Bushenfreude Prevails

Slate ran an interesting article a couple of days ago showing that in this past election the Republican party saw significant erosion in support from the wealthy, who are typically a bedrock constituency of the Republican Party. The editors at Slate envision Americans disgruntled with the Iraq war and Republican malfeasance taking their windfall taxbreak income and giving it to the Democratic Party. Oh, the beautiful irony. They have even coined a term for it: Bushenfreude (taken from the German "schadenfreude," taking pleasure in others' misfortune).

Bushenfreude prevailed in the East where individuals in households with incomes greater than $100,000 favored Democrats by large margins. This was a big shift from 2004 when Republicans the won the majority of voters in the $150k and up income range. The story was pretty much the same on the West Coast, but with slightly smaller margins of victory for Dems.

In traditionally conservative areas of the country, the South and the Midwest, the wealthy still favored Republicans by a fairly large margin, but these margins were much smaller than those in the 2004 elections. Erosion's the word.

Reading this article, I was wondering whether the swing in preference among these wealthy voters actually had an impact on the actual results of the election considering there are not that many people in the US making more than $100k a year. It turns out that wealthy people vote more than other income groups and in fact make up 23% of US voters, up from 19% in 2004.

Interesting.

Let's hope the Democrats can get something done in the next two years or we may soon be facing "Demfreude".

Video the Vote

Look out for this in the next couple of days:



Video the Vote

on CNN

Slate Green Challenge: Weeks 2 and 3

Has the Slate Green Challenge deceived me? In Week 1 it looked to be an exciting attempt to educate people about their CO2 emissions and to get them to cut back, but after Week 2 I'm not so sure. I was so nonplussed last week that I decided not to write and decided instead to this week a double feature.

Week 2 concentrated on ways we can emit less CO2 by heating our homes more efficiently. The focus was pretty standard: heat less, insulate more, caulk cracks, and weather-strip doors. Surprisingly, the quiz didn't mention anything about hot water heating or air conditioning, but I think those are coming later. I guess I didn't really have any big problems with the suggestions for reducing energy use. The issue I had with the suggestions is inherent in the challenge of addressing home heating in that it focuses mostly on changes to a physical object. My issue was this: many actions addressing home heating require physical capital investment (adding double-panda windows, installing insulation, weather-stripping) rather than a behavioral change (turning down your thermostat). If you're poor, instead of basking in the sunlight behind the glass-sandwiched argon of some low-E window panes, you may just be stuck shivering in that wool sweater you bought at the Salvation Army. Maybe that's just the way it is.

In the end, I pledged to turn down my thermostat both at night and during the day, the equivalent of taking something like .13 cars off the road.

This week, Week 3, focuses on food. Where does our food come from? How is it processed? How is it transported? The literature that goes along with this week's challenge was interesting at first glance and contained some good tips: eat local food above all; buy organic; avoid processed and overpackaged food; plant a garden; request local produce at your grocery store; etc. Unfortunately, a lot of the links embedded in the text of these tips point to badly-written, marginally-informative, and, frankly, discouraging posts on Treehugger.

I was not impressed with the pledge options either. Three of the seven options were pledges to cut beef out of your diet in increasing amounts (reduce by 1/4, 1/2 or stop eating it completely). One - bringing your own bags to the grocery store - saves a measly 17 pounds of CO2 a year, which seems like more of a feel-good commitment than anything else. Another pledge - buying local apples - was just baffling. Why not other produce? Why not local (free-range) beef? Why not shop at a farmers' market? I think the point is that apples are often shipped to the US from Chile, and Americans eat a lot of apples. But in the winter, how are you going to get local apples? The remaining two options are to buy products with less packaging and to let hot food cool to room temperature before putting it in the fridge. Hmmm...

My question is whether the lack carbon-busting eating options in this week's action quiz is because of shoddy, ill-informed research and a lack of creativity or if it reflects some sort of reality in the organization of our food supply system. Should I really be using canvas bags at the supermarket, or should I be eating local, free range turkey rather than Oscar Meyer? What are my winter alternatives to eating Chilean apples? Why the focus on apples?

For all my complaints, the Green Challenge is probably effective in two ways: raising lots of awareness, and getting lots of people involved. Let's just hope that's enough to compensate for its shortcomings.