Journal of Appropriate Technology IN VolumeVI No.4 January 1980 $1.50 NoAdvertising Doing More with MORE, p. 16 Owner-Builders Reconstruct the Code, p. 4 Population? ... or People?, p.19
Page 2 RAIN January 1980 Dear RAIN, This is in regard to your review of "Fast Foods Will Make You Sickly Quickly" in July 1979. I hope the rest of this letter shows a better knowledge of nutrition than . the quote you printed. "The moisture content alone in fast food . .. ranges from 44 to 62 percent, which almost qualifies them as beverages." The implication I get from this quote is that this high a moisture content is either bad for a person or ripping a person off. Checking out the moisture content of other foods, you will find that this percentage is low: e.g., asparagus, 91.7%; mung sprouts, 88.8%; sweet cherries, 80.4%; hard-cooked eggs, 73.7%; tofu, 84.8%; peas, 83.3%. These foods are generally considered good for a person but come much closer to being bev,erages than fast foods. In the November RAIN we accessed The Least Is Best Pest Strategy and neglected to note that it was edited by Jerome Goldstein, who also published it. Another observation to be made is that the difference in moisture content of a vegetable or fruit is not all that great. The difference between being solid and being a beverage is more a matter of form than moisture content (this is based on my glancing at percentages-not sure if nutritionists agree), e.g. : Raw Juice Apples 84.4% 87.8% Apricots 85.3% 84.6% Blackberries 84.5% 90.9% Tomatoes 93.5% 93.6% Another observation to be made is that substances with low moisture contents may or may not be good for oneself. Legumes, nuts and grains all have low moisture contents, but so do candies (0. 9-17.3 %), sugar (powdered O. 5 % , while honey is 17.2 % ) or cake icings (11.1 %-17.9%). As far as I'm concerned, the quoted critiWin, the weekly magazine from which we excerpted Vicki Barnett's "Changing the American Way of Work," is located at 503 Atlantic Ave., 5th floor, Brooklyn, NY 11217, 212/624-8337. (Subscriptions $15/year.) Win has been providing excellent coverage of nonviolent social change efforts here and abroad for almost 15 years. RAIN cism of fast foods is not valid and any other statements in the reviewed article should be checked with sources to make sure they are valid. Sincerely yours, Ronald Ekberg P.S. The human body is 60-70% water, which makes each of us even more of a beverage than'fast foods. -The fault is in my review, not in the Caveat Emptor article, which was not dealing in water content of foods as such but rather food laws and marketing practices that define excessive levels of allowable moisture and encourage the watering-down of foods. It's similar to the situation with Ivory Soap, where there is so much air foamed into the bar of soap that you pay over $3 per pound for the soap you get, while other soaps cost $1.19/lb. Pretty expensive air!_:_ Tom Bender Our apologies to Gerri Traina, who authored the Women and Solar half of "Pulling Together'' last month and was not credited. Gerri wanted us to note that many of her ideas were outgrowths from the Sydney Oliver speech she excerpted. The complete text of Sydney's talk will be printed in the "Women and Energy" issue of Quest: a feminist quarterly, 2000 "P" St. N.W., Suite 308, Washington, DC 20036. Journal of Appropriate Technology RAIN is a national information access journal making connections for people seeking more simple and satisfying lifestyles, working to make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, building a society that is durable, just and ecologically sound. RAIN STAFF: Carlotta Collette, Mark Roseland, Pauline Deppen, Jill Stapleton·, Kiko Denzer, Dawn Brenholtz, John Ferrell RAIN, Journal of Appropriate Technology, is published 10 times yearly by the Rain Umbrella, Inc., a non-profit corporation located at 2270 N.W. Irving, Portland, Oregon 97210, telephone 503/227-5110. Copyright © 1980 Rain Umbrella, Inc. No part may be reprinted without written permission. Typesetting: Irish Setter Printing: Times Litho Cover Photograph: Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society
Running on Empty: The Future of the Automobile in an Oil-Short World, by Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin and Colin Norman, 1979, 116 pp., $7.95 from: W.W Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10036 When Ivan Illich wrote his classic essay Energy & Equity a few years back he argued that Western nations, the U.S. in particular, shouldn't want ever-increasing forms and speeds of transportation, especially automobiles, because of the global and domestic inequity their production and use both requires and perpetuates. Now these researchers from the Worldwatch • Institute inform us that, whether we want to or not, we are going to have to make some pretty serious changes regarding automobiles and our use of them. A critical factor in this analysis, o{ course, is the escalating cost of gasoline resulting from diminished oil supplies. "In the United States, it now costs about $20 to fill the tank of a standard American car; five years ago it cost less than $10, and five years hence it could cost $50." For a variety of technical and economic reasons, alternative fuels and electric cars will not have a significant impact in the next few decades. Rather, the'key to the automobile's immediate future is the development of vehicles with greater fuel efficiency-60 to 80 miles per gallon is within the range of modern technology. "Billions of dollars have been lavished on highways, parking facilities, and other developments to encourage the use of automobiles; support for alternatives such as buses, trains, mopeds and bicycles has been minimal by comparison. In an oil-short world, these alternatives to the automobile will be essential to preserve, and in some cases increase, personal mobility." If you want to buy this book and save yourself some gas money at the same time, you can get the 64-page report the book is based on directly from the Worldwatch Institute (1776 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., ;~·· ·'.:·~· ".