Best sustainable ways to work abroad

Are you just out of high school or college? Retired? Care about the environment and want your travels to make a difference? Want to polish your resume in the meantime?

Working on sustainable projects is a great way to make this dream a reality. You have the opportunity to see the world in a meaningful way, as well as contributing to the local environment. There are a variety of options to choose from – just find the one that suits you best, and go for it!

Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF)

WWOOF hosts offer volunteers food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles. WWOOF organizations link people who want to volunteer on organic farms or smallholdings with people who are looking for volunteer help. Visit the WWOOF website to search for your perfect farm work stay.

Lotan Kibbutz in Israel has opportunities for volunteers to learn about organic agriculture, permaculture and sustainable living as well.

Try an internship

Sound simple? Interning is often the easiest way to earn your keep and travel too. Look for causes and organizations you believe in. Jump-start your search at Idealist.

Eco-resort jobs

Gardening, cooking, building tree houses, the experience of working on an eco-resort requires one to be a jack-of-all trades. The Black Sheep Inn in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador takes volunteers, as does Saba Ecolodge on Saba Island in the Caribbean. Search for opportunities around the world on the Eco Tropical Resorts website.

Environmental education camps

Love kids? Environmental education camps offer myriad opportunities to work and travel. Look at summercamps.com for international placements.

Become a research assistant

Visit university job sites such as Texas A & M University to find local and international opportunities. Also try looking into field research stations, some take volunteers and will provide room and board. It may even lead to a career change!

Work with wildlife

There are many opportunities throughout the world to work in as a wildlife rehabilitator. Greece, Bulgaria, Finland, and Venezuela are a few countries with many organizations. The International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and Green Volunteers are good places to start. Wildlife tracking is lesser known as an option but just as rewarding.

Park work

National and international opportunities abound. In the USA try CoolWorks or The Student Conservation Association.

There are so many options to choose from, there’s sure to be one that will allow you to follow your dream. Whether you end up working as a teacher, researcher or rehabilitator, follow your passion and you can’t go wrong.

Happily produced by The Indie Travel Podcast, proud winners of Lonely Planet's "Best Podcast 2009" -- Check out our free podcast in iTunes.

Best sustainable ways to work abroad

The Big Hate

Op-Ed Columnist
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: June 11, 2009

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh. His rants today aren’t very different from his rants in 1993. But he occupies a different position in the scheme of things. Remember, during the Bush years Mr. Limbaugh became very much a political insider. Indeed, according to a recent Gallup survey, 10 percent of Republicans now consider him the “main person who speaks for the Republican Party today,” putting him in a three-way tie with Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. So when Mr. Limbaugh peddles conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that fears over swine flu were being hyped “to get people to respond to government orders” — that’s a case of the conservative media establishment joining hands with the lunatic fringe.

It’s not surprising, then, that politicians are doing the same thing. The R.N.C. says that “the Democratic Party is dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals.” And when Jon Voight, the actor, told the audience at a Republican fund-raiser this week that the president is a “false prophet” and that “we and we alone are the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, thanked him, saying that he “really enjoyed” the remarks.

Credit where credit is due. Some figures in the conservative media have refused to go along with the big hate — people like Fox’s Shepard Smith and Catherine Herridge, who debunked the attacks on that Homeland Security report two months ago. But this doesn’t change the broad picture, which is that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.

What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even worse than in the 1990s — that thanks, in part, to the election of an African-American president, “the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

And that’s a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.

The great deficit scare returns

Even liberals are getting antsy about debt and government spending. Stop worrying. The deficit hawks are wrong.

By Robert Reich

June 11, 2009

It's the kind of thing I expect to hear from deficit hawks and chicken littles -- from the self-described "fiscally responsible" right, from the scolds Ross Perot and Pete Peterson, from my former cabinet colleague Bob Rubin. But yesterday I was shown slides developed by the putatively liberal Center for American Progress intended to make the point. And today's front page story in the New York Times, by the eminent David Leonhardt, entitled "Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread From A Puddle," puts the issue right before our progressive noses, so to speak.

The Great Debt Scare is back.

Odd that it would return right now, when the economy is still mired in the worst depression since the Great one. After all, consumers are still deep in debt and incapable of buying. Unemployment continues to soar. Businesses still are not purchasing or investing, for lack of customers. Exports are still dead, because much of the global economy continues to shrink. So the purchaser of last resort -- the government -- has to create larger deficits if the economy is to get anywhere near full capacity, and start to grow again.

