OCTOBER 1980 Volume VI I No.1 $1.50-No Advertising
Page 2 RAIN October 1980 .:-Sfii.:!IS.St.:-SS:-Sfii.:!IS.:-Ss-;:e-JS.-Sfei.:!-lfei.:!-lt..St-5S.-Ss-;:e-Js;;;;;:-,;s.s59,-;:s S.SSSSSS:Sfe:SI Dear Carlotta, Thanks for the June copy of RAIN. We were glad to see Scott Sklar's plug for Lance's book, Making Alcohol Fuel. You might want to make mention of my book on car conversion. I have driven to Oklahoma and back twice since March. The car has been on straight alcohol for over a year now and has covered 12,0b0 miles with this fuel alone. This is an area where we have a track record ahead of virtually everyone else. The weather has been warm this last week, but is beautifully cool today. Minnesota is a great place to be in the summer. We don't miss the volcanos a bit. Regards, Al Rutan Minneapolis, MN Dear Rainfolks , Sorry to hear about your financial woes. Wish we could give you more. Keep up the good work-we love ya! Best regards, Alan Locklear Marie Valler,oy Seattle, WA Dear folk, I am looking forward to the day when I can contribute directly (my skills) to what has been called counterfoil research. Presently employed as electronic engineering technician at Tektronix, fixing up my old salt-box house, and trying to get a house shop together. For now, please accept this donation to your essential work. Your proud reader, Phil Vayda Portland, OR Dear RAIN, Some food stores charge a premium for "sea salt," implying that it is richer in minerals, less refined, or more natural than other salt. The enclosed excerpt from the book The Forgotten Peninsula evidences what I've suspected: that "sea salt" is purified sodium chloride and doesn't differ significantly from salt extracted from a salt mine (which was also once a sea). As further evidence some friends and I just performed a taste comparison of "sea salt" from a natural foods store and of commercial salt. After crushing each to make the particles the same size, we could not taste any difference. Pat Underhill Philomath, Oregon What about the sugar added to many "processed" salts? - LS RAIN Dear Rainfolks, How nice it is to read your magazine again. Living out in the woods without enough money to subscribe is enough to keep an interested reader away from a good magazine, but now that my friend and I have moved back to the city we are gaining access to your publication again. In fact, we discovered you have a "living lightly" rate, and have pooled together enough cash to subscribe. We enjoy reading your magazine very much. It puts a lot of our feelings into words. In addition, I found your articles on feminism (April 1980) enlightening. It is good that your magazine points out the bad in society as well as the potential good. People must definitely realize something is wrong before it can be corrected, and unfortunately most Americans don't know what's wrong. I admire publications like RAIN, New Roots, and Not Man Apart for their efforts, and hope you can somehow become part of the background media that is so dominated by Time, Inc. and associates. Having worked in a third world country, I was impressed by your foreign access section (July '80, pp. 8-10). It's the kind of article I can xerox and send to my family to help express my feelings toward their work in·third world countries. I've been meaning to find out more about Chinese methane digesters for over a year now, and not surprisingly your magazine pulled through for me. The Chinese Biagas Handbook you reviewed is too expensive for me these days, but I did make it up to the Rainhouse library to see it. Your library is a good one; I've even been lightly thinking of moving to Portland just so I could go through your collection of publications. Truly yours, Carlos Portela (and Anita Coleman) Eugene, OR 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 sodety that is durable, just and ecologically sound. RAIN STAFF: Laura Stuchinsky,·Mark Roseland, Carlotta Collette, John Ferrell Zonnie J. Bauer, Graphics and Layout 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: Ancil Nance I
An open letter to RAIN Staff and Readers, I feel that I must comment upon some of the statements in C. C.'s generally creative and interesting review of my book, When God Was a Woman (April '80). The review states that the book, "focuses very negatively on the Hebrew people ... it is unlikely that their anti-goddess attitudes were also unique." I find the reasons for these statem~nts difficult to understand, in light of the fact that a great deal of the material in the book points out the anti-Goddess attitudes of the early Christian and Muslim ,religions, as well as those of the early IndoAryan and Inda-European groups in India, Turkey, Iran and Greece. The entire perspective of the book is concerned with offering an understanding of the broad geographic and historical network that was responsible for the eventual suppression of ancient Goddess reverence. The reviewer also seems to have overlooked the important point made in the book-that many early Hebrew people were Goddess revering, the evidence pointing to the likelihood that it was some of the members of the Levite tribe, just one of the many Hebrew tribes, who were concerned with suppressing the ancient religion. I could not help but notice that Donna Warnock's article, which obviously used When God Was a Woman as a resource, understood that it was the wave of Inda-European invasions that most affected the--G- oddess religion. (An entire chapter of the book was spent on discussing the connections between rhe Inda-European groups and the Levites.) So, C. C. is correct in her belief that it was not only the Hebrew people who suppressed Goddess reverence, while for some unexplained reason she did not mention that this was dealt with in-the book at great length. My most recent book, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood-Our Goddess and Heroine Heritage, Vol. I, came out in November '79. As C.C. hoped, it does contain a vast body of evidence about the spiritual beliefs (legends, prayers, ri_tuals and more) of many other cultures of the planet, e.g. China, Africa, Mexico and South America, Celtic Europe, Polynesia and more. After spending so many years researching and studying comparative religions and spiritual beliefs of the present and the past, I do Want.to comment that we need not blind ourselves to past realities. We, all of us, live today. Hopefully, we can draw upon what is positive and life-nourishing as it exists in all and any religious traditions, while gleaning out what hurts or suppresses any racial, ethnic or gender group-or any aspect of life on this planet. • Merlin Stone • 9980 ADA (Aftenhe Development of Agriculture) October 1980 RAIN Page 3 RAIN ACCESS Women's Resources 613 Lombard Street Philadelphia, PA 19145 Contrary to what I first imagined, Women's Resources is not a graphic arts firm that produces elegant full-color posters, but it was the posters that first caught my eye. In pursuit of the posters I learned that Women's Resources is really a consulting group that "provides services to women, collects data on women, and conducts research on matters of concern to women." The services include grantwriting, management and fundraising assistance, computer mailing and data collecting, and a professional women's registry and booking service to connect skilled women with available jobs. The group can consult with-an organization on a shortterm bas~s or spend more time developing real business plans to begin generating what it refers to as "hard money." "Harq. money" is the cash that sustains groups through marketed services or products. Women's Resources can help arrange small business loans and is soon to begin operating as a broker-linking women with money to invest - with women's businesses that can use the funds and provide returns on investments. The hard cash at Women's Resources comes partially from the sale of its services, and partially from those wondrous posters. The Orchid Poster (shown) has a warm plum background and multi-colored orchids. The Iris Poster, 2nd in an pngoing series, has a smokey blue background with soft rose and blue-~oned irises. Each costs $7.00 plus $1.50 postage. Send, too, for their brochure. You'll be impressed. -CC Orchid Poster from Women's Resources
Page 4 RAIN October 1980 ll•Ca ©Hal Bemton We're fortunate to have Hal Bernton write this article for us. A former researcher for newspaper columnist Jack Anderson, Hal has been working for some time on a book (due out in the spring) on th~ history, economics, and environmental impact of alcohol fuels. Hzs r~search has taken him not only all around the country but to Brazzi, where vast amounts of land and capital are being channeled into a massive alcohol development program. Currently he is working for the Washington Small Farm Resources Network (19 East Poplar, Walla Walla, WA 99362, 509/529-4980) to coordinate an ethanol fuel development program in the Skagit Valley. -MR Alcohol-Powered America In recent months the Carter Administration has begun to implement a series of major federal initiatives to expand production of alcohol fuels in the 1980s. By the end of the decade the White House would like to see 10% of the nation's gasoline consumption replaced by alcohol fuels. Some 1.2 billion federal dollars in loan guarantees, price guaran-: tees, and purchase agreements to stimulate distillery construction are beginning to flow into the private sector. An eight-year extension ·of a generous 4 cent-a-gallon exemption for 10% gasohol blends from federal excise taxes (which w_orks out to a 40 cent-agallon tax break for alcohol undiluted with gasoline) has been approved by Congress. All of this activity has been accompanied by a series of pamphlets, reports, and magazines released by various federal agencies which now extoll the virtues of an alcohol-powered America. The strong federal push to promote both ethanol (which is derived from starch or sugar-rich organic materials) and methanol (derived from cellulosic-rich wood and crop materials) has evolved in a surprisingly brief span of time. Just four years ago these fuels were viewed by the Carter Administration's top energy officials as marginal resources to be taken seriously only by a handful of farmbelt fanatics who were eager to bolster sagging crop markets by converting surplus grains into ethanol. But the so~ring popularity of gasohol crested with the gasoline shortage of 1979 and persuaded a politically sensitive White House to abruptly back rapid development of alcohol fuels. A strong federal effort to increase alcohol fuels production is al.:. most certain to continue well into this decade regardless of who takes up residence in the White House next January. Ronald Reagan has spoken out strongly in favor of gasohol in his syndicated radio commentaries, and John Anderson comes from Illinois, where gasohol has been elevated to a status usually reserved only for motherhood, apple pie and the American flag. With gasohol sales booming at service stations across the country, most of the major oil companies have ceased efforts to block development of the new industry and are now trying to figure out • ways to break into it. The infant gasohol industry is currently dominated by Archer Daniels Midlands, a large multi-national food processing corporation headquartered in Decatur, Illinois. • • Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) set up a fuel grade distillery at its sophisticated Decatur corn milling facility in the spring of 1978 and began converting starchy waste streams into 199-proof anhydrous ethanol. This ethanol was marketed to a network 0£ independent midwest service stations for $1 .30/ gallon (production costs initially stood at about $.95/gallon). Thanks ~n part to the federal tax breaks which kept gasohol competitively priced with unleaded gasoline, demand for ADM's production soared, 'far outstripping the available supply. By the spring of 1980,ADM had jacked the price of a gallon of 199-proof fuel to over $1.80.
