Thoughts on the JFF Report for Kaua'i

I have spent the last three years arguing that the fight over genetic modification is unnecessarily divisive, and that the fight does nothing to expand local agriculture or ensure that our communities are safe from pesticide drift.

Invoking the ire of many of my friends, I supported the mayor’s veto of bill 2491 because I agreed that it was his administrative duty to ensure a legally defensible bill. 

I feel strongly that we need to support the seed companies because we need an "all of the above" approach to feeding our planet, we need the economic diversity that they provide, and we need to encourage all forms of Kaua’i agriculture. When a Kaua'i kid can get a PhD and come home to a well paying agricultural job on the west side-- we all win.

And, I have consistently argued that we shouldn't let the loudest or the angriest voices dominate the dialogue.

Which is why I was really impressed with the draft report of the JFF—as it presents an objective bridge between the divide that has erupted on Kaua’i over the last few years.

The report clearly cited the slowly accumulating evidence that chronic pesticide exposure leads to ill-health; that exposure can come from many sources other than agriculture; and that while the west side has major health concerns, we don't have enough data to even attempt to dig through the various potential causes (socioeconomic conditions, lifestyle, ethnicity, etc).

And the most important finding of the report is that the current environmental and health data is glaringly insufficient.

And so their recommendations to the state-- further testing, buffer zones based off of that testing, and an expansion of the good neighbor policy-- are obvious conclusions.

Every year around this time, I sit down and double check my business bookkeeping with my bank account. It takes about forty hours of mind-numbingly boring work. I am careful when I do my accounting, so I never find errors. But, I do it anyway. Not because I'm hoping to find a mistake, or because I like wasting time-- but because the fall out from a potential problem is much greater than the cost of double checking.

By following the recommendations of the JFF, we can both support our seed companies, yet have the assurance that surrounding communities are not being exposed to pesticide drift. And we can begin to move beyond the divisive debate over genetic modification.

I encourage everyone to both read the draft report and the statement released yesterday by moderator Peter Adler.

Full disclosure-- my dad, Dr Lee Evslin, was one of the volunteer members of the JFF and one of the authors of the chapter on health. While I am proud of the work that he has done on the JFF, I want to be clear that I do not speak for him.

For more information on the rationale behind the recommendations-- here is the opening of the introduction to the recommendations that my dad gave at the JFF's public presentation on April 4th. 

My role in tonight’s presentation is to review a summary of the task force’s recommendations. 

I am going to start this review of the recommendations by very briefly answering a question.  I am answering from my perspective as a physician member of the taskforce. 

The question raised is: Why is the task force making ANY recommendations if there is no proof that there is any harm to humans or wildlife? 

As Kawika made so clear in his summary, we could not prove or DISPROVE that there has been harm to human health or to wildlife on the Westside due to pesticides or due to any other environmental toxin. The reasons for our inability to prove anything include the following: 

1. There has been almost no testing of the environment, meaning minimal organized testing of air, soil, water and dust and no reported testing of metabolite levels in humans and/or wildlife. 

2. The number of people on Kauai and particularly the number of people on the Westside is so small that most of the health data we could find could not meet the criteria of being statistically significant.  Meaning that although we did find somewhat elevated levels of developmental delay in children, ADHD in children, renal disease requiring dialysis in adults, and other adverse health statistics, the small numbers involved do not allow one to say with any certainty that these numbers are not just due to random chance.  

3. Even if for some reason we could find a number which was statistically significant, for example; obesity on the Westside compared to the rest of the state might just meet the criteria of being statistically significant, BUT without evidence of toxins in the environment or evidence of toxins in living tissue one STILL can not say with any certainty what may have caused this condition. Obesity obviously has many causes and only recently has obesity even been associated with environmental toxins.  

4. Final point, which is made repeatedly throughout our report, the health data, is very incomplete, much is out of date, and some may be actually incorrect.

The Path to 100% Renewable Energy

I just finished a four part series on renewable energy for Civil Beat. They are best read in order:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

And then in a sort of Star Wars prequelesque way, here's the conclusion which was actually published first.

Thank you to Brad Rockwell, Jim Kelly, Mina Morita, Ben Sullivan, and John Wehrheim for answering my incessant questions.

