The threat is so great, according to Beck, that he’s written a book about it, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The book, entitled Agenda 21, shows us what life will be like in a post-Agenda 21 world, says Beck.

Here’s a clip from the dust jacket:

“I was just a baby when we were relocated and I don’t remember much. Everybody has that black hole at the beginning of their life. That time you can’t remember. Your first step. Your first taste of table food. My real memories begin in our assigned living area in Compound 14.”

Just a generation ago, this place was called America. Now, after the worldwide implementation of a UN-led program called Agenda 21, it’s simply known as “the Republic.” There is no President. No Congress. No Supreme Court. No freedom.

There are only the Authorities.

Citizens have two primary goals in the new Republic: to create clean energy and to create new human life. Those who cannot do either are of no use to society. This bleak and barren existence is all that eighteen-year-old Emmeline has ever known. She dutifully walks her energy board daily and accepts all male pairings assigned to her by the Authorities. Like most citizens, she keeps her head down and her eyes closed.

Until the day they come for her mother.

“You save what you think you’re going to lose.”

Woken up to the harsh reality of her life and her family’s future inside the Republic, Emmeline begins to search for the truth. Why are all citizens confined to ubiquitous concrete living spaces? Why are Compounds guarded by Gatekeepers who track all movements? Why are food, water and energy rationed so strictly? And, most important, why are babies taken from their mothers at birth? As Emmeline begins to understand the true objectives of Agenda 21 she realizes that she is up against far more than she ever thought. With the Authorities closing in, and nowhere to run, Emmeline embarks on an audacious plan to save her family and expose the Republic — but is she already too late?

Beck, of course, didn’t really write the book. According to an editor who had worked on the project some time ago, it was written by a nurse named Harriet Parke, who was inspired by Beck’s entreaty to his Fox viewers to “do your own research” on Agenda 21. Here, by way of background, is how this editor describes the UN document from which the book takes its name, to the readers of Salon.com.

…If you’re not an urban planner, here’s a crash course on the novel’s eponymous United Nations Agenda 21. It’s a 40-chapter behemoth written in 1993. It lays out non-binding guidelines for promoting economic growth, environmental protection and social equality. Basically, it is a recipe for living within our means today, so that we do not pass along to our children a degraded economy, environment and society. It addresses topics as various as toxic waste, biotechnology, conservation and green transportation, all with the goal of helping poor countries develop economies — in large part, by encouraging wealthy countries to dial back in sensible ways on their consumption of resources.

Today, city and regional planners support the concepts that underpin Agenda 21, because they translate the big picture to local efforts to save people time and money. In other words, think globally, act regionally. After all, the planning profession is about supporting a community’s efforts to collaboratively make the best of change — such as whether your community is growing or shrinking, or becoming more rural, suburban or urban. Change is inevitable: Brookings reports that “our population exceeded 300 million in 2006, and we are on track to hit 350 million in the next 15 years.” And that “America will probably be older, more diverse, more urban — and less equal” than we are today.

Planners help communities find common-sense, constructive ways of using limited resources wisely. It looks for ways to make transportation inexpensive, keep energy plentiful, and help towns and cities avoid the kind of bad economic decisions that lead to eyesores like, say, a half-deserted strip mall anchored to an abandoned Wal-Mart. Thanks to zoning, for instance, which was created in the 1920s to protect property values, no one can come in and inappropriately construct a landfill or a steel mill next to your house.

Glenn Beck and fellow pundits hate Agenda 21, however, because they interpret a few lines from chapter four out of context. Their scare tactic is to say it’s the narrow end of a wedge that will insert global UN authority over American towns and cities, allow the government to confiscate private land, reallocate resources by force, and evict people from their single-family homes. Never mind that the law of the land begins with the United States Constitution and that our relationship with the UN can hardly be described as lockstep. Moreover, the United States has no land use laws at the federal level, whatsoever. All land use decision-making authority in the United States lies with the states, who delegate authority to local governments. Relatively speaking, the United States has some of the strictest protections for private property in the world.