·. i, ; . ~-,.r. Washington, DC 20036) for $2.00. Also, if you're in the market for a used car, I just happen to be unloading one . . . - MR Why Trade It In?, George and Suzanne Fremon, 1976, $5.95 from: Liberty Publishing Co. 50 Scott Adam Rd. Cockeysville, MD 21030 This is the kind of guidebook we need more of! It doesn't tell you a thing about repairing your car, but it does something equally important. It lays out the economics, based on considerable experience, of maintaining your present car indefinitely rather than replacing it (with a cost savings of up to $1000 per year). It goes on into the ' savings to our economy ($21 billion per year of human effort that could go to other things). But most importantly, it tells you how to keep your car going reliably for years and years-explaining how long various parts usually last, which ones cause unexpected breakdowns and should be replaced preventively, and which ones give a warning as they wear out and can be kept in use until then. It explains simply how rusted bodies can be repaired and repainted, and at what cost; that seat covers last up to six times as long as the original seats; why not to buy a rebuilt carburetor, etc. One thing it doesn't do is warn you about one of the biggest scams in the repair business-"book prices.".If you go into a car dealer's service department, they will quote you (or bill you) from a book that supposedly gives the average time needed to do the repair, not the actual time spent The rub is that the time figures are inflated so much that almost any mechanic can do the job in one-half the listed time. The last time I had to ha_ve a specialized repair done at a dealer, they started to bill me from the book for 2½ hours, then in the nickof time realized that I was there picking the truck up qnly an hour after I had left it off. Ralph Nader, get to work on this one. -TB January 1980 RAIN Page 3 TRANSPORTATION; Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow, Dee Brown, 1977,.$12.95 from: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 383 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10017 Why are Americans still unable to run It reasonable train system? Perhaps it has to do with lack of practice. Dee Brown's absorbing his_tory of frontier railroads shows how our ancestors got us off to an unpromising start by turning construction over to promoters whose primary concern was the creation of lucrative private fiefdoms, backed with generous grants of public land and money. According to Brown, their roads • were often laid out in helter-skelter fashion, with more thought given to speculative potential than to meeting any real transportation needs. By the 1880s, when western settlers began to understand this and express their anger politically, the nation was already saddled with what the author terms "the most absurd railway system in the world." Nonetheless, Brown gives full credit to the technological ingenuity evidenced in the building of the transcontinental train system; and his book also provides fascinating glimpses of frontier life in the era of railroad boom towns and the waning Plains Indian culture (which died in large part from changes brought by the railroads). In one poign.,ant anecdote, Sitting Bull is invited to ~peak at a ceremony marking the completion of the Northern Pacific route and takes the occasion to bitterly denounce land thieves and liars. An Army officer transforms his remarks into "English metaphors of benevolent hospitality" and he receives a standing ovation from the assembled crowd. It is apparent from this book that he deserved a better translator. -JF I'
Page 4 RAIN January 1980 Ow-ner• Builders Reeollstruet • the In May 1979 I traveled to Salem with a friend, Jonny Klein, totestify before the Senate Committee on Housing ,and Urban Affairs on Senate Bill 921, the Owner-Builder proposal. Jonny and I live in Josephine County, in southwestern Oregon, and we a·re members of the county-wide Building Safety Advisory Committee, which drafted the bill. , There are four major building codes in current use in the United States. Each is a thick book, writt~n in technical and legalistic language, setting minimum standards for new construction. They tend to be written by professional building inspectors and oriented to standard materials and methods of construction. The state of Oregon has a tradition of pioneer self-reliance and opposition to governmental interference. When I moved here ten years ago, there were no building codes at all in the rural area where I live, nor in most of the state. However, Oregon is currently also one of the fastest growing states in the coun~ry, and builders of large.unregulated developments engaged in ~hoddy buildip,g practices in the late '60s and early '70s. As a response to this, the 1973 state legislature adopted the Uniform Building Code, written by the International Congress of Building Officials, as a building code governing all new construction in the state. In our county people didn't like, and don't like, the idea-of govemrrie.nt officials coming on our land and telling us how to build our buildings. The situation rapidly became extremely heated because, at the same time that the state adopted the Uniform Building Code, Josephine County, for reasons I cannot imagine, adopted the Uniform Housing Code and the Uniform Code for the Abatement of Dangerous Buildings as county ordinances: These codes, unlike the UBC, set standards for all buildings, those presently in existence as well as those being constructed. They also give'building inspectors the authority to enter any building whenever they feel it is necessary. A lot of people here, from many different backgrounds and economic levels, were angry. For a while it seemed that each day brought a new story of some outrageous thing the building department had done. There was the couple who bought an old log cabin, planning to fix it up, went back to Los Angeles to get their things, and returned to find the cabin red-tagged. (That is, tagged with a sign saying that the premises are dangerous and one is forbidden to enter.) There was the farmer who had cut and peeled the poles to .Code build a pole-frame barn for his cows, and found a building official demanding to inspect him. (Under the present interpretation of the law, that wouldn't happen-currently all agricultural buildings in the state are exempt from permits and inspections.) There was the man I talked to who had come home from work at night to find the place he was currently living in red-tagged. At the worst point, about a hundred buildings in the county had been red-tagged. Local neighborhood groups had been forming in our county even before building codes became such a hot issue. Calling themselves "community associations" or "town councils," they defined a geographical area they thought of as their community, elected representatives, held monthly meetings, and sentletters to local, state and tedera1 authorities, asking to be consulted and informed about what "".as going to happen in their neighborhoods. They were later recogmzed by the county as part !)f the citizen input process mand~~ed by the ~tate Land Conservation and Development Commiss10n, but at fust they were informal, self-generated, and not very welcomed by the county government. . When the county fin~lly scheduled"a hearing a thousand people show~d up for t~e meetmg at the fairgrounds. This was during workmg hours, ma county of 50,000 population! They scheduled alternate speakers, for and against the codes, until they ran out of "pro" speakers. After a few hours the Board of County Commissioners said they had heard.enough, they had changed their minds, a~d could they please go hom_e now. "No," people said, "we came here to tell you how we feel and we want you to listen."