And also thank you to David Roberts from Vox who's been writing weekly columns on renewable energy for years (originally at Grist). If you're looking for a better writer who has gone way more in depth-- then check out everything he's written at both Vox and Grist.

On Growth and Polarization

Here's another Civil Beat column I just published. It's a short look into the 20th century history of development in Hawai'i, along with the duel threat of overpopulation and underpopulation. All of these arguments have appeared on my blog before-- though in a more rambling tone and spread out over a half dozen posts.

As a disclaimer, let me clearly say that there is no doubt that population growth is wreaking havoc on our infrastructure, natural resources, and climate. My argument is that unless we diversify our economy and heavily invest in local business, education, and the technology sector-- that we are going to face some really hard times.

On a completely separate note--

While Kaua'i's County elections are all non-partisan, last year we saw the rise of ad-hoc slates. And we're now facing an unprecedented level of discord and partisanship within our council chambers. In an effort to understand the grid lock within our county and federal legislative bodies, I recently started reading a book called Beyond Ideology-- which is on the root causes of partisanship. And about four pages into it I came across this stunningly accurate description of party polarization:

This book argues that fellow partisans' shared risk has wide-ranging effects on congressional party politics. It leads members of one party to support efforts to discredit the opposition party on the grounds of its incompetence and lack of integrity, not simply to oppose its ideological policy agenda. It persuades members to rally around the initiatives of their own party's president, and, as a mirror image, the other party to resist initiatives championed by an opposing party's president. It prompts members to routinely back up their own party leadership's efforts to exert control over the floor agenda. And it encourages members and leaders to steer the congressional agenda toward issues that allow them to differentiate themselves from their partisan opposition and thus to make the case that voters should prefer one party over the other. Members' diverging political interests drive the parties apart on many issues that bear no clear or direct relationship to the principled policy disagreements between liberals and conservatives.

Tracing the sources of party conflict speaks to the very purposes political parties serve in a democratic system. If party conflict in Congress were only rooted in members' disagreements over policy, then partisan debate would simply represent the range of public policy preferences that exist within the country's elected leadership. It would do no more than give voice to officeholders' legitimate, policy-based disagreements over matters of public concern. If, however, party conflict also stems from legislators' competition over power and office, then parties do more than reflect the underlying policy disagreements that exist in American government and society. Parties also systematically institutionalize, exploit, and deepen those divisions. Indeed, partisan political interests can create conflict where it would not have otherwise existed. Evidence presented in this book suggests that legislative partisans engage in reflexive partisanship, in which they oppose proposals because it is the opposing party's president that advances them. 

A clear implication of this analysis is that the public's well-documented skepticism about political parties-- a skepticism greatly at odds with political scientists' general attitude-- is well founded. At the same time that political parties help make government more coherent and understandable to the broad public, they also have some negative consequences. In seeking to advance their collective interests of winning elections and welding power, legislative partisans stir up controversy. They impeach one another's motives and accuse one another of incompetence and corruption, not always on strong evidence. They exploit the floor agenda for public relations, touting their successes, embarrassing their opponents, and generally propagandizing for their own party's benefit. They actively seek out policy disagreements that can be politically useful in distinguishing themselves from their partisan opponents. All of these sources of partisan conflict would continue to exist regardless of members' different ideological orientations. Even if there were ideological consensus in the Congress, political parties would continue to score points in their fights over power and office. In all these important respects, the American public is hardly misguided in thinking that "partisan bickering" goes on in congress...

The grim logic of two-party competition is that a party can potentially gain as much electoral mileage from damaging its opposition's reputation as from building a positive record of policy achievements of its own.

Reflection

I fell into my own trap.

In a burst of anger after the GOP caucus on Kaua'i I wrote an inflammatory post about Donald Trump. It took me about an hour to spew out and I posted it without editing. It wasn't just a self-righteous attack on Trump, it was an attack on those who voted for him. I stand by what I said, but I'm not sure what I achieved by writing it.

Yesterday, Civil Beat published my second official column with them. I started writing that piece last month. It took me around twenty hours of research, writing, and editing. And it was on Hawai'i's responsibility to step in where the federal government has failed on climate change mitigation. Other than a few veiled digs at the GOP's climate change denialism, I didn't criticize anyone or weave together any rhetoric about our responsibility to not fuck up our planet. I just pointed out the logical necessity of a policy to cap carbon emissions in Hawai'i. It was one of the most important things I've ever written.

