The beautiful Zoology building at UC Berkeley - after this week, it is my firm belief that the world would be much better off if everyone had a science degree.
Sorry it's been a little while everyone; I fear my posts will become more widely spaced now that things are really picking up. Although the quantity of posts will be lower, my hope is that the quality of each will be better as things get more exciting with each passing week. I should post a disclaimer though: this particular entry is a garbled mix of political and cultural observations. I've had lots of great thoughts today, but I've struggled to make them cohesive at this late hour.
The Front Page
This campaign is becoming a real nail-biter. . . which, for those who know me well, spells disaster for the appearance of my hands. Proposition 23 made the front page of the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17pollute.html
I think it's a great article, and it's already received over 200 comments. One of the most interesting came from a man here in San Francisco:
California faces a dilemma: Should it behave like an advanced first world nation, which it is, or should it join the third worldish, retrograde culture of the rest of the US, an emerging third world nation? While Stanford and Berkeley jointly are host to over 50 Nobel Prize winners (an astonishing contradiction in a nation where most people can’t find England on the map), the rest of the US ponders whether global warming exists or evolution has any validity (while at the same time benefiting from the advances in medicine that would not have been possible without a fundamental understanding of evolution). Unless northern California, Oregon and Washington state secede and become independent, they will be dragged down into misery by the rest of the US, whose culture, outside a few islands of enlightenment on the east coast, differs little from that of the most retrograde Islamic countries of the Middle East.
- Dominga Travella, San Francisco
This is perhaps a little melodramatic, but he makes several points that aren't too far off the mark.
Tea Parties and Retrograde Motion
The left and right of the U.S. political spectrum become more distant from one another by the day. The country still leads the world in innovation because of the masses of money available for research and development, however this money is still sourced from a pocket of American society where capitalism and fundamental religious beliefs are inextricably linked. In this poor economic climate, these right-wing, old money communities have the power to rally strongly and thus the Tea Party Movement is stronger than ever before.
Case and point: Christine O'Donnell just won the Republican primary election for the open Delaware senate seat. She wasn't expected to, but Tea Partiers rallied hard and won. Ms. O'Donnell didn't complete her undergraduate degree in the early 1990s because she defaulted on her tuition payments, which her University sued her for and won. Following that, she became the president of a religious organization that advocated against masturbation, biblically equating it with adultery. She has argued that the sexual revolution of the 1960s led to the AIDS epidemic, and that a literal interpretation of The Bible's Book of Genesis should be taught in schools.
I would hope that we have no one in the House of Commons with this background, however I'm not so up-to-date on my Canadian politics! The bottom line is that fundamentalism is gaining ground in Republican circles down here, and it is a very, very scary thing.
I had an adorable older lady come into the office the other day to pick up a yard sign, and she said, "It's a pity we have to work so hard to keep things from getting worse, when there's so many other things that we need to fix already." Coming from a woman who has lived through World War II, the civil rights movement, and the digital revolution, this comment really resonated with me. Change can happen, but it is slow, and often times things get much worse before they get better.
Talking to Americans
In that vein, being down here has gotten me really excited to go back to Canada and create change there where things aren't nearly so messy. From Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans, I had the inkling that our country registers pretty low on the horizon of the average Yank, but I've been slightly horrified to discover the extent to which this is true. My supervisor - an educated, aware 27-year-old - had no idea what Canada's political situation was, let alone who our prime minister is. The more unsettling thing is that this ignorance not only applies to us, their northern neighbor and biggest trading partner, but to every other country in the world. The most I've discussed global issues in the past two months has been with my visiting Canadian friends.
We had twenty people come in to the office this evening for an information session about the campaign and to phonebank with us. They were all shocked to learn that AB32, the global warming law threatened by Prop 23, is the most aggressive law of its kind in the world.
As part of the information session, Claire and I shared our "personal stories" as they're called by organizers; these are just little anecdotes about why we're doing this work. You'll see politicians use these all the time to connect with their audience and show that they're real people, and by golly they work! Mine starts like this: "I come from a country that won't take any serious steps towards addressing climate change until the U.S. does, and this is the reality in many other countries around the world."
At this, the Californians sitting around me looked at me with wide eyes. A few nodded in agreement, but most said, "Really? Well why are you taking a lead from us, things are so screwed up down here!" or "Oh that's so depressing!" The reality is that most Californians don't understand the power that their state has both within their country and the world. Most of them are just regular people living regular lives, with too little time or energy to be active in political and environmental realms. This has certainly been a sobering realization, and has shrunken my world view immensely. Although it will be challenging, perhaps through this campaign some Californian's will become more aware of their role as global leaders.
Talking Business
In a pleasant surprise, the oil industry has come out somewhat divided on Proposition 23. Although many companies are supporting it with millions of dollars, Shell is actually opposing the Prop. As I recall from a giant advertisement in the Queen's University athletics center depicting a futuristic city full of alternative energy sources, Shell is working to rebrand themselves as environmentally conscious and progressive much as BP was endeavoring to do with their Beyond Petroleum ad campaign. Chevron has also decided to remain neutral on the issue, likely because they've already gotten lots of bad press in the last few years in California over pollution law violations.
This divide is exciting; it's exposing those corporations who are truly invested in maintaining the status quo to secure profits. It's all laid bare in this "leaked email" from the National Petroleum Refiners Association to its members:
http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=4512&ptid=9
As a science student I am a perennial skeptic, and don't know if this is real or not. Several lines are utterly ridiculous and pretty funny, such as:
"We’ve raised about $6 million so far, but unfortunately in California’s expensive media market this is not enough to win the fight against environmental zealots led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who seems hell-bent on becoming the real-life Terminator of our industry."
If this is real, I find it mind-boggling that these are the billionaires controlling U.S. politics. But, going back to Ms. O'Donnell's win, I guess these people are alive and kicking out there. I have yet to figure out how to interact with them when I meet them, as I'm sure I will at some point this year.
That will be a life-changing experience in itself.
Sign-Off
If my observations or rambling commentary bored anyone this entry I apologize! Stay tuned for the next post, it's guaranteed to be more exciting. I'm attending a big party at the Chabot Space Center next Thursday for the Union of Concerned Scientist's campaign against Prop 23, and we're holding a massive rally at the Berkeley Valero station next weekend where two local government candidates will be our featured speakers. We're expecting TV news stations to cover it which is exciting.
I better work on my TV smile. . . the last time I was on camera was for a high school quiz show.
Happy back to school and back to work; the weather's wonderful here but I do miss those chilly autumn breezes - they always signaled months of great potential.
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