. As a result of that meeting, and other meetings like it, and all the local discussions that went on, we saw some real results. On at least some issues, if enough people get angry enough and involved enough, they can make a difference. The Housing Code and Dangerous Building Code were not re-adopted. A new administrator was hired for the county Building Departme.nt, and the behavior of the Building Department changed in many respects. Jhe new building official invited groups from all parts of the county to send tl;i.eir . chosen representatives to a county-wide committe_e which would meet monthly to work.together with the Building Department and advise it on matters of policy and practice. The Owner-Builder Proposal Our committee dealt with many subjects. It worked on developing a county policy for agricultural buildings, and one for seasonal dwellings. New departmental policies were developed regarding the behavior of building inspectors-they were required to send notice by mail before making inspections, and to leave someone's property if asked to do so. , • One of the major issues of concern, for many of the people in the county, was that of owner-built housing. We felt that someone who is building her own home which she intends to live in should be free to build to suit her own tastes and needs. Owner-built housing can cost much less than standard housing. Owner-builders can experiment with innovative methods that c·ould not be used on the mass_market. And many owner-builders plan to build a house they January 1980 RAIN Page 5 will live in for the rest of their lives-why shouldn't they build· exactly as they please? The situation is different when a contractor is building a·home for a purchaser who is not present and able'to look out for her own interests-in that case there is an argument that_ can be made for the building codes as a form of consumer protection. - Thi~ was not an issue that co{ild be dealt with by a local policy. We would have to go to the state legislature. We would have to deal with all the objections that are raised when you suggest exempting owner-built dwellings from the building codes. What about safety-suppose someone builds a fire trap? What if the neighbors object to the way the building looks? What if the owner-builder eventually wants to move and sell his house? Suppose an unscrupulous contractor uses this as a way to build substandard housing to sell to unwary customers? We didn't ask for a la~ that would exempt all owner-built dwellings in the state from the state building code-we asked only for a law that would give each county the power to exempt ownerbuilders if it wished. Each county could choose in which part of the county the law would apply, and it was intended mainly for rural areas, where houses aren't that dose together and people don't care that much what their neighbor's house looks like. Under the proposed law, owner-built dwellings could not be exempted from the entire building code. They would still have to meet all standards for fire egress, fire retardant and sinoke detectors. All structural members would have to meet maximum bending stress standards as set by the structural code. All energy conservation and insulation requirements _would have to be met. Any plumbing and electrical work that was done woul.f! have to meet their respective code standards. So what do you get? Undet this proposal an owner-builder /L------t\'r-"'"-ttiwould be exempted from all the many tiny detailed standards that are specified in the structural code. For.example, she would be free of the stal}dards that set the exact minimum width for a staircase and the distance a handrail must be from the wall. She could decide for herself how far apart the shakes will be set on her shake roof. °'=='"'-~::l-------1==ltfl She would have the right to use recycled building materials for everything except the structural members. C(Nlt.
Page 6 RAIN January 1980 Ow-ner---Builder eont. She would be exempt from the requirements of the structural c9de with regard to ceiling heights, room sizes and maintenance of specific temperature levels in those structures. Since owner-builders do sometimes move and an owner-builder may someday choose to sell her house, we said that owner-builders would still be required to get building permits', pay fees, and be inspected. The building inspector would record any ways the building differed from code stand!irds and give a copy of this record to the owner-builder. The owner-builder would be required to give a copy of this notice to the county clerk, who would file it with the deed. This protects any purchaser-he knows what he's getting. If the owner fails to give proper notice, the purchaser has the right to call off the deal. And the owner-builder exemption can only be used once in five years by any person-this prevents a crooked contractor frnm using it. We were trying hard to draft a moderate proposal, one that would appeal to any reasonable person. We presented the proposal to the J3oard of County Commissioners, won their approval, and with their support sent it to our legislative representatives Rep. , Cecil Johnson and Sen. Debbs Potts, to be introduced into the 1979 legislative session. Working with the Legislature I was surprised and pleased by the way the Senate Committee on • Housing treated us. The atmosphere was different than what I had expected. The legislators were more intelligent, and mare like ordinary folks, than I had expected. I had thought the legislators would be hard to persuade, and we would have to have our supporters . write lots of letters and work hard to explain our point of view. Instead it seemed that the legislators aheady understood our point of view and had been thinking some of the same things themselves. It was as if they welcomed our suggestions. The vice-chairperson of the committee, Senator Wingard of Eugene, is a builder by profession, and he clearly had already thought a good deal about the deficiencies of the codes. The building officials present at this hearing did not perceive our proposal as a moderate one. A written statement put out by the Oregon State Building Officials Association says in part, "Both SB 889 and SB 921 create a method by which a person who intentionally wishes to 'beat the system' and who knowingly constructs the building wrong (does not meet minimum.e,stablished and recognized code standards) may legally do so. This does not help the citizens who really do need and appreciate the assistance that their local building department provides but does encourage, endorse and legalize the 'bunko' construction artists, Williamson gangs and those who would perpetuate substandard 'schlock' upon the face of Oregon." [Italics theirs. What is a Williamson gang, anyway?] ... "More and more lending institutions now insist upon code compliance and inspections as a requirement of their loans and involvement. Why ern;:ourage, legalize and endorse substandard worthless construction? ... A better s,olution would be to offer free permits to In .our county . people don't like the idea ofgovernment offi~ials telling us how to build our buildings. 