News and Politics | San Francisco Bay Guardian
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I had a beautiful child via donor sperm from a sperm bank. My partner (female) and I are very happy, but recently I have been having sexual fantasies about the donor. I have not told this to my SO (she would not understand, trust me). I feel an almost spiritual bond with this unknown man and am concerned I may be getting a little obsessed. Have any experience in this minefield?
Love,
A Matter of Sementics
Dear Matter:
Not directly, no, but as we used to say at San Francisco Sex Information when somebody would call looking for a bisexual transman into water sports to answer a question, "We all have the same training! OK if I give it a try?" Of course, we, whoever we are, do not necessarily all have the same training, but if my time in the trenches has earned me anything, it’s an impressive virtual Rolodex of people, many of them good friends, who have done or seen or charged for whatever the experience in question might be. I have produced for your edutainment a professional singer who gives great head without harming her throat, a Realtor who would throw you out on your ear for attempting that "house humping" business, any number of well-spoken hos, a dominatrix who can testify to the fact that men who want to be kicked in the balls never show up for their appointments, and another who can prove otherwise. In other words, here’s your expert, my friend who has worked as a teller at the sperm bank, if you will. Call her Polly. Polly Enmity. She says:
It’s not uncommon for women using sperm banks to get really attached to their donors. No, really attached. When I worked in the semen industry I spent countless hours on the phone with women who wanted to know how hot their donor was, if I would do him (they were asking only hypothetically, I’m sure), what celebrity he looked like, how nice he was, what he wore, if he smelled nice. So yes, it’s supercommon to feel attached. I was offered not insignificant sums of money to divulge donors’ identities (which I never did, and that’s why I’m still broke), and at least one woman asked if we did "live inseminations." In my experience, donor fantasies and attachment are very common, and yours seems to be on the less stalkerish end of the scale.
And even if you never met the guy, you did get some of his most intimate bodily fluids (albeit centrifuged and washed beyond all recognition) inserted into your most intimate parts, so your connection to this donor is, well, pretty understandable. Ever get attached to someone after a one-night stand? It can happen, sure. Now think about a woman who uses the same donor, cycle after cycle, hoping each time to get pregnant and finding out month after month that it hasn’t worked … again. It almost becomes like a relationship, albeit one that involves you picking your partner based on a short description and the kindness of the sperm bank workers who vouch for his character and looks. I’ve seen women feel upset, angry, even betrayed by this person they have never met.
Now, is this just fantasy, or would you want it to play out in reality? Think: Do you really want to know anything more about him? What if he turns out to be your neighbor who had your car towed last week? Or the jerk on his cell phone sitting next to you in a restaurant? If you met him, would you do anything about the sexual feelings, or would they remain in the realm of fantasy? I knew many of these donors, and, well, with a couple of exceptions, many of them were nice, average guys trying to earn a few bucks by selling their genetic material, but most of them weren’t really fertile fantasy fodder. Trust me on this: your fantasy of your donor is probably much better — and hotter — than the reality.
Listen to Polly! She has some hilarious and fairly scarifying stories from the deepest vaults of the sperm bank — tales from the crypt — and many of them involve people or their products not smelling so nice. This is not something you need to think about while cuddling your sweet baby, who I am sure smells lovely. While Polly and I both steadfastly stand by your right to fantasize about any damned thing that pleases you, some fantasies are just inconvenient and ultimately more trouble than they’re worth. You wouldn’t want to fantasize about your boss every morning in the shower, only to have to face him or her and be all professional and not at all sweaty as soon as you got to work, would you? This one isn’t that bad as long as you keep in mind that tracking down the donor would be like suicide, only messier — so that anonymity thing sure was a good idea in this case.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.
TECHSPLOITATION I was raised on the idea that the information age would usher in a democratic, communication-based utopia, but recently I was offered at least two object lessons in why that particular dream is a lie.
First, a dead surveillance satellite, one roughly the size of a bus, fell out of orbit and into a collision course with Earth. It will likely do no damage, so don’t worry about being crushed to death by flying chunks of the National Security Agency budget. The important part is that nobody knew when the satellite died. Maybe a year ago? Maybe a few days? A rep from the National Security Council would only say, "Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation."
Is this our info utopia, wherein we literally lose track of bus-size shit flying through space over our heads? I mean, how many surveillance satellites do we have? It’s not like I love the techno-surveillance state, but it is a little shocking that the SIGINT nerds who run it are so out of touch that they can’t even keep track of their orbiting spy gear. Still, it’s hard to be too upset when Big Brother isn’t watching.
But that satellite could just as easily have been a forgotten communications satellite dive-bombing our atmosphere. And that would have sucked, especially since last week’s mega Internet outage across huge parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia didn’t bring down the global economy largely because people had satellite access to the Internet. This Internet outage, which took millions of people (and a few countries) off-line, happened when two 17,000-mile underwater fiber-optic cables running between Japan and Europe were accidentally cut. No one is quite sure how they were severed, but it was most likely due to human error — an anchor was probably dropped in the wrong place.
