bill:politics

John Robb had a post today on the latest developments in the police v. PCC battle in Sao Paulo and reminded me I was saving up some material to blog on Brazil, to follow up this post from a couple of weeks ago.

A good friend of mine, born in Massachusetts but fluent in Portuguese and married to a lovely Brazilian woman, said to me the other day: “Brazil is like a big carcass being ripped apart by hyeanas.” The PCC problem in Sao Paulo is just one part of it, and probably the lesser.

The bigger problem, as discussed in my previous entry, is the completely lawless destruction of the Amazon. Not to go all ecowarrier but for the near future this will probably have a larger global impact and is being driven by a simpler motivation, greed. The government won’t step in effectively because the necessary individuals are corrupted and external intervention is a non-starter due to Brazilian nationalism.

To a degree, the PCC and Amazonian issues are driven by the same underlying cause: Brazil is a country with a tiny, ultra-wealthy ruling elite, who think nothing of jetting to Miami for a hairdo and dinner, and a huge improverished peasant class, millions of whom live in cardboard and newspaper shantytowns called invasions with no water or sewage
treatment and minimal electricity provided by illegal taps.

Two of the commonly cited examples of economic success are widespread use of ethanol and exported beef; even proud Brazilians will brag on them at parties. Both, however, are actually causing much more harm than good. To provide grazing for the always increasing cattle herds and farm land to grow the corn and grain to feed them and produce the ethanol, more and more land is required.

Where is the land coming from? Criminals and corrupt politicians! Even Lula da Silva, the left winger elected President in 2002 on promises to reform the system and dig the country out from under the thumb of the IMF and World Bank, has found it impossible to put a dent in the system. Da Silva’s re-election this October, considered a lock weeks ago, is now under severe pressure from a renegade senator even further to the left who split off from the ruling party because it failed to deliver on the 2002 platform.

Guns are as, or perhaps even more, freely available in Brazil as in the United States. Over the last 20 years groups of armed men have simply shown up in the Amazon and the nation’s countryside, chopped down as many of the beautiful old growth hard wood trees as they could carry off and set fire to the rest to clear the land for ranchers or farmers. Politicians and police are paid to do nothing and the ones who refuse the payola are killed or transferred to ineffectual postings.

The people who lived on the land head for Sao Paulo, Rio and the other big cities where nothing but more misery awaits them. The hovels, which can spring up over night, grow into the huge tracts known as favelas. Brazil’s most brilliant futebol players, Ronaldinho and Robinho being the latest global superstars in a line going back to Pele, often emerge from these ghettos but other than the dozens who escape via sports each year few residents have little such hope.

Except, of course, through crime. My friend says that middle class Brazilians travel between home and work, shopping or school in constant fear of carjackings, kidnappings or worse, windows closed, doors locked and guards opening electric gates at the last possible moment and for the shortest time span so no one can sneak inside.

The recent actions of the First Command of the Capital (PCC) gang, the focus of Robb’s attention, is an early indicator that the largest country in South America may soon become the next failed state in our hemisphere, joining Columbia and Peru, but with horrifically more serious consequences than increased drug trafficking.

Amazon: Going, going….

“Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences.”

The massive collision of many negative threads of our modern life summed up in a single black swan. [via garret]

Richard Pombo has manipulated the California political system to get seven terms as a Republican Congressman; frankly if Schwarzenegger somehow manages to get his redistricting initiative passed next week, and hopefully even if not, one likely result is to redraw his district in a way that this will be Pombo’s last term.

The NY Times, in an editorial today, explains how there’s no blatantly sleazier currently serving member of the House of Representatives. At least I hope he’s the worst but the possibile contents of Tom Delay’s closet have me wondering. Anyway, Pombo’s corporate puppetmasters have their hand so far up his ass that I can see light glinting off their fingernails.

[Responding to a letter in the Merc's 7/20/05 Roadshow column, in which a man named Justin explains his need to live near Sacramento and work in San Jose, 96 mile drive each way.]

While I recognize the reality of housing prices, Justin Oliver’s answer avoids the actual question of wasting a month per year on commuting as well as the high and increasing cost of that commute.
Make some generous estimates, say 47 working weeks, 25 MPG and average price of $2.25 a gallon, and Oliver’s spending over $4000 annually just on the gas. Working locally either out by Sacramento or in San Jose, let’s just guess that the total cost would be equivalent to the difference in maintenance and insurance from the current commute, or that he could use lightrail and leave the car home.

