'Til the Wellheads Run Dry

I've been down with the flu this week - and one day I woke from a nap with the lyrics for a new parody of Don McLean's American Pie running through my head. Elliot and I had recently been watching Weird Al's excellent parody, "The Saga Begins" - but my parody lyrics were directly connected to climate change. And politics.

After a day of writing, and another day or two of tweaking (plus some input from Elliot and a few friends), I debuted the song last night at a friend's karaoke party. It was a big hit, and by the end everyone was singing along with the chorus. So here it is - try it out and see what you think! 

I'm working on making a good recording of it - but in the meantime you can listen to a poorly-recorded version (with cheesy karaoke backup) here.

You can download the lyrics with guitar chords here, and the piano music is available here and here. 

'Til the Wellheads Run Dry
Music by Don McLean, Words by Vanessa Warheit

A long, long time ago, 
something magic happened, 
when James Watt built a steam machine

And with it brought us fossil fuels
to rev up all our power tools
and build a brand new world - it was a dream

But like all dreams, it couldn’t last
The air pollution grew too fast
And now the climate’s changing
It’s time for rearranging

Cause physics doesn’t care at all
The ice keeps melting, while we stall
7 billion on one blue ball
We all will need to try

So bye-bye to the ridiculous lie
That we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Well the good news is, we’ve got all we need
The power’s there - but, so’s the greed
We need a revolution soon
Cause the money’s gone to a chosen few
And they don’t think like me & you
‘bout the future, no, that’s not the way of wall street…

But we’ve got a big election soon
Will it save us all, or spell our doom
The choice seems pretty clear…
Feel the Bern, or feed the fear… ooh!

We need a new supreme court justice too
The last one’s gone, it’s really true,
Let’s send up a prayer or two
I think, it’s worth a try. Cause I’m still singing.. 

Bye-bye to the ridiculous lie
That we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Now the reasons, well I must have missed ‘em,
For rippin out our life-support systems
‘Cause, that’s not how it needs to be…

We’ve got geothermal and lots of solar
To keep us cosy in the next big polar
vortex - brr - and don’t forget the wind… 

‘Cause we’ve seen how strong that wind can blow,
And storage - yeah, there’s still a ways to go - 
But financing is the key-
Can we end the oil subsidy? ooh -

‘Cause with a methane plume over LA
A melting Arctic and a rising bay
I’m worried my kid might not be OK
Unless, we start to try….
So let’s start singing

Bye-bye to the ridiculous lie
That we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

From Rio to Paris, they still keep meeting
To discuss the Mauna Loa readings,
400 parts & rising fast….

Fossil fuels have been a blast
But pretty soon, the die will be cast
I’m afraid our... generation... is the last

To take a stand and make things right
To ensure our future’s bright
We know what we need to do
Oh, and I think that you do too

We need more public transit, and high-speed trains,
Electric cars, and safe bike lanes
We could even fly in solar airplanes
But only if we try…
That’s why I’m singing

Bye bye to that ridiculous lie
That says we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Oh we are one human race,
On one little planet, alone in space
You’d think that we could find a way…

So bring on tiny houses, and safer streets
Healthy forests, and pastured meats,
And veggie meals, each & every day…

And if you’re waiting for the billionaires
Remember you are the one who cares
And nobody else but you
Can do that thing you do

So bring on your passion, Bring on your dreams
Together, we can do anything
The time is now, the train is leaving
C’mon, we’ve got to try.
And we’re all singing

Bye-by to that ridiculous lie
That says we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
'Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

I met a girl who had a dream
She saw a future, safe and clean
So I asked her, can you see the way?

Take a look around, she said
All those plans inside your head
Make them real, make them see the light of day.

Go out there and tell your friends
It’s not too late to change the end
You could all stand up now or
never know your power

So folks I hope you’ll follow me
And be the change you want to see
We haven’t got a Planet B
We’ve got to stand and fight.