And so big chunks of Dubai went dark, as did many Southeast Asian countries. Businesses couldn’t operate; people couldn’t communicate. The people and businesses that were able to keep running were by and large the ones that didn’t depend on cheap Internet services that use only one or two cables to route their traffic. It’s cheaper to rent time on one cable, but if that cable is cut, you lose everything. Most customers don’t research how their Internet service providers route Internet traffic across the Asian continent — or across the Pacific Ocean — so they don’t realize their communications could be disrupted, possibly for weeks, if some drunken sailor drops anchor in the wrong spot.
In fact, few of us anywhere in the world consider the fact that our info utopia is a fragile thing based on networks that are both material and vulnerable. We think of the Internet as a world of ideas, a place "out there," unburdened by physical constraints. Even if you wanted to research which physical cables your ISP uses to route your traffic, it would be very difficult to do without a strong technical background and the help of the North American Network Operators’ Group list, an e-mail list for high-level network administrators.
So why do a crashing spy satellite and a partly dark Internet mean we’ve entered the age of information dystopia? Quite simply, they are signs that our brave new infrastructure is failing around us even as we claim that it offers a shining path to the future. It’s as if the future is breaking down before we get a chance to realize its potential.
But the information age doesn’t have to end this way, in a world where
can-and-string-network jokes aren’t so funny anymore. There are a few simple things we could do. We could help consumers better understand what happens when they buy Internet access by showing them what routes their traffic might take and giving them realistic statistics about possible outages. People could then make better choices about what services to buy. And so could telcos and nations.
Why shouldn’t we have solid research on which ISPs are most likely to suffer the kind of network outages we just witnessed from the severing of those two cables? Consumer groups could undertake this research. Or, since developed nations suffer more, perhaps the United Nations might want to conduct the investigation as a matter of Internet governance. We know where car traffic and sea traffic go. Why don’t we know where Internet traffic goes?
Another thing we could do to stop the information dystopia is to cut down on spy satellites, but that, as they say, is another column.
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who is investing in semaphore communication networks.
OPINION Just five months after boasting that California’s "budget deficit is zero," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently came back to tell us the state is facing a staggering $14.5 billion shortfall over the next 18 months.
To deal with this amazing turn of events he is now proposing that we slash funding for our court system; virtually close down our state parks system; cut more than $4.5 billion from K–12 education; decimate our AIDS Drug Assistance Program; further reduce reimbursement rates for health care providers; put the children of mothers on state assistance at risk of homelessness; deny the blind, the elderly, and the disabled even a minimal cost-of-living adjustment; and continue to underfund our higher education systems.
Voters should rightfully be bewildered and seriously concerned. How and when did this crisis happen? How could the state go from a budget deficit of zero to one of $14.5 billion in just five months?
The governor’s earlier boast about our nonexistent budget deficit was a great line from a great showman. But it failed to tell the real story.
The fact remains that Schwarzenegger created the beginnings of this budget catastrophe on his very first day in office, when he followed through on a campaign pledge he made during the 2003 recall election. His promise was to rescind the restoration of the vehicle license fee.
The VLF was created in 1935 as a 1.5 percent tax on the purchase price of every automobile sold in California. Iconic Republican governor Earl Warren raised it to 2 percent in 1948. VLF revenue does not go to the state’s General Fund. Rather, it goes to local governments to pay for fire and police protection, keep libraries and parks open, and keep our streets clean.
In 1998, at the height of the dot-com boom, when California had surplus tax revenue, the Stage Legislature offered car owners a temporary relaxation on the VLF. The average 2 percent VLF was then $300. The "good times" tax break lowered the amount car owners paid to just $100. The state picked up the remaining $200 so local governments would continue to receive the entire $300. At the time this cost the GF around $5 billion annually. The deal was to continue as long as there were "sufficient general funds" to make up the difference.
In 2003, after the boom went bust, we faced a $38 billion state budget deficit. Then-governor Gray Davis’s finance director correctly determined that there were no longer sufficient general funds to continue the good times tax break. The VLF was restored to where it had been for 50 years.
Candidate Schwarzenegger seized on the issue, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, the $6.15 billion that Schwarzenegger is now spending annually on the VLF tax break is money we don’t have. Neither are the billions he’s spending to cover that debt, which stands at more than $20 billion over the past four years. Combined, the cost of the VLF tax break and the debt to service it account for almost 90 percent of our current budget deficit.
Without the governor’s reckless and profligate spending habit, our state would have no budget crisis and there would be no need to dismantle essential governmental services.
We need to finally have an honest conversation with the voters of California. One can debate whether or not the VLF spending program is a good idea. What is not debatable is that the ongoing GF cost of the VLF spending program is the main cause of our budget woes.
An immediate intervention is necessary. We must break the governor’s spending addiction to correct the course of our state.
Mark Leno
Mark Leno represents Assembly District 13 in Sacramento.
› news@sfbg.com
GREEN CITY For Van Jones, going green is not just about buying a Prius, putting a solar panel on a vacation home, or purchasing groceries at Whole Foods, which he calls Whole Paycheck. It’s also about training former gangsters in green-collar jobs, equitably distributing toxic waste sites, and bringing organic produce into urban ghettos.
According to the Oakland activist, who cofounded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (see "Redefining Radicalism," 9/19/06), there is a serious social injustice on the horizon, and the fight against it may just be the next great political movement in the United States.
