Kunstler is here to deliver the opening keynote at Living Future 2010, “the unconference for deep green professionals” put on by Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of the U.S.G.B.C. (and my wife’s employer). Kunstler is an interesting choice to open the unconference, for he is a rabble-rouser of epic proportions.

He says, “People call me a ‘doomer,’ but I call myself an actualist.” One of the things he’s being “actual” about is suburbia, which he says is “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” Kunstler says, “We’ve invested our identity in this. Suburbia is part of the American dream.”

Kunster claims the suburban dream is over, despite our lingering dreams. He claims builders and others are waiting for the bottom, so they can resume building, but “no combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run suburbia.”

Americans are conditioned to want something for nothing, he says. Kunstler reminds the liberal audience that President Obama said, “We won’t apologize for the American way of life.” Building on that, Kunstler says he is sorely disappointed by the nation’s elite cadre of environmentalists who are more concerned about producing electric cars than they are about living in walkable communities. His word for it: techo-grandiosity.

“We are not a serious society, not at all,” he practically spits form the podium. He tells a story about speaking at the Googleplex in Mt. View, CA. “The whole place is like a kindergarten. It seems the whole idea in business today is to be as infantile as possible.” Worse yet, Kunstler says the Googleites don’t know the difference between energy and technology, which is his way of saying technology isn’t going to solve all our problems.

Lack of political will is another sore point. He says we’re spending stimulus money to fix highways, when “we have a train system that would embarrass the Bulgarians.” Sadly, “we can’t afford to be clowns.”

During the question and answer session, a psychologist in the audience asks Kunstler if he doesn’t have a more hopeful image he can share, one that will make an already paranoid people feel less paranoid. In true Kunstler fashion, he says, “we can’t fix everything with therapy.”

When the talk is done, people applaud, but not as vigorously as they might. It seems the air’s been sucked out of this vast ballroom.

One attendee tells me he found Kunstler’s talk depressing. And therein lies the crux of the matter. Kunstler paints a broad canvas where all sorts of American ugliness are put plainly in view. Yet, most people working on solutions—like creating green buildings—are busy addressing one small part of the problem, not the entirety of the matter, and they want to feel good about their contributions. But Kunstler doesn’t care about making people feel good. His thing is to sound the alarm and make it ring loudly in our ears.

[UPDATE] Here are two other takes on Kunstler’s Living Future speech, one from Sustainable Industries and another from Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

Frances Beinecke, President of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), reminded me in an email that this year is the 50th Anniversary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Sadly, her occasion for doing so wasn’t a party announcement, but a grave letter of concern, asking for help now that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has given Shell the green light begin exploratory drilling in the area. Because what we care about as a nation, now as always, is the discovery and removal of natural resources.

According to The Guardian:

The Minerals Management Service, part of the federal Interior Department, yesterday gave Shell the green light to begin exploratory wells off the north coast of Alaska in an Arctic area that is home to large numbers of endangered bowhead whales and polar bears, as well as walruses, ice seals and other species. The permission would run from July to October next year, though Shell has promised to suspend operations from its drill ship from late August when local Inuit people embark on subsistence hunting.

Environmentalists condemned the decision to allow drilling, saying it would generate industrial levels of noise in the water and pollute both the air and surrounding water. Rebecca Noblin, an Alaskan specialist with the conservation group the Centre for Biological Diversity, said: “We’re disappointed to see the Obama administration taking decisions that will threaten the Arctic. It might as well have been the Bush administration.”

That’s damning criticism and fans of The President might bristle at the suggestion. But facts are facts.

In related news, Willamette Week recently ran an article that asked people who supported Obama for President what they think now, one year into his run. Lawyer and peace activist, John Bradach, isn’t pleased.

I was disappointed when he adopted the war team that Bush had left in place. For Obama to take those guys on, he really has allowed himself to be maneuvered into adopting those policies. And that’s not why I voted for him. Now I’m really disappointed, more than cautiously disappointed.

I do not want to hear Barack Obama justifying war, period. I am tired of wasting American kids on that war and on that policy, which is not going to win and will just be an indefinite commitment of American blood and resources.

Obama promised change, but change isn’t easy to implement in Washington, DC. But there’s more to it than that. Policy wise, change was always a false promise from Obama, a centrist Democrat.