1 people doing work of a limited nature so that they would at least have the benefit of p~ofessional help on their project." [Free permits for low-income owner-builders. That's an interesting idea:] The building officials at this hearing expressed their disapproval of the owner-builder proposal so strongly that one of the committee members felt obliged to remind them that it is the legislators and not the civil servants who are supposed to set policy. He said, "We like this bill. We intend to pass it out of committee. Now you help us do it right." , This hearing was the first time I've ever had the experience of the men up there in the seats of power being on my side. Maybe it won't be the last. Senate Bill 921 passed the Senate unanimously. It went to the House Committee·on Housing and Urban Affairs. At their hearing one committee member asked how come we had asked for so litle. The bill passed the House by a vote of 55 to 5. It was signed by Governor Atiyeh and is now law in the state of Oregon. Readability of Codes Another issue the 1979 Legislature worked on was the readability of building codes. As one staff analyst to the committee put it, "The state building code is a reknowned repository of technical informa- .tion which is as incomprehensible as it is inaccessible to anyone ' other than the professional specialists who produce it and use i.t." The committee at first proposed simply that each published code should have a Flesch Reading Ease score of 60 or higher. (The Flesch score is one of several standard measures of readability-basically it means that you write in short sentences and try to use short
words rather than multisyllables.) Many objections were raised-'- one of them the added expense of such a projec;:t.1 The codes were run through a computer to determine if it's possible to convey all this technical knowledge in readable English. (It is.) The final law,· which was passed by the State Legislature, provides that the Department of Commerce shall collect donations from interested citizens, in order to pay the cost of publishing the One and Two Family Dwelling Code and the One and Two Family Electrical Code at a ninth grade reading level. The Department shall inform interested citizens about the'project through public service announcements and other nominal cost advertising. When I first heard about this proposal I thought it was a ~onderful·idea. So truly Oregonian, so responsive to the needs of the average citizen. Why hadn't I thought of it myself? When I talked informally about the project with an administrator in the State Building Code Division, soon after the law became effective, I found that his response was far otherwise. Since the Legislature had passed the law, he was probably going to have to carry it out-or at least go through the motions-but he sure wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. One of the continuing problems in any work on reforming building codes is that the people who carry out the codes in practice are insulated from public opinion. The Oregon Legislature passes a law-then, after a six-month session, it disbands for a year and a • half. The legislators go back to their homes and their regular jobs. The bureaucrats who carry out the laws that the Legislature has passed have their own opinions about what should be done. Someone who is building her own home which she intends to live in should 1;,e free to build to suit her own tastes and needs. I think the present state of affairs is that the Legislature has passed the legislation, but it will take a lot of prodding to get the Department of Commerce to act appropriately. Write Jane Huston, 428 Labor & Industries Building, Salem, OR 97310. ' Changes in Advisory Boards The Legislature.also discussed changes in the procedure for the adoption and amendment of the codes. At the present time they are adopted by the Director of the Department of Commerce upon the January 1980 RAIN Page 7 advice of the respective advisory boards. The Structural Co-de Advisory Board, for example, is quite powerful; it amends the Structural Specialty Code and is the final avenue of appeal on any matters related to the Structural Code. Its membership according to law "shall be broadly representative of the industries and professions involved in the development and construction of buildings includi~g representation from building code enforcement agencies, architectural and engin•eering associations, building construction trades, the contracting and manufacturing industries, govem,ing bodies of local governments, fire protection agencies and the general public." There is at present one representative of the general public on an eleven-member board. Every member but one comes from the urban and urbanizing corridor that runs from Portland to Eugene. Broadly representative? The Senate Committee on Housing proposed to create a new Building Code Board of seven members, one from each of the four congressional districts in the state, and'three from the state at large At least two members would not be involved in construction or the building trades, and no more than two members would have the same trade or profession. This reasonable proposal, according to a committee staff member, was opposed by "current advisory board, ·fire prqtection, and trade interests. "·It didn't even _make it out of committee. Conclusions The problems that we find in dealing with the issue o'i building codes are the same problems we find in many other parts of our society. The manufacturers of building materials and other people with a direct economic interest in what building codes say put plenty of money and time and attention into a wording that is favorable to their intere~ts. No one who represents the average person