Speaking Jan. 30 at San Francisco State University’s teach-in on climate change, Jones called on students to be the next great generation by recognizing that the environmental crisis presents the biggest opportunity for poor people and minorities since the New Deal. Today it seems such grandiose statements calling an entire generation to action tend to lack an inspired audience. However, no one could deny Jones was onto something big after the packed crowd in Jack Adams Hall erupted in an ovation after his challenge to students to make history by addressing poverty and the environment together.
Green pathways out of poverty was just one topic discussed during the SFSU segment of "Focus the Nation" — billed as the nation’s largest-ever teach-in, with more than 1,500 schools and universities participating. The nationally coordinated event aimed to create one day of focused discussion on global warming solutions for the US. Throughout the day expert panels at SFSU discussed green efforts in their respective fields with an underlying message of public involvement.
Keynote speaker Michael Glantz of the National Center for Atmospheric Research jumped on the generational bandwagon, predicting the 21st century would be remembered as the climate century. However, Glantz stressed public pressure would be crucial, as lessons learned about the environment are generally not used during policy making. He cited detailed studies conducted in the early 1970s of melting arctic sea ice due to anthropogenic causes.
When asked how he would reply to arguments that humans aren’t causing climate change, Glantz noted the success of the environmental movement in marginalizing these beliefs: "I don’t think we need to spend time now dealing with the skeptics when Exxon and Shell are worried about global warming."
Faculty from the SFSU geography and geosciences departments presented new trends in climate change data and modeling, focusing on predictions for California. The panel reported the state’s average temperature is on the rise. Even with the best estimates for halting global warming, the Sierra Mountains are expected to lose 40 percent of their snowpack over the next 100 years. Agricultural production and quality in the Central Valley are also expected to decline, as some plants will not get the chill period they need.
Geography professor Andrew Oliphant worked with students to create a carbon footprint calculator for attendees to use throughout the day. Oliphant said the calculator was tailor-made specifically for the event so attendees could analyze their daily habits.
Students were also present throughout the event to answer questions on an informative poster display. The posters depicted breakdowns of greenhouse gases, rising sea levels in the Bay Area, and the formation of acid rain.
Erin Rodgers, an environmental advocate with the California Union of Concerned Scientists, discussed green policies at the state level. Rodgers focused on California’s groundbreaking initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of about 30 percent from current levels.
Experts have established detailed plans on how to reach the target reduction, with a large focus on transportation, although the California Air Resources Board has yet to embrace a comprehensive plan that will get anywhere close to the goals it is charged with meeting.
Cal Broomhead, climate programs manager at the San Francisco Department of the Environment, spoke on local green efforts. He praised the city for keeping the same levels of greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 and its continued use of the "Fab 3" composting and recycling program.
Broomhead also stressed the importance of furthering environmental education efforts: "Through education we can get people to adopt pro-green technologies and behaviors. Once you have the last remaining stragglers, then you can require them to participate through law."
Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.
EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom spent a fair amount of time this winter on the presidential primary — but he’s gearing up to spend far more time on the local supervisorial elections this fall. He’s showing a much more aggressive attitude toward the board, particularly President Aaron Peskin, and will be looking for ways to either embarrass or undermine the progressive majority over the next few months. Then he’ll push hard for his more moderate slate this fall.
That’s what this whole flap over Peskin calling Port of San Francisco director Monique Moyer and berating her over a policy disagreement is about. Remember: the incident she’s complaining about happened more than five months ago. Moyer’s letter went to the city’s Department of Human Resources, which took it as a complaint against a city employee and kept it strictly confidential. The City Attorney’s Office also said it was a confidential personnel matter and wouldn’t release it. But Moyer copied Phil Ginsberg, the mayor’s chief of staff, on the letter, and Newsom’s office doesn’t deny that it was the source of the leak.
We aren’t excusing Peskin’s behavior; if he was abusive to Moyer or her staff, that’s a problem. (He says he called and yelled at her over the Port’s development plans, and we don’t doubt he could have been more diplomatic.) But it hardly seems to rise to the level of a major political scandal.
It is, however, plausible payback for Peskin’s very public attack on the mayor’s dubious budget moves (including the diversion of money from Muni to pay for mayoral office staffers) and for the board’s attempt to remove two of Newsom’s public utilities commissioners from office.
With this kind of pressure (and nastiness) coming from the Mayor’s Office, some of the supervisors may be tempted to avoid conflict with the still-popular Newsom, but that would be a mistake: the board needs to fight back on several key fronts.
For starters, the supervisors need to stand up to the increasingly intense lobbying campaign and vote Feb. 12 to remove Dick Sklar and Ryan Brooks from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The stakes are immense, with public power and the city’s energy future on the line, and Brooks and Sklar have been on the wrong side of the key issues. The lobbying effort to save Sklar and Brooks has been unprecedented: Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who is still officially undecided, told us that "in all my seven years on the board, I’ve never seen such intense lobbying on anything, including multibillion-dollar development projects." Sklar has pulled out all the stops, and at one point his supporters offered to have US Sen. Ted Kennedy speak to the supervisors on his behalf. It will take eight votes to oust Sklar and Brooks — and the vote will be close — but the supervisors should ignore the pressure and stand up to Newsom.