So $325 a month, probably not enough to get that two bedroom, two bath here, maybe it is. However, is it enough to get something good enough so that his quality of life would be better overall? When that child he mentions comes along having, say, 2-3 hours a day more to spend together will surely more than make up for a smaller home.

Finally, what about the environmental cost of that commute, multiplied by all the current and future Justin’s those studies claim are coming? Beyond the direct pollution put out by their cars and trucks, as you’ve written several times, the supply of available gas isn’t getting bigger and most likely will decrease as international competition grows and aging refineries go out of business without replacements. This conflict between gas, housing and jobs is likely to be the major economic issue of the next decade.

U.S. Court Backs Bush’s Changes on Clean Air Act - Once again, Bush and Crew promoting short term interests of capital holders instead of the true interests of us all.

Take one pinch of Bruce Shneier’s U.S. Medical Privacy Law Gutted, a dash of White House’s Phillip Cooney taking markup pencil to scientific reports intended to be statements of fact and a heaping teaspoon of the abysmal failure of the Administration to explain the Downing Street Memo and you have recipe for one of the worst tasting Summer souffles in recent years. Well, probably not a souffle, that’s too French for this bunch, let’s call it a nasty ass beef ribs BBQ in tribute to the pseudo-Texan roots.

Maddox: I hate Cameron Diaz. “Canyonesque twat,” the boy does have a way with English. You wonder how some decisions get made. Lots of times but this is just such a highly visible instance.

Slashdot discusses an announcement by Ocean Power Delivery that the first order’s been secured for its Pelamis Wave Energy Converters. The devices sit on the ocean floor and, as their name suggests, take energy out of ocean waves. Similar conceptually to the wind turbines deployed in the Bay Area’s Altamont Pass, this on it face seems like a nearly free energy source.

TAANSTAFL. Leave aside the cost of constructing, installing, operating and maintaining the machines and the lines connecting them back to the energy grid on dry land, just consider the question of resources. Earth is, with one significant exception, a closed system: if you take energy out a one place for use by humans, there’s a corresponding place that will no longer have its use. Wave energy is a major power source in the ocean ecology and the global weather system; the other major source is the exception, sunlight.

The resource cost of OPD’s machinery must be evaluated carefully, of course. One of the common questions posed in articles about cold fusion is whether the discussed system is energy-positive, does it produce more energy than used as input; so far none have passed that hurdle. In this context, the systems are complex and must be made to withstand a corrosive, powerful environment and being located several kilometers offshore means maintenance costs more. One Slashdot comment pointed out that building and deploying Pelamis farms will consume substantial amounts of fossil fuels. Overall I think this is just a bootstrap cost and if they pan out will provide the energy used in establishing future installations.

Everything is relative: Though wave energy isn’t free, the real question is how using it compares to other energy sources. Oil, natural gas and coal, those have been pretty thoroughly analyzed and understood. Nuclear power, given some of the latest reactor designs and the always five years off promise of fusion, is a less clear proposition. Solar has great promise. Wind and biofuels haven’t been studied nearly enough.

Oil will be gone soon and I believe the current practice of using it to power cars and trucks will be seen in retrospect as one of the greatest tragedies of the modern age. Tens of millions of cars and SUVs that use gas so inefficently, with more of them built every weekday, driven without two serious thoughts for the true cost. Concisely: Future, fuck you.

Natural gas and coal seem to offer a lower cost if some of the technology now in research labs and small company portfolios pan out at a commercial scale to change the waste output (i.e., pollution). The quantity still in the ground should also last much longer, sufficient until better technology is developed.

Wind, water and biofuels are good but the consequences worry me a bit; a very simple example as things stand today is the large number of birds killed by wind turbines. Longer term, we need to understand how changing wind patterns and water flows will impact the larger systems of which they are an integral part. The cost of biofuels seems somewhat different to me, more related to how today’s corporate agricultural practices degrade farm land.

Best of all, to me, means solar power and I’m optimistic that if the Bush Administration-fronted oil industry doesn’t derail them, the Sun will bail us out of this predicament with the least impact on the rest of the global ecology. Using it raises some basic questions, mainly around the change in absorption and re-radiation, but I believe these considerations can be factored in and accomodated.

John Francis, a ‘planetwalker’ who lived car-free and silent for 17 years, speaks with Grist Magazine. Dedication, no doubt, but even to me these choices seem extreme. Perhaps extreme choices are what these times require.