with a paramount interest in low-cost housing, or the innovative builder with a paramount interest in freedom, is"out there lobbying with equivalent time and resources. And though the legislators I met were intellig~nt and responsive beyond my expectations, they only write the laws. The people who put the laws into effect are highly specialized, highly salaried, permanently employed people, and there is at present very little in the structure th.at surrounds them to make them responsive to the needs of the person who intends to build for himself. On the other hand, the situation isn't hopeless. In our county, ~hen enough people got angry enough, we definitely produced real changes. The State Legislature,is beginning to address these questions. At present Josephine County is drafting an owner-builder ordinance and Lane County is informally studying ways of implementing Senate Bill 921. ' There's still a lot of work to do. These-changes in the laws are •only one part, and not the most important part, of the changes that I think need to happen. We need a change in attitude on the part of building officials and building inspectors, so they are more respon-
Page 8 RAIN January 1980 The Sun Betrayed: A Report on the Corporate Seizure of U.S. Solar Energy Development, by Ray Reece, 1979, 234 pp., $5.50 from: South End Press Box 68, Astor Station Boston, MA 02123 If the appropriate technology movement is to come cl;ser to realiz- . ing its full potential in the 1980s, then a lot of us are going to have to read this book. If you've been wondering why solar is still being treated as an exotic and expensive energy source that won't be "viable" until the year 2050, why federal R&D money goes to Exxon and ARCO and Westinghouse rather than small entrepreneurs and solar inventors, or why the U.S. government hasn't • made solar energy development a top priority, then let Ray Reece explain it to you. His book is a lucid, well-researched, extensive'ly documented account of the corporate attempt to control the sun. Solar energy development in this country mus{ be underst~od in the context of U.S. energy_poJicy, as outlined in the "National Energy Plan" announced by Carter and passed by Congress in late 1978. "The solar function will be shaped," writes Re.ece, "so as not to inhibit a projected growth in elecrical power generation from 14 percent of the nation's total energy supply-the current figure-to as much as 60 percent by the year 2000." As Barry Commoner described it, the plan "represents the biggest intensification of control over the economy of the U.S. by big corporations that we have seen in our lifetime." . The fo'ilowing paragraphs are from The Sun Betrayed: • -crucial plank in the corporate en€rgy platfmm; while we don't mind importing a certain amount of OPEC oil-the "world market" price of which will enable us to inflate the price of our own . oil-we don't want to be so dependent on it that we couldn't fight a· war without it. Nor do we want to import so much that it wrecks our balance of payments. We are advised, therefore, to level off our long-term demand for petroleum-while not of course hindering economic growth requiring more fuel-by installing a massive grid of coal and nuclear generating plants. tovoltaic cells, ocean thermal generating plants, and giant expensive. windmills. Third:· minimize corporate risk in the evolution both of solar technologies and mark~t opportunities, which suggests a program-of heavy government subsidies and a willingness to let small companies assume as many of the early market hazards as possible. Fourth: mesh the burgeoning solar market into the larger corporate market by absorbing small successful firms (or their ideas), emphasizing mass production, and ph1cing distribution under the control -ere, briefly stated, are the major principles in the corporategovernment approach to solar energy. While it is doubtful that they existed in laundry-list form at the outset, they nonetheless emerge <!,gain and again throughout the process of developing a solar program: First: control the pace at which solar power becomes a viable force in the energy market, allowing time to maximize profits from fossil fuels and to consolidate the expanded electrical grid based on coal and nuclear power. Second: emphasize those applications of solar energy which are most compatible with the present system of capital-intensive, centralized power facilities, meaning primarily an emphasis on solar-electric concepts such as the power-tower, phoOwner-Builder eont. sive to real needs in the situations they are confronting, so they act as a service profession when that is appropriate, and not always as an enforcement organization. Maybe we need to pray foz: the perfect enlightenment of all building inspectors. And everyone else too. • Contacts Elaine would like to hear from other people who are_interested in building code reform, especially from Oregonians who would like to work on passing a local owner-builder ordinance in their county, also what your experience with building inspectors and'the codes has been. Write her at: OWNER-BUILDER 9335 Takilma Rd. Cave Junction, OR 97523 of utility companies. Fifth: deter the public from identifying solar energy as a possible means of altering the present economic and geopolitical structure of the United States (small is not beautiful). A sixth principle, by which the other five are made possible, is one which governs the more general corporate energy strategy as well: .centralize control over U.S. energy decisions in a single, easy-toreach place, e.g. a cabinet-level·department. Out-of-staters can send her a self-addressed stamped envelope for copies of the bills. This work has been done on the proverbial shoestring. We've prob- . ably spent $200 on drafting and lobbying for SB 921-almost all of that was for gas to go to meetings and hearings. If anyone can afford to make a donation to this project, or can suggest possible sources of money, please write me. Mailing List: I'm putting together a·maili~g list of people who are interested in further developments. Send your name and address and a small donation to cover costs. Copies of the Bills: Oregonians can get copies of these bills by calling 1-800-452-0290. Ask for SB 889 A-Engrossed and SB 921 A-Engrossed. The bill creating a Building Code Board, which didn't pass, is SB 888-if you're interested in that, ask them to send you all the different versions.
