A fascinating new alternative energy concept is being promulgated in the scientific community right now: the methanol-based economy. Its leading proponent is Nobel Laureate Dr. George Olah, originally from Hungary (he sounds a little like Bela Lugosi). He and his fellow researchers have developed a methanol fuel cell that can create electricity and, when reversed, will in turn convert industrial carbon dioxide into liquid methanol. Think about this: A viable fuel cell that will convert the destructive greenhouse gas CO2 into liquid methanol. Consequently, methanol doesn't require vast tracts of agricultural crops for its production. Put simply, it can be synthesized.

Moreover, methanol has none of the formidable safety, storage and conversion problems of hydrogen as a potential public transportation fuel. Methanol, Olah states, also has the chemical properties necessary to make it an alternative resource for all the industrial products now currently developed from hydrocarbons. This is a huge plus.

But don't take my word for it. Olah's new co-authored book on all these ideas is Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy. You can also hear his recent interview on NPR's Science Friday (with a rather antsy host) at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369301

This guy is really, really smart, and his ideas are well worth pondering and discussing.

Progressively,

Mac McKinney

Ralph Nader is challenging the new CEO, Rex Tillerson, to change Exxon/Mobil's arrogant and destructive ways, now that Lee Raymond, the oil industry's version of Caligula, has departed. Of course, one can help to convince Exxon of the need for contrition by boycotting their products and service stations. See:
www.exposeexxon.com

Here is Nader's letter:

An Open Letter to New Exxon/Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson

The Corporate Superpower of Superpowers

By RALPH NADER

Mr. Tillerson:

You have to be feeling pretty good about your new position heading the world's largest oil and gas company. You stand astride the globe where, with few exceptions, the Congress is like putty in your hands, the White House is your House and the consuming public is powerless. Governments in the Third World may huff and puff, but Exxon/Mobil pretty much gets its way in dozens of arrangements completed and about to be concluded.

Giant Wakeup Call!

The same fear and propaganda campaign that led us into Iraq is now going into high gear against Iran. Trousered ape John Bolton is now calling the situation with Iran a nuclear 9/11. How's that for a little hyperbole? See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11849446/

For an outstanding analysis by Juan Cole of this campaign, also see: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060313_fishing_for_a_pretext_in_ir...

So I guess Bolton means the Iranians are going to fly nuclear bombs into the Empire State Building, whether before or after Godzilla storms ashore in Brooklyn I don't know. So faced with the imminent Hollywood destruction of New York City, probably any week now, the Bush Administration will just have to preemptively strike again, or so the psychotic fantasy goes. And there goes the planet, impoverished, poisoned and tortured with another devastating war. And this one will likely send oil prices into the stratosphere.

The results of the largest ever national mercury hair sampling have just been released and they ARE SHOCKING: one out of five women of childbearing age has unsafe levels of mercury in her body. If you are a woman and pregnant, or have sisters or daughters in this situation, stop or have them stop eating all fish products immediately. You or they quite likely need to do a heavy metal detoxification. The effects of mercury on a human fetus are potentially devastating, including neurological damage and gross deformity. I am not exaggerating. I have seen the heartrending photographs the photojournalist Eugene Smith took of the human consequences of industrial mercury poisoning in the local Minamata, Japan, water supply in the 1970s. After thirty years, the images of these Japanese mothers' shattered children still haunt my memory. Do not let this happen to you and your children!

How many of you have read the article posted on our website this Wednesday entitled "The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years" by James Lovelock, the maverick British scientist who first developed the Gaia Theory? For those of you who haven't heard of the Gaia Theory, it is the proposition, now widely accepted in many, though not all scientific circles, that the Earth is a living superorganism that consciously monitors and regulates the environment, atmosphere and climate to maintain optimum conditions for life.

But Gaia is not invulnerable. Lovelock has warned in the past that the massive imbalances that industrialized, technological civilization is creating with almost total disregard for Gaia's forests, mountains, oceans, plants and animals has now eliminated much of the resources Gaia employs to regulate the biosphere and atmosphere.

Calls for impeachment, by public figures, of both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have begun, inspired by the recent, disquieting revelations of massive government spying on American citizens by the Pentagon, the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA). Bush's authorization of NSA spying without obtaining the required court-warrants is the most egregious example and is considered a felony offense. For Nader's article, see:

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader12242005.html

Progressively,

Mac McKinney

A few days ago, the outcome of the Montreal Climate Summit looked grim. The American delegation was trying to throw king-sized monkey wrenches into the discussions, staging a walkout and working behind the scenes to dissuade other delegations from taking part. Things seemed to be unraveling. At the last minute, however, Bill Clinton popped out of a rabbit's hat, so-to-speak, to throw a monkey-wrench of his own into the Bush delegation, giving a rousing, well-received speech in defense of the Summit's goals and principles while openly criticizing the Bush Administration as dead-wrong on global warming.