Obama has been building consensus since his days on the Harvard Law Review, and he’s not about to veer from that practice now. Yet to truly change the way things are, the art of compromise itself needs to be compromised.

According to The New York Times, the protests went from peaceful to heated today.

In Wednesday’s demonstrations, protesters began massing north of the center shortly before noon and pressed into a tight line of riot police blocking access to the hall. Some of the officers wielded truncheons against the chanting, shoving protesters in a close-order scrum. After forcibly removing protesters from a truck parked in an intersection outside the Bella Center, police in blue vans kept moving the protesters backwards, nearly pushing some into a watery marsh.

As the police vans advanced, skirmishes broke out with protesters who formed human chains and chanted their commitment to nonviolence and to helping people in parts of the world that they said would be hardest hit by climate change. A number of protesters encouraged individual groups to keep pushing against the police.

Apparently, 250 people were arrested today in these “skirmishes” with police. Like the protests around the WTO meetings in Seattle and elsewhere, it’s a hard core minority that seeks to escalate the confrontation. But I don’t believe anti-capitalist sentiment is a minority opinion. People are tired of powerful interests simply running people into the ground.

Mette Hermansen, 27, studying to train teachers, and a member of the International Socialists of Denmark, told the Times, “In the Bella Center they are not discussing solutions to climate change. They are discussing how rich countries can continue emitting and how to sell that to the public. We are not preventing leaders from making solutions but encouraging them to make solutions.”

Bonus click: I also wrote about “Hopenhagen,” the U.N.’s effort to rebrand the famous Danish city during the Conference, on AdPulp.

In preparation for this coming conclusion of what one critic calls the “greatest TV show ever made,” I’ve begun searching for and processing the criticism.

Mark Bowden of The Atlantic called the show’s co-creator, David Simon, “the angriest man in television.” In an interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, Simon says he doesn’t mind “being called that” and asks rhetorically if there’s a better response to the America of the last decade.

Bowden also makes note of the literary form advanced by The Wire.

Some years ago, Tom Wolfe called on novelists to abandon the cul-de-sac of modern “literary” fiction, which he saw as self-absorbed, thumb-sucking gamesmanship, and instead to revive social realism, to take up as a subject the colossal, astonishing, and terrible pageant of contemporary America. I doubt he imagined that one of the best responses to this call would be a TV program, but the boxed sets blend nicely on a bookshelf with the great novels of American history.

It’s a point well taken. I’ve often thought that Shakespeare, were he alive today, would be successful in Hollywood. It’s also interesting to understand Simon’s background as a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. For 12 years the man told detailed, well researched, fact-filled stories, but those stories didn’t change policy in City Hall, Annapolis or Washington, DC. Simon isn’t holding his breath to see these changes come as a result of his TV show either. He sees the problems in America (like the failed War on Drugs that his show dramatizes) as systemic, and argues that conditions will have to become much worse before they get better.

Here, let’s listen to the man:

Simon says our economy doesn’t need the underclass, and that’s why these urban black communities have been pushed completely from the frame of American life. He’s right about the extreme marginalization, but I would counter that this nation does need the underclass and that poor, under-educated workers can become productive and change their station in life and possibly the country’s future in the process.

President Obama is conducting a “jobs summit” this week to help spur jobs training and jobs creation. In my opinion, we need to get off our collective ass now and institute a 1930s-style public works program. It doesn’t take a genius to see how much work there is to do. The nation’s roads and bridges need repairs and we must build high speed rail from Seattle to San Diego and from Miami to Boston. Moving to energy, the nation’s entire electrical grid needs to be refitted to store and conduct DC current produced by solar and wind. And the list goes on. Meanwhile, little progress is made.

In one episode of The Wire, “Bunny,” of Baltimore city police, says he doesn’t know what the answer is to getting kids off the corner and returning the streets to the citizens of Baltimore, only that it can’t be a lie. That’s correct, and it can’t be a lie in real life. Yet, empire is a lie. The wars to maintain it are a lie. The war on drugs is a lie. Saying we don’t have the resources nor the will to house the homeless, feed the hungry and care for the uninsured is a lie.

It’s easy to get fired up by The Wire, and that art’s role in society—to challenge us, to make us think, and help us to care. On these fronts, HBO’s gritty crime drama is a huge success.

Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.

Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.

Yes, because the zombies–in this case the insurance companies and big pharma–have lots of money at stake. When there’s lot of money at stake, the public will be under-served every time. That much we know.

