Some solution thoughts ...

My friend,

I know what a perfect world looks like in my head.  Everyone is happy (except for a few burn-stuff-for-energy billionaires).  I envision solutions as a hobby.  So, for fun, I approached each of your points.  I skipped the stuff that seemed more speculation.  I have theories too but didn't get much into them here ...

I was just reading yesterday that the Chinese Premier has announced a war on smog.  The Chinese produce more renewables than Us.  The country banned plastic bags in two weeks.  Our country started that effort years ago and it is still working through the states (I don't care either way).  As we are slower to implement change, we require a head start.  China's coming around faster than we are.  

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-05/china-to-declare-war-on-pollution-as-smog-spreads-across-country.html

China's one child per family has not been ended, it has been eased.  Be careful with statements like that.  

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/28/world/asia/china-one-child-policy-official/

The 'we should pollute cause they do' is paramount in my mind to 'we should beat our children cause the neighbor does'.  Doing the right thing is not an economic choice, it is just something you do.  I would argue (with many economists) that full infrastructure change to renewables would create an economic boom besides allowing Us to climb back on top of the renewable industry.  Fun for the country to have a challenge, take our attention back off what Britney Spears is doing.  

'Wind up working for them...'   yes, we already do as most of our stuff comes from there.  If we put an 'Actual Cost' tax on China imports, it would end China and create clean jobs and industry here.   If we created our own energy (yes, I include natural gas as a transition fuel) than we end the middle east.  They go back to riding camels and throwing rocks.  A portion of every dollar we spend on gas goes to fund terrorism.  

I'm not a scientist but when 97% of climate scientists concur that global warming has a human caused contingent, I take is as fact and move on.  

"Electric cars could shift pollution to the power plant, which is much easier to clean up than individual engines. Just the switch to natural gas from coal is 70% cleaner."

Absolutely.  

We've never been a country that just layed down in front of a challenge until now.  And it's ok, all great empires crumble, overpowered by greed and laziness.  We just didn't last as long as most.  

An 'Actual Cost' on air travel would all but kill my business but I am for it.  Actual Cost meaning customers pay for the environmental damage they are causing in the future.  I'm for a very limited government.  My government has one job, to protect me on a basic level.  No one should be allowed to profit off of polluting the air I breath.  

You hear the population reason to keep polluting at home a lot.  It's not happening.  My personal belief is that it is a matter of time before a superbug halves us.  But a lot of folks who look at this stuff think population will decrease anyway ...

"...estimates for the year 2150 range between 3.2 and 24.8 billion;^[12] independent mathematical modeling supports the lower estimate."

Thats from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

I feel like it's a problem that solves itself.  Disease (and sterility) always follow overpopulation.  

The only solution to flights I can imagine, is to switch to hydrogen (burning it makes water but we're not there yet) or derigibles.  Yep, blimp travel is not going to go over well with most people.  I would enjoy it as I (and most people) can work from anywhere there is internet.  I just leave (way) early for my trips :).  

Trains are a good way to go.  Electricity storage is getting better.  They say 100 square miles of solar would produce enough electricity for the US.  Add wind, geo, wave etc and a good storage system and smarter grid and you are 100% renewable.  I would like to see personal electric vehicles (your own color but all the same shape) cruising around autonomously even linking up on highways for better efficiency.  Induction charging under roads and batteries for roads without.  Those cars could pick up kids at school etc.  

UPS picks up packages at homes, we handed a box to Ups Friday.  Saved me a trip.  And check this out ... or not, it just talks about Ups getting into electric delivery trucks.  If that happens, those of us that are green will stop using Fedex until they upgrade.  See how it works?  

http://www.pressroom.ups.com/Press+Releases/Archive/2013/Q1/UPS+to+Rollout+Fleet+of+Electric+Vehicles+in+California

That Obama article about EPA restriction was from 2011.  I wonder if that eventually happened.  

I agree that we should be making all of our own renewable gear at home - that's a win win.  

So I hear it a lot from the older set (slightly older than me) that it's someone elses problem.  I think that's fine.  But I, not being highly motivate to spend my spare time on income generation, have too much time on my hands to sit idle.   Thinking up and researching answers to problems is fun for me.  

If the world can live a higher quality life by being on 100% renewables, than that seems like a no-brainer to me.  But I understand your point, that 'it's never going to happen'.   Good stuff aint always easy.

In response to conservatism

Email to a friend who is freshly engaging in political thinking.  She has been working in a conservative industry and so has taken on some far right views.  I tried to offer some balance ...

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I envy my friends who aren't into politix.  It can be a burden.  Sounds like you've noticed ;)  My trick is to take it less seriously.  How does the serenity poem go ...