In December, I wrote a piece for Civil Beat on why we should ignore Trump. The gist was that climate change presents a much more serious threat to the fate of the world than some inflammatory reality TV star. It included this line:

Getting mired down in a debate over personality is easier than facing our actual complex and systemic issues. And Trump's complete lack of ethics and human decency allow me to brush aside my own moral failings in a warm blanket of liberal self-righteous condemnation... The systemic issues that we face are too grave for us to get bogged down in a fight with bigots. We should be discussing policy, not personality. 

Yet, in two days my blog post on Donald Trump is already my sixth most viewed post. And my post on climate change policy, despite Civil Beat's wide readership, was probably read by about 7 people. 

For me, the lesson of climate change has been one of complicity. As an American citizen, climate change is my fault. I drive a truck. I flew roundtrip to O'ahu yesterday. I have benefited from an economy based off of cheap fossil fuels. And so I can't blame runaway Co2 emissions on anyone else. Which is why I feel so responsible for solving it.

Yet, Donald Trump carries the same lesson. As an American citizen, I am complicit in his popularity and in the polarization of our country. I've launched rhetorical attacks. I've laid judgement on his followers. And, if hits are a measure of success, then my blog has benefited from those attacks. And so I can't blame his rise on anyone else. Which is why I feel so responsible for solving it.

Most importantly, both as a consumer and a producer of content, I am complicit in the victory of personality over policy in our media. Like grabbing that tub of ice cream from my freezer, I eagerly follow the link to Trump's latest inflammatory statement. And like distractedly picking at that arugula salad, I force myself to read what Scalia's death means to the future of Obama's Clean Power Plan. So I can't blame the media's infatuation with personality on anyone else.

Which is why I feel so responsible for solving it.

To my conservative friends:

Last night nearly eight out of every ten Kaua'i Republicans voted for either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. 

There have been a few moments in my life where a deeply held fiction was taken from me-- like learning that Santa Clause isn't real or when an understanding of the horrors of the holocaust changed my perspective of humanity. Last night was one of those moments.

I thought that I understood conservative ideology. 

• That freedom is the most important part of America.
• That limited government is the best way to expand our freedom. 
• That reducing taxes limits the size of government and grows the economy. 
• And that the only way to move people out of poverty is to get them a job through that expanded economy—not by handing them food stamps for life.

Like a dialogue between husband and wife making a marriage stronger, I've always understood that the give and take between progressive and conservative viewpoints is what truly made America great.

The GOP positions that I disagree with most fervently-- climate change denial, opposition to gay marriage, political obstructionism, and unlimited gun rights-- could all be explained through the dogmatic insistence that the only way to expand freedom was through a limited federal government.

And as a progressive Democrat, I've spent countless hours trying to dissuade the dangerous and divisive myth that conservatives are selfish, or racist, or that their party has been corrupted by corporate influence. 

Ronald Reagan was President when I was born. I've been watching the rightward shift of the GOP for my entire life. And, while I've always disagreed with the core tenets of conservative ideology-- I could at least respect them. 

And I knew that Donald Trump didn't represent those ideals. So I didn’t express any moral outrage when he called Mexicans rapists. I ignored his sexist feud with Megyn Kelly. And I barely began paying attention when he called for a complete ban on Muslim travel to the US.

There are plenty of racist shit heads in the world, and we tend to give them too much credit. This guy didn’t represent the conservative party-- he was just an egomaniac with a microphone. He was a media side-show, and we had more important things going on.

He took the most extreme aspects of the GOP-- inflammatory rhetoric, hate mongering, and intense xenophobia-- and got rid of the small government ideology that's been used to justify it. And so I knew that the party of Reagan would ultimately denounce him. 

Until last night. That fiction imploded with the Hawai'i GOP caucus.

Nearly forty-five percent of Republicans on Kaua’i voted for him. More than twice as many as voted for Rubio and Kasich combined.

These are people that I know and see everyday. People that live in one of the most vibrant multi-cultural societies in America. People that come from a community built by immigrants.

