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Saturday, 15 October 2005
couldnt have said it better
Mood:
 on fire
Topic: Clergy Abuse
The Catholic Church is at it again
By Riggs Fulmer
October 14, 2005
On Wednesday, the New York Times ran a front page article detailing the release of yet another garish laundry list of 75 years of deception, obfuscation, buggery and rape, this time in Los Angeles. Again we see a systematic cover-up of predatory sexual abuse, hidden behind semen-stained velvet curtains and sententious demands for forgiveness. It's the same sick, old story.
As I read the article I grew angrier and angrier. Many of my friends, teachers and co-workers are Catholics and are intelligent, honest people. Unlike their church "leaders," real Catholics use their faith as a base, a moral guide, a community with which to unite and celebrate the Divine. The Catholic Church as a temporal entity, on the other hand, uses its "faith" as a loophole, an abutment to crouch behind, a justification for the worst, lowest types of violence and dishonesty. To call this hypocrisy borders on euphemism. It's long past time that the Vatican live up to the ideals they promote.
Now that these acts and their concealment by Church administrators have been exposed, the same priests, bishops, and cardinals who turned a blind eye to the chronic rape of defenseless children, at the hands of those whom they should have been most able to trust, now ask us to do the same. Utterly and disgustingly unconcerned with the physical well-being of the least among their flocks over decades of sexual coercion, they now rush to guard the coffer doors when these selfsame victims rightfully demand that things be made right.
Understand that my anger is in no way directed towards Catholics, or even against Catholicism, although many of the tenets of that faith are, to me, insupportable. I'm angry with the Pope and his lackeys in the Vatican. The leaders of a religion whose deity said, quite explicitly, "It is easier for a camel (or rope, according to the Peshitta text) to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," are living in wealth so opulent that it would make Paris Hilton blush, and their flock is supposed to accept it. After waiting almost half a century to apologize for their refusal to stand up and condemn the Holocaust, they turn around and elect an ex-Nazi as pontiff. And while AIDS and starvation move like a brush fire through the ranks of the poorest, these "celibate" aristocrats refuse to condone the use of condoms. Friends, come on now, is it really more sinful to fuck your wife while wearing a rubber than to rape little boys in a palace?
All right, I'll calm down. I have no doubt in God's capacity for infinite forgiveness, and it might surprise you, given this article, to find that I pray many times every day. However, I'd suggest that in this case, we leave the forgiveness to God, and take care of the accountability our own damn selves. There's a Sufi axiom to which we should take heed: Trust God, but tie up your camel. God gave you hands and an asshole; don't expect him to hand you the TP as well.
I'd propose two radical reforms to help alleviate this situation: allow priests to marry and allow women to be priests.
The first addresses a number of points. One huge impact would be on the role of priest as counselor in matters involving marriage and sexuality. It's ludicrous to think that a person who's been celibate for thirty years could substantively comment on such matters. But of equal importance would be the release of testosterone, and I'm not kidding here. An intense focus on sexuality while denying its release even through masturbation? Who could ever think this a healthy situation? We might as well appoint 13-year-old boys to guard the girls' locker-room showers!
And allowing women into the priesthood would not only rectify 2000 years of baseless sexism (maybe we can thank the first Letter to Timothy, 2:9-15 for that bullshit), but it would put those vastly less likely to succumb to impulses of pederasty and rape at the reins.
God is good, God is great, but her representatives at the Vatican and its subsidiaries are often neither. It's time the world's Catholics demand that their church look more to the spiritual and physical health of its congregation, and less to slavish obedience to archaic, bass-ackwards dogma or the turning of an indulgent blind eye when grotesque crimes are committed again and again.
When the Catholic Church honestly focuses on righteousness rather than self-righteousness, it will at last become the immense force for good, which has always been its potential.
Posted by springbrooke
at 9:50 PM PDT
Saturday, 14 May 2005
Take the Bishop Michael Driscoll Pedo-Quiz!
Mood:
on fire
Now Playing: Why isnt this guy in jail?
Topic: Clergy Abuse
by GUSTAVO ARELLANO (O.C.Weekly)
Driscoll
On May 6, Diocese of Boise Bishop Michael Driscoll apologized for his role in Orange County’s Roman Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal. Driscoll—who was in charge of priest personnel affairs for the Diocese of Orange from its 1976 inception until leaving for Idaho in 1999—made the stunning admission in a letter printed in the Idaho Catholic Register, stating he was “deeply sorry that the way we handled cases [in Orange County] allowed children to be victimized by permitting some priests to remain in ministry, for not disclosing their behavior to those who might be at risk, and for not monitoring their actions more closely.”
What’s with the mea culpa? Two words: damage control. On May 17, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will issue a ruling determining which priest personnel files will become public as part of the record-breaking $100 million settlement reached earlier this year between the Orange diocese and sex-abuse victims. Church sources say Driscoll’s name is all over the documents, which molestation survivors claim will show the various cover-ups Orange diocesan officials executed while Driscoll served as chancellor and auxiliary bishop.
But why wait until May 17? Take the following quiz and discover for yourself Driscoll’s role in the rape of innocents!
1. Of the 21 priests the Orange diocese classifies as having “credible” molestation allegations, how many worked under Driscoll’s watch?
a. Half
b. Eight
c. All but one
d. 13
2. How many molestation lawsuits did the Orange diocese settle during Driscoll’s term?
a. None
b. Six
c. 30
d. Unknown
3. What famous county pedophile once testified that Driscoll asked him to stop molesting girls?
a. Gerardo Tanilong
b. John Lenihan
c. The president of the local NAMBLA chapter
d. Ted Llanos
4. After the diocese settled a 1991 lawsuit filed against John Lenihan, what disciplinary actions did Driscoll take?
a. Made Lenihan go to psychological counseling
b. Transferred him out of St. Boniface in Anaheim to another parish
c. Nothing
d. Defrocked Lenihan
5. When Siegfried Widera transferred to Orange County from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in 1976, Milwaukee Bishop William Cousins told Driscoll that Widera once had “a moral problem with a boy.” What was the moral problem?