So bye-by to that ridiculous lie
That says we’ve gotta keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
'Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die
Yes that would be a dumb way to die

Bye-by to that ridiculous lie
That says we have to keep on drilling til the wellheads run dry
Cause if we do, we know the planet will fry
And that would be a dumb way to die.

Media Lounge Interview

Watch Elliot knock it out of the park in our interview at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival's Media Lounge

An Open Letter to the Silicon Valley Business Times

The past week has held some serious surprises - among them the US Supreme Court's decision to stay enforcement of the Clean Power Plan, and the subsequent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But a smaller surprise - at least to me - was an article in the Silicon Valley Business Journal, about how businesses were thrilled about the SCOTUS decision.

Now, maybe I'm just naive - but I find it odd that the main business newspaper of Silicon Valley would be saying stuff like this:

“The National Federation of Independent Business said the rule would result in “substantially higher energy costs” for small businesses as well. The court’s stay “gave small businesses and the states some breathing room until it can decide the matter.”

Funny - I thought businesses were actually pretty pleased with the Clean Power Plan, as it finally gave them some certainty about how the government was going to start dealing our massive and mounting carbon problem. Staying its enforcement just throws the American business environment back into murky waters. Who was this National Federation of Independent Business, anyway?

Turns out - and I know, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am - they're a shill for Koch Industries and their cronies, as were most of the others interviewed for the article. 

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SILICON VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL

I was surprised to read your Feb. 10, 2016 article on the recent Supreme Court stay against enforcing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (“Business groups pleased Supreme Court put EPA's power plant rule on hold”). To read the article, it would seem the entire business community is lined up in opposition to the Clean Power Plan. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. 

Last July, no less than 365 leading companies and investors sent a public letter of support for the Clean Power Plan - including industry giants such as General Mills, Mars Inc., Nestle, Staples, Unilever and VF Corporation. “Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality,” they wrote - a reality that includes some statistics conspicuously missing from your February article, such as:

• The average price of a commercial PV system dropped nearly 30% from 2012-2015, and continues to fall precipitously
• Electricity generated by large wind farms is now cost-competitive in many places with coal and natural gas
• 60% of Americans support the Clean Power Plan

The article is not only inaccurate, it underestimates (if not outright insults) the American business community. Are we really so short-sighted as to ignore the fact that power plants account for nearly 40 percent of US carbon pollution? Are we really so immoral as to ignore the fact that this pollution contributes to life-threatening illnesses, like childhood asthma, that cost us billions of dollars in healthcare costs and thousands of lives each year?

Experts say the Clean Power Plan is the single biggest step the US has ever taken to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change (and all the problems that come with it). As a small business owner, a mother, and a concerned citizen of Silicon Valley, I am pleased to know that the business community does in fact care about the world we live in, and sees the financial benefits of moving away from the dirty, destructive fuels we no longer need for economic growth. Despite the recent misguided decision by the Supreme Court, I hope you will share with your readers that there are, in fact, many in the business community working hard to ensure a safe and secure future for our children.

Youth Screenings, M-F

We started and ended last week with youth screenings. On Monday, we drove to San Rafael, where the Mill Valley Film Festival's Environmental Youth Forum was screening Worse Than Poop! 

Vanessa and Elliot onstage with "Racing with Copepods" Producer Barbara McVeigh

On Friday, we attended a screening as part of Los Altos High School's annual "History Week" - which had an environmental theme this year.

Vanessa and Elliot answer questions at a Los Altos High School screening of Worse Than Poop!

As you might imagine, the elementary and middle school audience on Monday was a bit more engaged than the high school students - most of whom agreed that the film was most appropriate for a k-8 audience. Still, when I asked the high school students if they thought it might be appropriate for 9th and 10th graders, a few shyly raised their hands. And the parent volunteer who introduced us (a middle-aged surgeon) spared no effort in finding scatological references for his introduction ("I think you'll find it's a moving experience", etc.).... Proof, yet again, that you're never too old for poop jokes.