Yet, you handed him your vote. The guy who talks about the size of his penis in a GOP debate—who insists that we need to commit war crimes to win the “war on terrorism”— who calls Ted Cruz a "pussy"-- who defends Putin-- and the guy who scape goats all of our problems on other people.

Donald Trump represents the worst of America. He has made a mockery of our country and our political system. What wouldn't have been acceptable conversation at the dinner table is now acceptable in our political debates. 

The world is changing quickly, and we need a healthy Republican party. We need to have robust conversations on welfare reform, marginal tax rates, and infrastructure spending. On whether we should respond to climate change with market incentives or stricter government intervention. On what America's role should be as a global leader. And on how best to battle inequality.

Conservatives, we need all of you in this dialogue. And we can’t afford to lose you to the fire of extremism.

As a friend told me last night-- if we vote for Donald Trump, then it's Donald Trump that we deserve.

While I'm beginning to believe it, I hope that you can prove me wrong.

From The New York Times

The Rise of Fear Based Politics: From Trump to Kaua'i

Donald Trump has repeatedly proven me wrong.

Just a few weeks ago I erroneously wrote that he represents the ideological extreme of the Republican party.

But his crawl to the left of the GOP at the last two debates (criticizing George W. Bush, defending planned parenthood and Obamacare), and then his quick slither back to the right made me finally accept that it isn’t ideology that drives Trump—it’s his narcissistic quest for power. While Ted Cruz represents the ideological extreme of the Republican Party, Donald Trump is simply a manifestation of the anger and fear which the GOP has been carefully cultivating among their base since the election of Barak Obama.

Yet, as predicted by nearly every creation story from Prometheus to Frankenstein-- the GOP lost control of their anger fueled electorate.  

And I was wrong again when I wrote a piece for Civil Beat saying that Donald Trump’s name "will soon be buried in the sand of history. Just another hate-mongering demagogue who never made it into elected office."
Super Tuesday's primary results were clear enough to show that he will almost certainly be the GOP nominee. Which puts us one terrorist attack or economic recession away from having this vile political animal winning election to the most powerful office on the planet.

And even if he loses the election and drifts into obscurity, his brand of authoritarian politics is here to stay. Because he's not the problem.

Thomas Edsall recently wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the widening inequality gap and the stagnation of middle-class wages is driving the success of Donald Trump. "Already disillusioned with the Democratic Party, these white voters became convinced that the mainstream of the Republican Party had failed them, not only on economic issues, but on cultural matters as well."

Ironically, Donald Trump is a perfect example of the fundamental flaw in unfettered capitalism which leads to growing inequality and middle class wage stagnation. Trump inherited $40 million in 1974. As Vox reports, if he had just let the money sit in an index fund he would have just about the same size fortune as he has right now (somewhere around $3 billion). Donald Trump's wealth isn't because he's a brilliant businessman or good at making deals, it's simply because wealth begets wealth.

In every developed country on Earth the rate of return on capital exceeds overall economic growth. So investment returns on accrued or inherited wealth-- whether it's in stocks, land, or equipment-- increase much faster than wages do.

As Donald Trump shows us, those with money make more money at a faster rate than those who rely on wages. And unless we correct for it, inequality will continue to rise.

Which is the most fundamental problem facing America today. 

While I won't give him credit for his financial success-- he does deserve credit for his innate understanding of the electorate. Instead of confronting the fundamental issues that have swallowed the wealth of the bottom 90% of Americans-- Donald Trump has capitalized on our fear, anger, and desire to blame someone else.

Vox recently featured a must-read overview on the rise of American authoritarianism.

Two decades worth of research into authoritarianism has shown that a large segment of the population turns to authoritarian leaders when presented with a stimulus of fear. And it predicted the rise of a future authoritarian politician who could capitalize on those fears. But, while the article focuses on Donald Trump as the epitome of an authoritarian leader, it's hard to read it and not think about Kaua'i.

Frustration with the economy and social change isn't isolated to the mainland. Growth in personal income has stagnated in Hawai'i, inequality is growing, and crowded roads and crumbling infrastructure are the first signs that we are reaching our limits to growth.

