Suppose that an oil catastrophe more than 30 times the size of the Exxon Valdez happened and no one noticed?

 

Well it did. In the Ecuadorian rain forest. For decades, Texaco is alleged to have dumped oil in pits across Ecuador. What would be fenced off superfund sites in the United States are stinky open oil pits that indigenous peoples live next to in Ecuador.

 

After first seeing the catastrophe, American documentarian Joe Berlinger was so aghast and ashamed of what Texaco did that he decided to film it. Those first clips turned into a 104 minute feature film called Crude, which documents the pollution and the class-action lawsuit brought by 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians against Texaco, and now its successor Chevron.

 

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger will appear at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Friday night, November 20, as part of the Hartford premiere of Crude. He will stay afterwards for a question and answer session.

 

Mr. Berlinger is crisscrossing the country promoting the new movie. He took a few moments Monday, November 16 to discuss the film.

 

Q: Crude spans years and many locations. It seems like it took a lot of persistence to make.

Berlinger: It took a lot of dedication. It was a really hard film to make. Making any film is an achievement. I hate it when reviewers flippantly rip things to shreds. I would like to see reviewers make a film. They need to show some respect that something got done.

This film was difficult to make. We filmed in brutal conditions. We were filming at the equator, and the 120 degree equatorial heat was oppressive. We filmed next to these massive pollution sites that would be fenced off in the U.S. These were superfund sites we could walk right up to and have a trial next to.

By the end of the day, you would have a wicked headache and your eyes would be watering. We filmed a mile and half from the Columbian border. There was a big dispute over the natural resources between Columbia and Ecuador, and it was militarized.

And of course that border dispute brings a criminal element, plus FARC guerrillas, drug runners and so on. I was concerned for my and my crew's safety. It was a malaria zone, too.

The worst thing was whenever we slept overnight in these indigenous villages, we would get these chigger bites. Chiggers are bugs that crawl into your feet and lay eggs. I still have scars that get inflamed.

 

Q: So why do the film?

Berlinger: I felt it was a moral imperative when I was shown this disaster. I was embarrassed to be an American that an American company was involved in this.

I am not smart enough to figure out the lawsuit. The film’s job is to present both sides. The reason I am comfortable with that – there is a moral bankruptcy to the whole affair. The lawsuit debates whether there was fraudulent remediation and whether the release Texaco signed with the Ecuadorian government prevents a third party from suing.

I can't sort through those issues and come up with an affirmative conclusion about the suit. But there is no moral justification for what Texaco did, even if they feel they have protected themselves from it.

It was shocking to me. One of the big failings of crude is its two
dimensional nature. The thing that I'll never forget, and there are a lot of arresting images, I will never forget the foul odor of the region and the foul odor of people’s water.

When you see the pollution with the naked eye, it is far worse. When you are looking at it from a 360-degree viewpoint, it is shocking to see what they have done to that part of the world.

 

An interview with Joe Berlinger, continued...

 

I hate cars. But cars are a fact of life in Connecticut. This should not be. But it is.

 

I moved to Hartford in 1998 so I could bicycle to work, and for years, I kept a calendar tracking car free days.

 

But now, I have a job requiring a 40-mile round trip commute. To find some peace within this tyranny of travel, after I wrecked my 1993 Honda Civic in October 2006 (working a different car-dependent job), I bought a diesel VW Jetta with the goal of using biodiesel to kick my addiction to foreign oil.

 

When Karl Benz invented the diesel engine, he envisioned a flexible fuel engine that could run on veggie oil, diesel or biodiesel. Biodiesel makes your car run cleaner (less frequent oil changes, etc) and you emit 70 percent less carbon.

 

The best part of this non-fossil fuel is that ordinary people can mix biodiesel in their garages with methanol, lye and used vegetable oil from restaurants. I hoped that a diesel car could help me attain fuel self-sufficiency.

 

While running with biodiesel doesn't eliminate traffic, or any government policies that slant the transportation system towards the automobile, the wealthy and the suburbs, biodiesel would make me feel better about not relying on war to get around.