And the PUC should hold off on any decision on general manager Susan Leal until new commissioners are in place.
The board needs to keep pushing on the Muni money and Mayor’s Office staffing too — and take a hard look at the three people Newsom wants to put on the Municipal Transportation Agency. Since the mayor has fired three sustainable-transportation advocates, including Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum, the board should insist that the mayor or one of his top deputies appear at a hearing and explain the administration’s long-term plans for the MTA and public transit in San Francisco.
EDITORIAL In a few weeks, City College of San Francisco chancellor Philip Day will be gone, headed to Washington DC to head a nonprofit that works on college financial aid issues. He will leave behind a unionized staff that’s relatively happy (Day worked hard to get raises for the faculty), a board that’s bitterly divided, a long list of financial problems — and a legacy of bad feelings in the community. As G.W. Schultz reports on page 14, he’s also leaving behind a scandal involving the diversion of college money to a political campaign.
Three of the board incumbents will be up for reelection this fall, and the seven-member panel desperately needs more new blood. But the current board will be choosing the next chancellor, the person who will have to dig one of the city’s most important institutions out of a deep fiscal and public relations crevice. Running City College isn’t an easy job in the best of circumstances, and Day hasn’t made it easy for his successor. The board will have to weigh a long list of qualifications — but one ought to be at the top.
The next chancellor needs to be someone who respects open government and is willing to work with — not fight against — the neighborhoods, the Board of Supervisors, and other interest groups in the city. Day’s successor needs to understand that San Franciscans don’t like to be pushed around by big institutions, don’t like to be lied to, and don’t like imperious officials who think secrecy is an appropriate response to criticism.
The Community College District has a long history of making it difficult for the public to monitor what the administration is doing. After at least five years of battles, the agency still won’t adopt the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance. Day has been recalcitrant when it comes to making documents public, and with the support of a narrow board majority he has been conducting all sorts of business behind closed doors. The administration several years ago quietly shifted millions in bond money that was earmarked for a performing arts center into building a new gym and pool, then signed an exclusive lease allowing a private school to use the pool in the afternoons. One of Day’s senior aides apparently diverted school money into a political campaign — and Day, who makes more than $400,000 per year in compensation, said the district couldn’t afford an internal auditor to keep track of that sort of money.
In Chinatown and North Beach, neighbors have been battling the college over a new campus building — and while the issues (over historic preservation, light and shadow, and appropriate height limits) are ones that could have been resolved amicably, Day’s administration has bullied the neighbors, refused to talk in good faith, and infuriated people who ought to be the strongest allies of a new campus in an underserved part of town.
If the board members want to turn the troubled district around, they need to make sure the new chancellor is willing to embrace the city’s open-government laws, do business in public, and accept that fact that in this city an agency with the powers of the state of California won’t get away will telling communities their concerns don’t matter.
We’ve got the official word: the G-spot does exist. At least insofar as we’re talking about the Guardian‘s guide to sex, love, and romance. Turn the page for revelations from a newly knighted expert on women, scheduling tips from people who manage to please several partners at once, news from the world of gay porn, and plenty of advice about how and where to celebrate the National Day of Making Singles Feel Bad. Plus, we’ve got the results of our Sex Poll! It’s information that’s sweet, sexy, and, unlike the mysterious G-spot, doesn’t require a diagram to find. You’re welcome! And happy Valentine’s Day.
Love and lust,
Molly Freedenberg
>>Getting girls
What a supposed sex cult can teach you about women — and yourself
By Justin Juul
>>U R mine… and so are U
How the polyamorous celebrate Valentine’s Day
By Erikka Innes
>>Everyone’s a wiener
The GayVN Awards wrap the best gay dick in an envelope of surprise
By Marke B
>>Waiter, I’ll take the (status) check!
Valentine’s Day dinner ideas in sync with your situation
By Ailene Sankur
>>Don’t fear the jeweler
A Valentine’s Day shopping guide
By Candice Chan
>>Valentine’s Day events
Prom, poetry, and porn
>>Wine + chocolate = love
Valentine’s Day pairings
By Molly Freedenberg
>>Nookie by the numbers
The results of our 2008 Sex Poll
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m getting superfrustrated. I don’t have the highest sex drive, but it is there. However, I can’t understand why my brain and my body tell me I want to do something that inevitably makes me uncomfortable and unhappy. Even with lube, sex leaves me sore for hours. I try to just give my boyfriend blow jobs so I can avoid having to have sex. I’m 21 and have been sexually active for about three years, and I just always figured everything would get better.
And it’s not just intercourse. I can’t even get satisfaction from oral sex or masturbating. It feels good, but then, instead of feeling really good, like you’d expect an orgasm to feel, suddenly the pleasure just kind of floats away. If that’s an orgasm, it freaking sucks. It is unpleasant. What is wrong with me?
