Sherry Chandler

In response to some recent posts here on the blog, our intrepid poet/publisher Charlie Hughes has run some numbers of his own:

This morning I’m reading about Google who has announced that it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop renewable energy as part of a plan to help clean the environment and reduce the company’s own electric bill. “Solar isn’t currently cheaper than coal,” Google co-founder Larry Page said. “That’s the point of this — to get it there.” Google named the project RE<C, short for Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal, and hopes to benefit from cheaper electricity by reducing the costs of running its vast electricity-hungry data centers.

I realize that just moments ago I turned up my thermostat a couple of degrees, and now I’m wondering how this translates into harm to the environment. What if everyone in the country turned up their thermostats two degrees. How much coal would that consume? How much environmental harm would that do? I’m sure somebody somewhere has done that calculation in regard to CO₂ emissions, or global warming, or mercury emissions, etc. Not having the necessary facts, I can’t do the calculations. I’m not willing to say though, that my two measly degrees will produce no effect.

Many people, including many of Kentucky’s legislators, are evidently of the opinion that puny little man is incapable of altering the environment of the Earth, as gigantic as it is. I think the reason is that we humans are incapable of grasping the enormity of the situation. We can’t, for example, grasp the enormity of the national debt. Likewise, are incapable of doing the proper mental gymnastics to understand our effect on the environment. To that end, and since we Kentuckians know pickup trucks, here are a couple of calculations I’ve done, based on readily verifiable facts, which will be enlightening:

1. Each day year-round in Kentucky more than 1000 tons of explosives are used in coal mining. If this quantity of explosives were loaded into pickup trucks it would produce a convoy more than 10 miles long every day of the year.

2. In 2005 Kentucky coal production was 125 million tons. This rate of coal production would fill about 685,000 pickup trucks each day, and would produce a pickup truck convoy about 3,000 miles in length every day of the year. (If proper spacing for moving vehicles is allowed, the covoy would reach from New York City to SanFrancisco, every day.)

And these calculations apply only to Kentucky. West Virginia and Wyoming each produce more coal than Kentucky, not to mention other coal-producing states. Who among us is willing to say that burning this much coal has no effect on the environment? Not me.

With a P.S.:

If a baby is born every 8 seconds in the US, that’s 10,800 babies each day. This corresponds to a convoy of baby buggies with mothers more than 10 miles long each day.

And a P.P.S.:

29,569, the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004

Lay these bodies end-to-end. 32 miles. Lexington to Frankfort.

…Or

Let’s all go on a shopping spree.

From the NYTimes:

MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 26 — Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close.

…

“It kind of spirals,” [Greg Bryant, director of the food pantry in Sheffield, Vt,] added. “The people that normally donate to us have less, the retailers are selling to discount stores because people are shopping in those places, and now we have less food and more people. It’s a double, triple, hit.”

The Vermont Food Bank said its supply of food was down 50 percent from last year. “It’s a crisis mode,” said Doug O’Brien, the bank’s chief executive.

For two weeks this month, the New Hampshire Food Bank distributed supplies reserved for emergency relief. Demand for food here is up 40 percent over last year and supply is down 30 percent, which is striking in the state with the lowest reliance on food banks.

“It’s the price of oil, gas, rents and foreclosures,” said Melanie Gosselin, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank.

Ms. Gosselin said household budget squeezes had led to a drop in donations and greater demand. “This is not the old ‘only the homeless are hungry,’” she said. “It’s working people.”

Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of Arizona, agreed, saying: “The overall picture is that household incomes are kind of stuck. There’s very little way to increase income, and most people have a very heavy debt load. Any event that increases your costs is really, really troublesome, because you’re already stretched thin.”

From “Brother Can You Spare A Dime,” lyrics by Yip Harburg, 1931:

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

And from “We’re in the Money,” lyrics by Al Dubin, from Gold Diggers of 1933

We’re in the money, we’re in the money;
We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!
We’re in the money, that sky is sunny,
Old Man Depression you are through, you done us wrong.

We never see a headline about breadlines today.
And when we see the landlord we can look that guy right in the eye

We’re in the money, come on, my honey,
Let’s lend it, spend it, send it rolling along!

P.S. Time’s Joe Klein attended a Republican focus group during the debate the other night. Here’s what he saw:

In the next segment–the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee’s college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants–I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, “After all, these are children of God,” the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s).

Link from Political Animal.