- is a dimension of the corpcirate solar Strategy to prevent a rush of public demand for solar power, especially of the so_rt which le~~s itself to decentralized applications, until the corporat10ns and ut1h- . ties have (1) completed the expansion of their nuclear/coal-electric grid, (2) negotiated the profit potential remaining in fo~sil fuels,_ and (3) hardened their control over .the neophyte solar industry itself. - he real solar threat to the utility industry is those applications which cannot be centralized. . .. Thus, in approaching the incipient national market for solar heating and cooling (SHAC) systems, America's electric utilities, with EPRI [Electric Power Research Institute].at the fore, have been obliged to wear the same two faces • they wear in relation to other applications of solar power, nam~ly to impede the growth of that market while appearing to promote 'It ~n~ gearing up to coritrol it. _ • - h e Wall Street Connection: :,he m~re obvious it becomeS:,o America's investment community that Fortune 500 corporations with nuclear and fossil interests are assuming control of the solar market, both sanctifying and defining its future, the more willing-is that community to finance the process. - ot only have .Wall Street corporations thoroughly "penetrated" the U.S. solar market through intracorporate diversification ("cross-subsidization"), extensive government subsidy, and the purchase of smallerfirms, they have organized a solar industries association [Solar Energy Industries Association] clearly devoted to , building a solar market that wip be compatible with the larger aims and "hard-path" energy goals of the corporate elite in general. While it would be impossi~le to calculate the market strength thus accumulated by the l_arge corporations involved, there is mounting ·evidence to suggest that in less than five years they have concentrated sufficient control over the solar industry to' squeeze out smaller competitors and effectively prevent the entry of others. • .all Street participation in commercial solar energy development . .. [is] a signal that small-scale solar energy m the hands primarily of small producer~, aiming at decentralized, de~ocrati~, and maximally efficient applications., has been strangled m the cnb. After that rather depressing corJclusion Reece goes on to describe the work of community-oriented self-help projects, for it is these kinds of efforts that will make solar energy a powerful force in the movement toward community self-determination; "It is only in , conjunctio11_ with local and regional solar development initiativesafter almost a decade-of.federal involvement in solar R&D-that anything close to the potential of small-scale applications developed by small producers for the commonweal of the community has be.en realized." -MR • - \ January 1980 RAIN Page 9 Reaching Up, Reaching Out: j1 Guide to Organizing Local Solar Events, Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), 1979, 208 pp., $6.00 from: Superintendent of Documents U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, DC 2040~ Stock No. 061-000-00345-2 Much to my surprise, there's a lot of valu- , able stuff in this book. The "events sampler·" consists of 15 case studies of successful solar.events, complete with good tips and lessons learned; the ''organizing primer" has a wealth of basic, valuable information; and the last section is a resource guide. Numerous graphics and spacious layout make the book easy to read-in fact, it has the appearance of a children's book. -• The "team" that put the book together is composed entirely of women, and its key members "came to SERI with a background of participation in community, state, or regional solar activities." Several of the graphics depict women doing.solar construction. The book is not copyrighted, and its title page says, "In the spirit of solar energy development, material contained in this book may be reprinted freely with· proper credit." Still, it's bewildering to see this guide to local solar organizing ''published by the market development and communication branches of the commercialization division" of SERI. SERI is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by the Midwest Research Institute. The Midwest Research Institute is one of seven or eight national //nonprofit research institutes" (others include the Mitre Corporation, the Rand Corporation, Battelle Memorial Institute, Stanford Research Institute, and the Bechtel Corporation) whose primary occupation, according to Ray Reece (see review of The Sun Betrayed), is "government funded research on behalf of the U.S. corporate class, particularly the military-industrial complex." (The director of SERI, solar activist Denis Hayes, has as his boss Energy Secretary Charles W. Duncan, Jr., former Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration.) Denis, I wish you luck!-MR Legislators to Write: . • Senator Ted Hallock is the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs. He seems to be a person who can use his anger at illegitimate abuses in our society· to good effect. Write to him at 2445NW Irving St., Po~land, women's issues. She is a ni.ember of the House Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs. Write to her at 2680 SW Glen Eagles Rd., Lake Oswego, OR ~7034-.· . . . - I think our legislators would welcome specific, carefully worked out proposals for changes jn the codes or their administration. The building code is such a tec,Jmical subject that few legislators can master ~di its intricacies, putting them at a disadvantage in dealing with building officials. Many readers of RAIN are familiar with the technical aspects of the codes. Why don't you think about what changes you'd like to see-thinki:qgr.in practical terms, thinking about it from th_e. point of view'df the legislator asking what changes are pohhcally possible at present. Put your thoughts on paper and send copies to these legislators. Send me a copy too. OR97210. _ Senator George Wingard is the vice-chairperson of the Senate Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs. He is a builder by profession and has a professional builder's gr~sp of the • technicalities of the code. Write to hi~ at 2323 Fairmount Blvd., Eugene, OR 97403. - · Joyce Cohen is a freshman legislator who carried the· owner-builder proposal on the floor of the House. She comes from a rural background, so she has some sympathy and understanding for tha't point of view, and she also is sensitive to