Odder still that the Debt Scare returns at the precise moment that bills are emerging from Congress on universal health care, which, by almost everyone's reckoning, will not increase the long-term debt one bit because universal health care has to be paid for in the budget. In fact, universal health care will reduce the deficit and cumulative debt -- especially if it includes a public option capable of negotiating lower costs from drug makers, doctors, and insurers, and thereby reducing the future costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

Even odder that the Debt Scare rears its frightening head just as the President's stimulus is moving into high gear with more spending on infrastructure. Every expert who has looked closely at the nation's crumbling infrastructure knows how badly it suffers from decades of deferred maintenance -- bridges collapsing, water pipes bursting, sewers backed up, highways impassable, public transit in disrepair. The stimulus, along with the President's long-term budget, also focus on the nation's schools, as well as America's capacity to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. These public investments are as important to the nation's future as are private investments.

First, some background: Deficit and debt numbers mean nothing in and of themselves. They take on meaning only in relation to something else. And the most important something else, in terms of deciding whether the nation can afford such deficits or debts, is the size of the national economy.

Pay close attention, in particular, to the debt/GDP ratio. True, that ratio is heading in the wrong direction right now. It may reach 70 percent by the end of 2010. That's high, but it's not high compared to the 120 percent it was in 1946, after the ravages of Depression and war.

Over time, the basic way America has reduced the debt/GDP ratio is by growing the U.S. economy. GDP growth makes even large debts manageable. When the economy is cooking, more people have jobs and better wages. So they pay more taxes. And they require less unemployment assistance and other social insurance. That's why it's so important now, in the depths of depression, that government, as purchaser of last resort, steps in and runs large deficits. Without large deficits this year and next, and perhaps the year after, the economy doesn't have a prayer of getting back on a growth path, and the debt/GDP ratio could really get ugly.

That growth path, by the way, will be faster and stronger if the nation invests in our infrastructure, our schools, and our environment -- which is exactly what Obama aims to do. In this respect, national budgets are like family budgets. It's dumb for an indebted family to borrow more money to take a world cruise. But it's smart even for an indebted family to borrow money to send their kids to college. So too with the Obama budget. Public investments, just like family investments, build future wealth. They allow faster growth. They make the debt/GDP ratio even lower and more manageable over time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about when it comes to long-term deficit and debt projections. I'm just saying now's not the time to worry, and we ought to temper our worries by understanding the larger context.

Not every expert agrees that a deficit-driven stimulus is the best and fastest way to get the economy back on a growth track, or that public investments can speed growth. Conservative economists, Republicans, and many Wall Streeters are skeptical because they don't think government can do anything well. But look at the record of the last seventy-five years -- look at how the nation got out of the Great Depression, and consider the critical role public investments have played since then in speeding the nation's growth, investments such as the interstate highway system -- and you have ample evidence that the deficit hawks are wrong. They were wrong when they convinced Bill Clinton to chuck a large part of his investment agenda (the nation is now paying the price) and they're wrong now.

So, back to the mystery. Why are the ostensibly liberal Center for American Progress and New York Times participating in the Debt Scare right now? Is it possible that among the President's top economic advisors and top ranking members the Fed are people who agree more with conservative Republicans and Wall Streeters on this issue than with the President? Is it conceivable that they are quietly encouraging the Debt Scare even in traditionally liberal precincts, in order to reduce support in the Democratic base for what Obama wants to accomplish? Hmmm.

Baker’s Ghost in Cairo

Op-Ed Columnist

By ROGER COHEN

Published: June 3, 2009

NEW YORK — I hope President Obama has been reading James Baker in preparation for his speech Thursday to the Muslim world. It was in the time of the former secretary of state, two decades ago, that the United States last had a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Here’s what Baker told the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee — the pro-Israel lobby — on May 22, 1989: “For Israel, now is the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel.”

He continued: “Israeli interests in the West Bank and Gaza, security and otherwise, can be accommodated in a settlement based on Resolution 242. Forswear annexation; stop settlement activity.”

Those words make startling but depressing reading: Little has changed in 20 years. After Bush 41 and Baker, we got Clinton’s love affair with Yitzhak Rabin (“I had come to love him as I had rarely loved another man”); the disintegration of Oslo after Rabin’s tragic assassination; and the Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy of Bush 43.

Balance — the credential no honest broker can forsake — vanished from American diplomacy.

I don’t believe that’s been good for Israel. The Jewish state needs to be challenged by its inseparable ally if it is to achieve the security it craves.

Obama is speaking on a significant date. June 4 is the day before the outbreak of the 1967 war that led to the 42-year occupation of the West Bank. U.N. Resolution 242, invoked by Baker, called for the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” It has, with the exception of Gaza, been ignored.

The president must talk about the cost to Israel — and to U.S. standing in the Middle East — of the occupation and expanding settlements. Campfire Kumbaya about his part-Muslim family and schooling in Muslim Indonesia is not going to win over disaffected Arabs focused on dwindling Palestine. He must be honest to Israel and unafraid to address the issue of justice for Palestinians.

