Master Caution

This morning, I awoke to the smell of fried dough and the screeching hiss of helium escaping a pressurized tank. It’s that time of year again: today marked the first day of the Allentown Arts Festival and the beginning of festival season in Buffalo.

In about thirty minutes I have to go get my ass handed to me at work by the hungry festival crowds, but here are some highlights from the festival that I caught as I wandered around my block this morning:

Phill Singer (Oil Paintings)

Booth Location: Delaware Avenue, northbound side just below Allen Street.

Favorites: Hibernation, Continental Drift, Whale Watching, and the fruits and seasons series (near the bottom of the website gallery).

James Skvarch (Etchings)

Booth Location: Southbound side of Delaware near Virginia.

Favorites: Tidal Mishaps, When Main Street Whispered, The Swift and The Still, and A Pause To Consider The Arrogance of Machines.

There’s much more, like the drawings of old Buffalo by Michael S. Smith and the work of Andrew Morrison, but I’ll be late to work if I link to them all. Come down and check them out for yourselves.

Just don’t eat at my work.

Tim Russert died today of a heart attack while doing a voiceover.

To go along with its death-of-a-newsman coverage, the AP ran a series of reactions to the death of Tim Russert. All of these would be admirable if not given by many who probably wished Russert dead long before the unexpected took its course.

I apologize in advance to his family and friends, but he wasn’t the greatest journalist in the world or American history. I don’t say that in ironic understatement, the way you would say the Milwaukee Brewers aren’t necessarily the most successful of baseball clubs. I say it because of the deep insult and dishonor that has been done by those pretending to honor and laud the man.

Let’s go punch-for-punch from the AP reaction-piece:

“I think I can invoke personal privilege to say that this news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice. He’ll be missed as he was loved - greatly.” - Tom Brokaw, NBCNews anchor emeritus.

No quarrel here. A colleague saluting the fallen. I don’t know their personal history and it could be lip service, but I have a congenital difficulty disbelieving anything that comes out of Brokaw’s mouth.

“We have lost a beloved member of our NBC Universal family and the news world has lost one of its finest. The enormity of this loss cannot be overstated.” - NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker.

Bullshit. If the “NBC Universal family” name-drop wasn’t proof enough, the final sentence should clue you in that Zucker viewed the loss of Russert in parity with anyone else employed by him; he was a financially calculable asset lost to bad timing, not a person. It’s corporate boilerplate and no one deserves that on their headstone.

“Tim epitomized excellence in journalism and unflinching commitment to the craft. Our profession has lost a stellar journalist.” - Sylvia Smith, president of the National Press Club.

More boilerplate. I feel like if I’d ever worked a day at a professional publication she’d say the same thing about me, which is nice…ish, but it’s a sound bite. Even in your worst imaginations of Russert, even if you believe that he was a soulless careerist devoted to squeezing the lowest form of communication out of his interview subjects, not even a sound bite artist deserves a sound bite memorial from a fellow journalist.

“As the longest-serving host of the longest-running program in the history of television, he was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. Tim was a tough and hardworking newsman. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews. And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it.” - President Bush

Come on, dude. You’re a president that so notoriously hates journalists that you’ve changed the paradigm for White House reporting. Just shut the fuck up and let us honor our dead.

“There wasn’t a better interviewer in television. Not a more thoughtful analyst of our politics. And he was also one of the finest men I knew.” - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Less genuine than Bush. Fuck that last sentence.

“He was truly a great American who loved his family, his friends, his Buffalo Bills, and everything about politics and America. He was just a terrific guy.” - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

I’m cool with this one. I don’t know from personal experience how “terrific” he was, but the rest at least sounds accurate to McCain’s mind.

“He delighted in scooping me and I felt the same way when I scooped him. When you slipped one past ol’ Russert, you felt as though you had hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league.” - Bob Schieffer, host of CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Ol’ Russert. Home run off the best pitcher in the league. I don’t know what to think about this one, except to ask, when in the last five years has either of these guys scooped the other on something worth scooping/being scooped by?