Page 10 RAIN January 1980 (...__M_O_N_EY_ _) • Economic Concentration, John M. Blair, 1972, $18.95 from: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 757 Third Ave. New York, NY 10017 The increase of corporate economic concen-• tration in this country in spite of repeated co~gressional efforts at trust-busting and regulation of corporate mergers has led to a sense of futility and frustration as the effects of that concentration have become more visible. The detailed. loQk Blair gives us of the forces leading to that centralization and those opposing it; how the different kinds of concentration work and affect us; the role of government in tipping the scales one way or the other; the history of anti-trust regulation; and the alternative of various kinds of public ownership opens a new level of understanding what needs to be done and how to go about it. The book is based in large part on the comprehensive congfessional hearings on economic concentration carried out in the early '60s under the leadership of Estes Kef;mver. Invalua le to anyone interested in better rules for our economic games:-Tom Bender ( SOLAR ) A Solar Water Heater Workshop Manual, 2nd Editim;t, by Ecotope Group, 1979, 82 pp., $5.00 from: Ecotope Group 2332 East Madison Seattle, WA 98112 Thermosiphon solar hot water systems are simpler, cheaper alternatives to active solar technology. According to Ecotope, when properly designed and installed by the ho:- meowner, these systems provide 3/4 of the energy supplied by the highest quality commercial solar equipment and cost 1/2 to 2/3 less. If you want to install your own thermosiphon system, then try this manual. All aspects of collector construction, storage tank insulation, and freeze protection are discussed. Additional information on site evaluation, plumbing and building codes is provided. New material in this revised edition is offered on hot water conservation, active systems, a~d solar ~orkshop organization. Even if you prefer active over passive systems, or are not a do-it-yourself~r, this book will help you understand concepts important for the selection of quality commercial solar equipment and a; competent installation contractor -Jeff Paine -The Waste-Not House _ The Integral Urban.House, The Farallones Institute, 1979, $12.95 from: Sierra Club Books 530 Bush Street , San Francisco, CA 94108 The house that this book is based ~n is like a visit td Alice's Wonderland. All our normal ways of doing things have bt;en changed with some magic cunning to Do More. Sidewalks are redesigned to purify urban air. The front lawn feeds rabbits instead of lawnmow- _ers. The neighbor's flies are trapped to feed chickens. The fences support fruit trees and mulberry bushes to feed silkworms to make stuffing for insulated clothes. Not even wastes are wasted. The sewer is cut off and its contents hoarded for fertilizing and watering the garden. All the details are in this book. ,Don't get fooled, though. The book starts out with all sorts of ecological and design theory and decision-making processes. But as usual, that stuff came about as much after the fact as before. The house came about from a simple "lwonder ho'w self-reliant a house in the city can be!" Then followed a sifting through the mental debris of university professors, Californiafoppies and all t~e strange and wonderful people who wander through Berkeley for far-out ideas that might work. That they do work, and generally work well, is due to the people in the Farallones Institute who carefully sifted , out the good ideas and ~ade them work. . The magic of the house itself comes through somewhat diffused in the book, sandwiched as it is among 480 pages of charts, tables, Storing Kitchen Garbage in Sawduat At the Integral U~ban House in Berkeley, we devised the following method for handling table scraps and other food-related wastes from the kitchen: 1. During preparation for and clean-up after meals, the materials for the compost are left in a collander in the sink to .drain off excess liquid. 2. Whenever the collander is full, it is empti.ed into a small five-gallon ' bucket that has a tight-fitting lid. 3. Each addition of kitchen waste to the five-gallon bucket is followed by a thick (one- to two-inch) layer of sawdust, dipped out of an adjacent sawdust-holding bucket..(See drawing.) 4. Periodically, the sawdust dipper is pressed down upon the surface of the material in the bucket, compacting it evenly. If necessary, more sawdust is added to keep smells from •leaking out. 5. When the bucket is almost full, it is topped with an extra inch or so of sawdust, covered with its lid, and moved to a storage·spot outside the kitchen. An empty bucket is brought. in to take its place. When all the buckets are full, it is time to make another compost pile. 6. Once every couple of months, the sawdust bucket is hauled to a nearby cabinet shop (or other sawdust source) for refilling. If you use your own urin~for nitrogen fertilizer in your garden, you save energy used in the production of synthetic fertilizer equivalent to the amount of food-energy calories you consume in an entire month! A 180-pound man who produces 1.5 quarts of urine each day, over a year's time excretes 12.25 pounds of nitrogen. At an application rate equivalent to 300 pounds of nitrogen per acre, which is comparable to the rates applied on farms, one man's,annual production is sufficie,:zt to fertilize over 2000 square feet of vegetable garden. If the value of 12.25 pounds of nitrogen is computed at the cost per pound of bloodmeal, which is $3.50, then a man's annual nitrogen production is worth $43.75. A'25-pound bag of ammonium sulfate, at 21 percent nitrogen (5.25 pounds of nitrogen), consumes 42,000 kilocalories in the production of nitrogen. That is equivalent to the amount of food-energy calories consumed by an average adult male during an entire two-week period. ~--,I,...__ ------11 ...,__~ --c
January 1980 RAIN Page 11 Gary Snyder tells the story in Four Changes of a monk and an old rr:aster who were once walking in the mountains. They noticed a little hut upstream. The monk said, "A wise hermit must live there." The master said, "That's no wise hermit; you see that let- . tuce leaf floating down the stream? He's a Waster." Just then an old man came running down the hill with his beard flying and caught the floating lettuce leaf. diagrams, working drawings, theory and how-to. These details of all the systems are an invaluable aid to anyone interested in how to live morelightly in the city. Appropriate technology has often been criticized as a back-to-the-woods technology that is irrelevant for the majority of people who live in urban areas. The Farallones have clearly shown in this house that that ain't so. The Integral Urban House is an exciting and workable vision of how to live-one whose pieces can be changed, elaborated, revised and adapted to the specific situation in other cities, climates and temperaments. Obviously the cost of the project doesn'trepresent what it would cost to reuse the ideas. Much of the cost has been in the work necessary to figure things out and pull them together. Others don't have to repeat that. But other people also don't have national experts in biological pest control or solar energy at their fingertips to fine-tune their systems, so possibly the results of this "research laboratory" won't be ~qualled in broader applications. Time will tell. Some of the things in the book, such as energy and water conservation, solar technology, waste recycling, and urban food