/ .,"/.. ~ ·--(ir! .-c,(i,, 11/, -, ,__. /.,..,.,- . -. ~) The lucrative entry of ADM into fuel production has been closely watched by other major food processing corporations such.as Standard Brands, Heinz, American Maize, and Cargill, all of which are considering constructing distilleries adjacent to their wet corn milling operations. One food processing firm, CPC of Iowa, has already announced a joint-financed venture with Texaco Oil Company to build a major 60 million gallon-a-year distillery in the Midwest. This deal may come under scrutiny by the Justice Department for possible anti-trust violations. Small-scale alcohol advocates, like Scott Sklar of the National Center for Appropriate Technology, have proposed federal legislation to ban the oil industry from any involvement in alcohol fuels production. So far they have not found much support in Congress. • The Case Against Alcohol Fuels In the wake of all the activity in government and financial circles to •promote gasohol, a sharp critique of the emerging large-scale industry is now being formulated by A.T. advocates and concerned members of the farming community. One of alcohol fuels' most strident c.:itics has been Robert Rodale, publisher at Rodale Press, who has used both Organic Gardening and New Farm magazines as platforms to point out the folly of turning to the fossil fuel-dependent U.S. agricultural system to provide feedstocks for a supposedly renewable fuel. Take away the petroleum needed to power farm equipment and the natural gas needed to produce pesticides and fertilizers, he points out, and American agriculture would abruptly grind to a halt. Thus, in many respects, relying on energy crops for fuel fails to ease the nation's dependence on imported oil. At an even more basic level, Rodale is dismayed by the idea of turning to agriculture to meet the nation's energy needs at a time when the soil base is already seriously overburdened. According to U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA) statistics, soil erosion is ravaging prime farmlands at a national average of twice the rate that new soil October 1980 RAIN Page 5 Jill Stapleton is being formed. Since our remaining soil reserves are even more limited than our remaining oil reserves, Rodale argues that it makes little sense to turn to farm-based alcohol energy to meet the na- - tion's long term energy needs. Once a tract of land loses its fertility it is of little use for_either food or energy production. . Some congressional plans which call for taking marginal farmlands out of pasture and putting them into energy crop production could increase this already dangerous rate of soil erosion. Many of these marginal lands are hilly and particularly susceptible to the impact of water erosion while other tracts are-located in dry areas vulnerable to wind erosion. The commercialization of a new process which will enable distilleries to convert cellulosic crop residues (corn stalks, wheat straw, hay, etc.) into ethanol may also have a substantial impact on erosion rates. This technology is now being perfected by several different government- and indu.stry-sponsored research and development projects and involves the use of mutant offsprings of the trichodermaviride enzyme to break down the long carbon chains of cellulosic materials into the simple sugars necessary for successful fermentation. Gulf Chemical, a subsidiary of Gulf Oil, has already successfully tested a small pilot plant for the production of fuel grade ethanol from crop and paper wastes, but dropped plans to build a full-scale "demo" in 1979. Then, in a somewhat surprising move, the company donated the entire project and staff to the University of Arkansas. cont.
Page 6 RAIN October 1980 Generic Anhydrous Ethanol Plant from Fuel from Farms Cooker/Fermenter (3 Places) eont. Rodale fears that once this technology is in wide·spread use, there will be a massive harvesting of crop residues which should be returned to the soil to maintain long term fertility. "The crop wastes that would ... be put in the stills ... are a main bulwark against erosion," Rodale writes. "They add humus to the soil so hard rains _can soak in instead of washing lhe soil away. And these so-called wastes recycle minerals and nitrogen back to the soil-fertilizer elements which otherwise would have to be replaced at a high cost in fossil fuels." The importance of these crop residues in the prevention of erosion was well documented in a major USDA study by agronomists who concluded that "When returned to the soil, crop residues retain plant nutrients and help maintain soil porosity and tilth for easy tillage and good plant growth.... Proper use of crop residues can be the best means to control wind and water erosion and maintain the quality of water running off agricultural land." . . In their final report, released in March of 1979, the USDA scientists stressed that only a small percentage of the crop residues could be safely removed from the land for conversion into.ethanol. In the corn belt states, the scientists calculated some 36% of the residues could be harvested without damaging long-term soil fertility compared to only 21 % in the Great Plains states. In Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, some 40% of the crop residues might be used for alcohol production but only a miniscule 10% of the residues could be safely utilized in Alabama and Mississippi cotton fields. In an ideal world, the nation's far~ers would surely heed the agronomists' warnings and remove only the recommended percentages of their crop residues from the soil. But whe,n financially strapped farmers are suddenly offered cash payments for all their crop residues from a nearby distillery, they might well be tempted to trade off long-term soil fertility for more immediate profits. A soil conservation official would criticize the farmer for such a move-but the farmer might well reply, "It was either sell the entire field of crop residues to the distillery this year or go bankrupt next winter when I can't pay off my bank loans." In today's world, economic-not environmental~considerations are primary in determining land use on most U.S. farms. Rodale has also not hesitated to bring up the "Food versus Fuel" issue. A variety of grim future scenarios have been painted'in which prime farmlands are converted over to energy crop farming for gasguzzling automobiles while millions of the world's poor starve. The ·risk of such a warped development of the alcohol fuels industry is greatest in Brazil, which is already utilizing large areas of fertile farmlands for sugar cane-based ethanol production. Since less than 10% ·of Brazil's populace can afford to own automobiles, it seems appare'nt that vast amounts of Brazilian financial capital and resources are being funneled into a program for the benefit of an affluent minority. Although the massive Brazilian alcohol development program (designed to accomplish a near complete transition away from petroleum-based fuels by the end of the century) will create some jobs in rural areas, it will also reinforce agricultural development policies which have long favored export cash cropping over diversified agriculture targeted to meet the basic food needs of the Brazilian people. The by-products of the sugar cane distillation p~ocess have little nutritional value for either livestock or people. Toward an Alternative Fuel Network The creation of a broad-based ethanol industry in the United States would not necessarily result in any reduction of world food supplies. The dominant ethanol energy crop in the United States for at least the next decade will probably be corn, much of which.is now fed to livestock. The ethanol distillation process does not destroy the liyest~ck feed value of the remaining corn but actually enhances