A Modest Proposal

A friend called me this afternoon, to ask if I'd come down to City Hall to talk about parking. Evidently, our City Council is considering - seriously considering - spending $13m to build a new parking garage in our already car-choked downtown. When I told Elliot's dad about why I'd be at City Hall this evening, he gave me a great idea. "Why don't you tell them you actually want them to build FOUR new parking garages? Just to show them how ridiculous this is," he suggested. 

Vanessa presenting her modest proposal for parking in downtown Palo Alto

And so, my Modest Proposal was born. After re-reading Jonathan Swift's brilliant 1729 pamphlet on solving Ireland's poverty problem, I spent some time crafting a similarly-structured argument for solving Palo Alto's parking problem. You can watch my performance (and its confused reception in the council chambers) in the video my friend filmed with my phone - but she stopped filming when the mayor told me my time was up. (I ignored her and kept on talking, so I could make my last and most important point.) The funniest thing (or maybe the saddest thing) was that quite a few people seemed to think I was serious - including a reporter, who asked me as we were leaving if she could contact me for more details about my 'double decker road idea'.

The entire text is below. Read, and enjoy.

A Modest Proposal

Good evening dear council members. My name is Vanessa Warheit - I’m a Palo Alto resident, mother of a child in the Palo Alto Unified School District, and the owner of a car registered here in Palo Alto. In light of tonight’s discussion on parking in our downtown, I wanted to make a modest proposal.

Clearly, the streets of Palo Alto are too congested. It takes way too long to find parking. This is bad for local businesses - which is clear from the number of local establishments that I remember from my childhood, which have long since gone out of business. Our region is growing, and we need to better support the long-term growth of our downtown. We also need to keep all these cars from spilling over into the residential neighborhoods that surround it.

But I believe the proposal to build a new parking garage downtown isn’t the answer to these problems. For one thing, it only adds 214 additional parking spaces to our downtown - not near enough for the projected growth in this area. With 17,000 more jobs and 13,000 additional residents projected in the next 20 years, we can expect even more cars on our streets. The proposed garage is also all the way over on Hamilton Street - requiring people patronizing businesses on University, or Lytton, or any of downtown’s side streets, to walk one - or more - blocks to their destination. 

What I am proposing is a project to bring free parking right in front of every single business, double our existing capacity, and maximize the use of our existing facilities. 

I have been assured by a well-known transportation official in Los Angeles that creating a double-decker road system provides the kind of free, convenient access to local businesses that we need here in Palo Alto. I would like to therefore submit for consideration a common-sense idea that is in alignment with policies T-45 (provide sufficient parking to address long-range needs) and T-47 (protect residential areas from parking impacts of nearby business districts).

I propose to make University Avenue, Hamilton Avenue, and Lytton Street double decker streets - with diagonal parking along each side at both the ground floor and the second floor - allowing easy access to establishments regardless of their vertical location within a building. Building the second story of roadways would also require eliminating the trees from our downtown, and narrowing our sidewalks - which would make walking from car to business even easier, reduce tree maintenance costs, and add an additional 50% to the number of available parking spaces.

My proposal would put our city on the map - and not only as the city with the most convenient parking in the Bay Area. Cities like Beijing and New Delhi, which have seen a significant rise in their parking, have shown 7.3% and 7.4% levels of GDP growth - compared to a paltry 3.8% here in the US. Not only has this growth increased per capita income in these cities, but the record-setting levels of air pollution generated by this growth over the past few years has also gained them significant media attention. Imagine what Palo Alto could do with that added revenue, and all that press coverage!

I can’t think of any objection that could be raised against this proposal - unless it might be that constructing such a system of freely-accessible parking might cost more than the city has in its budget. But to that I would simply suggest that increasing the speed limit to 35 mph could put this project squarely into the realm of CalTrans, and thereby qualify it for available State highway improvement funds. 