Agenda 21 is simply a non-binding, unenforceable menu of guidelines that exists to help any town or city that signs on to it. But when removed from all sensible context and cast forward into a dystopian future, Agenda 21 becomes the novel “Agenda 21,” which tells the story of a post-American settlement where people are forced to ride bikes and walk on treadmills to generate electricity, told whom to marry, raised in communal kibbutz-like nurseries, and forced to swear allegiance to a scary green one-world socialist entity…

Unfortunately, though, some people are taking the “threat” of Agenda 21 very seriously, as evidenced by the fact that, during this last summer’s Republican National Convention, the Republican Party adopted a resolution opposing Agenda 21, adding the following line to their official platform: “We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty.” Furthermore, several state and local governments have considered or passed legislation opposing Agenda 21.(Alabama became the first state to prohibit government participation in Agenda 21, and Arizona just recently rejected a similar bill.) And, irate Tea Party activists, waving copies of the Agenda 21 guidelines, are not only making the lives of city planners in America miserable, but also derailing significant projects. The following comes from a report earlier this year in the New York Times.

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues.

Local officials say they would dismiss such notions except that the growing and often heated protests are having an effect.

In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions…

And, thanks to our friends at BetterGeorgia.com, who recently attended a four-hour briefing session for Georgia’s Republican State Senators, we now have some insight as to how this particular conspiracy theory is making its way though our state legislatures. Following is hidden camera video, shot on October 11, of a four-hour Agenda 21 information session for Georgia legislators called by Chip Rogers, the Republican Majority Leader of the Georgia State Senate, and Treasurer of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). During the session, Rogers shared what he’s uncovered about Agenda 21 with his fellow State Senators. (The invitation to the event promised that the presentation would explain: “How pleasant sounding names are fostering a Socialist plan to change the way we live, eat, learn, and communicate to ‘save the earth.’”) I particularly like the part, at about 23 minutes into the presentation, when we hear conservative operative Field Searcy relate to the Senators how Obama is using a mind-control technique known as “Delphi” to trick the American people into accepting this UN-orchestrated coup, which will ultimately see all of us forcefully relocated to cities. (It should be noted that Rogers was just two votes short of getting anti-Agenda 21 legislation approved by the Senate last session.)

Agenda 21 Full Video from Bryan Long on Vimeo.

And, did you catch that Majority Leader Rogers is the Treasurer of the ALEC Board of Directors? (He’s also their Georgia State Chairman, and winner of ALEC’s State Chair of the Year Award.) I find that connection really interesting, given ALEC’s well-established role as the lead entity pushing the extreme legislative agenda of corporate America. As one doubts that the very intelligent individuals behind ALEC truly believe that President Obama is attempting to enslave us, and hand our country over to the United Nations, I can’t help but think that they’re involved in the pushing of this conspiracy theory for other reasons… most notably, to stop environmental legislation that would negatively impact the bottom lines of America’s largest and most powerful corporations. This, in other words, has nothing to do with the threat of creeping Socialism, and everything to do with a desire on the part of America’s CEOs to operate outside of the law. This is about keeping cap-and-trade from being implemented, and keeping our coal-powered factories belching black smoke into the atmosphere.

And, on that note, I give you the ad for Glenn Beck’s book. Be sure to watch until the end. Otherwise, you won’t learn about how, in the future, we burn old people alive for energy.

note: I should add that I think this subject matter should be fair game for fiction writers. Dystopian novels, when done well, as in the case of 1984 and the Handmaid’s Tale, can be incredibly powerful. And, as we find ourselves, right now, at a time in history when natural resources are dwindling, population is rising, and our climate seems intent on wiping humanity from the face of the planet, I think we need to begin exploring, through fiction, and all other means available to us, how our countries might choose to intervene in hopes of salvaging what can be salvaged. It’s certainly plausible, I think, that we could find ourselves in a situation, for instance, where people are incentivized to give up their cars, move into urban centers, and use mass transportation. (Personally, I’d like to think that we could figure out how to make cheap, efficient solar power ubiquitous before resorting to the burning of our elderly, but I suppose it’s an alternative worth considering.) No, what I object to isn’t the book, but the fear mongering being done by certain people on the right who have a vested interest in the status quo. I have a problem with ALEC taking up the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory as a way to drive terrified and poorly-informed individuals into the offices of their elected officials, demanding that we not, for instance, legislate the emissions of coal plants, because it’s all part of Barack Obama’s evil Socialist plot to overthrow our great and powerful country. And, it pisses me off that Glenn Beck is building an empire on this nonsense, peddling fear between ads for gold coins, local gun shops, and so-called “survival seeds.” So, it’s not the book that I object to – it’s the completely disingenuous propaganda campaign surrounding it.