a. Just a mix-up, sir—the boy’s shorts accidentally fell to his ankles
b. Showed him pornography and gave him alcohol
c. Was arrested on a molestation charge
d. Told him the Freemasons and Jews kept Pope Paul VI in a Vatican basement
6. In a 1991 deposition for a civil trial against Eleuterio Ramos, Driscoll claimed he had only heard secondhand complaints about Ramos molesting boys. During that trial, who testified under oath that they went directly to Driscoll with their concerns about Ramos?
a. A priest
b. A church librarian
c. A parochial teacher
d. All of the above
7. When a parent revealed to Driscoll in the mid-1980s that Father Robert Foley had molested her boy on a Boy Scout trip, Driscoll:
a. Sent Foley to an Indian reservation as he did three other pedo-priests
b. Sent him to Liverpool, England, along with a letter to church leaders across the pond that the parent “has threatened to go to the police” and Foley “is in jeopardy of arrest and possible imprisonment if he remains here.”
c. Sent him away on vacation until things cooled down as he did Andrew Christian Andersen
d. Sent him to Tijuana as he did Ramos
8. After Boise diocesan officials found child pornography images on a priest’s computer in 2002, Driscoll:
a. Suspended the priest
b. Transferred him to a clinic
c. Sent him to Orange County
d. Upgraded his connection to DSL
Answers: 1. c, 2. d—six are known, but the Orange diocese has a habit of settling suits sub rosa, 3. b, 4. c, 5. c, 6. d, 7. b, 8. c
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:53 AM PDT
counter
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:43 AM PDT
Monday, 21 February 2005
Foxes make good henhouse guards and reporters!
Mood:
 don't ask
Now Playing: Good news! less than a thousand new abuse cases this year (reported!)
Topic: Clergy Abuse
More than 1,000 people reported to civil or church authorities in 2004 that they had been sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic priests, the second-largest number of allegations for any year on record, the U.S. bishops' conference said yesterday.
During 2004, the church spent $157 million on legal settlements and other costs related to sex abuse. It received allegations against 756 priests and deacons, half of whom had previously been named in similar accusations. It temporarily removed more than 300 clergy members and permanently defrocked 148, church officials said.
Kathleen L. McChesney, head of the Catholic Church's child protection office, and Bishop William S. Skylstad present a report on sexual abuse cases. (Adele Starr -- AP)
The new statistics, which appeared in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' second annual report on the sexual abuse crisis in the church, showed the heavy toll that the four-year-old crisis continues to take on the church's finances, its clergy and the trust of its laity.
The figures released yesterday bring the total number of alleged victims since 1950 to 11,750, the number of accused priests to 5,148, and the church's expenses to more than $840 million. Three dioceses have declared bankruptcy.
But the 2004 figures do not fundamentally alter the patterns found last year in a major study of sexual abuse in the church from 1950 to 2002. As in the past, about 80 percent of the 1,083 victims who came forward in 2004 are male, and the majority said they were between the ages of 10 and 14 when the abuse began. Most of the alleged incidents took place in the 1960s and '70s.
Also as they have in the past, victims' advocates and church officials disagreed on how to interpret the figures. Kathleen L. McChesney, a former FBI official who is leaving this month as head of the church's Office of Child and Youth Protection, said at a news conference that 22 incidents, or 2 percent of all the allegations reported last year, were fresh cases involving abuse of minors that occurred in the previous 12 months. She hailed that as evidence that the number of new cases "is declining."
David Clohessy of St. Louis, national director of the support group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told reporters outside the church's news conference that 22 fresh incidents is hardly "cause for joy." In fact, he said, it is probably just a small fraction of the true number, because last year's major study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that child victims typically suffer in silence for 20 to 30 years before reporting clergy abuse.
Interpretation of the statistics was also complicated by a lack of data for 2003. That is because the John Jay study compiled statistics for each year from 1950 to 2002. Then the bishops voted to update the study annually beginning in 2004.
The peak number of allegations reported in any prior year on record was in 2001, when the abuse scandal erupted in Boston. More than 3,300 alleged victims came forward that year. In 2002, the number of allegations dropped to about 750, about the same number that was reported annually in the mid-1990s.
McChesney also said yesterday that 96 percent of the 195 U.S. dioceses were found in a second annual round of audits to be fully in compliance with the sex abuse policy, known as the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and adopted by the bishops in Dallas three years ago. The archdioceses of Washington and Baltimore and the dioceses of Richmond and Arlington were among those in compliance.
McChesney said the church spent $20 million in 2004 on efforts to prevent sex abuse, including police background checks on 32,073 priests and more than 750,000 lay people who work with children in Catholic schools and parishes.
Barbara Blaine of Chicago, president of the Survivors Network, said that the audits are largely irrelevant because they focus on whether each diocese has strict policies in place, rather than determining how well the policies are carried out.
"Every diocese in America last year was cited, even praised, by auditors for three examples of ineffective steps: employee codes of conduct, formal communication plans and having a point person to take incoming abuse allegations," Blaine said. "Is there one priest who molested one girl because he'd never read an employee code of conduct telling him child rape is wrong?"
Blaine and other advocates said the most effective step bishops could take would be to release the names of all priests who face credible allegations, which has been done in fewer than a dozen dioceses.
They also accuse some bishops of trying to evade the core promise in the Dallas Charter, which required permanent removal of any priest who has committed sexual abuse involving a minor. According to the report, at least 42 priests "remain in active ministry pending a preliminary investigation" of abuse charges.
McChesney acknowledged that the church has no policy on how long a preliminary investigation should take or how it should proceed. "Many victims/survivors, accused clergy, review board members, and the laity remain confused about the exact procedures that are to be followed," the report said.
The president of the U.S. bishops' conference, Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., said he would not "second-guess the decisions of individual bishops" but that, in his opinion, "if there is a credible allegation of abuse, the priests [should be] immediately removed."