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

You and I have almost no control over our gov so this falls under the area of 'accepting the things we cannot change'.  I still enjoy following things and I look at it as a good project for my brain.  I am doing the charter stuff but my passion is finding solutions to things.  I invent stuff (mostly stuff that never leaves my notebook).  And I like to look at the worlds bigger issues and enjoy developing long term solutions.  Solutions should deliver the best long term results while taking the shortest path possible.  They are always fun puzzles.  Deliveries are one puzzle like this after another - and so I enjoy doing them.  

I am registered Green though I never vote Green because they can never win in our culture.  Because of what I have seen and my understanding of studying things, I feel that we generally are neglecting our health in exchange for money (greed).  Because currently the left (Democrats) more consistently vote green, I mostly vote Democrat.   Funny thing, back in the day, I would have been a Republican.  The right invented much of the green stuff we have now.  Roosevelt created the National Park system, Yosemite, etc.  The right pushed through the forming of the EPA and our clean water and air rules.  The right has always been the protector of the few (usually the higher income set) from the masses.  It makes sense that they would want to protect our beautiful places and keep the air and water clean and keep masses from wrecking everything.  

But times have changed.  Since we started allowing unlimited contributions to campaigns, our representatives have no choice.  In order to get elected, they have to legislate for the people/companies/industries that pay to get them into and keep them in office.  Both sides are corrupted by this fact, to different degrees.

I believe that is the solution to all the problems we are having.  If we limited campaign contributions to say 5k per eligible voter, all of the issues we are having would clean themselves up.  But that is another discussion.

Obama hasn't been that great for green.  I believe he will be remembered as the great compromiser.  Still, he is better to me than our rightwing options since he is less tied to the burn-stuff-for-energy industry.  

I agree, the governments job is to make enough rules so that we can live free in peace and prosperity.  I would argue that me and my neighbor's right to clean air trumps the right for a big company to install a coal plant up wind of me. This is where I veer sharply away from the Republican party.  

In a free country, with freedom of religion, if you are going to allow nativity scene you have to allow pagan ritual scenes too.  I think the problem is usually that it's not cool to have your tax money paying for the Christian scene when you are another religion or atheist.  That seems fair to me.  There are no laws against having your religious scene on private property.  That seems like a good compromise, private paid on private property, have at it.  I think that separation of church and state is important.  Things are complicated enough, how can we legislate around all of the different religion's rules.  

I would argue that the nativity scene is not a founding principle of the US.  As I understand it, a lot of the people who founded the US left their countries to get out from under the thumb of religion.  I think religion is great for those who need it.  We would suffer without it.  One of my conservative beliefs is don't regulate me when I am not hurting anyone.  Don't insist I wear a helmet and don't force me to align to someone else's religion.  A side note, it is a fact that you cannot be Christian and pro-war.  "Though shall not kill" is not buried in the middle of the bible, it is one of the commandments.  

We have to be careful when talking like this, to be factual.  It is easy to repeat something we heard that sounds like opinion.  You would have to give me an example when you say something like, "...dividing and conquering on a daily basis by demonizing ..."  when talking about the prez. 

I am flexible on the govt paid condom thing.  If the gov stopped paying for them, some independent company/group/person would step up.  They save lives, reduce unwanted pregnancies and keep kids from getting life long diseases so I personally think they should be available to anyone who can't afford them.  It would save the state $ in the long run.  I get that they have been deemed anti-Christian but I don't think a random religion should have a say.  

I get my news each lunch hour from google.com/news.  A computer grabs news stories from all over.  I really like that you can compare the same story from different news sources.  When I want the lefty/liberal take on a story I check out the MSNBC version.  When I want the extreme right perspective, I check out Fox or Wall Street Journal (both owned by a guy who is not even from the states).  

The environment is not supposed to be political.  It is a science issue.  97% of climate scientists claim that climate change is, at least in part, human caused.  That is all I need to know and all congress needs to know.  With that information, they are supposed to protect our future generations.  But their hands are tied by the people who fund their elections.  

I don't think we demonize the rich.  We all aspire to be rich.  The super cool rich people are calling for themselves to be taxed fairly (more) - Warren Buffett etc.  They know that in the war boom we just had, they profited, not only because they are smart but also because of all the lower class people that made their wealth possible.  The people who maintain the roads, work in their stores, keep the electricity flowing, protect the country and on and on.  A lot of those less affluent heroes are hurting now, it is ok to tap into one of the few sources of money that is not going to take food off of someones table.  No one is asking for rich peoples savings, they are raising their taxes on future income.  And not by much.  