 

Making a gallon of biodiesel costs about two dollars - a dollar for materials (equipment, methanol and lye) and a dollar for the labor. Building relationships with restaurants, collecting the veggie oil, filtering it, mixing it, cleaning up after the chemical reaction, and pumping it into your car all take time, which is money. This is all still cheaper than ExxonMobil’s sulfur-free diesel, which still spews mercury and Sox and Nox into the atmosphere.

 

Other biodieselers seem to handle the mixing and using of biodiesel without a problem. It seemed so simple at first that I dreamed of a bio cooperative where diesel drivers pool resources to insure a stable flow of clean fuel - a closed loop industrial process that recycles oil from local eateries and creates a few jobs, too.

 

But my bad car karma (or, my car-ma) has led to me to declare my experiments with the alternative fuel a failure.

 

The tribulations of my used 1999 Volkswagen Jetta TDI began with the engine being replaced under warranty in December 2006, two months after I bought it. In June 2007, my dad, trying to be a nice guy, accidentally filled my tank with unleaded instead of diesel.

 

Mistakes happen, so I can't hold that against my dad, especially considering that before graduating college, I totaled four of his cars – a '77 Chevy Nova, a '72 Dodge Dart, an '83 Ford Escort, and an '87 Firebird.

 

Obviously, that I am not the world's best driver contributes to my loathing of my dependence on automobiles. Yet I figured that making my own fuel might repair some of my bad car-ma.

 

So after paying a mechanic to drain the unleaded from my diesel, I started in earnest trying to mix biodiesel. A friend of mine has been mixing his own biodiesel for years, and I learned from him.

 

Adventures with Biodiesel...to the rest of the story...

 

The Earth cannot handle more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Currently, humanity has added enough CO2 to bring the content in our atmosphere to 389.42 parts per million.

 

On October 24, 2009, a worldwide day of action will address this crisis. See 350.org.

 

From December 7 through 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, world leaders will meet to decide on how to address the carbon crisis.

 

Yet federal, state, regional and local American democratic institutions, paralyzed by the influx of corporate cash, have been unable to address what some consider the most perilous threat humans have ever faced.

 

In the face of this crisis, some deny, some are paralyzed, some want to change the world, like the Al Gore and the Yes Men!, who both advocate civil disobedience.

 

The humble state of Connecticut, using legislative tools developed during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, could be a leader in addressing climate change. The law guiding state energy policy begins with Connecticut General Statutes §16a-1: "It is found and declared that a shortage of energy supplies and resources exists in the state."

 

This series of statutes allows the governor to declare an energy emergency if an impending shortage of usable energy supplies threatens the health, safety, or welfare of state citizens (C.G.S. §16a-2).

 

The law defines "energy resources" to include natural gas, petroleum products, coal and coal products, wood fuels, geothermal sources, radioactive materials, and any other resource that can yield energy (C.G.S. §16a-11).

 

Pursuant to this finding, the General Assembly created an Energy Emergency Plan, C.G.S. §16a-9, under which the Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management is able to ration oil and gas supplies.

 

At least someone in state government has some awareness of this oil emergency law, because on September 20, 2005, Principal Analyst Daniel Duffy from the state Office of Legislative Research prepared a report answering whether state law prohibits price gouging.

 

Duffy's response details the oil emergency plan. He noted that the statute was last amended in 1994, and it gives the OPM secretary the right to impose price restrictions on energy resources.

 

Someone read Duffy's report in 2005, when oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel, and then plain ignored it.

 

Although it was a Republican President in 1973 who dealt with the first oil embargo, a Republican governor – even one with stratospheric approval ratings – would not dare buck the Bush administration in 2005.

 

The political consequences of declaring an oil emergency to stop price gauging would have sent shockwaves throughout not just Connecticut, but the world.

 

An American state invoking fuel rationing independent of the federal government in Bush’s America? Unbelievable. It need not be in Obama's America. Connecticut has the power to start such a revolution. It chooses not to, of course.

 

Declare An Oil Emergency?...(link)

Marijuana is going to be legal in our lifetimes. If the Quinnipiac Poll is good enough to predict collective forgiveness of Jim Calhoun, then surely, the Q-Poll saying that 58 percent of Connecticut voters want to decriminalize marijuana can't be wrong.

 

And from this poll, we have an answer to one of the more trying questions of public policy right now: how to create wealth. While I think decrim is okay, we need to take it a step further and legalize it outright.

