Environmental Hypocrites, and Energy Efficient Mansions

I was researching some stuff because I wanted to do a blog post on how I thought Al Gore was a hypocrite because of his global warming message and yet he lives in a 10,000 square foot mansion, but what to my wondering eyes did appear but the monstrous house of John Edwards. Great goblet of fire Harry Potter, this thing is 29,000 square feet. I once worked manufacturing metal roofing in a warehouse that was 27,000 square feet, and we could drive trucks all up in that thing.

John Edwards has been running for president for a while, and he ran for vice last time if you remember. He has run on a campaign of help for the poor. Since I read the New York Times article last year about how he set up a non-profit organization to cure poverty and then used the millions of dollars to jet around the world, I have not trusted him. He appeared with Hillary and Barack in the Sojourners/Call to Renewal non-debate thingy about poverty, and by the sound of what he had to say and the way he said it, I thought he might have had a conversation with his aides back stage before the thing that went something like “What is their big issue? Poverty? For or against? Against? I can do against.” And now I find out he has a six million dollar house that could house the poor populations of some cities. He is not just a hypocrite, he’s a freaking jerk. What a load. There is not much that disgusts me more than people who preach help for the poor, but neglect to actually do anything for them. Jesus was different, he preached for the poor all the live long day, but he was poor himself, and he healed them, and he fed them, and I am pretty sure he actually touched and spoke to them face to face.

So back to Al Gore. Forget “An Inconvenient Truth.” He travels the world as an environmental evangelist and yet his home is massive, and has equally massive utility bills. He is shuttled around in SUV’s and other equally massive vehicles which would be unacceptable to any honest environmentalist. Oh, I see.

The thing is, any house can be green. Any home can be low energy or zero energy building or ZEB. How? Easy. First thing to do is insulate it well, plug all the holes, and install quality low embodied energy insulation (not fiberglass.) Secondly, orient it so as to take best advantage of warming sun in winter. Thirdly, install energy efficient appliances like solar water heaters and low water use plumbing stuff like low flow showerheads and the like. Fourth, generate energy to offset what you use. Any house anywhere can have solar panels in place of standard roof, or solar shingles in place of standard shingles. Rich people like slow Al and slick Eddie can do this stuff. Bill Gate’s mansion, while it dwarfs both Al’s and Eddie’s in size and cost, is quite efficient. It is an earth sheltered home built into a slope at the edge of a lake.

But, some say, Al Gore buys carbon offsets so that all the carbon he creates with his obscenely wasteful mansion gets absorbed somewhere else. This is true. But let me get through this carbon neutral bogusness and expose it for what it really is. It is a way for people with too much disposable income to buy their conscience clean. That’s right, BUY their conscience clean. Like the indulgences Martin Luther so despised, carbon credits do nothing but make rich wasteful (or sinful in Luther’s case) people feel better about stomping all over the rest of the world and hogging energy that could be used to refrigerate vaccines or heat the homes of the less fortunate. Let me ask this question: What else comes out of a power plant besides carbon dioxide? Mercury, sulfur, lead, cadmium, and a whole bunch of other toxic nastiness.

Where are the mercury offsets, where are the acid rain offsets, where are the testicular cancer offsets? I don’t see any of these rich people paying to offset the really important pollutants they create. I can breath carbon dioxide every day of my life, in fact, I produce it as a byproduct of simply being alive. If I breathe heavy metals, I’ll be retarded pretty quick, and dead not long after that.

Gore also pays extra to get green power from the Tennessee Valley Authority. What does this really mean? It means he subsidizes green power, it doesn’t mean he actually uses green power. Power comes from the nearest plant or two, no matter what kind of plant those two are. It’s like having a giant water tank to supply a town, and one supply to the tank comes from the lake, and the other comes from a natural mineral water spring, but here is only one outlet pipe. How long do you think it would work if we said “Pay us more and you can have the mineral water.” It doesn’t make any logical sense, the truth works like this: “Pay us more and we’ll think about putting more spring water in the tank.”