So let’s stop considering these other suggestions - ideas about analyzing different transportation demand strategies, or providing meaningful transit options, or exploring emerging technologies like self-driving cars and transportation as a service. Things like looking at expanding our bike share options, or expanding mode shift, or looking at what kinds of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure $13m might buy the city. Let’s not have any more talk of these ideas until we have at least the faintest glimmer of hope that there might some day be a hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice. 

For me, after so many years of offering up vain, idle, visionary ideas like these, and really despairing of any success in addressing our parking woes, I felt incredibly lucky to come upon this proposal - which I hope you will join me in embracing. It is so in line with the American way, with Palo Alto’s vision for growth, with our need for car-based mobility and complete and total independence - and, I might add, with the auto industry’s need to sell cars to each and every one of us - that I feel confident this is the best way forward for our city. 

But if someone has a better idea, I’d like to hear it. Just keep in mind, it will need to deal with 13,000 more people, and 17,000 more jobs, within the next 20 years.

Thank you.

UNAFF Screening, Panel... and Award!

Last week, Worse Than Poop! won the Grand Jury Award for Best Short Film at the United Nations Association Film Festival. We are so honored!

Vanessa and Elliot take home the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the 2015 UNAFF.

Held for the past 18 years at Stanford University, the UNAFF seeks to draw attention to the UN's Millenium Development Goals and, going forward, the UN's new Sustainable Development Goals. 

Elliot answers a question from the audience at the 2015 UNAFF.

Our film was scheduled on the last day of the festival, in a section addressing climate change. The other films included DamNation and Antarctic Edge, and afterwards Elliot and I sat on a panel and answered audience questions with filmmakers Matt Stoeker and Dena Seidel.

Bittersweet Wednesday

Today was a big day - in part because today I officially FINISHED Worse Than Poop! Last night, I received the last and final animation, and I just finished editing it into the final cut. I am uploading the finished film as I type! Those of you who supported our Kickstarter campaign will be receiving a download link very soon.

But as anyone who isn't living under a rock will also note, today is also the Day After Election Day here in the US - and in particular, an Election Day on which almost all of the candidates and issues we were supporting got thoroughly trounced at the polls.

Elliot watches Brian Schmidt interviewed on election night at KMTV.

One particularly bitter loss was for our friend Brian Schmidt, who was running for re-election to the Santa Clara County Water District Board. His opponent, a Silicon Valley millionaire, refused to abide by voluntary campaign spending limits, and outspent Brian 22-to-1. His opponent had no experience in two of the three areas for which the Water District Director is responsible (environmental management and flood protection), but in the end he managed to win the election by a narrow margin. This morning, I told Elliot, "This is a tiny microcosm of what is wrong with our entire voting system - and we need to fix it." When you have unlimited spending, the rich - or their proxies - get elected. Which in most cases does not make for honest or good government - or, for that matter, an electorate that believes in the process of democracy. (Is it any wonder that we had less than 30% turnout at the polls in California, in the most expensive mid-term election in US history?)

However, I am choosing to focus on the positive. One measure that did pass yesterday was Palo Alto's Measure B, which will fund some much-needed bicycle infrastructure here - including retrofitting a truly dreadful narrow cement bicycle underpass at the California Avenue train station that has tormented me and countless Palo Alto cyclists for decades. 

This nasty underpass' days are numbered! Try pulling your kid in a trailer through that...

And as my friend Joylette Portlock says, no one ever got depressed into action. With the government this country just elected, we're going to need more action than ever - so I also made a donation today to the Sierra Club, and signed up to participate in a visioning exercise here in Palo Alto for 'big, bold' ideas for sustainability.