Ethanol Storage Tank Safety Release Valve #2 Reflux Pump it by tripling its protein content. This high protein residue could even be dried and used as a protein supplement in foods for human consumption. In fact, a shipment of distillers' dried grain to a nation ravaged by famine would inake much more sense than ·~ shipment of unprocessed corn. The world food shortage is primarily a shortage of proteins, not starches, and ethanol production leaves the protein contents of all energy feedstocks intact. While large corporate distilleries plugged into the current petrochemical-intensive system of farming may prove to be ecologically unsound, farm- and community-based distilleries may still be integrated into balanced systems of food and energy production geared to maintain long-term soil fertility. The organizations built in the • past decade to produce, process, distribute, and market origanically grown foods can play a vital role in building new fuel n.etworks in the '80s. To create the skeletal outline of this net_work in the years ahead wiJl be a difficult but not impossible task. The first and most important step in this process is to establish a firm connection bet~een energy·crop production and agricultural practices which maintain long-term soil fertility and minimize fossil fuel inputs. The second step is to begin the financing of on-farm and cooperatively owned distilleries to process energy crops. This task has already begun in the Midwest where angry veterans of the farm strike movement have lent considerable financial and technical support to the construction of numerous on-farm distilleries. The A. T. community could find much more common ground in working with the farm strike movement leadership towards the creation of a de~ C centralized, locally controlled, liquid fuel industry. • Don Smith, a national representative of the American Agriculture Movement, the loosely structured organization which spearheaded the tractorcade protests of the late 1970s, has fought hard to limit corporate control of the gasohol industry. He told the U.S. House Agriculture Committee in May of 1979 that, "We are not interested in supporting the development of a new industry for the benefit of those who already have farmers over a barrel by-virtue of their superior market leverage ... but want to see the production of alcohol fuels-maintained as close to the source of basic feedstocks as possible, either on the farms or in the small rural communities ... where participating in the ownership and operation , can be broadly shared as a means of restoring economic health and viability to rural America." In these on-farm and community distilleries, lesser proof ethanol fuels (ranging in strength from 160 to 194 proof) can be produced in direct, unblended form for tractors, trucks and automobiles. These . October 1980 RAIN Page 7 vehicles can readily be converted to run efficiently on ethanol by changing plastic parts s~sceptible to ethanol corrosion, boring out carburetor jets to establish proper air to fuel ratios; and increasing the compression of engines. The technology for converting diesel engines to operate on ethanol is still in the developmental phase. However, there has been considerable success in utilizing 100 proof ethanol in 20% blends with diesel fuels. A s·ystem marketed by M&W Gear Company of Gibson City, Illinois, injecting the 100proof ethanol into the engine in a turbo-charger system, has performed quite satisfactorily in initial testing by various farm groups and community colleges. Ethanol fuel will certainly not be the only product of an alternative fuel network of on-farm and community distilleries. In the Midwest, 100 bushels of corn harvested from an acre of farmland could yield 250 gallons of ethanol and 1700 pounds of 27.% protein mash. The mash can provide a key portion of a balanced diet for livestock which, in turn, can provide at least part of the fertilizer for farmers' fields or 'a metha~e digestions system. Carbon dioxide produced by fermenting mash can be captured and pumped into greenhouses (partially warmed by waste heat from the distilleries) to promote rapid plant growth. Roof-top solar collectors that would preheat water used in the distillation process could be installed in many inidwest locations with corn cobs possibly providing part of the system's process energy source. . There are endless regional variations·on this concept of integrating ethanol production into a broader development of farm-based alternative energy sources. In the Southwest, solar stills may prove to be more ec~nomically feasible than traditional column systems while in the Northwest, waste.woods from mills could provide much of the process energy sources for distillation. Feedstocks would also differ sharply from region to region, with sweet sorghum holding considerable promise for midwest and southern regions and sugar-fodder beet hybrids for the Northwest. The introduction of these new energy crops need not inevitably increase erosion rates. Jerusalem artichokes, for example, are a • hardy perennial crop needing little tractor cultivation work. They could be planted on.marginal soils unsuited for intensive annual row cropping. On other ma.rginal lands, ethanol tree crops such as the honey locust (whose pods can be converted into ethanol and whose roots fix nitrogen in the soil) may be planted. And work in progress by agricultural researchers·at the University of Wisconsin may result in the utilization of certain forage crops for the.producil P&iii♦illil~~
Page 8 RAIN October 1980 cont. tion of ethanol and a high quality protein byproduct. A research team led by Dr. K. E. Bedsen is designing processing equipment which extracts 60% of the protein from forage crops in the form of a leaf juice. The protein in the juice can be separated out and dried into a nutritious human food with leftover plant sugars ready for fermentation into ethanol. Certain tree crops could also play a vital role in the establishment of an alternative fuel network. Fast growing eucalyptus, alder, cottonwood, and poplars can be converted via destructive distillation technologies into methanol and eventually into ethanol as the enzyme hydrolysis technologies are improved. It-is these wood resources-and not the crop residues needed to maintain soil fertility-which can form an ecologically sound basis for the cellulose-based fuel industry. The overall economics of small-scale and community-scale ethanol production look quite promising; especially when biomass process energy sources are used, stillage byproducts are fed in wet form to livestock, and distribution costs are kept to a minimum. In many cases, $1.00 to $1.30 a gallon production costs for 196-proof ethanol do not appear to be unreasonably optimistic. These costs are well below the costs of importing some of the higher priced mideast oils. • Jill Stapleton Farmers who earn a substantial new income from marketing