The figures on abuse allegations released yesterday included no breakdowns by diocese and no names of priests or victims. More than 90 percent of all U.S. dioceses voluntarily reported their abuse statistics for 2004, but 71 percent of the 158 Catholic religious orders in the country, such as Jesuits and Franciscans, provided their data.
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:04 AM PST
Sunday, 20 February 2005
Statement Regarding Bishops' Report on Diocese Surveys 2005
Mood:
on fire
Now Playing: RC Spin - Jesus would freak!
Topic: Clergy Abuse
CONTACT
David Clohessy of St. Louis MO, SNAP National Director 314 566 9790
Barbara Blaine of Chicago IL, SNAP Founder and President 312 399 4747
Janet Patterson of Conway Springs KS, SNAP Natl. Board Member 316 772 6537 cell
Peter Isely of Milwaukee WI, SNAP National Board Member 414 429 7259 cell
Mark Serrano of Leesburg VA, SNAP National Board Member 703 727 4940 cell
Friday, February 18, 2005
Part 1
Our message today is very simple.
First, prudent people will wait for proof before assuming these so-called reforms are working.
Second, much of what's being touted as reform is irrelevant or ineffective
Third, the crux of this crisis fundamentally remains unaddressed.
Before we talk specifics, take a minute and remember how all this came about.
Bishops have devised the rules of play, hired the umpires, chosen the players, and in about an hour, will declare that they're winning.
They wrote the Charter, they hired their own so-called watchdogs, they decide who gets interviewed and who gets heard.
This is crucial - prior to January 2002, each bishop was in charge of handling sex abuse in his diocese. Today, each bishop essentially still is.
Now, to our first message:
A lot of time and effort has been focused on abuse in the church in the last two years. A lot of time and effort went into the bishops' presentation you'll soon see.
There's one obvious question: Is all this making a difference?
The frank answer is: It's way too soon to tell.
The prudent answer is: We should assume, for now, it has not.
We owe it to innocent children and vulnerable adults to insist on hard evidence and solid data before determining progress is being made. Given what we now know about the complicity of bishops in the cover up, to do anything else is simply reckless.
We owe it to innocent children and vulnerable adults to remember that motion doesn't equal progress, and that activity doesn't equal change.
(The bishops themselves admit they have no idea if their efforts are effective. On the USCCB web site, in an FAQ section, it asks: Does the Charter mandate an effectiveness or quality measurement? Their answer: the Charter does not require an effectiveness or quality measurement at this time. Whatever they're doing, they are NOT measuring effectiveness.)
Our position may seem odd. Again, a lot of energy has been focused on this horrific scandal. There have been mountains of paperwork, policies, procedures and press releases.
Has this affected performance? On the whole, we will assume not. We hope Catholics will assume not. And we beg you to assume not, we beg you to be cautious
Keep in mind that it wasn't a lack of paperwork, policies, procedures and press releases that caused thousands of priests to rape and sodomize tens of thousands of kids. So it won't be paperwork, policies, procedures and press releases that solve this crisis.
How can we claim that little has changed? Because history, psychology, common sense and daily anecdotal evidence are on our side.
History is on our side. History tells us that institutions change very slowly. This is especially true of very old, rigid, secretive, hierarchical, male-dominated systems. Only the most naive would believe that decades-old, maybe centuries-old patterns could possibly be dramatically changed overnight.
Psychology is on our side. Psychology tells us people change when they experience unpleasant consequences for their behavior. Bishops tell us that on the whole, donations aren't down, mass attendance isn't down, and seminary enrollment isn't down. We've seen not a shred of evidence that bishops are fundamentally suffering or being forced to change their lifestyles or are losing their power.
Common sense is on our side. Common sense tells us that if the upper management of an organization remains essentially intact after an enormous scandal, little will change. One or two bishops have fired their hardball defense lawyers. A few bishops have fired their PR person. Some bishops have died or retired. But the stability within the upper ranks of the church is remarkable. Basically, the same men are in charge now that were in charge 3, 5, even 10 years ago. How can anyone really believe things have changed much.
Daily evidence is on our side. Every day, we hear from survivors who continue to be treated insensitively. Every day, we see bishops parsing phrases and splitting hairs and playing word games, rather than just telling the truth. Every day, we see church leaders doing the bare minimum, instead of doing what Jesus would have us to, to reach out to the lost and wounded sheep. Every day, we see Catholic officials using Catholics' donations to keep long-secret documents about cover ups hidden from public view.
(This isn't, by the way, anecdotal evidence. It's hard evidence. It's in the newspapers nearly every day. Read the Abuse Tracker. You'll see it.)
There have, of course, been many bad headlines. A few dozen dioceses and their insurers have paid settlements. A few criminals have gone to jail. In the corporate world, the non-profit world, or the government world, this scenario often produces change. But the church, remember, is a monarchy. For the most part, monarchs are unaffected by bad press, some financial losses, and a few underlings being sent to jail.
So to lay Catholics today, we say withhold judgment, don't assume, be skeptical, stay vigilant, safeguard youngsters and demand reform.
Part 2
Our second message today is that much of what's being touted as reform is irrelevant or ineffective.
Let's start with the ineffective. There have been plenty. Putting windows in confessionals is one of my personal favorites. Is a window like this bad? Of course not. Is it effective at stopping a child molester? Of course not.
Every diocese in America last year was cited, even praised, by auditors for three examples of ineffective steps: employee codes of conduct, formal communications plans, and having a "point person" to take incoming abuse allegations.
Is there one priest who molested one girl because he'd never read an employee code of conduct telling him child rape is wrong?
Is there one bishop who covered up abuse because he'd never read a formal diocesan communications plan telling him to be honest.
Is there one father who kept quiet about his son's victimization because he couldn't determine who the proper church "point person" was who handled abuse allegations?
If we pause to really consider these seemingly positive steps, many of them are revealed as largely superfluous.
Now let's look at relevancy. Much of what's being praised as reform is, in fact, largely irrelevant.
Fingerprinting employees is good. Doing background checks is good.
But 99% of the people these affect aren't part of the crisis. They aren't now and never have been. They are lay people.
The crisis involves abusive clergy and complicit bishops, not lay people.
So literally 99% of those being fingerprinted and checked have never been part of the problem.
Consider this: because molesters are shrewd, laws are archaic, statutes are rigid, prosecutors are timid, and bishops are secretive - because of all this, very few priests are criminally charged. Even fewer are prosecuted. Even fewer are found guilty.
So a tiny number of priests will ever have criminal backgrounds that a background check or fingerprinting might detect.
If these steps - fingerprinting, doing background checks, training staff - if these steps had been in place ten or 15 years ago, would they have prevented kids from being molested or bishops from covering up the crimes? In a few cases, certainly. In most cases, they would not.
We're not saying these steps are bad. We're saying the opposite. These steps are good. But they are largely irrelevant to the crisis in the church.
These steps will no doubt prevent a few molesters from becoming parochial school teachers or bus drivers. But, again, they are peripheral, not central, preventing abusive clergy and complicit bishops from causing more pain.
Look at today's AP story. This is the lead, quoted verbatim: "The Boston Archdiocese has begun running annual criminal background checks on more than 60,000 priests, employees, volunteers to prevent recurrence of the clergy sex abuse scandal."
Think about this. Again, literally 99% of those being checked are NOT clergy. So how does this "prevent recurrence of the clergy abuse scandal."
It will prevent some abuse. It will have little effect on clergy sex abuse.
Fundamentally, our beef is not with some of the measures being taken. Our beef is with how church leaders are deliberately overselling these measures. They are washing the Pinto, vacuuming the Pinto, adding a CD player and an air freshener, and saying "Viola, now it's a Cadillac."
That's wrong. That's designed not to prevent abuse, but to prevent worrying. That's designed to bring complacency, not to bring reform.
But what about the Review Board and their "big stick," this once a year report on how bishops are doing? Isn't that a deterrent to backsliding?
Let's be real. After enduring dozens of scandalous media reports about horrific abuses, is any bishop going to change his behavior because he fears a headline that says "Diocese abuse training program is only 75% finished?"
The crux of the so-called accountability mechanism -- the Review Board and the so-called "audits" - is all carrot and no stick.
Here's the bottom line:
Even the best of these steps are belated, begrudging, and too premature to be called effective at this point.
Some of these steps help, but help just a little.
Some of these steps help, but almost strictly with lay people, not with priests and bishops.
Other steps don't help, and are distractions.
They can be dangerous distractions, especially when they are depicted as substantive reforms and thus lead to premature complacency.
Do these steps take away the power of bishops? No. That's what remains to be addressed -- the power and accountability of bishops.
Part 3
Our third message today is that the crux of this crisis fundamentally remains unaddressed.
At the risk of oversimplification, here's why all these crimes and cover ups happened. In five simple words: bishops have too much power. Period. They rebuffed victims, hid secrets, transferred predators, warned no one, evaded prosecution, and decieved their flocks . . . because they could get by with it. They have too much power. That has not changed.
And today - despite the lawsuits, the bad headlines, the flurry of activity, the policies, the procedures, and the paperwork - bishops still have too much power.
Does anyone in this room really think that Cardinal Egan's power to deceive has been curtailed because the Charter tells him he must have a diocesan communications plan that pledges openness?
Does anyone really think that Cardinal Rigali's power to ignore victims has been curtailed because the Charter tells him he should be more compassionate?
Does anyone really think that Cardinal Mahony's power to hide secrets has been curtailed because the Charter talks of transparency?
Does anyone really think that Cardinal George's power to keep an admitted perpetrator in active ministry around teenagers, as he did until we exposed him last week, does anyone really think that Cardinal George's power to reassign this predator has been curtailed by the Charter's vague assurances of zero tolerance?
So if the issue is power, and power hasn't shifted, what can be done?
How, in a monarchy, can power be taken away from men who abused and continue abusing it?
There are two simple, proven ways.
The first is legislation. We don't let Enron police itself. We can't let America's bishops police themselves. And the most important legislation is reforming the archaic, rigid and dangerously restrictive statutes of limitations. When sex crimes are handled by the independent professionals in law enforcement, not by bishops, everyone is safer.
The second is getting the names of the predators. Knowledge is power, and when we gain the knowledge of who's dangerous and who's been harboring the dangerous, then we can protect our families.
We in SNAP firmly believe that this is where the focus needs to be. If real change will ever happen, it will be because bishops lose the power to handle sex crimes in house and lose the power to keep the names of molesters secret. That's where our prevention efforts have been and will continue to be focused.
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
www.snapnetwork.org
Sorry for the lenght but it pretty much says it all
LASURVIVOR
_________________
Bring No Harm !
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:01 AM PST
Monday, 3 January 2005
The harm caused by Drug abuse
Mood:
on fire
Now Playing: Government promisess drug impacts
Topic: War on Drugs (and kids)
The reasons oft cited for choosing against casual drug use are loss of family, loss of income, damage to self respect and medical impacts.
If you are prosecuted for even a tiny amount of arguably harmless possession, the government will guarantee that these come to pass. They will isolate you and stigmatize your family, you will loose all economic status until the end of your trial / punishment, then you will be required to identify yourself as unemployable to any potential employer. You will be demeaned, humiliated, dehumanized and castigated as a debtor to society and exposed to the most violent and unmanagable cauldron of disease found anywhere on theis planet while incarcerated.
Risks of drug use? your government guarantees them! Rethink the cost of the inept "War on Drugs" who is benefiting?
Posted by springbrooke
at 9:37 AM PST
Tuesday, 13 July 2004
the RICO Petition
Mood:
on fire
Topic: Clergy Abuse
We are asking you to join thousands of other Americans and raise your voice. The Rico Campaign for Survivor Justice Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/qd3dvoo/petition.html will bring the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to accountability through a Federal RICO investigation. Please forward this information to your mailing list, colleagues, associates, family and friends.
The Rico Campaign for Survivor Justice Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/qd3dvoo/petition.html
Press Release
"Ex-Nun Calls for Rico Investigation of Catholic Church"
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/6/prweb134840.htm
Thank you.
Pauline Salvucci
CONTACT:
pauline@voicesofoutrage.com
Voices of Outrage: Where's the Justice?
http://www.voicesofoutrage.com
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing - Edmund Burke
Posted by springbrooke
at 10:51 PM PDT
Tuesday, 25 May 2004
Economics of the Drug War
During alcohol prohibition (1920-33) the United States changed from a beer and wine society to a bourbon and gin society. The reason? Alcohol prohibition created incentives for bootleggers to smuggle the most potent form of liquor possible. Like modern day drug traffickers, risk-taking criminal organizations were compelled to traffic in products that provided the most bang for the buck. Why risk smuggling a keg of beer when a case of whiskey brings higher profits without incurring additional risk? This phenomena explains why consumers in drug producing countries like Peru and Afghanistan typically use illicit drug crops in their natural form as they have for centuries (chewing of coca leaves and smoking of raw opium), while Western consumer countries consume drugs in their most potent form available.
In addition to promoting the smuggling of illicit drugs in their most potent form possible, the drug war's distortion of basic supply and demand dynamics renders otherwise worthless crops extremely profitable. Marijuana is a weed and grows like one. If legal, growing marijuana would be less profitable than farming tomatoes. Yet in major urban areas marijuana is worth its weight in gold at the retail level. The drug war essentially provides price supports for organized crime. Forcibly limiting the supply of drugs while demand remains relatively constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. Street level dealers and occasionally drug kingpins are routinely busted and incarcerated, but the long-term impact on drug availability is negligible. The obscene profits to be made trafficking and selling illegal drugs guarantees replacement dealers.
Ironically, the self-professed champions of the free market in Congress are either incapable or unwilling to apply basic economic principles to drug policy. This ignorance of economic forces, deliberate or otherwise, is not sustainable over the long-term. Despite a steady decline in violent crime throughout the 1990's, the U.S. now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with drug offenses accounting for the majority of federal incarcerations. The enormous cost associated with maintaining the world's largest prison system is often cited by drug war bureaucrats as reason to throw more money at the problem.
In January 2002 the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) trumpeted the release of a study titled The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States. The study tallies the cost of incarcerating drug offenders, supply-side eradication, the HIV epidemic, and prohibition-related violence. The total is then presented as "costs of drug abuse." Consider the HIV epidemic. Centers for Disease Control researchers estimate that 58% of AIDS cases among women and 36% of overall cases are linked to injection drug use or sex with partners who inject drugs. This easily preventable public health crisis is a direct result of zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean syringes. Yet government bureaucrats would have the public believe that, like the cost of incarcerating record numbers of drug offenders, this unintended consequence justifies more of the same harmful policies.
Using new accounting procedures in 2003, the annual ONDCP Drug Strategy, for the first time ever, concealed billions of dollars spent on incarceration, military activities and other costs of the drug war by excluding these categories from the budget and including inflated expenditures on treatment services. Through this ONDCP was able to bring their enforcement to treatment ratios more into line with public sentiment (two-thirds of Americans want treatment, not incarceration, for nonviolent drug offenders). In reality, however, America's drug policy uses millions of tax-payer dollars to perpetuate the same failed reliance on law enforcement and interdiction with relatively minor focus on education and treatment.
Posted by springbrooke
at 5:06 AM PDT
Wednesday, 19 May 2004
Survivors of sexual abuse by priests in living hell
IT consumed her entire life, the priest's hand on her body creating a permanent tattoo that penetrated deeply into her soul.
She couldn't concentrate on her work, and her business regularly faltered. Her sleep fragmented routinely under the weight of her nightmares. Memories of being sexually abused by a revered member of the local clergy haunted her, and they formed barriers between her and the church doorway, between her and relationships with men.
She developed headaches, muscle pains, stomach distress and chest pressure that defied repeated diagnostic divinations for physical causes. Well into her 40s, she felt that her life had been stolen from her decades earlier by the popular priest who repeatedly violated her young body.
The woman who told me this story is but one of thousands of adults living with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse suffered at the hands of Catholic clergymen in the United States. Two studies reported in the Washington Post on February 26 indicated that this current epidemic of child sexual abuse has involved at least 4 percent of all Roman Catholic priests who, between 1950 and 2002, allegedly victimized 10,667 children. And although already alarming, these numbers are considered to be underestimates because they depended upon self-reporting by American bishops.
Like many other victims of this pedophilia scandal, this woman bore her trauma in silence, unconsciously forcing her body to express the suffering she could not voice. The shroud of silence that characteristically drapes over this traumatic experience is a complex weave, but a central thread is the tendency of these victims to blame themselves. Victims often bear the stigma of shame, and they fear being rebuked and discredited if they dare to criticize priests for ungodly acts.
The health care system often fails these victims as well. Despite multiple presentations to the medical establishment with undiagnosable conditions, this woman never divulged her history of abuse with a doctor. No health care professional had inquired about that possibility until a gynecologic nurse practitioner presented her with a standard questionnaire soliciting Information about prior sexual trauma.
This deplorable pedophilia scandal should remind us all about the devastating long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse in general. It should rouse in us a compassionate awareness about the myriad difficulties that its victims may experience. As the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology points out, adults with histories of sexual abuse often manifest a host of psychological, behavioral, and physical symptoms. Physical complaints commonly include chronic pain syndromes, various gastrointestinal or musculoskeletal symptoms, sleep and eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction. Prevalent psychological and behavioral dysfunctions include depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, self-injury and dissociative states.
In the medical setting, I would argue in favor of all patients being queried about any prior sexual abuse and trauma. If we limit our screening only to people with symptoms that defy medical diagnosis, we will miss a great number of opportunities to identify victims of abuse who might benefit from therapeutic interventions. In fact, a study published in 1993 in the Journal of the American Board of Family Practice revealed that, when proactively screened, about 40 percent of women in a primary care setting reported having experienced some form of childhood sexual contact, and 1 in 6 of those women had been raped as a child.
Counseling and psychotherapy can prove to be a godsend for adult survivors of childhood sexual trauma according to Rosemary Ehat, a psychotherapist in Berkeley with an interest in the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. She reports that such survivors typically feel shame, guilt, self-loathing, and depression. She says that "rather than realizing that the shame belongs to the perpetrator, the survivor feels bad and somehow tainted. Consequently, some wait 10, 20, or even 50 years before breaking the chains of silence that kept them locked in isolation."
In addition to the physical and psychological expressions of their abuse, "these people also lose their religious and spiritual home" and "they go on with their lives but feel burdened by the secret and the feelings of betrayal and abandonment."
She also suggests that a healing and supportive environment may be found through participation in support groups like SNAP (Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, Web site: http://www.survivorsnetwork.org/
The alarming magnitude of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests as revealed in the new studies and the known high prevalence of abuse within the general public recommend that we vigorously speak out against this appalling and widespread crime. That we lend our voices to the victims, to help them break the silence that insulates them from opportunities for healing. That as health care workers we assume a proactive stance in remaining mindful of the ways that their suffering can be expressed, physically and psychologically.
As Ms. Ehat reminds us, "Lifting the veil of secrecy and cover-ups is the first step in bringing about both private and communal healing.
Kate Scannell practices medicine with Kaiser Permanente and authored the book, "Death of the Good Doctor."
Posted by springbrooke
at 12:19 AM PDT
Thursday, 25 March 2004
Eating fossil fuels
1998 - 2003? Copyright From The Wilderness Publications
[ Note: The most frightening article FTW has ever published is now a free story for all to read. Our paid subscribers read it last October. As Peak Oil and its effects become a raging national controversy it's time everyone reads the story that puts the most serious implications of Peak Oil and Gas into perspective. Your biggest problem is not that your SUV might go hungry, it's that you and your children might go hungry. What has been documented here is no secret to US and foreign policy makers as China experiences grain shortages this year and, as CNN's Lou Dobbs recently reported, the US and Canada will soon no longer be the world's breadbasket. - MCR ]
Eating Fossil Fuels
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
? Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact admin@copvcia.com. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for non-profit purposes only.
[Some months ago, concerned by a Paris statement made by Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton regarding his concern about the impact of Peak Oil and Gas on fertilizer production, I tasked FTW's Contributing Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer to start looking into what natural gas shortages would do to fertilizer production costs. His investigation led him to look at the totality of food production in the US. Because the US and Canada feed much of the world, the answers have global implications.
What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published. Even as we have seen CNN, Britain's Independent and Jane's Defence Weekly acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and Gas within the last week, acknowledging that world oil and gas reserves are as much as 80% less than predicted, we are also seeing how little real thinking has been devoted to the host of crises certain to follow; at least in terms of publicly accessible thinking.
The following article is so serious in its implications that I have taken the unusual step of underlining some of its key findings. I did that with the intent that the reader treat each underlined passage as a separate and incredibly important fact. Each one of these facts should be read and digested separately to assimilate its importance. I found myself reading one fact and then getting up and walking away until I could come back and (un)comfortably read to the next.
All told, Dale Allen Pfeiffer's research and reporting confirms the worst of FTW's suspicions about the consequences of Peak Oil, and it poses serious questions about what to do next. Not the least of these is why, in a presidential election year, none of the candidates has even acknowledged the problem. Thus far, it is clear that solutions for these questions, perhaps the most important ones facing mankind, will by necessity be found by private individuals and communities, independently of outside or governmental help. Whether the real search for answers comes now, or as the crisis becomes unavoidable, depends solely on us. - MCR]
October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately derived from the sun.
It would have been absurd to think that we would one day run out of sunshine. No, sunshine was an abundant, renewable resource, and the process of photosynthesis fed all life on this planet. It also set a limit on the amount of food that could be generated at any one time, and therefore placed a limit upon population growth. Solar energy has a limited rate of flow into this planet. To increase your food production, you had to increase the acreage under cultivation, and displace your competitors. There was no other way to increase the amount of energy available for food production. Human population grew by displacing everything else and appropriating more and more of the available solar energy.
The need to expand agricultural production was one of the motive causes behind most of the wars in recorded history, along with expansion of the energy base (and agricultural production is truly an essential portion of the energy base). And when Europeans could no longer expand cultivation, they began the task of conquering the world. Explorers were followed by conquistadors and traders and settlers. The declared reasons for expansion may have been trade, avarice, empire or simply curiosity, but at its base, it was all about the expansion of agricultural productivity. Wherever explorers and conquistadors traveled, they may have carried off loot, but they left plantations. And settlers toiled to clear land and establish their own homestead. This conquest and expansion went on until there was no place left for further expansion. Certainly, to this day, landowners and farmers fight to claim still more land for agricultural productivity, but they are fighting over crumbs. Today, virtually all of the productive land on this planet is being exploited by agriculture. What remains unused is too steep, too wet, too dry or lacking in soil nutrients.1
Just when agricultural output could expand no more by increasing acreage, new innovations made possible a more thorough exploitation of the acreage already available. The process of "pest" displacement and appropriation for agriculture accelerated with the industrial revolution as the mechanization of agriculture hastened the clearing and tilling of land and augmented the amount of farmland which could be tended by one person. With every increase in food production, the human population grew apace.
At present, nearly 40% of all land-based photosynthetic capability has been appropriated by human beings.2 In the United States we divert more than half of the energy captured by photosynthesis.3 We have taken over all the prime real estate on this planet. The rest of nature is forced to make due with what is left. Plainly, this is one of the major factors in species extinctions and in ecosystem stress.
The Green Revolution
In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.
The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6
In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:
? 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
? 19% for the operation of field machinery
? 16% for transportation
? 13% for irrigation
? 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
? 05% for crop drying
? 05% for pesticide production
? 08% miscellaneous8
Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.
To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer Institute (http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.
Of course, this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy requirements for modern agriculture.
In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.
Fossil Fuel Costs
Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.
Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country.12 As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.13
In 1994, David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro estimated the output/input ratio of agriculture to be around 1.4.14 For 0.7 Kilogram-Calories (kcal) of fossil energy consumed, U.S. agriculture produced 1 kcal of food. The input figure for this ratio was based on FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) statistics, which consider only fertilizers (without including fertilizer feedstock), irrigation, pesticides (without including pesticide feedstock), and machinery and fuel for field operations. Other agricultural energy inputs not considered were energy and machinery for drying crops, transportation for inputs and outputs to and from the farm, electricity, and construction and maintenance of farm buildings and infrastructures. Adding in estimates for these energy costs brought the input/output energy ratio down to 1.15 Yet this does not include the energy expense of packaging, delivery to retail outlets, refrigeration or household cooking.
In a subsequent study completed later that same year (1994), Giampietro and Pimentel managed to derive a more accurate ratio of the net fossil fuel energy ratio of agriculture.16 In this study, the authors defined two separate forms of energy input: Endosomatic energy and Exosomatic energy. Endosomatic energy is generated through the metabolic transformation of food energy into muscle energy in the human body. Exosomatic energy is generated by transforming energy outside of the human body, such as burning gasoline in a tractor. This assessment allowed the authors to look at fossil fuel input alone and in ratio to other inputs.
Prior to the industrial revolution, virtually 100% of both endosomatic and exosomatic energy was solar driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of the exosomatic energy used in the United States and other developed countries.17 The typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered societies is about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed countries, climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more than 90 to 1.18 The nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has changed as well.
The vast majority of endosomatic energy is no longer expended to deliver power for direct economic processes. Now the majority of endosomatic energy is utilized to generate the flow of information directing the flow of exosomatic energy driving machines. Considering the 90/1 exo/endo ratio in the United States, each endosomatic kcal of energy expended in the US induces the circulation of 90 kcal of exosomatic energy. As an example, a small gasoline engine can convert the 38,000 kcal in one gallon of gasoline into 8.8 KWh (Kilowatt hours), which equates to about 3 weeks of work for one human being.19
In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking).20 The U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks.
Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal per capita for the daily diet in the United States, the 10/1 ratio translates into a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic energy per capita each day. However, considering that the average return on one hour of endosomatic labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of exosomatic energy, the flow of exosomatic energy required to supply the daily diet is achieved in only 20 minutes of labor in our current system. Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to produce.
Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food.
Soil, Cropland and Water
Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.
It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.21 In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.22 Former prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the United States, have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about 100 years. This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation rate.23 Food crops are much hungrier than the natural grasses that once covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining topsoil is increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral depletion removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S. agricultural soils every year.24 Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.
Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging. On top of this, urbanization, road building, and industry claim another 1 million acres annually from farmland.24 Approximately three-quarters of the land area in the United States is devoted to agriculture and commercial forestry.25 The expanding human population is putting increasing pressure on land availability. Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available for the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar energy-based economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise limited. For this reason, the development of solar energy or biomass must be at the expense of agriculture.
Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources. Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.26 Overdraft is occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.27 The great Ogallala aquifer that supplies agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern and central plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter of decades.28
We can illustrate the demand that modern agriculture places on water resources by looking at a farmland producing corn. A corn crop that produces 118 bushels/acre/year requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of water during the growing season. The production of 1 pound of maize requires 1,400 pounds (or 175 gallons) of water.29 Unless something is done to lower these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to propel the United States into a water crisis.
In the last two decades, the use of hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet each year we lose more crops to pests.30 This is the result of the abandonment of traditional crop rotation practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land is grown continuously as a monoculture.31 This results in an increase in corn pests, which in turn requires the use of more pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had increased 1,000-fold even before the introduction of genetically engineered, pesticide resistant corn. However, corn losses have still risen 4-fold.32
Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.
US Consumption
In the United States, each person consumes an average of 2,175 pounds of food per person per year. This provides the U.S. consumer with an average daily energy intake of 3,600 Calories. The world average is 2,700 Calories per day.33 Fully 19% of the U.S. caloric intake comes from fast food. Fast food accounts for 34% of the total food consumption for the average U.S. citizen. The average citizen dines out for one meal out of four.34
One third of the caloric intake of the average American comes from animal sources (including dairy products), totaling 800 pounds per person per year. This diet means that U.S. citizens derive 40% of their calories from fat-nearly half of their diet. 35
Americans are also grand consumers of water. As of one decade ago, Americans were consuming 1,450 gallons/day/capita (g/d/c), with the largest amount expended on agriculture. Allowing for projected population increase, consumption by 2050 is projected at 700 g/d/c, which hydrologists consider to be minimal for human needs.36 This is without taking into consideration declining fossil fuel production.
To provide all of this food requires the application of 0.6 million metric tons of pesticides in North America per year. This is over one fifth of the total annual world pesticide use, estimated at 2.5 million tons.37 Worldwide, more nitrogen fertilizer is used per year than can be supplied through natural sources. Likewise, water is pumped out of underground aquifers at a much higher rate than it is recharged. And stocks of important minerals, such as phosphorus and potassium, are quickly approaching exhaustion.38
Total U.S. energy consumption is more than three times the amount of solar energy harvested as crop and forest products. The United States consumes 40% more energy annually than the total amount of solar energy captured yearly by all U.S. plant biomass. Per capita use of fossil energy in North America is five times the world average.39
Our prosperity is built on the principal of exhausting the world's resources as quickly as possible, without any thought to our neighbors, all the other life on this planet, or our children.
