Can Technology Save us from an Environmental Apocalypse?
Yesterday I heard about something of a technological miracle. A company that makes alternative engines for transportation vehicles (a Green Investment, if you will), reported that the State of California has certified one of its natural gas engines as being cleaner than electric car engines. Westport Innovations is introducing the "ISL G Near Zero (NZ) NOx natural gas engine" for medium duty trucks and busses.
"The engine was certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Air Resources Board (ARB) in California that meet the 0.02 g/bhp-hr optional Near Zero NOx Emissions standards. . . Cummins Westport ISL G NZ exhaust emissions will be 90% lower than the current EPA NOx limit of 0.2 g/bhp-hr and also meet the 2017 EPA greenhouse gas emission requirements. CWI natural gas engines have met the 2010 EPA standard for particulate matter (0.01 g/bhp-hr) since 2001." [Westport ISL G press release]
Vehicles equipped with these engines will create less smog and greenhouse CO2 than electric vehicles. Why? Because electric vehicles must get their electricity from somewhere, and in California most electricity is produced from natural gas fired plants.
Natural gas is preferred to coal, for anyone wanting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because it has a lot of hydrogen in it. Petroleum gasses consist of molecules that have a chain of carbon atoms surrounded by hydrogen atoms. Burning hydrogen creates water. Burning carbon creates carbon dioxide. So burning coal, which is almost entirely carbon, produces more carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced than burning natural gas.
Most environmentalists, both of the ordinary citizen kind and paid non-profiteers, are very enthusiastic about solar energy (and wind). In theory solar energy produces no pollution of any kind. So in the ideal green world, solar panels capture energy, and electric automobiles and trucks would run on that energy. Most environmentalists advocate for moving to all solar and all electric vehicles as soon as possible, which would still take a while, given that solar currently creates only about 1% of U.S. electricity.
Of course the real world is more complicated than the imaginary utopias of environmentalists, or the imaginary utopias of climate change deniers.
While waiting for solar, let's think about the thesis of natural gas being better than coal. The first objection of environmentalists is that natural gas is cheaper than coal (the real reason coal plants are being abandoned in the U.S.) only because of fracking. Environmentalists hate fracking. They hate mountaintop removal for coal too. How does one fairly compare the side effects of natural gas extraction versus coal extraction? [a question I can't answer here]
You can see why environmentalists want to go straight to solar. But environmentalists are in denial about the complications of solar. The main active component of solar cells is silicon, but that has to be supported on some long lasting, strong material like aluminum or steel.
Producing a commercially usable solar cell requires separating silicon from silicon dioxide (sand or quartz) and extracting aluminum or iron from their ores. That involves huge amounts of energy, which comes from coal fired plants in China. It involves building massive plants to shape the raw silicon and steel into panels. Those plants are mainly in China, so the tons of panels have to be transported to the U.S. first by ship, then trucked to distribution centers. If they go on roofs it takes energy to life them up there. Even when installed they are not care-free. Cleaning them requires energy, and if they are covered with dust they produce no electricity. Also, they take up space that could be used for rooftop gardens.
Solar panels have high upfront costs. A single panel generates surprisingly little electricity. That is why it take years, perhaps two decades, for a panel to pay for itself compared to just buying electricity from a utility company.
That is no reason to not install more solar power. But it does bring us to the essence of the global warming problem: the size of the human population.
In The Martian the lead character says something like he is going to "science the hell out of the problem." I like science, I liked the movie, and I think we should science the hell out of the global warming problem. And other environmental problems like habitat destruction and lack of clean water. But the real solution involves the Secret Sauce.
Very few people want to talk about the Secret Sauce. I have noted that in the United States even the Green Party politicians don't want to talk about it, much less the Democrats.
The Secret Sauce is reducing the human population. Reducing it in California, in the United States, and in the World.
The science is available, but not the culture or technology, much less the political will. The science is birth control.
The governments of California and the United States encourage people to have children. They do that many ways, most notably through the income tax exemptions for children and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
We need a One Child Policy, to be in effect for about 3 generations until the human population has reached sustainable levels. 3 generations is 60 years, which should allow us to better understand what is really long-term sustainable for the Earth.
I believe in making such a policy as minimally coercive as possible. By eliminating tax credits for children, after the first child of a couple, we could probably get a good balance. Some religious crazies would probably insist on having more children than they should, but some couples (or singles) will have none, so it should balance out.
Our economic system would need some alterations as well, but then it needs alterations anyway. Average people could have a higher standard of living if there were less people competing for what little is left of the world.
Meanwhile, hurray for converting trucks from diesel to natural gas. Hurray for solar. But let's no be naive. The human population can be brought down gently and humanely, or Nature will bring it down in a crash. Talk about it. Ask politicians and environmental groups and churches about it. We are out of time. We we be far better off if we started a One Child Policy a generation ago. We have the tools, let's use them.
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Opportunity Costs of War, Population, and Education
It should not be surprising that the leaders of the British Empire decided to use the same genocidal tactics as the Nazis in World War II. Americans used similar tactics against the Native American Indians and later against the Philippine Islanders and the Vietnamese (to keep the list short). Mass murder is a strategy that a lot of other leaders have used throughout history, limited only by their power and technologies.
Overlaying an indigenous group we can call Celts (though they also were a mix of invaders and indigenous peoples), the people we call English are a mixture of Germans (Angles and Saxons), Vikings, Danes (who were just well-organized Vikings) and eventually the Normans, who were slightly Frenchified Vikings.