“Today, broadcast journalism lost one of its giants, who will be remembered along with names like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. The city of Buffalo has also lost its favorite son, who loved his city and its hometown team, the Bills.” - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

I wish I could somehow see how long after the news of Russert’s death reached Pelosi’s office it took her interns to Google “Tim Russert,” “Buffalo,” and “Journalism.”

I don’t want to keep going. The other quotes are as preening and full-of-shit as you could ask for. What a terrible way to send a journalist off: lying. And not even a good, hard lie someone could call out, but fake sentiment. It’s easy to befriend a dead man; he’s not there to tell people what you really think.

I never particularly sought out Russert for truth, but I enjoyed the Buffalo connection and I enjoyed watching him more than others on his network and in his medium. But I can honestly say I didn’t know much or anything about the soul of the man, where his ethics or credentials came from. And neither did many of the politicians that submitted sound bites to this article. They did it because they know Russert has a base of fans that they want to impress or enlist, and so they spoke, venally, to his honor, regardless of their actual thoughts of the man or his profession.

In other circles, we merely raise our glasses, toast the game, and go to work.

As if you needed any further proof that the Cato Institute is a completely full of shit mouthpiece used to skew debate and media coverage with asinine commentary, we now have this article from CNN.com.

In an effort to provide balanced news coverage, CNN’s Rachel Oliver took a story about Amtrak promoting itself through the proven energy efficiency per passenger-mile of rail travel over airlines or automobiles (Ch. 2 - Energy, Tables 2.4-2.6 or here) and transformed it into he-said she-said nonsense.

According to Amtrak, which was behind the event, trains are more energy-efficient than cars or planes so should be celebrated and actively encouraged as the ideal mode of transport among today’s travelers.

Attributing the information to Amtrak makes it appear as though Amtrak - an obvious financial beneficiary from increased rail travel - is the only authority claiming rail travel to be a more energy efficient mode of travel. Amtrak is, of course, highlighting and publicizing this information - but it also happens to be the truth, as the above-linked documents show.

So Rachel has shown one “side” of a non-debatable, fact-based issue. Let’s give everyone a chance, people! Balance, balance, fairness, balance:

In an April 2008 report Cato said the U.S.’s train lines “generate more greenhouse gases than the average passenger automobile,” before adding,”rail transit provides no guarantee that a city will save energy or meet greenhouse gas targets.”

Well. A fifteen-car passenger train creates more greenhouse gas than your Mazda. And Oliver doesn’t even say one train - it’s all of them. The combined greenhouse gas output of every train operating in the U.S. is greater than that of the average passenger automobile. Sounds like a reasonable counterbalance quote, don’t you think? Next we’ll hear that the homeless - once thought to be our most destitute and needy citizens - are actually okay after all, because everyone who isn’t homeless has money and a place to live.

Dodged that bullet, I guess; jester, a round for the house!

Then there’s the second half of the quote: “rail transit provides no guarantee that a city will save energy or meet greenhouse gas targets.” Well, no, it doesn’t. Rail transit also provides no guarantee that the city will not be sucked into the gaping maw of the earth’s crust as the result of a massive earthquake. It provides no guarantee that people will not simply start lighting gas stations on fire or burning truck tires in their backyard. It’s disingenuous nonsense and it’s what the American press does on a daily basis.

Demand better.

Food prices rose 0.3 percent over the past month, according to the Associated Press via the Buffalo News.

The recent increase is part of a larger trend linked to the increase in oil and natural gas prices. As the world passes the global oil production peak (which many believe occurred in 2005 or 2006), prices will continue to rise and our current food distribution infrastructure - with produce and meats trucked over vast distances from farm to grocery - will no longer be a viable option. Food supplies will diminish as inputs derived from oil and natural gas - such as gas-powered farm machinery and methane-based fertilizers - become increasingly scarce and expensive. (Natural gas will peak shortly after oil, and unlike oil depletion, it will not be a gradual decline in production.)

During World War II, the U.S. began a Victory Garden campaign to ease the burden of military spending on food for the troops. Within a matter of years, almost half the nation’s vegetables were being grown in personal and community gardens. The U.S. should return to urban and suburban agriculture and a reimagining of communities that will need to begin growing food closer to home.