I said little has changed in two decades. But some things have. The wall-fence has gone up, putting some 10 percent of West Bank land on the Israeli side of the barrier. The Israeli settler population of the West Bank has more than tripled to some 300,000. A network of garrison-like settlements, roadblocks and settler-only highways has built Palestinian humiliation into the very fabric of what Baker called “Greater Israel.”

Adam Bittlingmayer, a Google software engineer recently in the West Bank, sent this personal (and not corporate) view to me on his return: “I think the most important word to repeat is ‘humiliation.’ Palestinians can be successful software engineers, they can have an espresso in a café and blog on their MacBooks, but they cannot hide from their children that they are powerless in the face of an Israeli teenager holding a gun who may or may not be in a good mood.”

There have been other changes since 1989. The United States has formally embraced a two-state solution just as that solution was looking more vulnerable to demography and Palestinian disillusionment.

The Palestinian movement has fractured and Hamas has emerged as a powerful force within it. Political Islam has grown as a core expression of Muslim anger and identity. Jihadist terrorism has coalesced at its violent fringe.

Arab states, through a 2002 peace plan, have offered recognition to Israel within its 1967 borders, and that plan has received the support of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose members include Iran.

Not least, heroic Israel has teetered, in the eyes of many, toward bellicose, bullying Israel, whose two most recent wars have been inconclusive at best.

Place those developments on a scale and I don’t see a stronger Israel. The status quo is in fact never static. Obama, as a friend of Israel, must find ways to say that the occupation deadlock cannot be in the Jewish state’s interest.

The Muslims between the Mediterranean and Jordan River will soon outnumber the Jews. At that point, to remain a Jewish state, Israel must become a non-democratic state. Palestinian statehood — alongside Israel’s — has become essential to Herzl’s dream.

By using language not seen since Baker on halting the settlements, the Obama administration has started to hold Israel accountable.

Obama must of course do the same with Arabs and Palestinians. Again, Baker is a good guide: “Let the Arab world take concrete steps toward accommodation with Israel, not in place of the peace process, but as a catalyst to it.” Or: “Translate the dialogue of violence in the intifada into a dialogue of politics and diplomacy. Violence will not work.”

Abba Eban, the former Israeli foreign minister, once called the 1967 borders “the Auschwitz borders.” But Eretz Israel is a dead end; and the cultivation of traumatized memory offers Israel no path to 21st-century peace. The reconciliation Obama seeks with the Muslim world, and Israel’s reconciliation with itself, must be anchored, with mutually agreed adjustments, in the geography of June 4, 1967.

The president’s June 4 speech will fail if it does not make that clear.

Gene Robinson's Invocation at the Inauguration's Opening Ceremony

Advocate.com
January 21, 2009

Following is the text of the invocation given by Bishop V. Gene Robinson at the opening ceremonies of President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration Sunday, January 18. Robinson delivered the prayer at the base of the Lincoln Memorial while facing a crowd nearly a million people strong that filled a stretch of the National Mall all the way to the base of the Washington Monument.

Good afternoon,

Before this celebration begins, please join me in pausing for a moment to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

Oh God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears -- tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die a day from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless this nation with anger -- anger at discrimination at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants; women; people of color; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort at the easy simplistic answers we prefer to hear from our politicians instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed anytime soon and the understanding that our next president is a human being, not a messiah. Bless us with humility, open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Bless us with compassion and generosity, remembering that every religion’s god judges us by the ways we care for the most vulnerable. And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of the president of the United States. Give him wisdom beyond his years, inspire him with President Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for all people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady, calm captain. Give him stirring words; we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership there will be neither red nor blue states but a United States. Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him strength to find family time and privacy and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods. And please God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents and we’re asking far too much of this one; we implore you, oh good and great God to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand that he might do the work that we have called him to do. That he might find joy in this impossible calling and that, in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity, and peace.

Amen.

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

______________________________________________

For Immediate Release June 1, 2009

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009


BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New
York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for
members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America
was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June
1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting
contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American
society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional
fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans
also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic
and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to
the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT
rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly
today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint
openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100
days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities
we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the
White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing
their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more
work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear
of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live
their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a
wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined
efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the
world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full
spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include
enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights
for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring
adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy
in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security.
We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both
reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support
services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire
Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled,
all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the
principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will
benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the
Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal
rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of
America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution
and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of
the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere
it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June,
in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of
the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

Reagan Did It

Op-Ed Columnist

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 31, 2009

“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. ... All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

He was, as it happened, wrong about solving the problems of the thrifts. On the contrary, the bill turned the modest-sized troubles of savings-and-loan institutions into an utter catastrophe. But he was right about the legislation’s significance. And as for that jackpot — well, it finally came more than 25 years later, in the form of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.

Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.

We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops.

Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

Goodbye, GM

by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com