If you enjoy Vikings on The History Channel, you can see the leadership qualities of later-day leaders in Ragmar Lothbrok, brilliantly played by Travis Fimmel. A calculating greed and willingness to unleash mayhem eventually allowed these barbarians and their descendents (including cultural as well as genetic descendents) to conquer most of the world.
Being allied with the British, we Americans have been taught a great deal about Hitler's (and Tojo's) war crimes, but very little about our own. But this essay is not meant to recount those crimes. Here they serve as fodder for an exploration of opportunity costs. As in so many things, it is easier to see opportunity costs in retrospective than in the present or in the future.
For a more detailed (but still brief) review of opportunity costs in World War II, specifically those associated with aerial bombardment, I would recommend "Opportunity Costs" by Edward Luttwak in the November 21, 2013 London Review of Books [subscription required], which in turn is a book review of The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945
by Richard Overy.
In summary, mass murder, including genocide, is not always the best tactic. The British did very little face-to-face fighting with the Germans; that was left to the Russians [resulting in an atheist holocaust]. The Germans wasted effort (men and materials) killing their perceived internal enemies. The British used up (threw away) astonishing resources in their failed attempt to firebomb Berlin (though they succeeded in firebombing other cities). If the atomic bomb (which the British helped develop) had not worked (or just taken longer to get working), it might be argued today that using the same resources to advance other high-technology weapons would also have forced Japan to surrender earlier, if not unconditionally.
Every choice made implies choices not made. Resources devoted to the military deprive the civilian sector, and vice versa. In California the current drought has intensified the usual fight over the allocation of water to farmers, fish, and urban/suburban uses. Opportunity costs are the losses created when resources are not devoted to a particular pathway.
Forcing (or tricking) an enemy to waste resources is a classic strategy. Much of modern warfare has been quantified: the cost of wiping out a village in Vietnam with napalm, as opposed to the cost of winning over the village by providing running water or other desirable goods. So too it is possible to quantify the opportunity costs that different strategies and tactics might inflict on an enemy. The reason Al Qaeda is, on the whole, winning its war against the U.S. and our (more or less) allies is not based on large masses of people buying a peculiar brand of Islam. Al Qaeda has encouraged the largest waste of resources in history, by the United States. Al Qaeda has grown its capabilities while the U.S. has reaped a national debt that will cripple it for the rest of history.
Even before 2001 the U.S. wasted a lot of money on its military establishment. It could be argued that military expenditures in the brief era between the end of the war on Communism and the war on Islam might have been necessary to maintain America's commercial empire. But clearly the decision to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq while building an unprecedented Homeland Security force (and not raising taxes to pay for it) meant making sacrifices in the domestic economy. We have had two major recessions since 2001. Meanwhile, China, mostly at peace with the world, has grown to be a serious economic rival.
Some opportunities slip away with time. Education is a good example. The children who did not get enough education in first grade in 2002 are now mostly in their first year of work (or unemployment) or first year of college. We are working on creating a full generation of people who could have been better educated if there had been less spending on security. They, in turn, are and are going to be less economically productive than they could have been.
The national debt ($17 trillion), which may have complex sources but which I think can be fairly blamed on an inappropriate response to Al Qaeda, is now seriously limiting what the federal government can accomplish. It can stand as a proxy for the opportunity costs of bad political decision making. As interest rates rise the payments on the debt will cut further into the budget. I project that within five years both military and education budgets will need to be cut dramatically, at the same time taxes are raised, if the U.S. is to avoid bankruptcy.
Population control and (its close relative) global warming are time-sensitive issues where the bulk of the opportunities have now been lost. A one-and-done (1 child per family) global program would take so long to institute that the bulk of its effects would likely take place long after some other cause (war, disease, and famine, most likely).
Global warming is not likely to decelerate. Manufacturing more solar panels just adds more greenhouse gasses now, making people feel good about their energy consumption and breeding habits. Stopping global warming would require a bottoms-up fundamental change of how humans live, even if the population began to fall for some reason. Global warming itself won't kill many people, not anytime soon. It will cause negative feedback, but at too slow of a pace to be of much help reducing the homo sapiens plague.
Is there hope for the human population of the world? In Barack Obama's speeches, yes. But not in his policies, or those of other world leaders.
But don't worry, the U.S. and global economies should continue to pick up until the next round of free-market or government-mandate human folly precipitate another crisis. Environmentalists will use slightly less energy than their non-enviro neighbors, who are limited only by their ability to cope with their energy bills. People will pass on their culture of failing to educate, failing to take care of the planet, and failing to take the long view.
Pessimistic analysis is not popular. Happy talk is the order of the day. But I did not want to miss the opportunity to be straight with you on Darwin Day.
Overlaying an indigenous group we can call Celts (though they also were a mix of invaders and indigenous peoples), the people we call English are a mixture of Germans (Angles and Saxons), Vikings, Danes (who were just well-organized Vikings) and eventually the Normans, who were slightly Frenchified Vikings.
If you enjoy Vikings on The History Channel, you can see the leadership qualities of later-day leaders in Ragmar Lothbrok, brilliantly played by Travis Fimmel. A calculating greed and willingness to unleash mayhem eventually allowed these barbarians and their descendents (including cultural as well as genetic descendents) to conquer most of the world.
Being allied with the British, we Americans have been taught a great deal about Hitler's (and Tojo's) war crimes, but very little about our own. But this essay is not meant to recount those crimes. Here they serve as fodder for an exploration of opportunity costs. As in so many things, it is easier to see opportunity costs in retrospective than in the present or in the future.