And as for Worse Than Poop! - I'll be meeting next week with Carleen Cullen of Cool the Earth, to see if we can hash out a plan to get some funding for a Spanish-language version, some DVD packaging, a study guide, and a resource-rich website. We'd like to include all of these - for free - with Cool the Earth's climate kits, distributed to schools across North America. I'm also talking with some other organizations looking at the possibility of using the film for climate awareness outreach to children and families. There's plenty of work to be done - it's time to just roll up our sleeves and get busy.

Flood Wall Street

The day after the Peoples Climate March, I jumped on a Citibike and rode down to Battery Park, hoping to catch a glimpse of my hero, Naomi Klein, at the Flood Wall Street protest.

The carbon bubble makes its way toward Wall Street

I got there too late to hear her - but the event was so fun, and so captivating, and so important, that I decided to stick around. (I drew the line, though, at risking arrest. This didn't seem like the right time or place for that.) I met Tim deChristopher, and got to experience the 'human mic' (a really cool legacy of the Occupy Wall Street movement - enabling large groups of people to hear one person without a microphone.) 

Organizers use the "human mic" technique, developed during the Occupy movement, to prepare protestors for non-violent action at Flood Wall Street - a day of action after the Peoples Climate March, to draw attention to the root economic causes of climate chaos.

Flooding Wall Street

Tim deChristopher and Democracy Now's Amy Goodman at Flood Wall Street

Flood Wall Street protestors peacefully removing the NYPD barriers to allow access

Flood Wall Street protestors commandeer a tourist bus - to the delight of everyone inside the barricades

I'd been wondering when, oh when, we were going to start getting some climate action protest music - and at Flood Wall Street I finally got to hear some! We sang two songs - both of them catchy and spiritual and easy to learn. Here's one of them:

Marching for the Climate... with 400,000 of My Closest Friends

Caffeinated and ready to march!

I don't think I will ever forget September 21, 2014. I hope I never forget the feeling of being there - the feeling of being surrounded by almost half a million people, with love in their hearts, standing up and demanding a new course for humanity. 

Recently, and ever more frequently, I've felt this deep disconnection from the people around me - like I’m surrounded by sleepwalkers, all of us blindly headed for a cliff. Like I'm the only one awake to the danger we're heading toward, and I’m powerless to stop it. It's a kind of waking nightmare. At best, I might be in the company of a few others who feel the same - but sharing a common nightmare is, in some ways, even less reassuring.

But in New York, it was different. 

A fellow-traveler in the Peoples Climate March

My dear friend Sharon's 14-year-old son, Sam, at the Peoples Climate March

NYC Subway car, covered in signs encouraging people to attend the march

Volunteering for the Peoples Climate March at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

In New York, I was part of a tide of people pushing in the opposite direction - so strong a tide that it was pushing me in the RIGHT direction. (And pushing a lot of other people too.) It's like the whole city - labor unions, families, senior citizens, everyone, even the police - just rose up and said WE HAVE TO CHANGE. When I learned on Monday night that the Rockefeller brothers had decided to divest from fossil fuels, I could feel the world shifting beneath me. I felt like I was at the center of a giant upswell of righteousness, and that maybe, finally, things were going to get better.

Waiting (and waiting and waiting!) with the Interfaith contingent on 58th St. for the march to begin.

People as far as I could see, up and down 6th Avenue

It took some getting used to - to no longer being the crazy 'eco-active' mom on the block, and instead being just one of 400,000 people, all asking for the same thing. And it was strange to be engaged in an issue that is so personal to me, with so many strangers and so far from home. But if I felt solidarity from those strangers around me, I also felt that in a very small way, my being there was a source of strength and encouragement to others. Many times during the day, I would hear someone exclaim with pride and delight “Palo Alto - wow! you came all the way from California! That's so great!” And I was so grateful to be able to say, “Yes, my congregation sent me,” and to show them the photos I was carrying, and to let them know that others back home were marching too.

