-engineered sugar beets. The court ordered a full EIS be done on the
environmental and economic impacts of GMO sugar beet commercialization.

GN(7): ORGANIC ACTIVIST NAMED HEAD OF NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM: Miles

McEvoy, a 20-year veteran organic activist, was named head of the USDA’s National Organic
Program. McEvoy was most recently the head of the Washington State organic certification
program under the USDA NOP.

GN(8): CONSERVATION STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM APPLICANTS: More than 21,000

agricultural producers with 23 million acres applied for 2009 Conservation Stewardship Program
funding by the 30 Sep 09 deadline. The 2009 enrollment funding limit is 12.8 million enrolled
acres. This response shows strong interest among growers in pursuing wildlife habitat
enhancement, soil improvement, anti-erosion activity, etc., on the nation’s farmlands.

GN(9): FOOD AND AGRICULTURE RESEARCH ELEVATED TO NATIONAL INSTITUTE

STATUS: In the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, Congress changed the USDA’s
Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service into the “National Institute of
Food and Agriculture.” This puts it on equal footing with other national research science
institutes such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The
National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) contains the Organic Agricultural Research
and Extension Initiative and the Organic Transitions Research Program. Roger Beachy was
appointed the director of the new NIFA; alas, he was previously head of the Danforth Plant
Science Center in St. Louis, a hotbed of genetic engineering - Monsanto helped establish the
center and the CEO of Monsanto sits on its Board of Directors.

GN(10): ORGANIC PROGRAMS GET FUNDING INCREASES IN FY 2010: Organic

Richard Lance Christie 08 Nov 09 rant, page 8

programs in the USDA did very well in the final reconciliation between the House and Senate
versions of the federal FY 2010 budget bill for agriculture. The Organic Transition Research
Program was funded at $5 million for 2010 v. $3.2 million in FY 2009; the research program is
particularly charged with evaluating the effect of transition to organic farming on water quality.
The Organic Market and Production Data Initiative got a $250k increase from 2009 to a total
budget of $5.75 million. The National Organic Program got $3.1 million more than in FY 2009
for a total budget of $7 million in FY 2010.

The Value Added Producer grants program was increased to $20.4 million from FY2009's $18.9
million. The Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program had $5 million added to its mandatory
$4 million base for a total of $9 million in FY2010. The Appropriate Technology Transfer for
Rural Areas (ATTRA) was increased to $2.8 million from $2.6 million in FY2009 - I use ATTRA
materials quite a bit. The Organic Marketing and Data Collection Initiative was funded at
$750,000 in FY2010, up from $500k the year before. Sustainable Agriculture Research and
Education got a token increase.

GN(11): SEA OTTER HABITAT PROTECTED: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has
protected 5,855 square miles of Alaska waters as critical habitat for the recovery of the
endangered Alaska sea otter. This is the fruit of yet another lawsuit under the Endangered
Species Act by the Center for Biological Diversity and its partners.

GN(12): WEST MOJAVE LAND USE PLAN THROWN OUT BY COURT: A federal judge
threw out the Shrub administration’s West Mojave BLM land management plan which favored
ATV routes and cattle grazing. The judge ruled the BLM Regional Management Plan did not
limit ATV routes to minimize environmental damage, or adequately analyze ATV impacts on
wildlife, air quality, environmental and cultural resources. The RMP did not analyze the impact
of cattle on desert soils. I am hoping the execrable BLM RMPs drawn up in haste last November
2008 in Utah by the Shrub administration on its way out the door will meet a similar fate; they
deserve to.

GN(13): SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FOREST MANAGEMENT PLANS THROWN OUT: A

federal judge has ruled that management plans for 4 national forests in southern California did not
assess damage to natural resources from the road building and other development allowed for in
the plans.

GN(14): CORAL HABITAT DESIGNATED IN FLORIDA: 1.9 million acres of critical habitat
has been designated in the ocean off Florida for recovery of the endangered elkhorn and staghorn
coral.

BAD NEWS: (1) The Cornwall Alliance, a conservative Christian organization, stated “The best
thing we can do to help the poor around the world is to stop trying to fight climate change.”
Hmph. These people are not only ignoring the abundant information gathered by the IPCC on the
differential bad effects of climate change on the poor worldwide, but such specific reports as that
from the government of Peru: In rural Peru, heat waves and irregular rains wiped out half the corn

Richard Lance Christie 08 Nov 09 rant, page 9

and potato crop, a loss of 350,000 acres of crop. This resulted in 26 million people being
displaced due to climate change effects, according to the Peruvian government. The World
Health Organization estimates climate change causes the death of 150,000 people a year - all poor
- in developing countries.

BN(2): NUCLEAR POWER USED AS BARGAINING CHIP IN CLIMATE LEGISLATION:

Democratic leaders, with the approval of the Obama administration, are using the endorsement of
nuclear power in the climate change abatement bill as a means of wooing a half dozen
Republicans who are fixated on building more nuclear power plants. As detailed in The
Renewable Deal’s Aspect Two, Plank One, Chapter 10, nuclear power has the lowest energy
profitability and the longest development lead time of any energy source - even worse than oil
shale, according to MIT studies. When you include greenhouse gas emissions associated with
mining, milling, enrichment, transportation, and disposal of nuclear fuel and the construction of
the nuclear power plant, nuclear power plants have a large carbon footprint, even though they do
not emit carbon dioxide while using nuclear fission to generate heat to boil water into steam
which drives electric turbines.

BN(3): Oil, gas and coal interests as of late October were spending $300,000 a day lobbying the
federal government in opposition to climate change legislation.

That’s all folks until I get back from my medical checkup and Trunity platform tutorial in Salt
Lake City November 13-15. I will be leaving for Salt Lake on Thursday afternoon after I attend
the Spanish Valley Water and Sewer Improvement District meeting to canvass the SWV&SID
Board election results at noon on Thursday. Blessed Be! -Lance

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