Every spring, when we get our last, little flurry of snow, global warming deniers are anxious to take the opportunity to point it out to all of us on Facebook, as though it somehow proves there’s no such thing as global climate change. I’m curious where they all are now, as we’re experiencing yet another day of 100-degree heat, and it looks as though Michigan may be losing its cherry crop for good…

I just can’t believe we’ve let it go this far. I sat in on a panel about global climate change in D.C. in 1987. That was 25 years ago. That’s how long we’ve been talking about this, trying to get the anti-science crowd to take global warming seriously. And this is where it’s gotten us. How much longer are we going to sit around and wait for the other side to act in good faith?…

And, on a personal note, I’m pissed because, after 12 years, I’ve finally given in and agreed to go several thousand dollars further into debt and get AC. I hate wasting the electricity, and contributing even more to the cycle that’s killing our planet, but I couldn’t in good conscience continue to do that to my family… I think humanity is fucked… We should have fought harder back when action would have meant something. (I’m not saying that we shouldn’t act now. I’m just saying that we should have been doing more before. Among other things, I should have gone to Florida and fought for Gore, who would have made bold moves to get us off of foreign oil after the 9/11 attacks, instead of declaring war on Iraq.)…

And the Republicans keep changing their tact. First they denied it. And, then, when they couldn’t deny it any longer, they said that global warming might exist, but that mankind wasn’t at fault, and therefore there was nothing that we could do about it. And there’s no reason to think that they won’t continue to shift the argument as they’re confronted by undeniable facts. They will never take this seriously. We need to go around them… or over them… or through them. We cannot do this with them… And we cannot continue to wait…

As another one of my Facebook friends pointed out, the idea of global warming wasn’t new in 1987, when I saw that panel of Congressmen and lobbyists debating how we should proceed in light of the scientific findings. We knew about the possibility long before that. As this friend pointed out, Sterling Lanier, in his book Hiero’s Journey, published in 1973, mentions the “greenhouse effect” and the possible consequences.

Speaking of that 1987 panel, the reason I can remember it all these years later is because of something said by an industry representative on the stage that evening. I can’t remember his exact words, but he said something like, “If it’s real, we’ll invent our way out of it.” The message was essentially that Capitalism will solve everything, if we just allow it to. The specific thing that I remember him saying is, “We’ll build better air conditioners.” I can still remember sitting there, thinking about how better air conditioners wouldn’t save the crops, or the lives of people who couldn’t afford these new, improved air conditioners. Of course, I didn’t do anything about it, though. I was too busy protesting Apartheid in South Africa, and our country’s nuclear policy. The impending peril posed by climate change seemed too abstract – too far off.

Actually, I think there may be a glimmer of hope. If the corn crop really is dead, the price of everything sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup will surely rise. And, maybe that’s what it takes to awaken the Big Gulp-drinking population of America, who don’t seem to give a damn that polar bears are drowning, and the levels of our oceans are rising. When Coke doubles in price, though… maybe that’s when we’ll see real change. Maybe that’s what triggers the revolution.

The young man in this video, who witnesses say was shot in the head by a police projectile, is named Scott Olsen. He’s a 24 year old Iraq war veteran. According to The Guardian, he’s presently in critical condition, with a fractured skull and brain swelling. Olsen, who served two tours of duty in Iraq, is a member of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Here’s another angle of the same scene, which clearly shows the cops not only not coming forward to help Olsen when it’s clear that he’s been badly injured, but then launching another flash-bang grenade into the group of protesters who come to his aid.

I might be able to excuse the actions of police up to a point, as it’s been documented that some in the crowd of protesters were throwing rocks, but what’s absolutely inexcusable in my eyes, is not coming to this young man’s aid when it’s clear that he’s in desperate need to medical attention. I’m not one to throw around the phrase “police state” willy nilly, but it’s hard to watch the video of these faceless officers, behind their shields and masks, launching flash-bang grenades into a group of people coming to the aid of an injured man, and not feel as though we’ve crossed a line.