If you grew up on Kaua'i, then the rapid pace of change and our seeming inability to do anything about it can be both frightening and maddening. In 2014, that fear gave rise to an unprecedented level of polarization from emotion based politics. One side capitalized on the fear of genetic modification and the other side capitalized on the fear of socio-economic change. 

Polarization on Kaua'i: Click to Enlarge

With that in mind, please read closely these excerpts from the Vox article:

Authoritarians are thought to express much deeper fears than the rest of the electorate... and the extreme nature of authoritarians' fears, and of their desire to challenge threats with force, would lead them toward a candidate whose temperament was totally unlike anything we usually see in in American politics...   

When they face physical threats or threats to the status quo, authoritarians support policies that seem to offer protection against those fears. They favor forceful, decisive action against things they perceive as threats. And then they flock to political leaders who they believe will bring this action...  

There is a certain subset of people who hold latent authoritarian tendencies. These tendencies can be triggered or "activated" by the perception of physical threats or destabilizing social change... It is as if... a button is pushed.  

 [In 2005, researchers theorized] that if social change and physical threats coincided at the same time, it could awake a potentially enormous population of American authoritarians, who would demand a strongman leader and the extreme policies necessary, in their view, to meet the rising threats. 

This theory would seem to predict the rise of an American political constituency that looks an awful lot like the support base that has emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, to propel Donald Trump from sideshow loser of the 2012 GOP primary to runaway frontrunner in 2016... 

... non-authoritarians who are sufficiently frightened of physical threats... could essentially be scared into acting like authoritarians. 

Authoritarians are much more susceptible to messages that tell them to fear a specific "other"-- whether or not they have a preexisting animus against that group. Those fears would therefore change over time as events made different groups seem more or less threatening. 

When told to fear a particular outgroup... "On average people who score low in authoritarianism will be like, 'I'm not that worried about that,' while people who score high in authoritarianism will be like 'Oh, my god! I'm worried about that, because the world is a dangerous place..."

Trump's specific policies aren't the thing that most sets him apart from the rest of the field of GOP candidates. Rather, it's his rhetoric and style. The way he reduces everything to black-and-white extremes of strong versus weak, greatest versus worst. His simple, direct promises that he can solve problems that other politicians are too weak to manage. 

This... is "classic authoritarian leadership style: simple, powerful, and punitive..."

If Trump loses the election... the authoritarians will still be there. They will still look for candidates who will give them the strong, punitive leadership they desire. 

And that means Donald Trump could be just the first of many Trumps in American politics, with potentially profound implications for the country.

The key in this research is that fear triggers a move towards authoritarianism: "as if a button is pushed." As I've written about before, our political discourse is moving increasingly towards a rhetoric of constant fear-- which is triggering otherwise latent authoritarianism tendencies in voters.

In the rise of authoritarian leaders, the issues aren't important. What does matter is the "simple, powerful, and punitive" leadership style, the reduction of complex subjects to simple memes, the willingness to fight, and most importantly, a steady rhetoric of fear.

But Donald Trump and some of our loudest fear mongers on Kaua'i are not the problem-- they are just symptoms of this growing trend.

This isn't about the specific politicians or their policies-- it's about what happens when we let fear and anger drive our political discourse. There will be no end to the line of authoritarian leaders who can successfully channel that emotion towards a clear "enemy;" whether it's Jews, Muslims, "north shore haoles," or "chemical company shills."

We're facing the beginning of a new breed of emotion driven politics. And as campaigns based on fear and resentment proliferate, they will continue to erode our ability to have rational conversations, engage in transactional politics, and reach across the aisle. Our political system was never designed to be a zero sum game-- and if we can't come together then we will continue to fail at solving our most fundamental problems.

In a self perpetuating cycle-- as fear and anger continues to grow, so will the number of politicians who can capitalize on that emotion.


While we might not be able to break that cycle nationally, we can break it on Kaua'i. The island is small enough that, at most, there's only one degree of separation between all of us. We are one community, and we can't be divided by fear.

I was wrong about the rise of Donald Trump, but I don't think I'm wrong about this.

Sharp Scissors

If future archaeologists ever start digging through my yard-- they will have to assume that I'm a cruel sadist. There are beheaded baby chickens scattered in shallow graves all around my house. So, as a message to any future generation that goes prowling with a shovel, let me clarify that I do not take pleasure in killing chickens.

