Ashes to Ashes, Bust to Bust

(Note: I researched and wrote this piece in July 2006, shortly after Brooks passed, for publication in the regular obituary column of LiP magazine. It never got printed, and I just happened to find it on my harddrive today.)

Robert Howell Brooks, head of the Hooters chain of restaurants, died of natural causes at the age of 69.

Brooks, who spent much of his impoverished childhood working in his family’s tobacco fields in South Carolina, was a member of Future Farmers of America, a public agricultural education program for boys (until 1969, when girls were admitted), before studying dairy science at Clemson University. He made his first fortune in Naturally Fresh Foods, Inc., with fast-food milkshake formula and non-dairy creamer for airlines.

Despite his proven familiarity with udder-based products, Brooks claimed to be ignorant of the mammary connotations of the Hooters brand when he took over in 1988. The official Hooters website says of its famous brandmark: “Hooters does have an owl inside its logo and uses an owl theme sufficiently to allow debate to occur over the meaning’s intent. The chain enjoys and benefits from this debate. In the end, we hope Hooters means a great place to eat.”

In deference to his wife Tami, who engages in weekly Bible study with daughter Belle, Brooks did remove Playboy spreads of former Hooters Girls from all the restaurants after taking the helm, which Tami apparently found more objectionable than signs like “Hooters Waitresses are Flattery Operated,” which prevail.

Invariably young and buxom, overwhelmingly white, and minted from a single “All-American Cheerleader” mold, the “Girls” are officially described as “bubbly,” “vivacious,” and “wholesome yet sexy.” At their hiring they sign a policy that asks them to acknowledge that “the Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and that the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace” and furthermore that they “do not find [their] job duties, uniform requirements or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile or unwelcome.” “Hooters Girls are to be camera-ready at all times,” explains the extensive employee handbook.

Over the years, several cases of sexual harassment by Hooters managers surfaced (sexual harassment by guests being a condition of employment). One “Girl” sued her Panama City Beach, FL employer for being tricked into thinking a contest would win her a Toyota, when what she got was a toy Yoda. But under the steady hand of Brooks, Hooters not only survived these and other challenges (such as the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s investigation regarding discrimination against males in 1995)–indeed, Hooters came out on top.

Part of the community appeal sprang from a PR idea of Brooks’: philanthropy. Hooters Community Endowment Fund has donated over $8 million to charities, including to Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Yet, while the company website asserts that “the women’s rights movement is important, because it guarantees women have the right to choose their own careers, be it a Supreme Court Justice or Hooters Girl,” women’s rights groups do not figure prominently among the beneficiaries of HOOCEF.

By all accounts, multimillionaire Bob Brooks worked tirelessly for the wealth he accrued. The small chain grew into a multinational with over 430 locations in 20 countries. Brooks’ related business endeavors include Hooters Magazine; Hooters Casino; and the ill-fated Hooters Air airline. Promoting, commodifying, and normalizing the sexual-objectification of women: It’s hard work.

FutureFuel Reads The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann

Anthropology, philosophy, spirituality, ecology… Where does this book get filed? The keyword on the upper left corner of the back cover says Current Affairs. I guess those are current affairs; I guess it’s high time they were.

I actually bought this book after hearing Hartmann speak at Bioneers in 2006, impressed by his reasoned (intellectual) and grounded (spiritual/emotional) presence on stage. But I never got around to cracking it until I realized it might inform my current researches for Van Jones’ book on Green Collar Jobs.

Hartmann’s first goal is to explain how humanity exceeded natural carrying capacity on earth. For most of human existence, alongside every other living creature, we lived off what he calls “current local sunlight,” the amount of sun that hit the earth and got stored in plants, which fed the herbivores, which in turn fed the carnivores. Human shelter and clothing were derived from plants and animal parts too, and thus also from sunlight.

Population densities stabilized at the level which local sunlight could sustain, growing slightly when we developed herding and farming practices, which more efficiently converted sunlight into food.

Then we discovered what he calls “ancient sunlight:” coal, a material derived from plants that had stored sunlight for hundreds of millions of years. As coal replaced wood as a main source of heat, forests in turn could be cleared for food production, and global population jumped: from 500 million people around 1000 A.D. to one billion in 1800. And then we discovered another form of ancient sunlight: oil.

So while it took us 200,000 years to produce our first billion people, with the discovery of oil, it took just 130 years for our second billion, and a paltry 30 years for our third billion. Then, leveling off from exponentials into more linear growth—14 more years until we hit 4 billion, 13 more years to 5 billion, and 12 additional years to hit 6 billion in 1999. And growing.

And now there’s almost no more ancient sunlight left. Experts differ on the exact amounts remaining, but everyone is clear we’ll be totally OUT within the next 40-60ish years at current rates of usage– and increased use is predicted. Since demand and population is still growing, and since even our alterative energy technologies require oil (to produce photovoltaic cells, for example), and since we’re running out of all sorts of other things (water, metals, trees) we obviously need to Get Smart now.

Then Hartmann switches tacks entirely, in order to introduce us to the people who may hold the answer to effective resource management: the Older Cultures, such as the San, Kogi, Ik, Kayapo. He spends a lot of time debunking our Younger Culture’s prevailing narratives about these primitive peoples, and questioning our Younger/Dominant Cultural values. What is enough? What is wealth? What is growth? Who really attains leisure or contentment? Whose culture is deeper?