For a more detailed (but still brief) review of opportunity costs in World War II, specifically those associated with aerial bombardment, I would recommend "Opportunity Costs" by Edward Luttwak in the November 21, 2013 London Review of Books [subscription required], which in turn is a book review of The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945
by Richard Overy. In summary, mass murder, including genocide, is not always the best tactic. The British did very little face-to-face fighting with the Germans; that was left to the Russians [resulting in an atheist holocaust]. The Germans wasted effort (men and materials) killing their perceived internal enemies. The British used up (threw away) astonishing resources in their failed attempt to firebomb Berlin (though they succeeded in firebombing other cities). If the atomic bomb (which the British helped develop) had not worked (or just taken longer to get working), it might be argued today that using the same resources to advance other high-technology weapons would also have forced Japan to surrender earlier, if not unconditionally.
Every choice made implies choices not made. Resources devoted to the military deprive the civilian sector, and vice versa. In California the current drought has intensified the usual fight over the allocation of water to farmers, fish, and urban/suburban uses. Opportunity costs are the losses created when resources are not devoted to a particular pathway.
Forcing (or tricking) an enemy to waste resources is a classic strategy. Much of modern warfare has been quantified: the cost of wiping out a village in Vietnam with napalm, as opposed to the cost of winning over the village by providing running water or other desirable goods. So too it is possible to quantify the opportunity costs that different strategies and tactics might inflict on an enemy. The reason Al Qaeda is, on the whole, winning its war against the U.S. and our (more or less) allies is not based on large masses of people buying a peculiar brand of Islam. Al Qaeda has encouraged the largest waste of resources in history, by the United States. Al Qaeda has grown its capabilities while the U.S. has reaped a national debt that will cripple it for the rest of history.
Even before 2001 the U.S. wasted a lot of money on its military establishment. It could be argued that military expenditures in the brief era between the end of the war on Communism and the war on Islam might have been necessary to maintain America's commercial empire. But clearly the decision to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq while building an unprecedented Homeland Security force (and not raising taxes to pay for it) meant making sacrifices in the domestic economy. We have had two major recessions since 2001. Meanwhile, China, mostly at peace with the world, has grown to be a serious economic rival.
Some opportunities slip away with time. Education is a good example. The children who did not get enough education in first grade in 2002 are now mostly in their first year of work (or unemployment) or first year of college. We are working on creating a full generation of people who could have been better educated if there had been less spending on security. They, in turn, are and are going to be less economically productive than they could have been.
The national debt ($17 trillion), which may have complex sources but which I think can be fairly blamed on an inappropriate response to Al Qaeda, is now seriously limiting what the federal government can accomplish. It can stand as a proxy for the opportunity costs of bad political decision making. As interest rates rise the payments on the debt will cut further into the budget. I project that within five years both military and education budgets will need to be cut dramatically, at the same time taxes are raised, if the U.S. is to avoid bankruptcy.
Population control and (its close relative) global warming are time-sensitive issues where the bulk of the opportunities have now been lost. A one-and-done (1 child per family) global program would take so long to institute that the bulk of its effects would likely take place long after some other cause (war, disease, and famine, most likely).
Global warming is not likely to decelerate. Manufacturing more solar panels just adds more greenhouse gasses now, making people feel good about their energy consumption and breeding habits. Stopping global warming would require a bottoms-up fundamental change of how humans live, even if the population began to fall for some reason. Global warming itself won't kill many people, not anytime soon. It will cause negative feedback, but at too slow of a pace to be of much help reducing the homo sapiens plague.
Is there hope for the human population of the world? In Barack Obama's speeches, yes. But not in his policies, or those of other world leaders.
But don't worry, the U.S. and global economies should continue to pick up until the next round of free-market or government-mandate human folly precipitate another crisis. Environmentalists will use slightly less energy than their non-enviro neighbors, who are limited only by their ability to cope with their energy bills. People will pass on their culture of failing to educate, failing to take care of the planet, and failing to take the long view.
Pessimistic analysis is not popular. Happy talk is the order of the day. But I did not want to miss the opportunity to be straight with you on Darwin Day.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
2011: Wild Year Ahead
Some predictions are easy to make. It did not take much looking at Barack Obama in 2008 to see that he did not have the spine to take on the corporate military state in any meaningful way. Some predictions are well-nigh impossible to make, either because they involve incredible levels of complexity (predicting the paths of all 2011 hurricanes, today) or because we simply have limited knowledge of specifics that give birth to them.
The chances of peace, or of a military victory, in Afghanistan are pretty near zero for 2011. The United States and allies will spend another half trillion dollars, the Taliban and allies will spend somewhere south of half a billion dollars (that is a thousand to one ratio), and the year will end in stalemate. Without advanced weapons and training the Taliban cannot defeat the U.S. No one is going to loan them jets or even cruise missiles. Yet the people of Afghanistan aren't going to suddenly like being bossed around by a bunch of militant Christians from the U.S. and their local puppets. Killing Taliban fighters (and Afghan civilians) just creates more orphans that grow up to be Taliban process.
If anything happens in Congress this year, it won't be for the good of the American people, if by people you mean those earning less than the national median. Or for that manner, the lower 80%. Any Republican measures can be blocked by Obama or by Democrats in the Senate; any Democratic measures can be blocked by Republicans in the House of Representatives. So the only measures that will pass will be those that help industries that contributed campaign funds to both Republicans and Democrats.
The economy will improve in 2011 [See also 2011 Economic Analysis]; I predict both Republican and Democratic Party politicians will take responsibilities for any improvements, while continuing to deny any responsibility for the Great Regression.