Legalizing the underground drug economy would bring hundreds of millions of dollars above the table, taxable, where now, millions of dollars pass through our state without regulation or taxation. I had an old friend tell me 15 years ago that marijuana would be legal the day that the government could make more money and advantage on it from taxation and regulation than from criminalization.

 

So, it appears that day has arrived, or is certainly around the corner. Consider that yesterday - March 18, 2009 - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder suggested he won't be prosecuting medical marijuana dispensaries in California.

 

The hour is upon us. This pot of gold awaits the first American city and state that make this policy change. For the first city that creates a three or four block red light district like Amsterdam, the value of being a pioneer is tantamount, and worth the equivalent of billions.

 

In our capitalistic culture, the sloppy second city that makes the change won't have the prize. Hartford is in a position to be first. And the red light district doesn't have to be the whole city. It need only be one small three block area.

 

People already think Hartford is a sink hole. But if the city, and the state do something radical and thought provoking, if we stands on the cutting edge of drug policy reform, we will be seen as a beacon. The value lies in breaking the ground, in being the first.

The Q-Poll is a stunning development from the inhabitants of the land of steady habits. We Nutmeggers should capitalize on this courage, and blaze the trail in the green economy. Connecticut can set the agenda for the policy, and invent the American model. The dollars and prestige from research and innovation that will come this way are unimaginable.

 

Not one state has legalized weed outright yet. California is close, because it sees the hemp dollars pumping into its economy, one of the world's largest. Marijuana increases real estate prices in farm country, it creates jobs, not just at urban dispensaries, but at rural farms, too. Connecticut must leapfrog ahead of California and be the first among the 50 to create a policy for weed like alcohol.

Link to the Green Economy, Q-Poll Style

Decades ago, Attorney Charles Hamilton Houston, who mentored Thurgood Marshall from young Howard University law student to NAACP super lawyer, called Marshall and his peers social engineers.

 

Today, the Echoing Green Foundation, a non-profit think tank dedicated to planetary preservation, calls people like Marshall social entrepreneurs. We might call them leaders or visionaries or innovators who perceive injustice, then develop plans and systems to address these needs.

 

Every year, about 1,500 or so idealists apply for a two-year, $60,000 grant from Echoing Green to pursue dreams that might one day end up as a Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation win Marshall argued before the Supreme Court he eventually served on.

 

Every year, only 20 people win Echoing Green Fellowships. It’s not quite the Nobel Prize, but I’d be pretty thrilled to win $60 grand to sink into my ideas.

 

Last week, two of those 2008 Echoing Green fellows were at UConn Law. One of them, Ben Smilowitz, is there all the time, because he is a UConn law student.

 

The other, Rafa Cancel-Vazquez, was visiting from San Juan, Puerto Rico at Smilowotz’s invitation to discuss his project, and more importantly, Cancel encouraged the small group of 30 law students in attendance to pursue their passions.

 

Smilowitz, from West Hartford, won his Echoing Green Fellowship for creating the Disaster Accountability Project, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to insuring that if a category five hurricane ever hits land again, the post-storm rescue, relief and rebuilding efforts don’t fail like those efforts in New Orleans for Katrina.

 

Cancel won his Echoing Green Fellowship for establishing Anda: the Asociacion Nacional de Derecho Ambiental, or the National Environmental Law Association. In Castillian Spanish, Anda means walk. In Puerto Rican vernacular, Anda means cool, good, right on.

 

As a law student at the University of Puerto Rico, Cancel saw no public interest environmental law firm existed in Puerto Rico. So, like a good social engineer, he started one.

 

"Two main experiences showed me the need for accessible environmental legal services: participating in a grassroots movement to end the U.S. Navy's bombing of Vieques, and my involvement in a community group against the cutting of 300 trees in an urban area," Cancel said at the Echoing Green website.

 

"In Vieques, I realized that a legal strategy is essential in producing social change," Cancel said.

 

Cancel was arrested for entering the Navy's bombing range on Vieques. Now that the Navy has stopped the target practice, the small island just east of the Puerto Rican mainland is full of toxins and cancer clusters. To clean it up, the Navy wants to burn the half of the island it polluted. Cancel and Anda are fighting against it.