Krugman, unlike most Americans, is a student of history.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again.

Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.

Sadly, our present day recession is bad, but not bad enough to break the stranglehold. We haven’t reached a tipping point yet. In the 1930s one-in-three Americans was out of work and let’s remember that women typically didn’t hold jobs at that time, which meant one-in-three households had no income whatsoever. Today, things are falling apart, but not as fast.

More importantly, the psychology of the situation isn’t leading Americans to fundamental change. Instead of coming to terms, millions are busy trying hard to hold on to whatever they have—their boat, their home, the college fund for the kids and/or a retirement nest egg. Let’s just get back to normal is the prevailing mindset and that’s not going to lead to radical change.

We needn’t look back very far to recall what a miserable start the Clinton White House had in 1993 because of health care. Whatever the powerful interest–health care, the gun lobby, welfare farmers, warring oilmen–they can be outdone, but only through a massive public uprising. And who has time for that kind of vigilance when there’s a job to keep (or find), kids to feed, dogs to walk and favorite TV programs to capture on the DVR?

Krugman is astonished that nothing has changed in America. He knows we ought to know better. But we don’t know better and therein lies the real challenge. How do we lead our neighbors, friends and family from the fear that binds them into a new era of cooperation and trust? I don’t know any way other than to write it out and talk it out.

House Bill 3122 allows taverns and bars that sell true 16-oz. pints to sport a state-issued sticker saying so.

The vote was 34-26 in favor.

Critics argued that businesses could do this on their own and that they didn’t want state agencies spending time on this.

Rep. Nick Kahl, D-Portland, put his own spin matters.

“Our state faces serious problems and we’re dealing with this bill, because now more than ever, Oregonians deserve a full 16 ounces.”

The bill now moves to the Senate.

How do you define yourself politically?
I think I am a radical. I have never deviated from that. By radical, I mean someone trying to go to the root of things.

Do you regret your involvement in setting off explosions in the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol?
Anyone who thinks what we did is despicable should look at the fact that the U.S. government killed three million people in Indochina between 1965 and 1975. That’s really despicable.

How do you feel when you wake up?
Happy, and then I drink coffee and I’m even happier. I’m a work in progress and, even at 64, living in a dynamic history that’s still in the making.

You’re weirdly cheerful for a former bomb-thrower.
I suffer from a genetic flaw, whichis that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.

Time Magazine has the speech in its entirety. It’s well worth reading several times over.

Here’s one of the best parts, IMO:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

I love how President Obama calls out “the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things” and says they are directly responsible for our nation’s “prosperity and freedom.” What a celebration of American ingenuity and a call to arms for entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. The nation needs us to risk, to do, to make—now more than ever.

The sign was first constructed by the White Satin Sugar Company in 1940. It was changed in 1957 to read “White Stag” by White Stag Sportswear. The Naito family, owners of the Made in Oregon chain, again rebranded the sign in 1995.

This is where it gets interesting. Made in Oregon is a brand name and prominent retail business in Oregon. But the phrase “Made in Oregon” is a mantra that all Oregonians can relate to and embrace. So, it’s a particularly positive piece of branding that has transcended commerce and become a civic landmark.

Now, University of Oregon, a tenant in the White Stag Building where the neon sign is perched wants to modify the text of the sign to read “University of Oregon.” See WWire for a sketch of the proposed changes.

According to Portland Business Journal, there’s resistance to the change from residents of Portland and city officials, some of whom attended Portland State University (presumably Oregon State grads would have a say in this, as well).

It’s hard to fault O of U for pursuing the change. It’s a bold move, but one that would clearly help build their brand after the dust up washes out to sea. At the same time, it’s hard to support U of O in this, since the existing sign works for everyone, not just Ducks.

It’s good to see the overlap of these bubbles because it shows that red and blue co-exist in the same places. It’s a finer distinction than the red state/blue state point of view.

Another striking map is the Voting Shift map which shows where each party received more votes in 2008 than they did in 2004. There’s a very identifiable red streak from Texas to West Virginia that’s interesting because it’s so well defined, localized and contained.

Bill Moyers appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air today. He is one of our best journalists and he served on LBJ’s staff in the 1960s, so he’s well qualified to speak on the historic events transpiring in America today. He says “he felt a great stone lifting from our neck” but he also recognizes the racism that continues to exist in many parts of the American South.