You would think that after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma that Exxon/Mobil, the oil lobby and their pseudo-think tanks would at least pause to reflect for one minute whether the sizable damage to their oil rigs and refineries may have just a tiny bit to do with global warming. Well, you might as well be waiting for Godot. These morons are as predictable as sharks in the middle of a school of tuna and equally ravenous. Now they are launching a campaign to derail the Kyoto Protocol and any meaningful efforts to counter global warming and greenhouse emissions in the European Union. For the full story on this, see:

I need to shift the topic to politics, because the political dynamic in America impacts the entire planet and almost every facet of our lives. For humanity to survive the next decades somewhat intact, it is imperative that progressive forces replace the neanderthal, anti-life forces embodied by the Bush Administration and Right-wing dominated Republican Party. However, as I write, senior Republicans are brain-storming how to reverse their declining fortunes as of late. Believe it or not, one of their brain-flatulations is that another 9/11 attack would reinvigorate the Bush White House. This is according to the Washington newsletter, "Capitol Hill Blue", dated Nov 10, a few days ago. The website is:

I have been wondering at the apparent contradiction between China's great strides in industrialization and economic growth, and the glaring disasters that China will face environmentally if they continue on the traditional Communist model that ignores the environmental consequences of such growth. I thought, how can they be so successful with their economic strategies and so damned oblivious to destroying China's biosphere? Or are they really?

For I also knew that China has become open to progressive environmental influences, and that Chinese scientists and various institutes had actually agreed on a collaboration project with the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, based at the University of Vermont (see: http://www.uvm.edu/giee/), and whose mission is to "transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to address the complex interrelationships between ecological and economic systems in a broad and comprehensive way." To put it another way, the Gund Institute is a powerful proponent of Green Economics. This project took place this last Spring in China and was apparently a success. How much this has impacted Chinese official thought I have no idea. Perhaps other readers know more. But I got a big surprise when I read Tuesday that China now intends to invest 180 billion dollars in renewable energy resources over the next 15 years! This of course dwarfs the paltry sum Washington has voted to actually invest in renewable energy.

Not everyone in Establishment circles is brain-dead, gone fishing or bought off. There is a hard-core of intelligent individuals who know drastic change is needed. Roger Morris, an elder statesman-type figure in Washington political circles, with respected credentials in journalism and academia, has gotten together with Steven Schmidt, one of the founders of the American Green Movement, to draft a strategic vision for the 21st Century that is well worth taking a look at. It is a long document, and I have only superficially read it, but this is precisely what we need to see happening on the national discourse level now, an intelligent alternative to the mindless miasma that currently "disserves" us as a poor imitation of a strategic blueprint. Some kind of progressive manifesto that a rather rudderless intelligentsia can rally around is needed right now, and this draft may be a good starting point. Roger's email address is also provided at the end, so one can actually dialogue with him. The draft is at:

Some of us have suspected this all along, and now the FTCR (Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights) has proven it: they have uncovered internal memos from Exxon/Mobil, Chevron and Texaco that show how they have intentionally reduced domestic refining capacity to drive up profits and push independent refiners out of business. For the FTCR article, see:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/pr/?postId=5110&pageTitle=Interna...

This website links to actual copies of the incriminating memos. Are there any lawyers out there who want to look into class action lawsuits? We have to use the legal system as a tool for confronting these vampires. It will undoubtedly take a powerful legal stake driven right through their corporate hearts to free us (and them) from their dark ways.

While we are duly concerned about all the negative consequences of fossil fuels and related problems such as global warming, I think we tend to overlook that there are a lot of individual scientists and researchers out there who are hard at work to come up with renewable energy sources as well as the equipment and machines to create and sustain them. We have to begin with what Nikola Tesla posited a century or so ago, that there is abundant energy within our own atmosphere, in the form of electromagnetism, that can be tapped for our electrical power needs, even our transportation needs. Over the years various individuals have explored his ideas and inventions, and expounded upon new ideas as well, in attempts to bring his vision of abundant energy to fruition. I believe we are getting closer all the time. A recent article I read in Nexus Magazine, Issue Vol 12, No. 4, entitled "The Free Energy Race" by Jeff Sargent, discusses some of this progress.

I was somewhat dismayed to hear a NOAA scientist today, who was being interviewed by NPR, when asked if he felt that global warming was causing intensified hurricane seasons, pretty much boohoo that idea while simultaneously saying that other factors, such as warming waters, etc., etc., were much more significant. So, I'm thinking, dah, what do you think is causing warmer oceans? I had to think, did he really even say that? I'm pretty sure he did. So how can he not correlate the obvious? Well, he works for the government, so have we reached the point where government scientists don't dare put two and two together? Is NOAA now compromised too or are they just plain doctrinaire?