I want to make it clear that I have no problems with rich people as such. I have problems all day with people who are liars and hypocrites. However, I know of very few wealthy people who do not drive giant SUV’s and live in very large houses or large multiple houses. In fact, the only celebrity I know of who lives what they preach is Ed Begley Jr. He lives in a completely solar powered house, is a vegan and rides bicycles and stuff. But the biggest problem I have with the situation is that the world’s global warming evangelist has done very little to actually help the problem, other than just talking about it that is.

Everything I talk about I do, or try to do, or plan to do when I get more money. Al has all the money he needs and all he can do is buy carbon credits from his own company. The key to minimizing the future energy crisis is efficiency and conservation, two things Al Gore’s house lacks.

Now the oil companies say that prices will have to stay high because demand has dropped, go figure.

WiredForStereo

“We Want Another Reagan Conservative! What? No We Don’t." A Treatment on Taxes and Other Money Stuff.

Ignore political and conservative biases for a minute, we are gonna try to work this out using simple logic. The Facts as I see them are these.

The United States is neck deep in national debt. None of our thinking citizens wants this.

Many conservatives favor stuff called supply side economics, or Reaganomics, or basically tax cuts for the rich to make more money.

The gap between rich and poor widens.

Celebrity worship and greed fueled a now bursting housing bubble.

Government spends too much money, much of which is wasted.

I’d like to say first of all that I am not one of those dorky single guys that live at home with their mom. I live 2200 miles from my mom. I don’t sleep between Star Wars sheets, I don’t own a video game younger than ten years old. I have two associates degrees and a job. My wife has two bachelors degrees and a job. While I work only part time, my wife and I are paid adequately for the specialties we both have. I’m not trying to brag here. I am just trying to say that I understand fully what it takes to make a life. I am not some moron whose mouth runneth over and has no idea what they are talking about.

On the other hand, guys who come up with supply side economics are guys who have degrees in Political Science. That’s right, not economics, not math, they are fully equipped to be politicians. A few definitions should follow. Supply side economics is essentially the belief that if you make incentive to produce products by lowering taxes on the producers, you will get enhanced economy as a result. It is really saying “we’ll let you keep more of your money, so you should invest it so you can make even more money which we’ll then take our share of.” The past two double term republican presidencies have been big into this, also recessions. The basic problem is this: If you give someone more money, chances are, they’ll just want more money. More money is usually gotten by laying off people, paying people less, and moving production over seas, and likely a combination of all three. If all the money moves overseas, then we don’t get any of it.

We poor people (read “middle class”) don’t understand this. Why? Because it doesn’t make any sense. If you want more money, you take more taxes. The reason why the conservatives tell us that it is working is they cut taxes in one area, then look at all revenues to see the result. Sure, the US is taking in more money than ever before, but it is not coming from the area where they cut taxes, which as you might imagine is bringing in less money. It makes sense. It’s like saying “I’ll plant less corn in the garden this year” and then taking the gross weight of the production of the whole garden and then saying “Wow, look at all the new corn we have by planting less.” You aren’t making more corn. You are making less. The difference is, you can distinguish corn from peas, dollars all look the same. So when a politician tells you there are more dollars, you automatically think, “Well, I don’t understand it, but it seems to be working!” Additionally, it doesn’t matter that we are taking in more money than ever, we are also more in debt than ever, go figure.

I have a friend in our church small group who always brings up the “punishing productivity” argument whenever we have this discussion. He says that keeping taxes high on the rich punishes them for working hard and making more money. Since we are making sense today, I’ll admit, that does make a little sense, but only a little. However, every dollar has two sides. If you lower taxes on the ones who can afford it, you punish those who cannot. What it says is “Oh, you have money, here, have some more,” and “You over there don’t have much, give me some of it.” Do you see the problem? You may be rewarding productivity, but you are punishing misfortune. Most physically hardworking families whose jobs are strenuous but not well paying are not there because they don’t work hard. They are not being supported by welfare, they are not popping out kids left and right so they can get tax rebates and welfare checks. The whole “working hard” paradigm is completely meaningless. Working hard does not equal more money. The hardest work I’ve ever done paid well less than $10 an hour, and the easiest work I’ve ever done pays more than that. What’s the difference? Education, skill, perseverance, paying dues, work ethic, opportunity, and actually enjoying the work I’m doing. I would also like to say from a spiritual perspective that giving tithe, offerings, and works of service to God makes a ton of difference as well because he is the one who makes that whole list up there possible. See the book of Malachi.

