Renewable Energy Gold Rush

NIMBY and the Psychology of Protected Areas

December 2009

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
--Wendell Berry

2009 is the year of the renewable energy boom. Renewable energy projects that start construction by the end of 2010 can get 30% of the construction costs federally subsidized. Booms and busts have had great impacts on California and the West before, and those impacts will continue as we madly dash toward a carbon-free energy system.

The Eastern Sierra is already a renewable energy colony of the rest of the state and a water colony of Los Angeles too. We already produce, use, and export electricity generated from dammed streams, deadened geysers, and dropping water tables.

But it isn't enough. Now renewable energy prospectors are looking for sites where they can build new dams and hydroelectric plants. There is a proposal for

How to create a socially responsible oil company

Tonight (due to the documentary on marijuana on CNBC) I was thinking about how people that smoke pot without knowing where it comes from are probably supporting the Mexican Mafia and its horrible murderous acts. It reminded me of an essay I wrote on my Website in 2000, 2001, or 2002 when I didn't have a car. It was about boycotting all oil companies because they all did such horrible things. How could you be a willing customer of someone/something so evil?

At the time, the research I did on the Internet turned up zero oil companies with records clean enough that would make me want to do business with them.

The oil companies I researched back then were: BP and Oxy, Shell and Chevron, Texaco and Maxus, Unocal, Arco, Exxon, Mobil, and Amoco. Their crimes and transgressions included human rights violations (Colombia, Nigeria, Alaska, Ecuador, Burma, Thailand, Cameroon, Chad, Central America), spills and related environmental impacts, massive CO2 emissions, and being members of the Global Climate Coalition that claimed Global Warming was a myth.

I'm sure some things have changed, although the press surrounding the BP oil disaster this year leads me to believe that most oil companies are stuck in the old, outdated, and simply evil ways of doing business.

The logical next step: stop buying anything from them. But how to live without oil?