surplus ethanol may begin to find the financial breathing space needed to help them find a way off some of the more destructive petrochemical treadmills. Alternative farming techniques stressing balanced, long-term rotations, or'ganic fertilizers; and biological pest management stand a better chance of gaining wider acceptance when fanners achieve more economic stability and are willing to take a few financial risks. In the near term, the amount of ethanol produced by on-farm and cooperative,distillieries will be small enough to be consumed primarily by farmers and a few rural residents who may choose to patronize the pump in front of their local barn or food cooperative rather than the one in front of their local Texaco. In the long term, ho~ever, as the resource base broadens to include more cannery wastes, cheese whey, wood wastes, and even such off-beat energy.sources as cattails and algae (to be cultivated in new aqua-energy farms), substantial surpluses of alcohol fuels will. develop in some regions of the country. Bulk food distributors could play an important role in delivering fuels grown in an ecologically sound manner to established consumer cooperatives. While the oil industry concentrates on gaining control of the gasohol market, the alternative fuel network should concentrate on the production and marketing of the lesser proof fuels which can be l;IS'ed straight in retrofitted engines. This market is, at least for the moment, small enough that it has not aroused much serious interest on the part of major oil companies. Despite some of the more ominous trends in the emerging alcohol fuels industry detailed here, it is far too soon to issue any blanket condemnations of alcohol fuels' potential to play a key transitional role in easing the nation into a post-petroleum future. The question of the hour is not SHOULD these fuels be developed-but HOW and by WHOM. DO access "Food or Fuel: New Competition for the World's Cropland," by Lester R. Brown, Worldwatch Paper #35, March 1980, $2.00 from: Worldwatch Institute 1776 Massachusetts Ave. N.W. Washington, DC 20036 In a study which has already provoked a good deal of discussion in the months since its release, Lester Brown argues that "the stage is set for direct competition between the affluent minority, who own the world's 315 . million automobiles, and the poorest segments of humanity, for whom getting enough food to stay alive is already a struggle." Brown believes that a carefully designed alcohol fuels program, based on forest and agricultural waste products, could become an important source of renewable fuel. His fear is that the promise of profits will lead instead to alcohol programs which will compete directly with food production, drive food prices upward, and dramatically underline the already large disparities in income between the richest and poorest segments of the world's people. For anyone seeking to understand the issues surrounding alcohol fuels development, this is important reading. -JF "Alcohol Fuels," special issue of Sun Times, August 1980, single copies free from: The Solar Lobby 1001 Connecticut Ave. N.W., 5th Fl. Washington, DC 20036 If you're new to the controversies surrounding alcohol fuels development, here is an excellent primer. Among the topics discussed are the economic feasibility of alcohol fuel, net energy yield, the role of Big Oil in alcohol production and marketing, federal alcohol legislation, and the "food versus fuel" debate. If you have not previously read the Sun Times, you will also be ,introdu~ed to a magazine with some of the best coverage around on renewable energy development and solar legislation. - JF
Energy Catalog, 1980, 32 pp., $.50 ppd., from: Food for Thought Books, Desk R-2 325 Main Street Amherst, MA 01002 413/253-5432 , No ordinary "energy catalog" here. Rather, this mail-orderbook service has compiled THE BEST collection of social ecology resources I've seen anywhere. It includes over 300 succinct and sometimes critical reviews of hard-to-find classics, soon-to-be-published pieces, and listings • from small presses-as well as the standard books and periodicals. Sections on ecology, energy policy and politics, and nuclear weapons are especially strong; A.T., renewable energy sources, transportation and economics are strong, too. A section on teaching materials makes this catalog particularly valuable to educators at all levels. Food for Thought has also published an excellent catalog on Food and Agriculture (RAIN, Feb/Mar '80). -MR No Nukes Left!, $4/4 issues, from: P.O. Box643 North Amherst, MA 01059 617/944-6055 A very encouraging sign: a forum for internal political discussion and debate in the antinuclear movement. The first issue (Summer, 1980-$1.25) is well designed with a·rticles from around the country on nuclear power and weaponry, synfuelsr powerlines, racism, nonviolence, utility rate hike withholding campaigns-even a song! Marcy Darnovsky's lead article, "No Nukes! Is Not Enough," provides a superb overview of the movement today: The mystifying ideological and cultural characteristics described here-the moralism, ahistoricism, ostrich-like avoidance of conflict and the promotion of small-is-beautiful as a panacea-are dulling the radical cutting edge of the anti-nuclear movement. Its most liberatory aspects, are being left behind-its challenge to the direction of capitalist pro- . duction, explicitly anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian tone, and attempts at direct democracy. ·-MR ENERGY Berkshire Energy Manual, 1980, 58 pp., $3.00 donation from: Center for Ecological Technology 74 North Street Pittsfield, MA 01201 I'm not convinced th~t it's necessary for <:aunties to each produce their own energy manual, certainly not one so extensive as this, but this is a good "climate type" guide for any community with comparable New • Englantl weather. A simple brochure providing the "Where to Go for Assistance," "Laws, Taxes and Regulations about Energy," and "Energy Yellow Pages" specific to a county, city or large community would be useful, .though, and the Berkshire Manual does a good job in that regard. It's also written in a simple, d,irect style, supplying valuable background as well as how-to data, and compares favorably to any federal co servation document. -CC October 1980 RAIN Page 9 The President's Clearinghouse for Community Energy Efficiency Suite 185 ' 400 North Capitol St. N.W. Washington, DC 20001 Toll free 800/424-9043 The government in all its branches publishes literally hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, flyers, etc., to inform the public about energy·conservation. The President's Clearinghouse for Community Energy Efficiency has the unenviable task of keeping track of these and providing access to them for local officials a·nd the general populace. They also attempt to track innovative community approaches to energy conservation and provide more specific information on these to inquirers. A phone call will net you a grab-bag of info~mative publications, a sort of sampler of what's available and current. You can rummage through them and pick ones which will most suit your needs, then order just those in bulk. Or request information on a specific topic such as heat pumps or wood burning and they can send you what they have in that subject area. This can be a very useful resource. -CC I .