There are so many gems in this book that my copy is riddled with dog-eared pages, underlined passages, asterisks and exclamation points. There are far too many to convey here, so I’m just going to ask very nicely—maybe even beg you—to read the book yourself, and believe what he conveys about transformation rippling from the individual to the community to the global level, and how individual acts of grace, generosity, and gratitude can change humanity’s trajectory.

FutureFuel Reads Inevitable Surprises

I’ve been reading a ton of books about climate change and clean energy as part of my work with Van Jones and Green For All. I thought I’d start sharing my gleanings from and reactions to those books here.

Inevitable Surprises, Peter Schwartz

Wunderkind Peter Schwartz has been crafting predictions about the future—chiefly on behalf of his huge corporate clients, and for Hollywood productions like “Minority Report” and “War Games”—since the mid-1980s. And he’s been right a lot of the time, which is why I found myself reading—and re-reading—his book carefully.

Since he’s not only paid by corporate power, but is also a venture capitalist, often investing in the projects he’s describing as the Next Big Thing, I also found myself taking him with a big ole lick of salt, particularly when I read things from him that nearly every other scientist and observer gainsays, like “pollution is diminishing. Species are harder to extinguish than they seem.”

Among the things he predicts, which I note here without any editorializing:

Significantly-increased lifespans, with corresponding larger numbers of working, playing, procreating and consuming Elders.

Massive population migrations.
One specific approaching shift he points to is based on the fact that cultural preference for male children in China has resulted in a skewed ratio of male-to-female births, which “translates into ½ million ‘excess’ males coming into the population each year for the next 20 years.” He predicts this will lead to a diaspora of Chinese males seeking wives, and tremendous immigration of non-Chinese women to China.

Economic growth over the long haul, mostly due to increased productivity, globalization, and global infrastructure.

Ongoing terrorist acts by a set of “disorderly nations,” augmented by the impulsive behavior of the “rogue superpower” United States. Religious wars. The disconnectedness of 14 million parentless children growing up in Africa. Huge numbers of AIDS cases in China, India, and Russia.

Total and virtually inescapable surveillance, facilitated by retinal scans and nanotechnology. Human control over biological processes such as fertility. Bioindustrial processes (e.g. growing steaks in steel vats). Regenerative medicine: grow a new one of whatever you need. Computers that are a hundred million times as powerful as today’s. Space travel, eventually, possibly.

Posssibly, information theory as underlying reality: the idea that “there is a code that determines what happens when atoms and other small entities come together, and it is possible to crack that code….Reality, in short, is a giant computer, and it conceivably could be programmed if we knew how to input the right ‘data.’”

Population growth levels off. Green energy prevails—including nuclear. Global climate change, and with it: severe shortages of water, flooded coastal communities, tropical diseases’ spread to northern climates, and the resulting migration of populations.

A hugely devastating global plague—from a newer disease like Ebola or (airborne?) AIDS, or the return of an oldie now drug-resistant, like staph, the flu, or tuberculosis. And finally, equally cheerily, an asteroid hitting the earth and potentially destroying human civilization as we know it.

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Although at first I was tempted to fully discount Schwartz’s views as biased by his own economic interests, subsequent readings have also made me perceive my own biases and my wishful thinking. Reading Inevitable Surprises, I’m left with a mix of hope and despair not far from the ratio I already hold, but comprised of different ingredients. You might want to read this book, just in case.

FutureFuel Reads The Revenge of Gaia

I’ve been reading a ton of books about climate change and clean energy as part of my work with Van Jones and Green For All. I thought I’d start sharing my gleanings from and reactions to those books here.

The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock

What’s infuriating about this book’s implementation of Lovelock’s trademark concept of Gaia, the living and self-regulating superorganism that is Earth—including “her” atmosphere, oceans, geological strata, etc.—is that it often casts “her inhabitants” as separate and external. The duality is evidenced by statements like: “we still talk of sustainable development and renewable energy as if these feeble offerings would be accepted by Gaia as an appropriate and affordable sacrifice.”

Lovelock is far from the only theorist to draw that line of distinction, but given that the theory underscores the interconnectedness of earth systems—and given that the intent of this book is to build our empathy for this creature named Gaia and thereby shake humanity into action (his highly-contested primary recommended action being widespread adoption of nuclear power)—I find this a dubious disconnect.

In his prediction that billions of humans will die due to climate change and the resulting loss of habitable areas, Lovelock writes: “Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but the planet will lose a precious resource: human civilization. Humans are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us Gaia has seen herself from space and begins to know her place in the universe.”

I find this a terribly confused description of the relationship between the planet and humanity—casting us simultaneously as a superior and separate entity (we are the ones who has shown Gaia herself), as a pox upon her surface, and as a part of her (specifically, her nervous system.)

As Christy Rogers pointed out in her review of the book, we know it’s going to take the Promise of a Dramatic Improvement in our Situation and/or the clear identification of an Enemy to motivate us to change our ways. Lovelock provides neither of these motivations, and merely muddies the throughtstream with his arguments. This is an ineffably skippable book.

change

utterly compelling, this speech. Looks like the Future.