What do you do when you find an injured baby chick that has no hope of survival? Do you let it sit in the sun, trying in vain to stand up, while getting pecked at by its relatives? Or do you put it out of its misery with a quick snip of the scissors?*

And, as I've rambled about before in two earlier posts (part one and part two), there isn't a good answer. I'm faced with two options. Shitty and shittier.

Shitty is listening for hours as the chirps go from desperation to resignation to silence as the life slowly drains from the broken legged, or malnourished, or underdeveloped chick. And shittier is watching as a headless body strives in vain to stand up while the beak opens and closes gasping for air while the beady eyes stare at me in justified accusation.

To cut, or not to cut-- for me, that may be the most challenging moral question of springtime. Luckily I'm not a politician.

On that note, Civil Beat just published my first official column. It's on inequality and why the excise tax is a bad source of funds to repair our crumbling infrastructure on Kaua'i. It builds off of the article I wrote the other week on congestion and prioritizing spending.

We have $100M of necessary infrastructure repairs and a woefully inadequate public transportation system.

So let me clearly say that avoiding the problem completely is akin to the slow, cruel death of neglect.

While I'm critical of the administration's proposal to increase the excise tax-- I respect the fact that they are at least putting forth a solution. Any elected official who opposes the increased excise tax has to simultaneously put forward an idea for where the funding should come from instead. Just saying "no" is a dereliction of duty.

From my perspective, to make up the difference we need at least a 15 cent increase in the gas tax and a one cent increase in the vehicle weight tax.

Yet, making that suggestion is like picking up the scissors, looking into the chicken's eyes, and then making the bloody cut.


* Before anyone accuses me of animal cruelty-- I make sure that the wild chick has no chance of recovery before killing it. The only time I cull chicks is when they are incapacitated by either a broken leg or a broken neck.

Presidents' Day

I'm experimenting with posting at medium.com-- so this post originally appeared there.

Monday is Presidents’ Day. In honor of George Washington’s birthday, it’s the one-day of the year that we’re supposed to reflect on our 240-year experiment in representative democracy.

 Washington’s unanimous election to the presidency represented the final gasp of American unity after the Revolutionary War. Eight years later, he ceded the Presidency to John Adams amidst a deeply divided nation. A division that we have held on to ever since.

The founders of this lasting ideological partisanship are John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — the 2nd and 3rd Presidents' of the United States. They met each other at the Continental Congress in 1775 and became close confidants. Later they worked together to draft the Declaration of Independence and then worked side by side as the diplomatic team in France in 1784 — where they visited each other nearly every day.

In these early years, Adams called Jefferson “one of the choice ones of the Earth” and Jefferson described Adams to James Madison (4th president) as “so amiable, that I pronounce you will love him if you ever become acquainted with him.”

Their relationship began to fray in 1791 when Jefferson publicly inferred that Adam’s writings were “political heresies.” Their growing disagreement was on the role of the central government. In the words of Jefferson:

two political Sects have arisen within the U.S. the one believing that the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs support; the other that… it is already too strong for the republican parts of the constitution.

John Adams was a Federalist who believed in strong central authority and a loose interpretation of the constitution, while Jefferson was the founder of the Republican Party and believed in limited federal powers and a strict interpretation of the constitution.

 With already tense relations, Adams won the presidency against Jefferson in 1797 and then was defeated by Jefferson after just one term. After losing the presidency, Adams left the White House at 4am on the day of the inauguration, beginning more than a decade long estrangement from each other.

 In 1812 Benjamin Rush, a close friend of both, wrote to Adams urging them to rekindle their friendship. Rush would later write to Adams that:

I consider you and him as the North and South Poles of the American Revolution. Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all.

After their reconciliation, Jefferson and Adams spent the next fourteen years engaged in the most monumental intellectual dialogue in history. Their six hundred pages of letters represent the healing of an ideological divide in the pursuit of a better nation.

 Both men died on July 4th, 1826. With bells ringing in the distance to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams’ dying words were: “Jefferson Survives.”

 Since they were 560 miles apart, he had no way to know that Jefferson had died just a few hours earlier.

 As Daniel Webster said in his eulogy to both men:

No two men now live… who, more than those we now commemorate, have… given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them… they have died together, and they did on the anniversary of liberty.