growing are by now familiar to many people and might be found in more detail elsewhere. But other sections go far beyond what is commonly available elsewhere: details even on urine fertilizing of gardens, non-pesticide means of controlling bedbugs, roaches, rats and other household pests, problems of lead-poisoning from urbangrown food and how to deal with it, or how to recycle dead honey bees into fish. (A ring of vaseline around the bedposts will keep bedbugs from having you for a midnight snack.) There is an incredible amount of useful information in the book, ano it represents an amazingly successful first attempt to pull all these things together. Neither the house nor the book are perfectin typical California fashion, no solar or any other kind of space heating was worked into the original house design, and its functional organization is incredibly poor. The book could benefit from an examination of the problems of recycling pesticide-, fungicideand herbicide-doused suburban lawns into food production. Although the authors obviously understand well how the house's systems fit into the larger ecological systems, the graphics in the book frequently fail to communicate those links. And it would be nice to know how much time more of the systems involve. Like all of us, the Farallones folks are still learning. As thorough as their efforts to turn wastes into resources are, and as little as they do throw away, they were surprised one morning to discover that two neighbors were mining the Farallones trashpile and finding uses for what little they were throwing away! - Tom Bender Figure 14-2 . Yearly Energy Budget of a Lawn Compared to an Alfalfa Patch The front lawn feeds rabbits, the neighbor's flies feed chickens. Not even wastes are wasted. Grass clippings (95,000 Kcal) Trash can Lawn 20 square meters Labor (2.500 Kcal) Lawn Alfalfa Note: All notation represents annual totals. Fuel (10.000 Kcal) Energy Input, Kcal Energy Yield, Plant 15,000 95.000 5.000 110.000 15.000 Alfalfa 20 square meters 21 lbs rabbit meat (15.000 Kcal)
Page 12 RAIN January 1980 If you live in northern North Dakota, you may have known about Northern Lights for quite some time, but for us city folk it's just starting to appear in the movie houses. It is a beautiful film that appeals not only to the eyes and heart but also, upon learning the story of how the film was made and promoted, to ideals of "appropriateness" and "right livelihood." This piece of history comes from a review in Rural America, A Voice for Small Town and Rural People, monthly, from Rural America, 1346 Connecticµt Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20036; subscriptions $10.00/yr., memberships $15.00/yr. our l\ural P: The movie itself grew out of a narrower effort to document the story of the Non-Partisan League, a political coalition of North Dakota farmers organized in the early 1900s. The league was a part of the Populist Movement and was one of the most successful attempts of the period to put political power into the hands of regional agricultural folk. (See accompanying article.) The opposition came in the form of the Eastern "big money boys" who controlled the means of distribution by which grain and produce went from country field to city table. Ultimately, however, the plot works out to a conflict between the farmers themselves. Those who are aware of "the system" and its methods of cheating the farmers must convince the others to seek power outside of their own small homesteading communities. The struggle is all-consuming and continually frustrating. Not only do most of the farmers mistrust and misunderstand the initial efforts of the organizers (who are themselves farmers), but the grip of the industrialists combined with the force and adversity of the climate also work against the leaguers. The script is sensitive to feminist issues as well-one of the strongest scenes is between two of the farm women who are probably more torn and confused by events than their men. Their situation-separated from their men by the league and from their farms by foreclosure-forces them to take independent roles as partners in a new and greater enterprise. The film and the story are worthy of each other-too many movies can only be recommended for one or another particular aspect; photography or acting or screenplay-Northern Lights is rare in that it is wholly worthwhile. Visually, the movie is beautifully done; all the scenes are in black and white, which is elegantly used to present the stark simplicity of emotion and landscape. The story is unashamedly political, but the issues and conflicts are real enough to make you grit your teeth and clench your fists. What makes Northern Lights extra special, though, is the process by which it was made: John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, the two proWhen Nort1 Farmers · To<J by Phil Brown e forces that angered Ortat . The SaJ!' ers in the 1880s-forces Plains aram farm lled Queen of the that P!'ompted th ~t~h Lease, to urge Popubsts, M~,.r'I . less corn and more farmers to rai~e ing to rile the wheat hell"-were contmu kota 30 years later. farmers of Nor th Da uld harvest their The North ~akot_an: 0 ~:e grain elevators, crop and deliver. it uld be out of their and after that thmgs wo nies set the d The railroad compa k ban s. 1 ·n the hire of bro ers freight rates, peop e :d make a handsome and processors wou. and grading the profit through trading ould get what was wheat, "!'d th e fa~y~nconsiderable. left-which ~a; :r, scontent rampant among In 1915, wit 1 rthur c Townley, a these grain growers, Z flax f~er from bankrupt wheat an started organizingBeach, North D~kt~•PartY and later for a first for the S0cta is the NQJlpartisan .new group- ~o~ngO:~ was to elect a state go into scand~n.avi Catholics would vis1tC After several farmet organizers would me county• leaving the ~• the word among fn• When this leaven lu work "the organizers , sign the remaining far At this point, thei'c once thought the t! becaUSC they had' e wake up with·a s r wits, they would i which • would o'et program as "ana1 radical"• But it was tQ() la· the 1,eague mani .Ji)akota's governor, state supreme cou1 senate, and all the 1 state office save on1 In ·1918, th• Le: not only succee< governor' Lynn F1 control of the state League. Tow ey sed of farmers who government compo s of the state to finally would use th~ powher onomic equals of the make farmers t e ec business world.. . . 111 technique to Tow~ey•s .. organ•~arvel to behold. As accomplish this was ~ ·n "The Farmers' These victories enthusiasm i!1 newspapers, uslDI hard to match "bolshevistic, re now reigned supr (the League's P1 .coverage) though 1 T lor tells -It 1 • Car . ay 62 0, 1920 ,. Townley and his Movement, 1 uld first painstakingly lie'\ltenants .wo eneral ·line of argument. rehearse theirh gfarmhouse would go an Then to eac and a neipbor or at •or~• a lecturer Scandinavians would :l east an.otber farmer. legislature would
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