This Supply Side Economics, or Reaganomics, or Trickle Down Economics stuff is just bogus. I don’t remember who it was that said this, but it is not the rich who are owed because of their success, it is them who owe us who made them successful. You can’t get rich by yourself but you need underlings, people whose work you profit from. No one person can have the skill or more importantly time to be every employee of a multi-million dollar company. There is almost always someone profiting from someone else, and the some ones who make more money should have to pay taxes at no less a percentage rate than the person from whom they are profiting.

It is not like buying toilet paper bulk, so you actually pay less per roll. In fact it is the reverse. Let’s just assume a 10% tax because it is easy to calculate, in reality it is much higher. A person making $20,000 is not very able to pay $2,000 in taxes, while a person making $2,000,000 is very easily able to pay $200,000. In the same way, a person is more able to pay $10,000 if they make $100,000 that if they make less. It is very simple. In fact, if a person making $2,000,000 can live like a person making $100,000, which anyone can, then they can afford to pay far more. Of course, I am not suggesting that we force people who make a lot of money to live as if they don’t, but I AM suggesting that they do it themselves.

The big overriding problem above all this is the problem of people with money, oh, I mean people with our money. If the government wants to cut taxes, please do, but you must also cut spending. I don’t have any credit cards, so I really can’t spend more than I have without immediate consequences. So we live what most of us would call “within our means.” Why can’t our government do the same? All of the presidential candidates right now are proposing new spending when we already are having a deficit every year. And all the republicans are proposing tax cuts. What nonsense! All of it is nonsense!

The solution.

As far as taxation goes, I can see no better option than the Fair Tax. The more you can afford to buy, the more you can afford to pay, and there are no arbitrary percentage rates for anyone. If you buy a $20,000 car, $4,600 of that is taxes, if you want to buy a $100,000 car, $23,000 is taxes. So simple. Please, buy a $10,000,000 house, we need the $2.3 million in tax revenues. It works everywhere. If all you can afford is a $2 box of macaroni, then all the tax you’d pay is $.46, but if you want a $40 steak meal, then you pay $9.20. It is just like giving a tip, only slightly more than we would often give, but hey, it’s taxes! I know it is hard to really work out the math, but, you must stop to calculate that the value of money will be different. If you were to make $40,000 a year, right now, that is something like $28,000 after taxes. With the Fair Tax, if you were to make $40,000 a year, you would be making $40,000 a year. Wow, that was easy, and there wasn’t any stress in April.

Tax this!

WiredForStereo

Future Fuels and Personal Standards.

Now in true virtue of combining blogs, the corresponding sustainable living discussions.

I know there are millions of statistics running around about all the stuff we have to do and the dangers of not, and the results, and costs.

I'm not going there today. I wanna talk about practices and philosophies and attitudes, not statistics and costs.

I was wandering through Lowe's the other day with my friend. We happened upon one of his friends (or acquaintances, not sure) while we were perusing through the CFLs and she was looking for light bulbs as well, and my friend suggested a CFL. She went on to explain that she was such a conservative that she just wanted to drive the biggest vehicle she could find, go home string up a million Christmas lights, turn the heat all the way up, and open all the doors and windows and watch her 8 foot wide plasma tv. Of course I'm exaggerating a bit, and I hope she was kidding because she really was looking at the CFLs, but it was the attitude that she had that really made me think. And thinking is what will solve the problem, not global warming, but of limited energy supplies. I've said it before, Arkansas has one wind turbine but is 27th in the nation for wind resources. We're surrounded by coal and natural gas power plants, and there's a nuke just down the highway. We do have a number of hydroelectric dams, but they are of limited elevation drop and therefore limited power. Their primary function is as sources for various water needs. The only solar panels I have seen lately are the ones that power the emergency roadside signs. The thing is, you can't burn coal or NG again, but the rain will bring us water again, and the winds will come again, and the sun will shine again.