Their philosophical brilliance and passion for independence enabled the United States to survive through its infancy. Yet, while they were able to reconcile their differences and resume their close friendship, the dogmatic divide that they spawned lived on.

Fast forward 190 years, and we’re now witnessing the crippling long-term effects of the chronic ideological disease which fuels our political process: from the Supreme Court’s recent decision along partisan lines to block the EPAs new emissions standards, to Hillary Clinton calling Republicans her “enemies,” to every Republican debate turning into a shouting match against President Obama.

As America faces the greatest levels of inequality of any society in the history of civilization, as we look towards declining economic growth in the 21st century, and as we are experiencing a warming planet that our political system seems incapable of dealing with — if you’re not angry, then you’re not paying attention.

And so we choose an ideological hero — on one side we have the hate filled rhetoric spewing from the venomous lips of Ted Cruz and on the other we have the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders.

If this election season can teach us one thing — it’s that voters want their candidates to be pure. Not to compromise. Because when politics is a war of ideology, compromise is akin to losing.

As Ted Cruz said in Saturday night's debate: "you shouldn't be flexible on core principles."

 Yet, all social progress has been acquired through the long grind of transactional politics. As Otto von Bismark said, “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.”

 Even Thomas Jefferson, the mastermind of limited government, could put his ideology aside when necessary. He organized the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country and added fifteen new states. Not only was it an unprecedented increase in the scope and authority of the central government, but it could only happen with a loose interpretation of the constitution — which went against his Republican ideals. If Jefferson were to have stuck with ideology, we would be missing a third of our country.

 The issues facing us as we head into the 21st century are just as dire as those facing America as we entered the 19th century. The regulations necessary to combat climate change and inequality are incompatible with a dogmatic opposition to any governmental expansion.

 There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to reach across the political aisle in our search for solutions. But first, we need to get to the same table.

 In the words of an elderly Thomas Jefferson reflecting on his friend and political opponent John Adams:

I knew him to be always an honest man, often a great one… why should we be dissocialized by mere differences of opinion in politics, in religion in philosophy, or anything else. His opinions are as honestly formed as my own. Our different views of the same subject are the results of a difference in our organization & experience.

While it took Thomas Jefferson and John Adams two decades of political warfare to reconcile their differences — we don’t have that luxury of time to solve our most pressing issues.

As a dying Adams reminisced in his final letter to Jefferson:

Public affairs go on pretty much as usual, perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than their used to be… our American Chivalry is the worst in the world. It has no laws, no bounds, no definitions, it seems to be all a caprice — My love to all your family — and best wishes for your health —  John Adams.

It’s been 190 years. And it’s still a caprice.

So, let’s move on. In celebration of Presidents’ Day, let’s put our ideology aside in the hopes of working together to solve our fundamental issues. Even if it’s only for today.

Let’s Not Go Down The Same Old Road

Tomorrow the county will begin receiving public testimony on whether to add a .5% surcharge on the GET to fund road construction and repairs (and some token money towards public transportation).

As bad as traffic Kaua'i is-- this isn't a solution.

If you're interested in the rest of my 1300 words on the subject-- please check out this piece published by Civil Beat.

Off-Grid

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, I recently wrote a piece for KIUC's monthly magazine. While I was embarrassed that I forgot to shave (I didn't realize that my face would be on the cover) and that the only viewable books on the shelf in the background are the Twilight series, it didn't occur to me how offended people would be at what I had to say. There was a mini barrage of emails, texts, and even a blog post criticizing me of going "to the dark side."

The article, which you can read here, was an honest look into my experience going off-grid. If you've read my blog over the last few years, I've said it all before. We went off-grid because we were idealists looking for simple solutions. While we learned the true value of electricity, going off-grid exposed my own logical fallacies.

We can't solve climate change as individuals, we need our local utilities.
I originally hoped to be able to inspire others to go off-grid, because I thought that that would be the solution to climate change and environmental degradation.

But, I was very, very wrong.

There are a few issues with this.