Page 10 RAIN October 1980 Ecology As Politics by Andre Gorz, 1980, 215 pp., $5.50 from: South End Press Box 68, Astor Station Boston, MA 02123 Question: What do you get when you cross Karl Marx with Ivan Illich? Answer: Andre Gorz. I've been waiting for this book for nearly three years. Though the French edition was originally published in 1975 and 1977, the English edition, after numerous false announcements, was not released until this summer. Andre Gorz is the author of, among others, Strategy for Labor (1967, $3.95, from Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108). He is also, in the spirit of Herbert Marcuse, one of the foremost social thinkers of modern France, indeed Europe. • Three-of the book's four sec_tions are compiled from essays written between 1971 and 1976 on several environmental issues, nu- , clear pow~r, medicine and health. Gorz's keenest and most original thinking, though, is in the opening section, "Ecology and Freedom." Gorz argues, predictably, that "the ecological movement is not an end in itself, but a stage in the larger struggle" (Marx's influence). Yet he acknowledges that ecology transcends the political objectives of socialp isin (Illich's influence) . The result is an argument for appropriate technology: "Socialism is no better than capitalism if it makes use of the same tools. The total domination of nature inevitably entails a domination of people by the techniques of domination." This is accomplished via the destruction of civil society by the expanding institutions of the state (e.g., public schooling). By "civil society" Gorz means "all relations founded upon reciprocity and voluntarism, rather than on law or judicial obligation." The only way of decreasing the power of the state (and the accompanying threat of technofascism) is through the expansion of civil society. Hence , his enthusiasm for ecology as politics: "Against the centralizing and totalitarian tendencies of both the classical Right and the orthodox Left, ecology embodies the revolt of civil society and the movemen't for its reconstruction.'' The book's epilogue concludes with some ob_servations made during a mid-1970s trip to the U.S. Gorz describes us to his fellow citizens as follows: ... typical Americans start from the premise that the country belongs to them, that it will be what they make it, that it is up to them and not to the authorities to • change life. The American revolution is not over. -MR ICS Political Ecology: An Activist's Reader on Energy, Land, Food, Technology, Health, and the Economics and Politics of Social Change, edited by Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway, 1979, 422 pp., $6.95 froni: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co:, Inc. Three Park Avenue • New York NY 10016 In this case, the title really does sum it up. This is a good anthology which should be of interest to teachers as well as activists, with selectior{s by a range of authors from Ralph Nader and George McGovern to Amory Lovins and Richard Merrill to Ivan Illich and E.F. Schumacher. It also,includes Hans Magnus Enzenzberger's classic essay, "A Critique of Political Ecology.'' Cockburn and Ridgeway conclude the book with a discussion of the horizons of political ecology: A political ecology that does not regard as central the fact of structural unemployment fY!-U~t be rightly perceived as marginal or frivolous: a political ecology that does not integrate such central economic issues into its analysis and programs has failed before it begins-a victim of the same tunnel vision that has been the crippling limitation of middle-class refarm· movements for the last few decades. -MR
Economic Democracy: The Challenge of the 1980s, by Martin Carnoy and Derek Shearer, 1980, 436 pp., $7.95 from: Pantheon Books 201 E. 50th St. New York, NY 10022 Economic democracy-the transfer of economic decision making from the few to the many. You want specifics? Examples? Facts, figures, statistics, models, and theory? Well, these are your guys. Carnoy is an economist at Stanford and Shearer is, among other things, a lecturer in architectural and urban planning at UCLA, a contributing editor to Working Papers, and a member of the board of directors of the National Consumer Cooperative Bank. Carefully they analyze problems and potential reforms in areas such as public ownership, greater public control of investment, worker ownership, alternative technologies, and democratic economic planning. For them "the government-at all levels-is the key arena in the struggle for economic democracy." In their penultimate chapter Carnoy and Shearer offer an alternative and optimistic view of the "me decade" seventies, suggesting that more happened and that the country is more open to change than the mainstream press would like to admit. For progressive political change to occur in the 1980s, they write, two conditions must be met: 1) Regular, working people with families and jobs must participate directly, in varying degrees, in bringing about better lives for themselves as well as a more decent society; and 2) "The vision of economic democracy must begin to emerge as a majority viewpoint. " Building a national movement for economic democracy in the 1980s is possible, they conclude, but only if the task is clearly understood within the context of structural ecor.omic reforms. -MR Good Works: A Guide to Social Change Careers, 1980, 289 pp., $22.50, from: Center for the Study of Responsive Law Dept. R P.O. Box 19367 Washington, DC 20036 Looking for "good work" ? You're not likely to find any of these public interest, self-help, social change oriented groups recruiting on your campus this semester. You'd be lucky to have a job counselor who could suggest even one such project, and here's a guide to 275 of them! Moreover, the alphabetically accessed groups are cross-referenced by state and by topic. As if that's not enough there's a basic social change reading list of the classics: Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Malcom X's Autobiography , etc., and lists of networks that can refer you to the right people/programs and training schools to prepare you. Get your reference/career libraries and school counseling offices to stock it. It's invaluable! -CC October 1980 RAIN Page 11 Working Papers for a New Society, bimonthly, $18/yr ($24/yr for institutions; $13.50/yr for students and low-income), from: 186 Hampshire Street Cambridge, MA 02139 617 / 547-4474 RAIN is glad to welcome Working Papers back into print, after nearly a year's dormancy. Working Papers is one of the best policy journals in the country as well as one of the best free-thinking magazines on the left. Its impressive staff and contributors have published excellent pieces on all aspects of economic and social democracy-not only analyses of existing programs and problems, but provocative ideas about what is working or might work. The feature article of the July/August 1980 issue ($3. 00) is " Soft Energy and Hard Times" by Phil Primack: "The soft path could command wide public support if it were seen as a genuine solution to energy shortage· rather than only an ethical imperative.... The failure to date of the soft path to attract the hard hats is not an inevitable cultural or class divide, but a failure of public policy." He cautions that "rather than leading to locally owned, innovative workplaces, the wrong kind of solar development could produce a sort of McDonalds: high technology, centralized management, decentralized production, and low pay." Some alternative that would be! -MR
