Energy Plans Running Dry- Problem or Deliverance?

So the word from the Los Angeles Times today comes down from San Pierre, Indiana, a town of 156 in the northwestern part of the state. Prior to the credit crunch and economic slowdown, San Pierre was due to be the site of an ethanol processing plant, promising jobs, income and opportunity to a town that is rapidly losing population to nearby cities. Instead, the credit crunch and wildly fluctuating commodities markets have left the plans dead in the water:

But last month, the developers of the San Pierre plant announced that the $62-million deal was dead. Banks involved in the project had cut off their lines of credit. Desperate calls to dozens of other financial institutions led to the same answer: No.

Already battered by other market forces, the ethanol industry has been hit hard by the banking world's credit crunch, and the seemingly bright future of corn-based biofuel has been cast in doubt.

In Pratt, Kan., the grinding mill machinery stands silent inside the Gateway Ethanol plant. It was open for less than six months before running out of money, and there were no bank loans available to keep it going. The firm recently filed for bankruptcy.

In Royal, Ill., developers abandoned efforts to build a plant there and in six other locations, citing an inability to get financing. Plants have been shuttered, or plans for new ones halted, in Mead, Neb.; Belle Fourche, S.D.; Blairstown, Iowa; and Melrose, Minn.

It's sad, no doubt about it. I never like to hear stories about dreams postponed or canceled, especially when opportunities for some of these communities are few and far between. But I have to ask this question- are these industrial outlets truly the kind of development that rural America needs?

For all the promise of being a green industry and an answer to the fuel crisis (although who worries about that now with prices so low?), let's call ethanol processing for what it is- extractive industry. It is dependent on processing raw materials into a more finished form by way of labor- and capital-intensive industrial processes. There are significant byproducts to this process, such as large amounts of emissions and regions turned into monocultures, as well as massive inputs such as fuel to operate harvesters and chemicals for fertilizer. What is the difference between that and any other extractive industry? Mining, logging, fishing? They all make use of raw materials in a low-skill, relatively low-wage job.

Ethanol production is more of the same. It is clear how many of these projects have turned out in America- witness the ghost towns that are shells of their former selves once the boom has gone bust, littered throughout the west, watching commodities prices to turn their resources profitable again. Much like other extractive industries, ethanol production also needs intense government intervention to turn a profit. So let's put to bed the notion that ethanol is some new, green-collar wonderland. It's what we call 'same sh*t, different day.'

I'm not keeping score, but that's quite a few strikes against this plan.

It just seems to me, from where I sit, that we are hitching our horse to the wrong wagon, both as a country and as individual towns. As towns, we must be able to find other ways to spur economic growth. Sure, this is easy to say; in times of trouble, you can't fault someone for jumping at an opportunity as it comes along. To tell the truth, I kind of feel like an ass for saying it. But if we are going to get serious about building our rural communities into self-sufficient ones that are players in a regional and global economy, we have to move past the outmoded models of development for decades past.

So I'm pulling for you, San Pierre, and everyone else that is hurting in this bust. It's going to be hard. But I also want to try, TRY, to see this as an opportunity to reimagine ourselves and our various locales, wherever you find yourself, loyal reader, to compete in the new century and new economy. We can't do that if we stick to the old models.

Do I have ideas, you ask? Sure. They aren't perfect, but what ideas are? If I were the government, I would invest in electronic communications infrastructure for a lot of places in the USA. From where I sit, a lot of these high tech workers would jump at the chance to live in a place like San Pierre, to live away from the madness and heat and crowding of the city high-tech hubs. They would be perfect locations for continuity of operations sites, if the connections could be built reliably enough. Imagine the jobs available both at these facilities, and the multiplier effects on the local economy.

That's my humble idea off the top of my head. If you have anything else... or want to call me out... well, fire away!

Our New Electoral Map

So, after our collective exhale, I think it is interesting to look a little deeper into some of the electoral trends we witnessed this last Tuesday.

I ran across this very cool map on NPR's website. What is does is this: It takes our map of the USA and turns it into a cartogram -- a representation of population rather than geographic size.

What is striking to me (but not surprising, being that we here at Mid-America Calling are all about bi-partisianship!) is the amount of purple you see.

We truly are a nation of people who want to see our country be all it can be... we may have differences of opinion on how to make it so, but as you can see from the map, our population is NOT divided by partisian bickering.

Let's hope our elected leaders take that cue, and get to work with a bi-partisian spirit.

OK, Collective Exhale...

A couple days late, sure, but isn't that symbolic in itself? It's been a pretty wild and wooly election, one of the most hardly fought in history, and to be perfectly honest I could not tear my eyes away from it in order to update this ole project. Sorry. But truth be told, not sure if we can compete with the big dogs, trying as we are to refrain from partisanship, which is kind of the order of the day.

That said:

It is truly a fantastic time to be an American. For a long time now, our mainstream media has been pummeling us with assumptions, that the result on Election Day would never have been possible with a divided, latently racist, lazy, disinterested and moronic electorate. We've been told that we'd never elect a black man. We've been told that he's scary, he's a mystery, that he has secret plans and secret friends and is definitely not a friend of us. Even his name became ambiguously threatening.

But like Fox News' Brit Hume said, all those accusations didn't add up to what we saw on the screen. Not by a longshot. And by a notable margin, we the people showed those that make a living telling us about ourselves that they really don't know a damn thing. People came together across ideological, racial and class divides to cast a vote in favor of a truly amorphous idea- change. What does it mean? There's as many answers to that as there are people. But with that vote, Americans nationwide put their foot down in favor of change, and in essence declared their great faith in themselves and their countrymen to come together. We demand it of our government, and each other, so that we all may prosper.

For all the subplots and deeper meanings, that's what this election meant to me. It meant an open opportunity to get to work. It means a president who is open and willing to hearing what everyone has to say, as opposed to one who seeks the approval of 50% plus one. If you have an idea, the president-elect wants to hear it. So bend his ear. Let him know. We are all in this together, now. It's all on us.

So I ask you all, let's get ready to roll up our sleeves. Don't retreat back into the living room, whether you knocked on doors for either candidate, in self-satisfied elation or bitterness. We need to get to work. There's a lot of things that need fixing in our beautiful land, and there is no time to lose. I, for one, am chomping at the bit to get down with it. Let's go.