As my friend Matt noted, though, we may not be subjected to these kinds of troubling videos for long, as a number of communities are moving to make it illegal to record the actions of police officers. So I guess that’s something to be thankful for, right?

It would certainly make things easier if we only had one side of the story to consider, wouldn’t it… Speaking of which, here’s a clip from the Oakland Police Department’s press release about the incident:

…During the evening protest, a number of officers were assaulted, doused with hazardous materials and hit with large rocks and bottles, which resulted in the declaration of an unlawful assembly and the order to disperse. To assist in the dispersal efforts, officers used less lethal force tactics.

At approximately 10:00pm this evening, a group of approximately 300 protesters in the area of Frank Ogawa Plaza began throwing large rocks and bottles at officers after receiving the order to disperse, which again prompted the use of less than lethal munitions. At the time of this release, there are approximately 200-300 protesters in the area of 14th and Broadway and enforcement efforts are continuing…

It kind of sounds like we should be thanking the cops for showing restraint, doesn’t it? After all, they were doused with hazardous materials and hit with “large” rocks. [note: I would have described these large rocks as boulders, if I'd been writing this.]

There was also a Q&A included in the press release. It included the following.

Question: Did the Police deploy rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades?

Answer: No, the loud noised that were heard originated from M-80 explosives thrown at Police by protesters. In addition, Police fired approximately four bean bag rounds at protesters to stop them from throwing dangerous objects at the officers.

And this would have been fine with me, if not for the video above, which clearly shows flash-bang grenades being used, and all of the photos going around the web of what look like projectile injuries.

If this same thing happened in the Middle East, our leaders would have condemned it, but, since it happened here, we’ll just agree to accept the fictional version of events in which the bad hippies were the ones making the explosions and dousing our heroic crime fighters with unnamed “hazardous materials”.

And, as much as I love blogs, I don’t think blogs are sufficient to the task of rooting out corruption and abuse. Bloggers not only lack resources – they lack the ability to strike fear into the hearts of elected officials. Take, for example, the case of EMU student Laura Dickinson, who was murdered in her dorm room by a fellow student in 2007. Does anyone really think that story would have been broken open by a blogger? I think it’s safe to say that, had that murder taken place today, there would be a good chance that President Fallon would still be in power at EMU, and that people would never know the extent to which University administrators had conspired to keep it quiet that a student had been murdered. And that’s just one isolated example.

At any rate, the FCC just put out a fascinating report on the current state of American media. If you get a chance, I’d suggest checking it out. And, if you’re not one to follow links, here’s a little introduction from our friends at Think Progress:

The Federal Communications Commission’s report titled “Information Needs of Communities” probably won’t generate as much buzz as a political sex scandal, but at least one of its findings should be a cause for concern among citizens. The study concludes that “we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting” which “manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little.”

The report indicates that the decline in local reporting is a result of “dislocations caused by seismic changes in media markets.” In other words, local newspapers’ subscriber bases are drying up because readers are migrating online. Despite the limited success of services such as AOL’s Patch, online media has not been able to fill in the gap created as local papers have downsized their reporting staffs and cut back on the quantity and frequency of their publications.

This raises the question of whether demand for local news was that strong in the first place. After all, if individuals actually valued local reporting when print newspapers were still thriving, then wouldn’t they press for online news sources to offer more of it now? And if nobody was reading local stories in print papers, then what difference does it make if they vanish? Still, the mere threat of press coverage often can be enough to keep state and local governments honest. Even if citizens weren’t actively seeking out information about city council meetings, state and local elections and public sector dealings with private business, there was the possibility that they would become aware of a scandal or boondoggle through a front-page headline or a lead report on the 6 o’clock news…

So, instead of an “accountability press” we, for the most part, at least at a local level, now have glorified bloggers, under tight deadlines to get fresh content up several times a day, posting press releases issued by corporations and public entities. It’s a recipe for disaster. And you’ve all been warned.

…I worked as Obama’s chief blogger during his presidential campaign, and my primary focus was telling the stories of these supporters, many of whom had never been engaged in politics or were reengaging after years of disillusionment. There was a common thread in my conversations with the hundreds of people who gave time, sweat and small donations – that amounted to $500 million – to Obama’s campaign.