Page 12 RAIN October 1980 living on under $ 500 a year by Julie Summers From 1974 through 1979 I averaged $449. 91 per year. (I don't get food stamps or welfare either.) I live comfortably, not longing for anything more money could buy. (In fact I'd spend more if there were things available that I thought would make my life better.) I live in beautiful, peaceful surroundings, without smog, noise, hustle or bustle. I eat well. My health is good. My time is mostly my own, since I need devote little of it to earning money. I do not live as I do because of a religion. Nor am I an ascetic, fugitive or primitivist. I live as I do because after trying various other ways (all more expensive and providing less leisure) I find my present situation gives me the most satisfaction. I'm not out to set a record for living on little money: it just happens that what I've found to be most congenial is at the same time very economical. Food My diet is based on grains and pulses (the edible seeds of plants having pods-peas, beans, lentils, etc.) bought minimally processed, in bulk-often 50-100 pound sacks-from wholesalers: wheat, rice, millet, corn, beans and lentils. Also alfalfa, sesame and sunflower seeds; nuts; and dried fruit. Because of perishability I buy baking yeast and oil in smaller amounts (by the gallon) at natural food stores. I try not to be attached to any particular food. When one shoots up in price I cut down, substitute, or simply do without. E.g. when raisins were extremely high I used dates, which were less expensive. When rice was many times the price of other grains I eliminated it. Cheese is so expensive that it's now in my luxury category and I buy it infrequently. To increase the nutritional content of my fare I sprout alfalfa and other seeds. I also buy fresh fruits and vegetables that are currently low in price, such as carrots and oranges. I buy eggs when I crave them-I may go months without any. I use meat very irregularly, perhaps on the average of once a week. ' ' ::-- =-- • ..--:-~-!-;, . ' ' I do some foraging; mostly for berries and greens, occasionally for a squirrel. I seldom eat out. That must save a bundle. But it's not simply a question of money: the food most restaurants serve (often reheated, highly seasoned and doused with chemicals) is not what I want to eat. Also I don't care for the waiter-patron relationship, and I don't like having to worry about my·table manners. From 1974-1979 I averaged about $200 a year for food. Shelter My partner and I live in an old house trailer. Admittedly small, it's still adequate since all we want to do is live in it, not use it as a status symbol. It keeps us dry, it's easy to heat, easy to clean, and everything is within easy reach. lt',s also mobile so we can change scenery without much trouble. We usually live in sub-rural, woodsy areas, trading a few hours of work a month for camping privileges. Clothes I don't wear any-when I can get away with it. For nasty weather, armed berry bushes and intolerant people, I cover up. Free-boxes, second hand outlets, or home industry provide most of my garments. They may not be highly fashionable but they serve the necessary functions. Transportation I don't have a car. I walk, ride a bike, hitch, or take the bus. (To move the trailer I borrow a vehicle.) Maintenance For the toaster, blender, chain-saw and electric toothbrush it's simple-since I don't have any. But I do have a bicycle, se'\'Ving machine and typewriter to contend with. I learned bike mechanics prif!larily through books and how to service my sewing machine by reading the owner's manual. I approach typewriter repair on a trial and error basis. Health Care Taking care of my own body is a more complex matter. My first line of defense is preventative medicine, but even so, sometimes I get sick or have an accident. Learning what to do when that happens, without recourse to exorbitantly priced doctors, has been difficult. Some books have helped: Where There Is No Doctor, David Werner, $5.50 in '79, Hesperian Foundation, P.O. Box 1692, Palo Alto, CA 94302; Being Your Own Wilderness Doctor, Angier and Kodet; First Aid Afloat, Eastman; Medicine for Mountaineering; and The Merck Manual. Recreation Because my way of living does minimal un-creating, re-creating isn't called for. Or putting it another way, my everyday activities are my recreation: making bread, walking in the woods to fetch water, picking berries, bicycling, making clothes, writing, reading. I tried a daily 30-minute meditation period. Although free, it didn't do anything for me so I gave it up. I think the reason it was a flop is because I already meditate practically all the time. I'm constantly reflecting about what I experience. I think that's important if one wishes to live economically; otherwise it's easy to get caught up in someone else's expensive follies.
l 1 --- Unnecessities Oven (I bake on top of my wood stove in a foil-covered pan). TV. Newspapers. Radio. Shampoo (I use bar soap for hair as well as body). Toothpaste (I use water and elbow grease-along with my brush. A little dental pumice every few months removes stains). Deodorant (washing suffices, though if I'm going to be among super straight people I may rub some baking soda under my arms to bolster my self-confidence). Hand lotion. Hair cuts (and razor blades). Pajamas. Aspirin ( and other palliative drugs). Supermarkets (of the myriad items, I purchase only meat, eggs, cheese and produce-if there's no better place to buy them). Professionals (I try to take care of, fix, and make things myself. To learn I read how-to books that experts have written-cheaper than buying their time on a one-to-one, face-to-face basis). Meat every day (once in a while is enough). Bacon 'n' eggs (I don't buy bacon because of additives and I use eggs only when I get a yen for them). Desserts (perhaps once a month; candy even less often). Cavities (I haven't had any in years-maybe I just outgrew them, or maybe it's because of good diet/proper hygiene). October 1980 RAIN Page 13 Julia Suddaby A Typical Day In winter: Mornings I used to sleep late. But now, after some years, I get up earlier, sometimes at dawn. I spend a while lying and thinking (glad my life is such that I have time for that). I lift some weights, do some exercises. Eat an orange. Read. Write. Bake bread. Have lunch-sandwich of alfalfa sprouts, buckwheat grass and homemade mayonnaise. Write and read some more, study geography, a foreign language, rap with my partner. Eat dinnerbeans cooked to perfection in a pressure cooker, corn cooked along with the beans, and a raw carrot. Darkness comes and I go to bed. To converse. To think. To fantasize. To dream. In fall there are apples to pick. Juice to squeeze. Wine to make. In spring there is equipment to make and mend; wild greens to forage. Summer is time to hike, swim, travel. The diet in that example sounded rather spartan and perhaps misleading. Actually I enjoy food very much, but I've come to derive just as much pleasure from simple dishes as from more elaborate ones. Occasionally I like and make more fancy things: pancakes, quiche, tortillas, tamale pie, cheesecake. My activities lean heavily to the intellectual. However, there's a time and season for everything. I'm coming close to exhausting all the books I feel highly worthwhile and I expect I will become more of a naturalist as time goes on, reading nature instead of books. So there you have my life, at least at a glance. I hope it fosters the realization that one doesn't need thousands of dollars and therefore one doesn't need to spend endless hours earning them. Think in terms of variations on a theme. There is no necessity to duplicate the details of my life to achieve the same ends. May we travel in parallel, though perhaps on different roads, towards a more joyous, peaceful world. DO Julie lives in Philomath, Oregon.