I predict that in 2011 fundamentalist christians will Praise Jesus for anything good that happens, and blame Satan for anything that goes wrong.
The environment, on the whole, will continue to deteriorate. This is largely a function of the growth of the American and global economies. However, deterioration will continue at such a slow rate that most people, especially politicians, will be able to deny reality or deprioritize doing something about it. The exception is the State of California. Here politicians have written laws such that in-state cement factories will not contribute to global warming (cement = limestone + heat, releasing carbon dioxide in the process). Cement will be brought in from Mexico, so in addition to the greenhouse gasses needed to create it, more will be created transporting it. But since the emissions will go into Mexican air, I suppose they won't warm up California.
In other words, life will go on in 2011. Apocalypse may be just around the corner, or at the end of the tunnel, or sitting waiting for you in the Texas School Book Depository or the jungle or the next traffic jam, but before then we all must muddle through 2011.
The good old rules still apply. Practice charity, love the Earth and its occupants, and don't be too gullible. Humans are mortal; that is why life is precious. Enjoy it while you can.
The chances of peace, or of a military victory, in Afghanistan are pretty near zero for 2011. The United States and allies will spend another half trillion dollars, the Taliban and allies will spend somewhere south of half a billion dollars (that is a thousand to one ratio), and the year will end in stalemate. Without advanced weapons and training the Taliban cannot defeat the U.S. No one is going to loan them jets or even cruise missiles. Yet the people of Afghanistan aren't going to suddenly like being bossed around by a bunch of militant Christians from the U.S. and their local puppets. Killing Taliban fighters (and Afghan civilians) just creates more orphans that grow up to be Taliban process.
If anything happens in Congress this year, it won't be for the good of the American people, if by people you mean those earning less than the national median. Or for that manner, the lower 80%. Any Republican measures can be blocked by Obama or by Democrats in the Senate; any Democratic measures can be blocked by Republicans in the House of Representatives. So the only measures that will pass will be those that help industries that contributed campaign funds to both Republicans and Democrats.
The economy will improve in 2011 [See also 2011 Economic Analysis]; I predict both Republican and Democratic Party politicians will take responsibilities for any improvements, while continuing to deny any responsibility for the Great Regression.
I predict that in 2011 fundamentalist christians will Praise Jesus for anything good that happens, and blame Satan for anything that goes wrong.
The environment, on the whole, will continue to deteriorate. This is largely a function of the growth of the American and global economies. However, deterioration will continue at such a slow rate that most people, especially politicians, will be able to deny reality or deprioritize doing something about it. The exception is the State of California. Here politicians have written laws such that in-state cement factories will not contribute to global warming (cement = limestone + heat, releasing carbon dioxide in the process). Cement will be brought in from Mexico, so in addition to the greenhouse gasses needed to create it, more will be created transporting it. But since the emissions will go into Mexican air, I suppose they won't warm up California.
In other words, life will go on in 2011. Apocalypse may be just around the corner, or at the end of the tunnel, or sitting waiting for you in the Texas School Book Depository or the jungle or the next traffic jam, but before then we all must muddle through 2011.
The good old rules still apply. Practice charity, love the Earth and its occupants, and don't be too gullible. Humans are mortal; that is why life is precious. Enjoy it while you can.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Bundling Immigration, the Economy, and the Environment
A few personal notes before getting onto the topic of the day:
I am now getting abusive email from a neo-Nazi who objects to my America: Republic or Democracy? essay. He favors republics over democracies. And presumably dictatorships over republics. I am sure conservatives who prefer a republic with minority rule by the rich are really glad to have neo-Nazi protection of their flanks on this issue.
Volunteers collected enough signatures to put me on the ballot for the state assembly race as the Green Party candidate (1st Assembly District, California), but not enough that I could be on without paying a filing fee, and not as many as I said I would require to show that it was worth running. The incumbent Democratic Party guy raises hundreds of thousands of dollars every cycle. If I had governed California as bad as he had I would fall on my sword, but this guy just has staff members collect his signatures and pay his filing fee. Even if I coughed up the filing fee, the expense (time and energy as well as money) of running a campaign is not the best use of me this year. On the other hand I have until March 12 to make a final decision.
My spring garden is well underway. Fava bean plants are about 4 inches high, radish sprouts are visible, and the earliest apple and plum trees have already started blooming. My tea plants were devastated by a rabbit or other rodent a few weeks ago, so I put wire cages around them and am hoping for a recovery.
I did a lot of good thinking about an Assembly campaign. How would I answer a question on immigration? Immigration is a great example of bundling issues, and the problems that causes.
The left, including the centrists who call themselves liberals, like to be pro-immigrant. The right is mainly anti-immigrant.
But the left also tends to be environmentalist, and most environmentalists will admit that we have an unsustainable global population. The population of the U.S. is too large too. My district is traditionally forested, so we could probably convert more forests to food production and sustain a larger local population, but lefty environmentalists are against that. You would think environmentalists would be against immigration, even legal immigration. It not only raises the population (and stress on the environment) in the short run, but immigrants tend to have a lot of children, so it leads to even more stress in the long run.
For many conservatives the bottom line is not "unborn babies," but the economy. That is why taxes are so important to them. They want economic expansion, the environment be damned. Low taxes are a priority. So you would think they would favor unlimited immigration, at least for middle-class to rich immigrants. Think how fast housing stock would be dried up if anyone who would buy a house would be allowed to immigrate legally and immediately.
So why is pro-immigration sentiment bundled with contradictory leftist views, and anti-immigrant sentiment bundled with contradictory rightist views?