Ribbons from the Climate Ribbon project

People choosing climate ribbons to take home, Peoples Climate March, NYC

Projects like the Climate Ribbon campaign also showed me that my grief and fear and hope are not mine alone - that we are ALL fighting, and praying, for the better world we know we must build for our children.

Quite possibly my favorite marcher...

I guess that the best thing about being at the march was that it gave me a taste of hope. For the first time, I believe we might actually win this. It’s going to take a lot of love, and a lot of hard work, to achieve any kind of climate safe future. And when I get back to California, I know it's going to feel weird all over again, and I'll go back to being the crazy eco-mom on the block. It's going to be hard, too, to hang on to this hopeful feeling, and to share it with my eco-active friends - who are increasingly terrified by the news coming in every day about the crazy-short amount of time we have to turn things around.

But I'm going to remember - and remind them - that half a million people marched with me through the streets of New York. And together, we can move mountains. 

Tomorrow is the big day!

The last two days have been simply incredible.

I began my day on Thursday by painting a banner for the California contingent at the Peoples Climate March, at MayDay artspace in Brooklyn. While there, I ran into Col. Anne Wright and Medea Benjamin, I got interviewed by WNYC radio, and I had the privilege of buying the artspace manager a falafel lunch.

Entrance to MayDay Artspace in Bushwick, Brooklyn: ground zero for Peoples Climate art!

Hand-drawn sticky-note map of the planned 'zones' inside the Peoples Climate March, at MayDay Artspace

From there, I went to a Peoples Climate March volunteer training, hosted by the NYC Transit Workers Union.

Hundreds of volunteers get trained for the Peoples Climate March at NYC's Transit Workers Union hall in Brooklyn

Phone banking for the Peoples Climate March at PCM headquarters, with Linda Hutchins-Knowles

On Friday, I did some phone banking at the Peoples March headquarters near Grand Central Station, with my new friend Linda Hutchins-Knowles. And on the way to pick up my protest signs at Kinko's, we ran into former US Congressman Dennis Kucinich!  

The Hon. Dennis Kucinich - with Linda Hutchins-Knowles, yours truly, and an unidentified Kucinich fan on Madison Ave.

That evening, Linda took me to a party for Moms Clean Air Force, hosted at a phenomenal upper west side apartment, where I got to meet people like EDF's Eric Pooley and IPL president Rev. Sally Bingham, as well as some amazing climate-active parents from all over the country.

Party for Moms Clean Air Force, on the upper west side of Manhattan

John Friedrich from Climate Parents was there - and he invited me and Linda to join him for the tail end of a 350NYC event afterwards. My favorite speaker there was Sean Sweeney, Director of the Cornell Global Labor Institute, who explained how labor unions have been forced to deal with the oil and gas industry - and then declared that those days are over, calling for President Obama to do nothing less than issue an executive order seizing the assets of Big Oil to prevent them from destroying our planet. (This modest proposal received cheers and a standing ovation.)

On the way home, while passing out flyers to the march on the subway, I met Johanna Wald, of the NRDC, who assured me she'd be at the march in the morning. A perfect way to end the day!

At the Moms Clean Air Force party with Linda Hutchins-Knowles and Lisa Hoyos of Climate Parents

Kathy Dervin and friends from 350 Bay Area, on the roof of MayDay Artspace

New York, Here I Come

I'm on board a tiny airplane headed for LA, where I'll be boarding a much bigger (I hope) airplane for New York. I'm going to volunteer for - and represent my UU congregation at - the biggest climate action in history.
It was a tough decision, whether or not to bring Elliot with me - but ultimately I decided that it wasn't worth the money, and the carbon, to bring him along. I can also be more effective on my own as a volunteer - and this way Elliot will get to participate in the Bay Area's bid this weekend to break the Guinness World Record for most EVs in one place. He's particularly excited because he'll get to see Stella there - the world's first family solar car.

For more on my reasons for flying to a climate march, visit my personal blog: http://vmarksthespot.blogspot.com/