They were inspired by Obama’s promise to upend Washington by governing from the bottom up. “The change we need doesn’t come from Washington,” Obama told them. “It comes to Washington.”

Yet at seemingly every turn, Obama has chosen to play an inside game. Instead of actively engaging supporters in major legislative battles, Obama has told them to sit tight as he makes compromises behind closed doors.

During the battle over tax cuts, Obama’s grass-roots network, Organizing for America, was silent. An OFA spokesman said that the network would engage supporters when the time is “ripe.” But many people feel the time is ripe now – that tax cuts for millionaires in the midst of cuts in basic services and a spiraling deficit are unacceptable – and they don’t understand why Obama won’t let them fight…

If the White House wants to keep its grass-roots supporters at bay during major legislative fights, that’s its choice. But there’s a larger problem looming.

Obama needs this list in 2012 – and he needs its members to dig much deeper than in the last election. The Citizens United ruling has allowed campaigns to become an unprecedented corporate cash free-for-all – and Obama will likely need to raise far more than $500 million from the grass roots to be competitive.

While Obama’s political team intensely focuses on independents, the grass-roots list seems like an afterthought. Every time Obama chooses to compromise behind closed doors, and keeps OFA quiet, he might win over a few independents. But he’s also conveying a message that the grass roots doesn’t really matter, that the bottom-up ethos of his candidacy doesn’t apply to his presidency….

I think he’s absolutely right. While a lot of us will no doubt vote for Obama in 2012, I can’t see us investing the same amount of our money, or our time. Here, on that subject, is a comment that was left on the site a few days ago by Glen S.

I first got involved with politics going door-to-door for Mondale/Ferraro in 1984, when I was still just a kid. Since then, I’ve spent countless hours — and countless dollars — supporting the Democratic Party and dozens of Democratic candidates, including Jesse Jackson, Michael Dukakis, Bill Bradley, Howard Dean, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, etc. I did so because I believed that, in general, the Democratic Party genuinely represented the interests of poor and working people, and the middle class — and was willing to fight for what was right, and what was fair.

So, naturally, I was thrilled when Obama and the Democrats won the White House and big majorities in Congress in 2008, and very much looked forward to seeing them use the power of their mandate to enact real (and much-needed!) change.

Instead, however, almost from day one — Obama and the Democrats have allowed Republicans, conservatives, tea-baggers, and Wall Street and corporate lobbyists to set the agenda, define the nature of the debate, and move the ever-elusive political “middle” further and further to the right…

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that we have now reached the point where President Obama has promoted, and a majority of Democrats in Congress have supported this disastrous “compromise” with Republicans — which will not only accelerate the massive upward transfer of wealth that has been going on in this country for decades, but also lays the groundwork for the eventual destruction of Social Security. For me, this turn of events represents not just another “vote,” not just another “compromise,” but rather, a dramatic turning point that makes mockery of “Democratic” values and the whole Democratic Party.

Going forward, I will likely continue to vote for individual candidates (like Senator Carl Levin) who continue to exhibit some degree of integrity, and who are willing to continue to stand up for what is right — but I will certainly no longer actively support the Party, nor consider myself a “Democrat” — whatever that even means anymore.

And, if I personally know a half dozen people like Glen, here, in the relatively small town of Ypsilanti, who don’t plan to support Obama at anywhere near the level that they did in 2008, I’ve got to think that there are millions across the country who feel the same way. And, I’d think that, at some point, it’s got to enter into Obama’s political calculus. The Republicans won’t be holding anything back in 2012, and Obama is going to need his base to be actively engaged, and financially contributing. Hopefully, for his sake, our memories are short.

Maybe a few progressive wins, like the one this weekend on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, will ameliorate those of us on the left. Maybe we’ll believe him when he comes back, telling us that he’s changed. Maybe we’ll forgive him for not keeping his word on Guantánamo Bay, caving on the public option, and agreeing to tax breaks for the wealthy without so much as throwing a single punch. I hope, though, that I know better. I hope that, at the very least, I’m able to stay strong during the primaries, backing someone that, if nothing else, I knew wouldn’t betray his principles. I can live with compromise. I cannot, however, fight for a President who doesn’t want to fight for the working men and women of America.