Love,
Can’t Get Me No
Dear No:
Well, you’re feeling unsatisfied because you are unsatisfied, but I don’t suppose that observation will be much use to you. I believe that your sex drive is still hanging in there because you’re a normal, healthy girl, albeit one who apparently has some issues (we call them issues when we don’t know what else to call them) about sex. In fact, I’m not even sure you have issues. I think maybe you’ve just had some pretty disappointing sex, and now you’re so expecting it to be disappointing that you’re just kind of jumping straight to the disappointment part and saving yourself some time.
I hate to punt this over to the usual suspects, but I think I have to: there are books — lots of them — on learning to masturbate and becoming orgasmic, and there are some spectacular toys out there now, toys so good that I am not altogether positive I can still promise that using them will not interfere with partnered sex, but that is obviously a topic and a worry (an issue) for another time. The old classics are Lonnie Barbach (reads like a therapist writing for Redbook) and Betty Dodson (reads like someone you’d meet at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival circa 1989, naked), but they have accumulated an Amazon wish list full of competition. Poke around in the reviews and see if you can find someone whose voice you can stand, buy their book or DVD and whatever basic toys they recommend, then buy yourself some time and use them. Oh, and if there’s a boyfriend in the picture, tell him to just hang on — you’ve got some stuff to do, after which he’s welcome to come back and try again. If this works, it should be worth the wait.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I’m a 20-year-old girl, and I’ve only had one sex partner in my life (high school to the present). My problem seems pretty basic: sex doesn’t feel all that great. I mean, the desire’s there, but after a few minutes the pleasure part just kind of slips away, despite my best efforts to keep it there, and the rest either feels like smushing body parts or else is unpleasant and sort of painful. I don’t understand how it can start off feeling good and then just go away. Maybe I’m on the right track: When I first started having sex (three years ago), it always felt pretty neutral. Now at least it feels good for a little while. I can’t masturbate to orgasm either. It is incredibly frustrating to want to have sex even knowing I always go away from it unsatisfied. What is wrong with me? How do I fix it?’
Love,
No, No, No
Dear No:
I had to reread very carefully to make sure you and your doppelgänger are not the same person, but look — you’re slightly younger! And very, very faintly less hopeless, I think, but that is open to interpretation. I do find it slightly heartening that you are experiencing a bit of pleasure now, since I’d have to agree that it would be difficult to get motivated in the complete absence of anything more exciting than "neutral" sensation.
It’s neither fair nor just but is common for women to be out of touch with their sexual-response cycles in a way that simply doesn’t occur very often in males. I hesitate — nay, refuse! — to get into any historical-political reasons why this might be so. (It’s not that they’re not interesting, but they are unfruitful and dreadfully distracting, which is exactly what we don’t need when we’re already having trouble concentrating.) I’m afraid you too will have to buy media products and a vibrator that tickles at least your fancy, put the boyfriend on hold, and get practicing. I wish I could wave a magic wand for you, but I think the motor in mine is burning out. They don’t last forever.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.
› news@sfbg.com
The fourth floor of San Francisco’s City Hall feels remote. Dimly lit and strangely quiet, it conveys a sense of isolation from the powerful people who do their work in the lower levels of the building.
Here, in an unremarkable conference room, is where the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force is conducting its second meeting. Two of its officers are absent, and only one member of the public has turned up to participate. It is an atmosphere that belies the issue’s cataclysmic potential.
The day’s breaking news headlines of oil reaching $100 per barrel for the first time in history is perhaps a harbinger of things to come. One year earlier the price was $58 per barrel. This dramatic increase in such a short span would devastate economies around the world if it continued at anywhere close to that rate.
Chairperson Jeanne Rosenmeier, an articulate, contemplative woman, reiterates the task force’s purpose: "Our charge is to examine how the city is going to handle rising oil prices and possible shortages. That is what we have been asked to do."
The assessment seems like an understatement, perhaps suggesting that the group is merely looking for solutions to how the average citizen could function better without an automobile. Yet in a society built on oil, the consequences of such an energy crisis are likely to be far more sweeping and problematic than merely high gas prices.
While considering models for the study the task force will prepare, Rosenmeier points to Portland, Ore.’s recently completed peak oil report and talks about limiting San Francisco’s effort to outlining the range of scenarios, from small impacts to large. She’s reluctant to acknowledge the extralarge scenario — massive worldwide social unrest and full-scale anarchy in the streets of San Francisco — which she argues would be harmful to the group’s focus.
Jan Lundberg, the task force member in charge of "societal functioning," politely disagrees. Insightful and exuding a sort of deeply ingrained experience, Lundberg has a goatee and a big mane of blond hair that make him look like a Berkeley-ish version of billionaire Virgin CEO Richard Branson. The resemblance is strangely apt when you consider that Lundberg has defected from more lucrative ventures. His family’s business, the Lundberg Survey, has been one of the premier oil industry research authorities in the world for the past few decades, but today Lundberg is volunteering his time to the task force.
"You have to look honestly at what we are up against," Lundberg tells the Guardian. "Only then can you come up with intelligent responses to what is occurring. If it is a tsunami coming, then you take action for a tsunami."