 

To the Rest of Rafa Cancel-Vazquez's Dream of Anda ...

 

Green Hartford is upon us!

 

First things first: John Norquist, the former Milwaukee mayor who led the charge to demolish one mile of elevated highway slicing through that downtown will speak at the Hartford Public Library, 500 Main Streert, Tuesday, April 15 at 6 pm.

 

Second, biking - CCBA annual dinner Wednesday night at 6:30 pm at Adam's Mill in Manchester. Bike part II Thursday night at Hartford Public Library to give input on Capital Region Council of Government's bike/ped plan.

 

Next, acquire compact flourescent bumbs and energy saving lamps cheaply at a taxpayer-subsidized sale at City Hall Thursday, April 24, 2008 from 11 am to 6 pm.

 

Finally, a Keney Park Clean-up Saturday, April 26, starting at 9 am. Here's more from a City of Hartford’s Department of Health and Human Services news release:

 

"Earth Day Clean-Up Needs Your Help"

 

Various community organizations, groups and individuals will be joining the Department of Public Works this year in the 'Keep America Beautiful' Campaign on Saturday, April 26, 2008.

More on gloves and trash bags and why they're needed...

 

First time in a long time that I made first chair this morning at Mt. Ellen aka Sugarbush North.

 

We got rained off the mountain Saturday. The mountain website, which uses euphemisms like "non-crystallized precipitation" for such rain, on Sunday told would-be skiers to sleep in because the wind knocked down trees and the cold left a thick blanket of ice across the terrain.

 

So this morning, I knew I wanted to be there. On time. Here are a few more photos of cold and some greenwashing, too.

Link...

 

Sunday evening, I needed a bicycle ride after spending a beautiful spring day inside working on law school homework. So I pedaled straight west on Farmington, then buzzed UConn Law School and pointed to the burbs on Fern Street.

 

The goal was to see how far I could get in 30 minutes. Once I crossed Prospect, I noticed it was trash day, and after about 10 minutes, I spotted an oriental rug that looked worth salvaging. I bolted home and grabbed my camera and messenger bag.

 

The trash we discard tells much about our society, and gives us an idea of what small actions we can take to reduce the waste that enters into our trash streams, all of which ends up either back in our air, as electricity or as ash on Mount Trashmore in Hartford's North Meadows.

 

So, in honor of Earth Day, here is a short photo essay on what we throw away.

Link...

 

"This is a call to action for Connecticut Citizens," the flyer breathlessly read. "Our goal will be to 'Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050.'"

 

Saturday afternoon, about 200 hardy souls dedicated to that goal of planetary preservation gathered at the northeast corner of Bushnell Park for a Step It Up rally, one of almost a dozen across Connecticut and one of 1,400 across the country.

 

Considering that there were Step It Up events in Enfield, New Hartford, and Portland, the turnout for Hartford was good. Participants could learn about biodiesel, clean energy, or buy compact flourescent lightbulbs for $1 apiece.

 

As I watched the woman sell the lightbulbs seemingly by the case, I pondered the theory of diffusion of innovation, which posits that social movements occur in five phases: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%).

 

And I wondered, with regards to clean energy and global warming, where are we on the chart?

Link...

 

Riding my bicycle through Hartford, I sometimes spy litterbugs in action. If I can, I confront the perpetrator with the potato chip bag (or worse). This crusade may result in my untimely demise, but I hate litter.

Recently, I spotted a hand tossing a cigarette butt out a red pick-up truck stopped at the intersection of Main and Buckingham. I pedaled up to the culprit at the wheel, a hard-hat worker. Our interaction went something like this:

Link...

 

W ay back, last fall, when Thornton for Governor ruled my existence, a crew of Green campaigners joined a team of Trinity College students for the Connecticut River Watershed Council's 10th annual Source to Sea cleanup at the Park River over by New Britain Avenue in West Hartford.

I wrote a column about it way back when, but never really followed up and described what we ended up doing.

In my mailbox today, I saw the CRWC's newsletter detailing the trash hauled from the mighty Connecticut by 1,685 volunteers at 68 locations from northern Vermont to southern Connecticut.

Yikes is all you can really say when you read the list.

Link...