And, while we’re on the subject, I thought that you might enjoy this brilliant little video:

On Thursday, a California man by the name of John Patrick Bedell, was killed at the Pentagon after shooting two police officers. It seems as though, Bedell, who suffered from what is being described as severe “anti-government anger,” had crossed the country with two semiautomatic weapons, intent on making a stand in DC… Following is a clip from the Associated Press:

…Hints of a deep-seated mistrust of government emerged in Internet postings linked to Bedell. A blog connected to his LinkedIn profile contained a two-part treatise on big government, including its vulnerability to being controlled by a criminal organization.

“This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control,” the blog post read…

Coincidentally, the Southern Poverty Law Center just issued a report on anti-government extremism… Here’s a clip from the report’s accompanying press release:

…The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Antigovernment “Patriot” groups – militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy – came roaring back to life over the past year after more than a decade out of the limelight.

The SPLC documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Their numbers grew from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009, an astonishing addition of 363 new groups in a single year. Militias – the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement – were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009…

While I don’t believe there’s evidence of this most recent shooter having ties to any particular group, I don’t suspect the recent, paranoid anti-government ravings by the likes of Glenn Beck, who loves to talk about the secret military that Obama is building, the conspiracy theories of the tea bagging set, or the proliferation of signs about Obama’s gas chambers, helped.

Those interested in reading the Southern Poverty Law Center report, click here, or watch this video featuring the report’s author, Mark Potok.

…The April 7 report, which Reuters and other news media obtained on Tuesday, said such fears were driving a resurgence in “recruitment and radicalization activity” by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements. It did not identify any by name.

DHS had no specific information about pending violence and said threats had so far been “largely rhetorical.”

But it warned that home foreclosures, unemployment and other consequences of the economic recession “could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists.”

“To the extent that these factors persist, right-wing extremism is likely to grow in strength,” DHS said.

The report warned that military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with combat skills could be recruitment targets, especially those having trouble finding jobs or fitting back into civilian society…

And, as you might imagine, folks on the fringe of the right wing aren’t enjoying being singled out.

Until recently, the idea that the world’s most powerful nations might come together to tackle global warming seemed an environmentalist’s pipe dream.

The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, was widely viewed as badly flawed. Many countries that signed the accord lagged far behind their targets in curbing carbon dioxide emissions. The United States refused even to ratify it. And the treaty gave a pass to major emitters in the developing world like China and India.

But within weeks of taking office, President Obama has radically shifted the global equation, placing the United States at the forefront of the international climate effort and raising hopes that an effective international accord might be possible. Mr. Obama’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, said last week that the United States would be involved in the negotiation of a new treaty — to be signed in Copenhagen in December — “in a robust way.”…

Speaking of global warming, have you seen the new Clean Coal PSA from the Cohen brothers?

For more information on global warming and what we can do about it, check out Repower America.

In all seriousness, I think that it’s likely that this half-hour primetime special will be primarily casual documentary footage of Barack and his family at home together, not all that different from the unused footage Spike Jonze shot of Al Gore and his family in 2000. (If I know one thing, it’s that Americans love them some reality television.) The biggest apprehension that voters have about Obama, it seems, is that they don’t “know” him. My guess is that they’ll seek to address that in this half-hour. We’ll see Barack talking policy and being presidential, but primarily we’ll see him being a good father and a loving husband in a home surprisingly not that different from our own. Contrary to what many of us expect, there won’t be a bust of Osama bin Laden, drug paraphernalia, or bomb-making materials. The next day some folks will be up in arms, saying that it was completely scripted and shot on a Hollywood sound stage, but the damage will have been done. The American people will know that Barack Obama, contrary to what they’ve been told, is just your average American — only maybe a little more motivated and brilliant.