Page 14 RAIN October 1980 LAND Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, by Donald Worster, 1979, $14.95 from: Oxford University Press 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Tons of soil were swept up from the American plains and deposited as far away as Boston and Atlanta. Thousands of refugees were swept westward in the mass migration immortalized by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. The creation of the Dust Bowl has been ranked as one of the worst ecological blunders in history. Who blundered and why? . In a scholarly history with the flavor of a huqian interest story, Worster contends that it was "the inevitable outcome of a culture that deliberately, self-consciously set itself the task of dominating the land for all it was worth." In the dozen years before the winds came, a race to mechanize plains agriculture and cash in on expanding domestic and world markets led to plowing up millions of acres which had formerly been anchored by native grasses. Conservation measures were ignored and, when the drought set in, the land lay open to erosion. Some of the Dust Bowl's hard lessons about stewardship of the land were eventually recognized in the form of programs to establish shelterbelts of trees, restore grasslands, and utilize contour plowing. Butaccording to Worster, the lessons were not easily accepted by middle-class farmers and merchants who had always believed that progress was inevitable and nature malleable. Their characteristic response was to "shout down nature's message with a defense of the old assumptions." To an alarming degree, the message is still being shouted down (as recently as the mid '70s another, smaller Dust Bowl followed the plowing of several million acres of grassland to cash in on soaring grain prices), yet we continue to export our agricultural practices to the increasing numbers of the world's people who must scratch out a living in arid and semi-arid regions. In the context of world population crisis and probable unfavorable shifts in climate, the need for models of ecologically sound agricultur~l practice grows ever more crucial. It would be fitting, as Worster comments, if such models were to emerge on the site of the old Dust Bowl. - JF FOOD) Who Owns the Earth, by James Ridgeway, 1980, 154 pp., $8.95 from: Collier Books 866 Third Ave. New York, NY 10022 It is easy to take for granted the raw materials that serve our basic needs on a day-today basis. Easy, but not smart, since those materials are cords that bind us in consumer dependency to a few, very powerful controller/owners who have anything but our "basic needs" in mind. We have in our world economy the awesome phenomenon of vertically integrated corporations, which is to say, corporations which control virtually every aspect of an industry from produrtion to consumption. The grain industry is a good example. It is controlled internationally by five major companies. These firms often own the elevators to store the grain; the railroad cars (and directorships in railroads), trucking fleets, port facilities and steamship lines for transport; the feed-manufacturing, milling, baking and refining facilities for processingf the fertilizer, seed companies and the land it grows on; and ultimately the banks to finan~e and the insurance companies to back their interests. Wars are fought (the current Mideast strategy being a handy example), governments overthrown, and whole populations subjugated to protect those interests. Ridgeway' s new book details some of the specifics, cataloging numerous raw materials and commodities. It's the sort of consumer education you're not likely to acquire elsewhere. -CC The Wild Palate, Walter and Nancy Hall, 1980, $7.95 paperback, from: Rodale Press Emmaus, PA 18049 This is an interesting and unusual cookbook full of recipes for weeds and wild animals. It is not a field guide, for it offers no advice on how to find or catch anything, but if you happen to have some arrowgrass or a muskrat sitting around, this may be the only cookbook that can tell you how to cook it. It is not a book for vegetarians-most of the recipes include meat: crackpot beaver, simmered elk tongue, etc. The recipes are based on the culinary accomplishments of a reallife wilderness forager and trapper, Barnacle Parp, who is also somewhat of a chainsaw virtuoso (Barnacle Parp's Chain Saw Guide , Rodale Press, 1977.) As the subtitle indicates, this is a "serious wild foods cookbook" and it deserves a place on the shelf of your wilderness cabin beside Euell Gibbons. -Kristine Altucher Kristine works with the Gardening Program of Responsible Urban Neighborhood Technology, a Portland-based appropriate technology group. A Report on the Food System in Oregon: Recommendations for a State Food Policy, prepared by the Oregon Food Policy Project, 1980, from Nutrition Information Center 239 S.E. 13th Ave. Portland, OR 97214 This 250-page report is the outcome of a project initiated by the Oregon Food Coalition to establish a set of food principles that would ''enable a comprehensive, coordinated and equitable food policy to be adopted by the State of Oregon." Well researched and written, the handbook has the potential to be a powerful and effective organizing tool on both a community and legislative level. The report is divided into six sections: Nutritional Health of Oregonians (covering basic health questions and nutritional goals); Nutrition Programs in Oregon (food assistance, educational and self-help programs); Food Industry; Agricultural Production; and Environment and Energy. Each section is full of valuable information and concludes with a series of practical recommendations-the most significant aspect of the report. While the handbook is intended primarily for Oregonians, the information and example of this unique document may be broadly applied. For Oregonians-individuals, organizations and policymakers interested in food, land use and hunger issues-this report will be invaluable. Limited copies of this publication are currently available for sale. Prepaid orders will help assure future printings of this worthwhile resource. -LS
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