You have to raise taxes or end the wars.  Which is it going to be?  We used to fund the wars directly by taxes.  WWII got paid for by higher taxes, 90% rate at the upper levels.  Can you imagine.  That is probably why we didn't have a war for a while.  We didn't want to pay for it.  Now all the states profit in war time because they help supply planes, guns and infrastructure and then get to kick the bill down the road.  I know conservatives complain when we feed a mexican kid lunch in a public school (like .0001% of the budget) but you never hear that the largest part of our budget is defense (25%).  Our taxes are lower than any other civilized country while we outspend the next 10 countries combined on defense. It's unsustainable.  

Other rich countries spend half what we spend on medical care and still provide a minimum level of health care to everyone for free or cheap.  Our system, even the new one, gives most of the profits to the big insurance companies.  According to the neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the new health care system will be cheaper than the one we have in the long run.  No one complains about the US Post Office competing against UPS and Fedex.  Not sure why they care about getting some health care competition from the gov ... unless their campaigns are funded by insurance companies.  

My conservative thoughts:  I think the pension thing is out of control and can be cut way back.  I think the voucher school system would work if the private schools had to teach actual science and history.   Eliminate all regulation that don't protect citizens.  And a bunch more stuff.  What used to be the right is now the middle.  I see myself in the middle.  

Any of these numbers or statements don't seem accurate to you, point them out.  I'll get you a couple sources, one's that are hopefully not partisan.    

 

I'm not concerned about the progressives taking over just like I knew that the tea partiers didn't have a chance.  The extremists on both sides make up 20-25% of the population (it is the number range that I always see in poles, it's funny).  It is the middle of the road people that make all of our decisions.  And they are pretty mellow.  Obama doesn't have the control (or intentions I would argue) that you suggest.  He has to sell everything to Us to get it done.  Again, the middle wimps won't strip all our guns away just as they won't legislate to pay 10% more for a renewable energy plan to save the planet.  There is no impending doom and gloom just a bunch of media (on both sides) playing to our emotions.  

So you are going to DC to help the right.  It is good to help and be proactive in what you believe in.  Funny thing, I am planning to go to DC on Feb 17 for the Keystone rally.  We are both being supportive of our beliefs.  

Remember when I met you ...  and spent time with you, you always were cheery and everything was always great (far as I could tell).  I'm sure you are still like that but don't let dumb politics stuff bring you down, even now and then.  Be healthy and happy ....  It's a choice.  Live blissfully!

Succeed Lisa Jackson

Letter to the President,
I would like to throw my hat in the ring to succeed Lisa Jackson at the EPA (though I'm not sure why she is leaving - great job ;)

Above all, children in our country will have clean air to breath, water to drink, food to eat.  Solutions should be creative so that they protect our citizens while enhancing our economy.

I believe we need a balance.  Renewables create jobs, enhance security ... and are renewable!

I would relish the coming legal battles.  I believe they can be a great political tool to shed light on the profit-on-sickness folks in the house and senate and those running companies in the burn-stuff-for-energy industry.

I believe the country is ready for someone funny who can inform Us in a simple way and still be an immovable object in the protection of our children.
Call anytime ;)
Thanks,

Letter to the President ...

Letter to the President. From Bill Maher. Epic
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/won-direction_b_2174227.html

--

-Quality, Balance and a Clean Wake-

99% or 1%, Which One Are You?

Curious about the break down of where the percentages fall? So were we:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/18/what-percent-are-you-the-numbers-behind-the-tax-divide-debate/

Money in Politics - Maybe Not a Good Idea

"One of Lessig's heroes is Henry David Thoreau, and he likes to quote the American philosopher as saying, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." Lessig sees the role of money in politics as the root of the country's current ills, from health care to education to the economy."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/opinion/gergen-zuckerman-politics-money/index.html

"His argument is wide-ranging and impossible to do justice to in a brief column. But a few of the most striking facts he marshals are worth recognizing. Among them: -- The cost of getting elected to Congress has exploded: from 1974 to 2008, Lessig notes, the average cost of a re-election campaign ballooned from $56,000 to more than $1.3 million, a more than twentyfold increase that far outpaces inflation. -- Fundraising is a constant concern: Candidates have to spend between 30% and 70% of their time raising money. (Lobbyists, however can ease this pressure through many kinds of what Lessig calls "legislative subsidies" -- advice, research, support, and most of all, campaign cash.) -- The revolving door between Congress and lobbyists is spinning faster: In the 1970s, just 3% of retiring members of Congress went into lobbying. But by 2004, in the previous seven years more than half of all senators and 42 percent of House members had made the switch. -- The incentives for lobbying are clear. A 2009 paper found, for example, that firms get between $6 and $20 back for every $1 they invest in lobbying for tax benefits."

Top 1%. Destroyers of Wealth

"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers