Unconventional Sources

A note that makes me wish I were in California – and that’s a rare thing:

May 11-15 is California Bike Commute Week this year. That means that you’ve got less than two weeks to prepare for that week of bike commuting, so maybe you want to get a bit of practice in – a day or two of bike commuting between then and now.

Map out you route, and take a bit of extra time, and enjoy yourself. You’ll be saving money and helping the clear the air in the process.

Don’t believe the hype about the 2010 Pentagon budget. Right wing hawks are running around with their arms waving, panicking about how the military’s budget has been “slashed”. They remind me of Brer Rabbit, begging not to be thrown into a briar patch.

The truth is the proposed military budget for 2010 has a 4 percent increase – billions of extra dollars being spent. If that’s what a slashed budget looks like, I would very much like my personal household budget to be slashed, please.

If you want to understand what’s really going on with the military budget, for goodness sakes don’t listen to the party line talking points. Go read the Government Accountability Office Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, released just at the end of March – and then go see how many of the bloated, overdue, malfunctioning programs have been maintained, or even expanded, in the proposed budget.

As the economy gets worse, what we do not need more of is posturing by the national leaders in photo opportunities like the G20 summit. What we do need are strategies for learning to get by with less. Whether it’s by Bush or by Obama, stimulus is clearly targeted to help big banks and corporations. The rest of us are just supposed to live off the trickle-down kibbles from the fat cats’ banquet.

Here’s one tip: Leave your car in the driveway – or even sell it. Instead of burning up expensive gasoline every day, try using your muscles to move. Walk. Bike. Heck, skateboard.

Remember, your legs are designed to enable you to move, not just to tap acceleration and brake pedals.

While you’re at it, visit the National Center for Biking and Walking, and keep up to date with their activities in helping people promote a stronger place for pedestrians and cyclists in American communities.

It’s not just for our human economy that we need to learn to move again. Our planet’s biosphere is becoming a dangerously filthy place to live in, thanks to the pollution that comes from fossil fuels.

Get back on your feet. It’s a better way.

Americans’ annoyance at the proliferation of pubescent personal water craft has grown since the onset of the recession and the returned rise of energy prices. As the rest of America seeks to establish responsible energy conservation, saps on seadoos burn gasoline like it’s 1975, just to go riding around and around in circles. Jerks on jet skis pollute the air and water with their inefficient engines going just a mile or two per gallon. Egocentric, they drain the economy of its real strength, pouring dollars into preschool fantasies of listening to loud motors make a vroom vroom sound.

Public anger at the dangerous and dirty jet skis has been growing for years. More recently, there’s been a movement to ban jet skis, recognizing the unsustainability of the mostly useless mini boats.

The following video makes a personal point of criticism against the predominantly out of shape people who ride jet skis instead of exercising their own muscles:

One of the most under-reported stories of the economic recession is the role of military waste. Trillions of dollars are poured into the creation of immense, elaborate weapons that fail to actually benefit the American people. If this amount of money had been put into areas such as sustainable energy development instead, our nation might not be in a recession today.

One site, entitled simply Military Waste, does a good job of organizing information about the immense financial, environmental and human waste organized by the Pentagon. From the outrageous out-of-date F-22 Raptor to the neglect in the weak-skinned Humvee, Military Waste pulls no punches.

Grassroots International, based in Boston, Massachusetts, is involved in people’s struggles around the world. The group’s philosophy considers fair access to water, food and land as human rights, and focuses on supporting bottom-up political struggle as a means of securing those rights.

More than 86 percent of the organization’s donations go directly to the causes they support in places as far away as Eritrea and as close to home as the farms of the USA.

Some industry lobbyists are trying to argue that, since their bosses have messed up the economy, climate change is no longer an important issue that matters to the American people. Thanks to the people who organized the Capitol Climate Action today – a protest at a coal-burning power plant in Washington, D.C. They proved the industry lobbyists wrong – and proved that Americans can keep their eye on the ball. Economic recovery cannot come without environmentally sustainable energy reform. We can’t rebuild America’s engines using the same old dirty fossil fuels.

Given that President Barack Obama is supporting the hoax of “clean coal”, this message could not be more timely. We don’t need climate change – but we do need real change of the political climate in Washington D.C.

It’s become clear that alternate energy isn’t just good for the environment, it’s desperately needed for the economy as well. The fossil fuel economy has failed us, as stocks are crashing downward and foreclosures are rocketing upward. The Earth’s climate is careening on a helter skelter path of wild fluctuations that are sending natural ecosystems and human communities alike into crisis.

For too long, corporate right wing political leaders have pretended that nothing is wrong. They’ve left us a disaster of neglect and denial. It’s time to consider the alternative visions offered at AlternativeEnergy.com instead. Alternative Energy offers news and social networking centered around cleaner and more efficient ways to power our lives.

Well, you have a long time to prepare, it’s in September. But, I just love, love, love this idea, and I can’t wait that long to write about it.

The Bike Commute Challenge has a great strategy for encouraging people to take bicycles to work instead of driving. It encourages groups of people from the same workplace to sign up for the challenge, and then compete to see who can do the most commuting by bicycle.

“For health. For the earth. For fun. For glory.”

Glory be. The only problem I can think of with this web site is that it has a bias in favor of people who live further, rather than closer, to work. Maybe it could measure trips taken instead of miles ridden… except then it would have a bias in favor of people who live closer to work, and have an easy ride, instead of those who are really working hard to make a longer trip.

Well, these details miss the main point: However long you have to ride, please, just take your bike to work!

It’s a small service, really, but blogger Paul Dorn is assembling information from other sources at Bike Commute Tips. It’s a bit heavy on the quotes from other news sources, in my opinion, but useful nonetheless.

What I can’t believe from there is the article on how easy winter bicycling can be – from a newspaper in Boulder, Colorado, where the air is so dry that there’s hardly ever much winter precipitation – easy for them to say. It comes with a photo of the difficult winter conditions they have to deal with in California – fog. Have mercy!

For a more realistic, if not less adventurous, perspective on the matter, go take a gander at the winter biking tips from IceBike. That’s more like it.