It might come as news to most San Franciscans that a team of seven relatively unknown, politically appointed volunteers is hashing out the hard realities and dire implications of a potentially massive energy crisis. When the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution (with Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier absent) in April 2006 to acknowledge the looming phenomenon of the global oil supply being exceeded by demand, San Francisco was the first city in the country to do so. It was a precedent that received little attention from the media, perhaps shrugged off as just another wacky resolution steeped in San Francisco values.
For the next 10 months the task force will be preparing a study of mitigation measures to be considered by the city government for implementation into law. Much like the phenomenon of peak oil, their work will also be best assessed in hindsight. For now, some will see them as a team of Chicken Littles sketching a contingency plan for when the sky falls.
Yet if the scientific insights that compelled the Board of Supervisors to form the group prove prescient, then the report that the task force is producing may well be crucial to San Francisco’s very survival.
Oil has acquired a bad reputation in recent years, as if the resource were not a fossil fuel found in the earth’s crust but a corrupt corporate tycoon spurring international conflicts and gleefully dismantling the ozone layer. Like addicts who blame the substance rather than the habit, we have come to forget that oil is one of the best resources the planet has offered.
"Oil is amazing stuff. The 20th century was basically founded on the wonders of petroleum," explains Richard Heinberg, a professor at New College of Santa Rosa and author of several books, including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society Publishers, 2003). "Oil is very energy dense and can be made into an amazing range of chemicals and products. Our entire way of life is soaked in petroleum," he says.
This point tends to get lost in the shuffle. It is often forgotten that more than just powering our cars, petroleum is deeply woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Adding up to a global consumption rate of about 86 million barrels per day, oil plays a starring role in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and transportation. It heats our homes, paves our roads, and grows our food.
So what happens when the global demand for oil begins to outpace the supply? That’s the peak oil question.
"Peak oil is not theoretical. Everyone knows that oil is a nonrenewable resource," Heinberg explains, "so at some point our ability to continue increasing the supply will cease. Everyone knows that it will happen. It is just a matter of when."
Peak oil is inherently a geological concept, formulated by renowned geophysicist Marion King Hubbert. In 1956, as a researcher for Shell Oil, Hubbert presented his theory to the American Petroleum Institute, claiming that the oil output in the mainland United States would peak in the late 1960s or early ’70s. Though dismissed by his colleagues at the time, Hubbert was vindicated when US oil production peaked in 1970 and the nation became forever dependent on foreign sources of petroleum to meet its energy needs.
Hubbert had explained that the production of any petroleum reserve — a single oil well, a particular country, or even the entire planet — follows a similar bell-shaped curve (now referred to as the Hubbert curve). The logic is that as the supply is first tapped, there is a steady increase of oil output that ascends to a peak (or plateau), which represents the maximum amount of oil that will ever be produced from the designated source. As production descends the other side of the curve, the supply is not exhausted, but future yields will always be lower and more expensive to obtain.
For the past 10 years — as the price of crude oil has gone from $12 to $100 per barrel on the world market — scientists, geologists, petroleum experts, and concerned citizens have increasingly pondered the point at which the global oil supply will not only begin to wane but fail to keep up with surging demand.
Proponents of preparing for the impending peak in worldwide petroleum output often cite the steady decline of major oil field discoveries since the 1960s and the alarming number of oil-producing countries that have already hit their peaks. Considering the widespread role petroleum plays in the general day-to-day functioning of our society, an impending decline in overall global production is — to put it mildly — severely worrying.
"People assume that the other side of the peak will be an orderly transition," Lundberg tells us, "but we have no other experience to compare it to."
In 2005 the United States Department of Energy completed a study it had commissioned on the topic of worldwide petroleum depletion titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management. Popularly known as the Hirsch Report (for principal author Robert Hirsch), the study consulted a wide range of scientific and oil industry experts.
It painted a startling portrait: "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."
"It is one of the most important government reports of the last half century," Heinberg explains, "because it clearly indicates that this global event of peak oil is going to change everything."
Unfortunately, the Hirsch Report has been mostly ignored by Congress, the George W. Bush administration, and the DOE itself (which did not even publish the study for more than a year after its completion). However, the most troublesome aspect of the report is the fact that a sizable selection of the scientists and activists concerned with the topic believe that we’ve already hit the peak. They believe peak oil is happening right now.
"Most people in this country are energy illiterate," David Fridley says. "We can’t substitute millions of years of fossil fuels with something that we can manufacture in a factory, like biofuels. So most people don’t get this sense of anxiety about the situation we’re in."
Fridley knows a fair amount about energy. Currently a staff scientist leading the China Energy Group of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he has spent a large portion of his career working in the Asian oil industry. His deep concern over the implications of peak oil incited him to play a key role in the formation of San Francisco’s task force.
"Having spent a year just thinking about this on my own," Fridley tells us, "and everyone around me telling me I was nuts, I decided to join a local group where I could at least meet up with others and see if we might educate people rather than just talking amongst ourselves."
In 2005, Fridley met Dennis Brumm — a veteran San Francisco activist with an address book containing an A-list of the city’s prime political players — who was looking to raise the city’s awareness of the issue.
Together with local activists Jennifer Bresee and Allyse Heartwell, they set their sights on bringing the issue of peak oil before the Board of Supervisors.
"Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee is a friend of mine," Brumm explains, "so I invited him over to my house one night and had him discuss with us the personalities and quirks of the supervisors and their aides."
Having charted the terrain, Brumm’s small group soon began spending its Thursdays and Fridays for the next six months lobbying the supervisors at City Hall. When technical questions were asked, the group referred to Fridley’s decades-long experience in the industry for expert scientific analysis.
In April 2006, with backing from District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and District 1 Sup. Jake McGoldrick, the board passed Resolution Number 224, recognizing "the challenge of Peak Oil and the need for San Francisco to prepare a plan of response and preparation."
For Fridley, the resolution and the formation of the task force were matters of appropriate preparation. "We have two oil tankers come under the Golden Gate every day to fill up the local refinery tanks to produce the fuels that keep the Bay Area running," he says. "What would happen if those tankers don’t come in? Or they don’t come for a week? The city has no plan for that, but we have the ability to be better prepared."
When discussing the phenomenon of peak oil, Lundberg prefers to use the term petro collapse. It is a turn of phrase that quickly provides insight into his considerable sense of alarm for the days ahead.
"It is going to be a globally historic event," Lundberg says. "Imagine a nationwide version of [Hurricane] Katrina."
Although ominous in its predictions, Lundberg’s perspective is based on a long road of experience. While he ran the Lundberg Survey with his father in the 1970s, their widely read insider journal for the oil industry predicted the second great oil shock of the decade (in 1979). In the mid-1980s he moved on from the family business to form the Sustainable Energy Institute nonprofit in Washington DC, a move USA Today marked with the headline "Lundberg Goes Green."
As suggested by the title of the online magazine he currently edits — Culture Change — Lundberg has come to view the peak oil phenomenon as being primarily an issue of the American consumer lifestyle.
"We have this crazy way of life based on limited resources that are clearly becoming constrained," he says, "and we’re holding on to yesterday’s affluence without realizing that we have already walked off the cliff."
Chairperson Rosenmeier, one of Lundberg’s colleagues on the task force, is wary that such an explicitly bleak viewpoint may scare public attention away from the matter.
"You have to be careful with peak oil that you don’t immediately leap to ‘We’re all doomed and our economy is doomed,’<0x2009>" she says. "I think there is an intermediate phase, which is what we are being asked to address: the transition from business as usual."
An accountant by trade and a longtime Green Party activist, Rosenmeier ran for state treasurer in 2002, garnering about 350,000 votes. Setting an ambitious pace for her contribution to the report, she recently met with the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to request an analysis of how oil prices are related to the orientation of San Francisco’s economy. For this reason, she appears less concerned with predictions than with producing a heavily researched and well-structured report.
"I have a very strong vision of what I want the report to look like," Rosenmeier says. "I want us to have a uniformity and a more quantitative approach. I do not want to address the disintegration of our society."
The disparity between the views of Lundberg and Rosenmeier reflects the vast spectrum of opinions on how peak oil will manifest, although the extremes go well beyond them: some call peak oil a liberal hoax, while others have converted all of their assets to gold and prepared well-stocked and well-armed bunkers where they can ride out the social and economic storm.
The Web site LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net is now getting as many as 23,000 hits per day. Creator Matt Savinar, a graduate of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, abandoned his law career as a futile concern when compared to the implications of peak oil.
"It is pretty simple," Savinar tells us. "What do you think is going to happen when the oil-exporting countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran say, ‘We cannot export any more because we need to keep it for our own people’? The US will react by starting a war."
Although Savinar gravitates toward the most drastic of peak oil’s potential implications, his concerns are shared by some high-profile figures. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), who has started the small but significant Peak Oil Caucus in Congress, has quoted Savinar’s work in congressional session, while billionaire Richard Rainwater told Fortune magazine he regularly reads Savinar’s site.
Pessimistic about the prospect of mitigating the effects of peak oil, Savinar characterizes the efforts of the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force as "throwing a wet rag at a forest fire." In swinging to the opposite end of the spectrum, the vast chasm between opinions on the matter manifests more clearly. Peter Jackson, the senior director of oil industry activity for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, recently published the results of an in-depth analysis of more than 800 oil fields worldwide, concluding that the declining output rate of established fields is about half as low as originally expected.
"I think the danger of a peak [in global oil production] in the short term is minimal," Jackson tells the Guardian. "I think there are plenty of new developments on the books of oil companies, and the prospects for growth are good."
While Jackson acknowledges that at some point in the future it will be difficult to increase production, his optimistic viewpoint of the current situation helps to flesh out the dynamics of the overall discussion. As Heinberg explains it, "The debate really is between the near-peak and the far-peak viewpoints."
Yet even as Jackson attracts the ire of near-peak proponents such as Heinberg, he still acknowledges the need for swift preparation efforts. "There is still time to think about these issues and plan for the future," Jackson says. "But the sooner we do that the better."
Toward the end of the task force’s most recent meeting, the group discusses the city’s potential options for producing its own food supply. As Lundberg points out some of the particulars for pulling up pavement to plant crops, the exchange seems like an excerpt from Ernest Callenbach’s novel Ecotopia (Bantam, 1990).