Emotionally leftists can identify with immigrants; conservatives see immigrants are foreign in a scary way. Other issues feed into these basic emotions. Liberals and conservatives both say they care about human rights, but the rights they care about differ in subtle ways. I think the liberal-left feeling is that you really need to treat all individuals equally, so if someone is physically present in the U.S., even after illegal entry, they should be treated like citizens, who are citizens precisely because they are phyiscally present.
Conservatives feel no similar obligation. Human rights are largely property rights, and property rights have a history for each individual. To the extent citizenship is a property right, you can't just get it by standing on American soil. You need to establish title.
Would it be possible to change the bundling? I have seen it tried several times. I have seen environmentalists argue against illegal immigration (trying to get large organization like the Siera Club to take a sensible position). They get screamed at as being racist neo-nazis for even trying to discuss the subject. On the other hand I have seen many attempts by Republican business men to try to get fellow Republicans to show some sense about the business benefits of immigration. Even former President George W. Bush tried to make this argument. The only result was that Republican politicians learned to keep any pro-business, pro-immigration ideas out of their campaign rhetoric. The rank-and-file will not stand for it.
Locally (Humboldt County and Mendocino County, California) the talk is usually in terms of development. Liberals and environmentalists are usually anti-development but pro-immigrant, which is contradictory. Conservative are pro-development and anti-immigrant. Also contradictory.
I would like to see the immigration issue unbundled from the liberal v. conservative fight so that we can talk about it rationally. There are economic benefits to high level of immigration, and there are environmental consequences to immigration. There are also legitimate human rights issues involved.
I am now getting abusive email from a neo-Nazi who objects to my America: Republic or Democracy? essay. He favors republics over democracies. And presumably dictatorships over republics. I am sure conservatives who prefer a republic with minority rule by the rich are really glad to have neo-Nazi protection of their flanks on this issue.
Volunteers collected enough signatures to put me on the ballot for the state assembly race as the Green Party candidate (1st Assembly District, California), but not enough that I could be on without paying a filing fee, and not as many as I said I would require to show that it was worth running. The incumbent Democratic Party guy raises hundreds of thousands of dollars every cycle. If I had governed California as bad as he had I would fall on my sword, but this guy just has staff members collect his signatures and pay his filing fee. Even if I coughed up the filing fee, the expense (time and energy as well as money) of running a campaign is not the best use of me this year. On the other hand I have until March 12 to make a final decision.
My spring garden is well underway. Fava bean plants are about 4 inches high, radish sprouts are visible, and the earliest apple and plum trees have already started blooming. My tea plants were devastated by a rabbit or other rodent a few weeks ago, so I put wire cages around them and am hoping for a recovery.
I did a lot of good thinking about an Assembly campaign. How would I answer a question on immigration? Immigration is a great example of bundling issues, and the problems that causes.
The left, including the centrists who call themselves liberals, like to be pro-immigrant. The right is mainly anti-immigrant.
But the left also tends to be environmentalist, and most environmentalists will admit that we have an unsustainable global population. The population of the U.S. is too large too. My district is traditionally forested, so we could probably convert more forests to food production and sustain a larger local population, but lefty environmentalists are against that. You would think environmentalists would be against immigration, even legal immigration. It not only raises the population (and stress on the environment) in the short run, but immigrants tend to have a lot of children, so it leads to even more stress in the long run.
For many conservatives the bottom line is not "unborn babies," but the economy. That is why taxes are so important to them. They want economic expansion, the environment be damned. Low taxes are a priority. So you would think they would favor unlimited immigration, at least for middle-class to rich immigrants. Think how fast housing stock would be dried up if anyone who would buy a house would be allowed to immigrate legally and immediately.
So why is pro-immigration sentiment bundled with contradictory leftist views, and anti-immigrant sentiment bundled with contradictory rightist views?
Emotionally leftists can identify with immigrants; conservatives see immigrants are foreign in a scary way. Other issues feed into these basic emotions. Liberals and conservatives both say they care about human rights, but the rights they care about differ in subtle ways. I think the liberal-left feeling is that you really need to treat all individuals equally, so if someone is physically present in the U.S., even after illegal entry, they should be treated like citizens, who are citizens precisely because they are phyiscally present.
Conservatives feel no similar obligation. Human rights are largely property rights, and property rights have a history for each individual. To the extent citizenship is a property right, you can't just get it by standing on American soil. You need to establish title.
Would it be possible to change the bundling? I have seen it tried several times. I have seen environmentalists argue against illegal immigration (trying to get large organization like the Siera Club to take a sensible position). They get screamed at as being racist neo-nazis for even trying to discuss the subject. On the other hand I have seen many attempts by Republican business men to try to get fellow Republicans to show some sense about the business benefits of immigration. Even former President George W. Bush tried to make this argument. The only result was that Republican politicians learned to keep any pro-business, pro-immigration ideas out of their campaign rhetoric. The rank-and-file will not stand for it.
Locally (Humboldt County and Mendocino County, California) the talk is usually in terms of development. Liberals and environmentalists are usually anti-development but pro-immigrant, which is contradictory. Conservative are pro-development and anti-immigrant. Also contradictory.
I would like to see the immigration issue unbundled from the liberal v. conservative fight so that we can talk about it rationally. There are economic benefits to high level of immigration, and there are environmental consequences to immigration. There are also legitimate human rights issues involved.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Rivers of a Lost Coast
Last night Jan and I went to see Rivers of a Lost Coast at the Point Arena theater. I was prepared to be bored, as while this was billed as an environmentalist documentary about northern California rivers, I knew it was actually about fly fishing, which I consider less than fascinating.