So, how do we change things so that we can sustainably support ourselves as a culture? Some have said that we cannot support our current standard of living. That may be so. So, we change our standard of living. Standards are made to become more strict, a standard is a minimum requirement, and as time goes on, standards become more stringent. Examples: gas mileage, home insulation, safety belts, child car seats, wiring, plumbing, internet speeds, video quality (HDTV), bullet proof vests, helmets, airbags, buildings and structures, pollution restrictions, lead based paint, asbestos, fire retardants, CFCs, water quality, flammable Halloween costumes, fire suits for race car drivers, computer speeds, fuel quality, and bridge construction, need I go on? Our standard of living must not drop, because standards do not drop, our standards must be raised, but not in a way that we live more opulently, and more wastefully. Our standards must include those that are more efficient, they must include changing or altering our sources of energy, food, and leisure, and most of all, we must change our rate of consumption.

Consumption, what did Jesus think? Jesus was, more than most else, interested in how the poor were cared for. He railed against the wealthy religious leaders, said things like "It is difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," and picked his disciples from among the working class. There is so much I could say, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

So, what did I say here? (Pauses to actually read what he wrote.)

Well let me say what I meant in the above paragraph. I am not saying that you cannot be rich. I say do it at your own risk, but the wealthy are in a position to do more than many of us can, both to make their lives more efficient, but also to help the rest of us by for instance helping the car companies decide to make more efficient cars, because though I'd like to, I cannot afford to build my own car right now.

Ok, the real conclusion. Raise your standard of living. Grow your own organic food. Insulate your house so it stays really warm in the winter and really cool in the summer without using any outside power. Raise your standards, don't go the cheap (actually more expensive {costly} in the long run) way, don't do what everyone else is doing (some of you reading this will not be in Arkansas and will be in a more environmentally conscious area, and for you, do some of what everyone else is doing)

Live the way you were meant to.
WiredForStereo

*Would I say God is on my side?
I might think it, but I won't say it, hopefully I'm on God's side.

The Gospel of Wealth

I reject the Gospel of Wealth and any and all adherents and illusions thereto.

Now before anyone gets confused, lemme explain. The Gospel of Wealth was a little (big) essay that Andrew Carnegie wrote back when he was alive that said alot of things. One, that a rich man's duty before God was to make the world a better place. This is a great idea. However, no one followed it, not even Carnegie. Sure, he built hospitals and libraries, but he was also notoriously ruthless in his dealings with workers.

Carnegie had some great ideas about what to do with wealth, unfortunately, he lived by the motto that the ends justify the means. He thought that what he did with his money at the end of his life would make up for how he got it to begin with. I don't think this works. Lying, cheating, and stealing do not a Godly business make, no matter how much of the profits go to the church or missions or the poor.

I think Jesus was right when he said it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Not because it rich people find it hard to be believers, but because I think believers find it hard to be rich. Every one of the more wealthy people I've met all have the same attitude about money. God gave it to me, God has blessed me, it's mine. I have never known any wealthy believers who lived humbly, though I know that some do exist. The quickest way to find out is by the car. Toyota or Lexus, Honda or Porsche, Ford or BMW. I'm not saying it is wrong to have money or a nice car. I'm just saying, I have never known anyone who has simultaneously presented a positive Christian life, lived humbly, and gave generously. The best I've seen is two out of the three, and usually only one in my opinion.

The wealthier men I have been close to present a nice face at church and around town, but often use foul language. Have great business, but have a few small hidden shady business practices. Throw money around like everyone has it. Drive fast in fast expensive cars. But the thing that bugs me the most is that it appears that they think their opinion is worth more than yours. Why do people not realize that they are no better than you, they just have more money.

God doesn't truly bless people with money, I believe he truly blesses them with contentment.

I am disgusted with myself for even writing this but it just bugs me so much. I'll admit, I may just be writing these things out of jealously. But, I have heard it so many times that God gives wealth to his people, and I just don't think this is true. God gives rest and contentment to his people. He gives them peace, not money. He gives money to some to be given to others, and he gives money to the wicked to prove his point that money is the root of all kinds of evil.

So what do I do with money? I really have no idea, but I know what not to do with it.
WiredForStereo