"Streets cannot be pulled up as easily as driveways or parking lots," Lundberg explains. "There is soil immediately below a concrete driveway, whereas the earth beneath a street is much farther down."
This talk of tearing up asphalt to transform the city’s urban landscape into a viable agricultural venture may seem strange, until one considers how overreliant modern agribusiness has become on cheap fossil fuels.
"About one-fifth of all the petroleum we use goes into some part of our agriculture system," explains Jason Mark, the task force member focusing on the city’s food supply. "Whether that is through transportation and shipping, tractors and farm machinery, or the making of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides — it all demands oil."
Mark notes that the average American meal travels an estimated 1,500 miles from the farm to the dinner table, a startling figure that can be partly attributed to federal policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement that have encouraged export crops rather than diversified farming for local consumption.
"There is no way that San Francisco is going to feed itself in the short term," Rosenmeier says. "Food is going to be a gigantic issue."
In a larger sense, it already is. This past December the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations urged governments to take immediate steps to mitigate "dramatic food price increases" worldwide. Meanwhile, a recent cover story in the New York Times ("A New, Global Quandry: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories," 1/19/08) cited "food riots" in more than half a dozen countries and asserted, "Soaring fuel prices have altered the equation for growing food and transporting it around the world."
In the US, the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index cited a 5.6 percent increase of national grocery store prices in 2007, echoing sizable domestic price spikes in milk, corn, and wheat supplies.
"In a situation where you have sharp increases in the price of fossil fuels, you are going to see spikes in the costs and perhaps even the availability of food," explains Jason Mark, a former employee of Global Exchange and a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz’s renowned ecological horticulture program.
Mark now splits his time between editing the environmental quarterly Earth Island Journal and comanaging Alemany Farms. In his task force research, Mark plans to focus on two key challenges: increasing food production within San Francisco and improving both production in and distribution from the farms in the Bay Area.
"The city is pretty lucky because we are surrounded by all of this incredibly productive agricultural land," Mark explains. "If you were to draw a 100-mile radius around Potrero Hill, you could still have a pretty amazing diet."
Of course, the situation is far from simplistic. Climate change has proven to be a wild card in the equation, periodically negating dependable food supplies. Most recently, the entire Australian wheat crop collapsed due to a massive drought, affecting food imports around the world.
Less noticeable, though equally problematic, is the strain that biofuels are putting on food supplies. As increases in oil prices are stimuutf8g demands for alternatives, governments must decide whether crops should be used as food or fuel.
"Increasing our production of ethanol or biodiesel means direct competition with the food supply," Heinberg says. "In other words, we may see millions of people around the world going hungry so that a small percentage of the population can continue to drive their cars."
While such factors translate into a predicament as delicate as it is complex, Mark manages to elude pessimism. "I’m not one of these apocalyptic fetishists inciting for some sort of Mad Max scenario," he explains. "[The task force] is going to come out with a document that, although cautionary in scope, will be really optimistic about how SF can exist as an oil-free city."
Amid a vast disparity of opinions from scientists and industry experts expounding both sides of the debate, the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force plans to release its final report in October.
As with the issue of climate change almost two decades ago, the task force members face a long climb toward making an impression on an American population that has shown considerable reluctance to alter its lifestyles.
And while the deliberation over the onset of peak oil is likely to see little decline among skyrocketing energy costs and increasing geopolitical hostilities, the underlying truth may already be far less complicated.
"The era of cheap oil is over," Lundberg says. "Period." *
The next meeting of the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force will be on Feb. 5 at 3 p.m. in room 421 of City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF. Members of the public are strongly encouraged to attend.
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OIL ALTERNATIVES
In the event of sudden petroleum shortages, how do the alternatives stack up?
Ethanol: The Republican choice for weaning the nation off oil is a lucrative venture for red state constituents in the Midwest. However, the drawbacks are numerous. Corn ethanol requires almost as much oil energy to produce as it is meant to replace. Furthermore, it will require 4.8 billion — yes, billion — acres of corn to match the world’s current rate of annual oil consumption.
Hydrogen fuel cells: Touted by conservatives as some kind of miracle fuel because its tailpipe by-product is simply water vapor, hydrogen is a long way from being a viable fuel for cars, if that’s even possible. It takes even more energy to produce than ethanol and can explode in collisions.
Nuclear: Expensive and unpopular, nuclear power faces numerous logistical hurdles (particularly safety and long-term waste storage) that make it infeasible in the short and middle terms.
Natural gas: A major source of current United States energy consumption (25 percent nationally), natural gas is extremely difficult to ship, making importation from far-off sources impractical. Its supplies are running low in the US, and this nonrenewable fossil fuel is likely to parallel oil in its decline.
Wind: This clean power source is being quickly developed around the world as a major generator of electricity. Currently in the US, it accounts for about 1 percent of domestic electricity production, so offsetting the loss of fossil fuel plants would require a massive commitment. Downsides include the danger to migrating birds and the fact that sometimes the wind doesn’t blow.
Solar: This is Marion King Hubbert’s choice for replacing fossil fuels. It is a renewable generator of electricity, yet the shortcomings so far have been with finding more efficient and less toxic battery technology to store it. But improving research and strong consumer demand for solar panels point to a promising future.