The film, however, was artfully crafted. There were no long demonstrations of twenty ways to tie a fly. It was a story well told, the history of the heyday of fishing for salmon and steelhead from Santa Cruz to the border of Oregon. It showed the vast schools of giant salmon and the fishermen who learned to catch them in the elegant fly-fishing style. Some of these guys were pretty kooky. If the fish were running, they were there, even if it meant adopting a nomadic, job-free life style.
The heyday was in the 1950's. The salmon were running as stongly as they had for thousands of years. Anglers lined the banks of the rivers, big and small, including the Russian River, Klamath, Smith River and Eel River.
By the late 1970's, the fish were gone. Instead of catching several fish in a day, one was lucky to catch one fish in several days. The film shows what happened. Logging, especially clear-cuts with no remediation, caused too much sediment to run into the streams during the winter rain storms. Also, logging companies filled in streams to use for roads. Urban areas and suburbs grew, sucking the water from wherever they could find it (much northern California water is diverted to Los Angeles). Wine production, with its attendant vineyards, destroyed more forests and sucked up more water while dumping enourmous quantities of pesticides into the environment. When years of drought came, the rivers sank. Already hurting, the fish died off rapidly. Rather than restoring the fish by restoring the rivers, politicians decided to fund hatcheries. But dumping live hatchlings into dead rivers does not work very well, we have found.
And so fly fishing for salmon and steelhead in California has also died. Ancient fishermen remember the good old days and regret they were too busy fishing to fight with the loggers, developers and their politicians to protect the fish.
Craig Bell, who knew some of the old geezers interviewed in the film, spoke before the film and answered questions afterwards. I admire Craig. He is a workhorse when it comes to protecting our rivers and fish. But he is also a good illustration of why the environmental movement is so crippled in American politics. Multiply the example of Craig Bell by a factor of 10,000, and you might get an idea of the magnitude of this problem.
With Craig Bell as an example, the other half of the coin is going to be Mike Thompson. Mike, is this area's guy in the House of Representatives. Mike is known as an environmentalist largely because he once got photographed holding a salmon and demanding that water in the Klamath River be reserved to protect the salmon. The farmers who wanted the water for their farms were in a different Congressional District. Mike is in the conservative wing of congressional Democratic Party members, the Blue Dog Caucus.
Beyond that, local perceptions of Mike Thompson on the environment are shaped by people Craig Bell. I have heard Craig praise Mike Thompson many times. Unlike most of the local greenish voters, however, I know quite a bit about Mike Thompson. I also know why Craig has no choice but to praise Thompson in public.
Congressional offices operate like little feudal fiefs, not just on the local level, but in Washington as well. They get a lot of say in things that happen in their districts. Including funding for new parks, just for instance. You might think that the Interior Department gets a budget, and bureaucrats divide it up, but that is only partly true. If you want to extend a park or create a new one, you can't do it without the help of your person in Congress.
So activists like Craig Bell and their organizations spend a lot of time asking politician like Mike Thompson for their help. Even though the money actually comes from taxpayers, they are made to feel like it comes from Mike Thompson's own hands. Of course Craig rarely talks to Mike. Instead he talks to staff people. The staff people are really nice, if you are nice to them. That is their job. They are not so nice if you are a person known to campaign actively against their guy in elections.
After the film, in listing the causes of loss of salmon runs in northern California rivers, Craig listed grape vineyards as a major factor. This is on many people's minds locally right now because a astonishingly large vineyard is being proposed in our area by an international corporation. Craig did not mention Mike Thompson in regard to vineyards.
That would be impolitic.
In other situations, say wine tastings or vineyard tours, it is not impolitic to mention Mike. Vineyard owners love Mike Thompson. They are major contributors to his bloated campaign war chest. Mike Thompson created the Wine Caucus in Congress and has been one of its co-chairs for years. Representative Thompson has done a lot for the wine industry over the years. He is their guy in Congress. He has done a lot to help keep vineyards profitable. He recently got them a nice federal tax break, for instance.
Profitable vineyards mean expansion. Old vineyards grow, and new ones are built. That sucks more water from the land and dumps in more pesticides.
Craig Bell should be screaming about how damaging Mike is to the salmon fishery.
But that is the job of people like me. I don't ask Mike for anything, so I am free to criticize. I always vote for and support candidates who run against him (not Republicans. I support Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, or independent candidates, depending on who is available). Of course my candidates always lose, but there is always the next election cycle.
Most of the big, national environmental groups are in the same position as Craig Bell. They do good work, but if they want anyone in Congress to work with them, they must mute their criticisms.
Sadly, many of them go further than that. They try to shout down the more radical environmentalists (I have never heard Craig Bell do that, but I've seen it plenty elsewhere).
As environmentalists our mainstream political strategy needs to be to replace the Mike Thompson's in Congress by genuine Greens. And since the big money will always be trying to oust any green in any major political office, we need a long term strategy to keep the voters on our side.
We also need to revive the concept of direct action. Direct action gets the goods. If you want the rivers to flow to the sea so the salmon can swim up them, don't wait for the government. Craig mentioned how much of what has been done since the 1960's to protect our rivers began with direct action. Like I said, Craig is one of the good guys.
But when he swears that Mike Thompson is a good environmentalist, imagine him winking a warning that maybe you should look a little deeper before believing him.