I think he resented the suggestion that his analysis had to contain some kind of cheerful advice on how disaster could be averted when our oil-addicted nation begins to collapse. I, of course, wasn’t suggesting that. At least I didn’t mean to be suggesting that. I didn’t want for him to sugarcoat the truth. What I did want, however, was a glimmer of hope, even if it wasn’t really waranted. My argument was that people, if we really wanted for them to sacrifice and begin changing their lives radically, needed to be shown a vision of something better that we were headed toward. If we really wanted people to leave the suburbs and all the rest of it, I was arguing, we needed to paint a picture of a better world, and not just tell them that this one is shit… At any rate, I was catching up on his blog tonight and in a recent post he laid out some of the things, in his opinion, that we’d have to do if we hoped to survive what’s on the horizon. It’s not quite the vision of a better world that I’d asked for, but I think it’s a step in that direction. Here’s a clip in which he outlines a few things that we have to do if we intend to live.

…From time-to-time, I feel it’s necessary to remind readers what we can actually do in the face of this long emergency. Voters and candidates in the primary season have been hollering about “change” but I’m afraid the dirty secret of this campaign is that the American public doesn’t want to change its behavior at all. What it really wants is someone to promise them they can keep on doing what they’re used to doing: buying more stuff they can’t afford, eating more shitty food that will kill them, and driving more miles than circumstances will allow.

Here’s what we better start doing.

Stop all highway-building altogether. Instead, direct public money into repairing railroad rights-of-way. Put together public-private partnerships for running passenger rail between American cities and towns in between. If Amtrak is unacceptable, get rid of it and set up a new management system. At the same time, begin planning comprehensive regional light-rail and streetcar operations.

End subsidies to agribusiness and instead direct dollar support to small-scale farmers, using the existing regional networks of organic farming associations to target the aid. (This includes ending subsidies for the ethanol program.)

Begin planning and construction of waterfront and harbor facilities for commerce: piers, warehouses, ship-and-boatyards, and accommodations for sailors. This is especially important along the Ohio-Mississippi system and the Great Lakes.

In cities and towns, change regulations that mandate the accommodation of cars. Direct all new development to the finest grain, scaled to walkability. This essentially means making the individual building lot the basic increment of redevelopment, not multi-acre “projects.” Get rid of any parking requirements for property development. Institute “locational taxation” based on proximity to the center of town and not on the size, character, or putative value of the building itself. Put in effect a ban on buildings in excess of seven stories. Begin planning for district or neighborhood heating installations and solar, wind, and hydro-electric generation wherever possible on a small-scale network basis.

We’d better begin a public debate about whether it is feasible or desirable to construct any new nuclear power plants. If there are good reasons to go forward with nuclear, and a consensus about the risks and benefits, we need to establish it quickly. There may be no other way to keep the lights on in America after 2020.

We need to prepare for the end of the global economic relations that have characterized the final blow-off of the cheap energy era. The world is about to become wider again as nations get desperate over energy resources. This desperation is certain to generate conflict. We’ll have to make things in this country again, or we won’t have the most rudimentary household products.

We’d better prepare psychologically to downscale all institutions, including government, schools and colleges, corporations, and hospitals. All the centralizing tendencies and gigantification of the past half-century will have to be reversed. Government will be starved for revenue and impotent at the higher scale. The centralized high schools all over the nation will prove to be our most frustrating mis-investment. We will probably have to replace them with some form of home-schooling that is allowed to aggregate into neighborhood units. A lot of colleges, public and private, will fail as higher ed ceases to be a “consumer” activity. Corporations scaled to operate globally are not going to make it. This includes probably all national chain “big box” operations. It will have to be replaced by small local and regional business. We’ll have to reopen many of the small town hospitals that were shuttered in recent years, and open many new local clinic-style health-care operations as part of the greater reform of American medicine…

So, what do you think? Is he exaggerating the enormity of the situation we face? And, if not, what do we need to add to his list? I think that clearly rail infrastructure, for instance, needs to be addressed. What else?

For what it’s worth, I do not think that he’s overstating the enormity of the situation. Like him, I do not think that there’s an alternative energy solution around the corner that will allow us to keep consuming at the rate we’ve become used to. I thnk the shit is getting ready to hit the fan. I just think that what’s on the other side might be better. And that’s where we part ways. I think that the cause would be better served if we were to embrace re-localization. I think we need someone, like President John Edwards maybe, to take Kunstler’s ideas, remove the doom and gloom, and put them in front of the American people with the message that together we can build a stronger, more sustainable America.