Population & Sustainability
Considering a growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population is projected to double by 2050. As the population expands, an estimated one acre of land will be lost for every person added to the U.S. population. Currently, there are 1.8 acres of farmland available to grow food for each U.S. citizen. By 2050, this will decrease to 0.6 acres. 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current dietary standards.40
Presently, only two nations on the planet are major exporters of grain: the United States and Canada.41 By 2025, it is expected that the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter due to domestic demand. The impact on the U.S. economy could be devastating, as food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S. annually. More importantly, millions of people around the world could starve to death without U.S. food exports.42
Domestically, 34.6 million people are living in poverty as of 2002 census data.43 And this number is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Too many of these people do not have a sufficient diet. As the situation worsens, this number will increase and the United States will witness growing numbers of starvation fatalities.
There are some things that we can do to at least alleviate this tragedy. It is suggested that streamlining agriculture to get rid of losses, waste and mismanagement might cut the energy inputs for food production by up to one-half.35 In place of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, we could utilize livestock manures that are now wasted. It is estimated that livestock manures contain 5 times the amount of fertilizer currently used each year.36 Perhaps most effective would be to eliminate meat from our diet altogether.37
Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel postulate that a sustainable food system is possible only if four conditions are met:
1. Environmentally sound agricultural technologies must be implemented.
2. Renewable energy technologies must be put into place.
3. Major increases in energy efficiency must reduce exosomatic energy consumption per capita.
4. Population size and consumption must be compatible with maintaining the stability of environmental processes.38
Providing that the first three conditions are met, with a reduction to less than half of the exosomatic energy consumption per capita, the authors place the maximum population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.39 Several other studies have produced figures within this ballpark (Energy and Population, Werbos, Paul J. http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm; Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel, David, et al. http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm).
Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, 40 that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41
None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.
Three Choices
Considering the utter necessity of population reduction, there are three obvious choices awaiting us.
We can-as a society-become aware of our dilemma and consciously make the choice not to add more people to our population. This would be the most welcome of our three options, to choose consciously and with free will to responsibly lower our population. However, this flies in the face of our biological imperative to procreate. It is further complicated by the ability of modern medicine to extend our longevity, and by the refusal of the Religious Right to consider issues of population management. And then, there is a strong business lobby to maintain a high immigration rate in order to hold down the cost of labor. Though this is probably our best choice, it is the option least likely to be chosen.
Failing to responsibly lower our population, we can force population cuts through government regulations. Is there any need to mention how distasteful this option would be? How many of us would choose to live in a world of forced sterilization and population quotas enforced under penalty of law? How easily might this lead to a culling of the population utilizing principles of eugenics?
This leaves the third choice, which itself presents an unspeakable picture of suffering and death. Should we fail to acknowledge this coming crisis and determine to deal with it, we will be faced with a die-off from which civilization may very possibly never revive. We will very likely lose more than the numbers necessary for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario, conditions will deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population would be a negligible fraction of the present population. And those survivors would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of their civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families. Those survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.
The questions we must ask ourselves now are, how can we allow this to happen, and what can we do to prevent it? Does our present lifestyle mean so much to us that we would subject ourselves and our children to this fast approaching tragedy simply for a few more years of conspicuous consumption?
Author's Note
This is possibly the most important article I have written to date. It is certainly the most frightening, and the conclusion is the bleakest I have ever penned. This article is likely to greatly disturb the reader; it has certainly disturbed me. However, it is important for our future that this paper should be read, acknowledged and discussed.
I am by nature positive and optimistic. In spite of this article, I continue to believe that we can find a positive solution to the multiple crises bearing down upon us. Though this article may provoke a flood of hate mail, it is simply a factual report of data and the obvious conclusions that follow from it.
-----
ENDNOTES
1 Availability of agricultural land for crop and livestock production, Buringh, P. Food and Natural Resources, Pimentel. D. and Hall. C.W. (eds), Academic Press, 1989.
2 Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis, Vitousek, P.M. et al. Bioscience 36, 1986. http://www.science.duq.edu/esm/unit2-3
3 Land, Energy and Water: the constraints governing Ideal US Population Size, Pimental, David and Pimentel, Marcia. Focus, Spring 1991. NPG Forum, 1990. http://www.dieoff.com/page136.htm
4 Constraints on the Expansion of Global Food Supply, Kindell, Henry H. and Pimentel, David. Ambio Vol. 23 No. 3, May 1994. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.dieoff.com/page36htm
5 The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use, and the Ecology of Agriculture, Giampietro, Mario and Pimentel, David, 1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm
6 Op. Cit. See note 4.
7 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page55.htm
8 Comparison of energy inputs for inorganic fertilizer and manure based corn production, McLaughlin, N.B., et al. Canadian Agricultural Engineering, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2000.
9 Ibid.
10 US Fertilizer Use Statistics. http://www.tfi.org/Statistics/USfertuse2.asp
11 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Executive Summary, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm
12 Ibid.
13 Op. Cit. See note 3.
14 Op. Cit. See note 7.
15 Ibid.
16 Op. Cit. See note 5.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Op. Cit. See note 11.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Op Cit. See note 3.
26 Op Cit. See note 11.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Op. Cit. See note 3.
31 Op. Cit. See note 5.
32 Op. Cit. See note 3.
33 Op. Cit. See note 11.
34 Food Consumption and Access, Lynn Brantley, et al. Capital Area Food Bank, 6/1/2001. http://www.clagettfarm.org/purchasing.html
35 Op. Cit. See note 11.
36 Ibid.
37 Op. Cit. See note 5.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Op. Cit. See note 11.
41 Op. Cit. See note 4.
42 Op. Cit. See note 11.
43 Poverty 2002. The U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty02/pov02hi.html
35 Op. Cit. See note 3.
36 Ibid.
37 Diet for a Small Planet, Lapp?, Frances Moore. Ballantine Books, 1971-revised 1991. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/
38 Op. Cit. See note 5.
39 Ibid.
40 U.S. and World Population Clocks. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
41 A Distant Mirror, Tuckman Barbara. Ballantine Books, 1978.
42 Op. Cit. See note 40.
The PARTY'S OVER
Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
By Richard Heinberg
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/store/books.html
Posted by springbrooke
at 1:04 PM PST
Updated: Thursday, 17 June 2004 6:10 PM PDT
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