1) For even a small system, you need to have $15,000 to pay for PV panels, an inverter, and a battery bank. Yes, it quickly pays itself off over time, but many people don't have the access to credit or upfront cash to make it feasible. So, some people are stuck with the utility. But, imagine that the 50% of people who can afford to go off-grid end up leaving the utility structure. KIUC is now left with the same overhead for half of the customers. If overhead accounts for about half of each customer's bill (the other half being the variable price of fuel) and half of the customers leave, then the average utility bill will have to go up by around 25%.

Further, as the pool of customers paying for grid-overhead shrinks, rates will continue to steeply rise-- which leads to ever increasing numbers of people defecting from the utility which leads to higher and higher rates. Until the only people left footing the extreme bill are those without the financial wherewithal to get off-grid. This is what is referred to as the utility death spiral. It would rapidly increase the level of inequality on Kaua'i and ensure that KIUC can't invest in utility scale renewable energy solutions.

Granted, there is a very similar issue for people who oversize their PV systems. Imagine if half of the island oversized their PV system so that they no longer pay anything to KIUC. The other half of the island (notably, the poorer half) are now stuck footing the bill for the overhead that everyone benefits from. As even those with massive PV arrays still rely on the grid at night or on cloudy days.

However, the difference between these two scenarios is that the second one (where people stay on grid) is solvable with market forces. Most equitable is time of use pricing. Which I've written about before and won't repeat.

But, what would happen if we could figure out the equitability part? Imagine that Mark Zuckerberg decides to give everyone on Kaua'i an off-grid set-up.

2) Because solar panels are entirely dependent on the sun, we will always need some type of baseline energy to make up the difference at night and on cloudy days. On Kaua'i, right now that's naptha, diesel, bio-mass, and hydro. As we head towards a future of 100% renewable energy, that will increasingly turn to bio-mass, hydro, pumped hydro, and battery storage. Other than batteries, those utility scale solutions are not possible at a household scale.

Either we would each need massive battery banks and oversized systems to get us by, or we would all be running our generator on cloudy evenings. Both options are environmental villains.

The fundamental problem with being off-grid. 
The bigger a system gets, the more energy it is wasting in the middle of a sunny day. If I size my PV array so that I have 100% of my power needs on a rainy winter day, then I will have upwards of 300% of my power needs on a sunny summer day. If I were on grid, that power would be fed back into the grid. Being off-grid means that I'm simply shunting that power. Those electrons are being lost, while fossil fuels are being burned at Port Allen to make up the difference.

In a scenario where the entire island consists of isolated off-grid households or communities, then we would need vastly more solar panels to make it work than we do if we are all interconnected.

The other option is to undersize the system. So that I'm wasting less energy on a sunny day but have to run the generator on rainy days. Imagine if everyone on the island were running their household generators every cloudy evening... That results in an incredibly inefficient use of resources and we'd still be burning excess energy on sunny days.

But wait, how am I wasting energy if I'm off-grid and self sufficient? As long as the world isn't running 100% off of renewable energy, than every available solar panel should be contributing electrons at its full potential. Imagine an island where everyone is starving to death because there's not enough food. I own a farm with unusually fertile soil, and am able to provide more than enough food for myself and my family, but I throw the rest away. People are starving all around me while I just throw my excess harvest to the birds. Sure, I'm self sufficient, but that would be morally reprehensible.

With the threat of climate change from carbon emissions, we can't afford to waste any energy produced by the finite amount of solar panels on planet Earth.

Truly going off-grid is impossible.

I went off-grid because I liked the idea of self sufficiency. Yet, my hypocrisy is thrown in my face everyday. As I discussed in the article, I use propane sourced from hydraulic fracking, I consume organic coffee from foreign dictatorships, and most of my furniture and electronics were produced in China. We are part of a global community, and the solutions to climate change and environmental degradation are just as global. I can't just cut my cord to the water department and the electric utility and self righteously claim to be doing my part. If we keep looking for simple solutions, then we'll never find the answers.

Going off-grid taught us the value of electricity, and it's a lesson that I will value for the rest of my life. I will never again do laundry at night, leave a fan on on a cloudy day, or leave the lights on in an unattended room.

But, as long as I'm wasting electrons on sunny days and burning fossil fuels on cloudy evenings, then I am part of the problem. And, I'd prefer to be part of the solution.

So, as soon as I can-- I'm getting back on the grid.