The process has already started amongst people feeling the pinch of higher gas and food prices. For more information on urban agriculture and its benefits, check out Sprouts in the Sidewalk.

Oil depletion is real and in an effort to avoid chaos as the supply of such a globally important resource dwindles, cities across the U.S. have begun to adopt an oil depletion protocol, a set of rules for reduction of demand and peaceful distribution of supply.

Portland and San Francisco have already adopted protocols of their own. Buffalo should, too.

We would need a lot of work. As recently as 1950, Buffalo had abundant public transportation. Rail lines ran throughout the city and were a major source of transportation for both city-dwellers and suburbanites. The vast majority of these lines have been paved over to make way for the now-tragic automobile, but they can be rebuilt, to a degree, if we act quickly. Increased rail transportation will not keep us going indefinitely, but it can serve to mitigate the effects of high fuel prices and provide for an efficient method of using what’s left of our fossil fuel reserves.

Increased rail service would also ease the problem of food distribution. Buffalo still has vibrant agricultural areas located nearby. We need to connect to these areas through a viable system of freight transit to prepare for a future where diesel-powered trucking is no longer sustainable.

This is not nostalgia; it is necessity. If Buffalo is to survive the future, our leaders need to adopt policies to ensure that we have one. They need to be nudged - hard.

Posted below is a version of the sample letter oil depletion protocol advocates recommend you send to your elected officials. I sent this to Mayor Byron Brown yesterday. We need more people sending more letters to more officials throughout the city, state, and federal government. Only through concentrated effort can we reach a critical mass where anyone actually does anything.

To The Honorable Mayor Byron Brown,

I am writing to express my concern about our systemic dependence on oil and its by-products, and how the forthcoming depletion in global oil production will affect everything from transportation to agriculture to technology. I also urge you to support the adoption of the Oil Depletion Protocol, which is designed to mitigate these effects.

Over the past century, industrialized nations such as ours have achieved economic prosperity due mostly to easily accessible and inexpensive oil – in fact, our modern industrial way of life is based upon having a sustained and abundant supply of cheap and nonrenewable petroleum. This being the case, we have developed an unsustainable dependence on oil and its by-products, and have thus come to a point in history where our survival is threatened by the very thing that allowed us to come this far.

The era of cheap and abundant oil is over. Peak Oil is on the horizon, whether it be now, in 2 years, or by 2030. Experts worldwide stress the importance of early and sustained preparation, pointing to the fact that there is not currently any energy source available that can fully substitute for petroleum. The time is now to seriously consider our options and take appropriate action to prepare for an energy-constrained world.

One such action that I strongly encourage you to take is the endorsement and adoption of the Oil Depletion Protocol, an international agreement whereby nations of the world agree to reduce their oil dependence by about 2.5 percent per year. As Peak Oil approaches, reducing our dependence on oil will not be an option: it will be forced upon us whether we are prepared for it or not. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that we begin now to gradually wean ourselves off of oil. The Oil Depletion Protocol allows us to do just this. If the entire world adopted the Protocol, global consumption of oil would decline gradually and predictably, thus stabilizing prices, preserving the resource base, and reducing competition for remaining supplies.

Larger cities like Portland and San Francisco and many others have already adopted various forms of the Protocol and some have begun to enact their measurements. In Buffalo, with our smaller population numbers, our tradition of public transportation, and available local farmland, I believe the process can be easier with proper leadership. I know Buffalo can commit itself to this challenge and succeed. I encourage you to visit the Oil Depletion Protocol website, www.oildepletionprotocol.org for more information on how the Protocol will work and how governments and citizens of the world can adopt it.

Sincerely,

Jacob Drum
Allentown, Buffalo

Send your own version of this letter to as many elected officials as you can. I sent mine via e-mail because I don’t have a printer, but you should send a real paper-copy letter. I’ve worked in political offices and I know that this is much more effective than phone calls or e-mails. Those mostly get logged and ignored. Real snail-mail letters get read, at least, by somebody.

Make it happen.