The film, however, was artfully crafted. There were no long demonstrations of twenty ways to tie a fly. It was a story well told, the history of the heyday of fishing for salmon and steelhead from Santa Cruz to the border of Oregon. It showed the vast schools of giant salmon and the fishermen who learned to catch them in the elegant fly-fishing style. Some of these guys were pretty kooky. If the fish were running, they were there, even if it meant adopting a nomadic, job-free life style.
The heyday was in the 1950's. The salmon were running as stongly as they had for thousands of years. Anglers lined the banks of the rivers, big and small, including the Russian River, Klamath, Smith River and Eel River.
By the late 1970's, the fish were gone. Instead of catching several fish in a day, one was lucky to catch one fish in several days. The film shows what happened. Logging, especially clear-cuts with no remediation, caused too much sediment to run into the streams during the winter rain storms. Also, logging companies filled in streams to use for roads. Urban areas and suburbs grew, sucking the water from wherever they could find it (much northern California water is diverted to Los Angeles). Wine production, with its attendant vineyards, destroyed more forests and sucked up more water while dumping enourmous quantities of pesticides into the environment. When years of drought came, the rivers sank. Already hurting, the fish died off rapidly. Rather than restoring the fish by restoring the rivers, politicians decided to fund hatcheries. But dumping live hatchlings into dead rivers does not work very well, we have found.
And so fly fishing for salmon and steelhead in California has also died. Ancient fishermen remember the good old days and regret they were too busy fishing to fight with the loggers, developers and their politicians to protect the fish.
Craig Bell, who knew some of the old geezers interviewed in the film, spoke before the film and answered questions afterwards. I admire Craig. He is a workhorse when it comes to protecting our rivers and fish. But he is also a good illustration of why the environmental movement is so crippled in American politics. Multiply the example of Craig Bell by a factor of 10,000, and you might get an idea of the magnitude of this problem.
With Craig Bell as an example, the other half of the coin is going to be Mike Thompson. Mike, is this area's guy in the House of Representatives. Mike is known as an environmentalist largely because he once got photographed holding a salmon and demanding that water in the Klamath River be reserved to protect the salmon. The farmers who wanted the water for their farms were in a different Congressional District. Mike is in the conservative wing of congressional Democratic Party members, the Blue Dog Caucus.
Beyond that, local perceptions of Mike Thompson on the environment are shaped by people Craig Bell. I have heard Craig praise Mike Thompson many times. Unlike most of the local greenish voters, however, I know quite a bit about Mike Thompson. I also know why Craig has no choice but to praise Thompson in public.
Congressional offices operate like little feudal fiefs, not just on the local level, but in Washington as well. They get a lot of say in things that happen in their districts. Including funding for new parks, just for instance. You might think that the Interior Department gets a budget, and bureaucrats divide it up, but that is only partly true. If you want to extend a park or create a new one, you can't do it without the help of your person in Congress.
So activists like Craig Bell and their organizations spend a lot of time asking politician like Mike Thompson for their help. Even though the money actually comes from taxpayers, they are made to feel like it comes from Mike Thompson's own hands. Of course Craig rarely talks to Mike. Instead he talks to staff people. The staff people are really nice, if you are nice to them. That is their job. They are not so nice if you are a person known to campaign actively against their guy in elections.
After the film, in listing the causes of loss of salmon runs in northern California rivers, Craig listed grape vineyards as a major factor. This is on many people's minds locally right now because a astonishingly large vineyard is being proposed in our area by an international corporation. Craig did not mention Mike Thompson in regard to vineyards.
That would be impolitic.
In other situations, say wine tastings or vineyard tours, it is not impolitic to mention Mike. Vineyard owners love Mike Thompson. They are major contributors to his bloated campaign war chest. Mike Thompson created the Wine Caucus in Congress and has been one of its co-chairs for years. Representative Thompson has done a lot for the wine industry over the years. He is their guy in Congress. He has done a lot to help keep vineyards profitable. He recently got them a nice federal tax break, for instance.
Profitable vineyards mean expansion. Old vineyards grow, and new ones are built. That sucks more water from the land and dumps in more pesticides.
Craig Bell should be screaming about how damaging Mike is to the salmon fishery.
But that is the job of people like me. I don't ask Mike for anything, so I am free to criticize. I always vote for and support candidates who run against him (not Republicans. I support Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, or independent candidates, depending on who is available). Of course my candidates always lose, but there is always the next election cycle.
Most of the big, national environmental groups are in the same position as Craig Bell. They do good work, but if they want anyone in Congress to work with them, they must mute their criticisms.
Sadly, many of them go further than that. They try to shout down the more radical environmentalists (I have never heard Craig Bell do that, but I've seen it plenty elsewhere).
As environmentalists our mainstream political strategy needs to be to replace the Mike Thompson's in Congress by genuine Greens. And since the big money will always be trying to oust any green in any major political office, we need a long term strategy to keep the voters on our side.
We also need to revive the concept of direct action. Direct action gets the goods. If you want the rivers to flow to the sea so the salmon can swim up them, don't wait for the government. Craig mentioned how much of what has been done since the 1960's to protect our rivers began with direct action. Like I said, Craig is one of the good guys.
But when he swears that Mike Thompson is a good environmentalist, imagine him winking a warning that maybe you should look a little deeper before believing him.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Memento, History, and Political Tattooes
First, a couple of iiipublishing.com new articles not given blog entries: Catholic Inquisition of U.S. Nuns and review of Zonet 16-Port Ethernet Switch.
In the movie Memento the main character, Leonard, has lost his short term memory. The movie runs back through time, showing how how Leonard uses a system of notes, some tattooed to his body, to try to track down the killer of his wife. The problem is that other people realize Leonard has not only lost his short term memory, but that his long-term memory has deficits as well. So they use him for their own ends.
I doubt the writer or director intended it, but this is a nearly perfect metaphor for American politics. It is an even scarier notion than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian government manipulates people by actually re-writing history as needed. The governance (here I include both the government and corporate decision making) of America is not totalitarian. If you don't like Vista, you can buy OSX or Linux. But it does encourage forgetfulness, History Channel not withstanding.
Lack of long-term memory is at least comprehensible as a human fault. There is a lot of history. Just to survey it takes a huge commitment. For example, there are quite a few nations in the world that I have not read a single history book about. Even if you focus on American history, and just try to get a sense of what really happened in each decade of our history, you have a lot of reading to do. Once you realize how carefully edited most history books are, how they lie by omission, you have a lot of work to do finding books that have critical views. Usually to find a critique of any given nation you must look to histories written about it by other nations.
There is no easy way around the long-term memory problem. We can't all be history majors.
You would think, however, that people would remember what happened in their own lifetime, and learn from their experiences.
If the Democratic Party members over the age of 55 in this rural area of northern California are any indication, we might as well save ourselves the ritual of voting. Sadly, many Green Party members (but not all) have been just as forgetful. We are reliving 1965. I was ten back in that bygone year. I paid minimal attention to news and politics, but I knew Lyndon Johnson had beat Barry Goldwater in the November 1964 presidential election largely by implying that Senator Goldwater would get us into a nuclear war with Russia.
We did not have a war of any kind with Russia, but Johnson bombed North Vietnam and then invaded South Vietnam on the flimsiest of excuses. Not that President Johnson was all bad. He was the first Democratic Party president to break with the racist past of the party in deeds as well as words.
Now we have a black President (but not one whose ancestors were slaves in the United States), and the excitement over that caused otherwise cynical voters to forget everything else. Like that politicians tell you what you want to hear, then deliver unto their major donors.
So now what was the Bush war on terror is wider than ever before. Fighting in Iraq has cooled for the moment because we are happy with our puppet government there. But fighting has intensified in Afghanistan and we are regularly bombing Pakistan. Shades of President Johnson, shades of President Nixon.
And let's not forget about the economy. I predict there will be no real economic reform. The crisis is past, and for a while bankers and investors will be cautious. With no reform, however, the conditions will be in place for another massive round of thievery, with working class Americans, again, as the ultimate victims.
Nor are we getting real reform on environmental issues. The Democrats figure that by being slightly more green than the Bush administration, they can keep their corporate sponsors and trap voters in the old the-Republicans-are-worse recycling bin.
So, ask yourself, what should you tattoo to your body politic?
In the movie Memento the main character, Leonard, has lost his short term memory. The movie runs back through time, showing how how Leonard uses a system of notes, some tattooed to his body, to try to track down the killer of his wife. The problem is that other people realize Leonard has not only lost his short term memory, but that his long-term memory has deficits as well. So they use him for their own ends.
I doubt the writer or director intended it, but this is a nearly perfect metaphor for American politics. It is an even scarier notion than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian government manipulates people by actually re-writing history as needed. The governance (here I include both the government and corporate decision making) of America is not totalitarian. If you don't like Vista, you can buy OSX or Linux. But it does encourage forgetfulness, History Channel not withstanding.
Lack of long-term memory is at least comprehensible as a human fault. There is a lot of history. Just to survey it takes a huge commitment. For example, there are quite a few nations in the world that I have not read a single history book about. Even if you focus on American history, and just try to get a sense of what really happened in each decade of our history, you have a lot of reading to do. Once you realize how carefully edited most history books are, how they lie by omission, you have a lot of work to do finding books that have critical views. Usually to find a critique of any given nation you must look to histories written about it by other nations.
There is no easy way around the long-term memory problem. We can't all be history majors.
You would think, however, that people would remember what happened in their own lifetime, and learn from their experiences.
If the Democratic Party members over the age of 55 in this rural area of northern California are any indication, we might as well save ourselves the ritual of voting. Sadly, many Green Party members (but not all) have been just as forgetful. We are reliving 1965. I was ten back in that bygone year. I paid minimal attention to news and politics, but I knew Lyndon Johnson had beat Barry Goldwater in the November 1964 presidential election largely by implying that Senator Goldwater would get us into a nuclear war with Russia.
We did not have a war of any kind with Russia, but Johnson bombed North Vietnam and then invaded South Vietnam on the flimsiest of excuses. Not that President Johnson was all bad. He was the first Democratic Party president to break with the racist past of the party in deeds as well as words.
Now we have a black President (but not one whose ancestors were slaves in the United States), and the excitement over that caused otherwise cynical voters to forget everything else. Like that politicians tell you what you want to hear, then deliver unto their major donors.
So now what was the Bush war on terror is wider than ever before. Fighting in Iraq has cooled for the moment because we are happy with our puppet government there. But fighting has intensified in Afghanistan and we are regularly bombing Pakistan. Shades of President Johnson, shades of President Nixon.
And let's not forget about the economy. I predict there will be no real economic reform. The crisis is past, and for a while bankers and investors will be cautious. With no reform, however, the conditions will be in place for another massive round of thievery, with working class Americans, again, as the ultimate victims.
Nor are we getting real reform on environmental issues. The Democrats figure that by being slightly more green than the Bush administration, they can keep their corporate sponsors and trap voters in the old the-Republicans-are-worse recycling bin.
So, ask yourself, what should you tattoo to your body politic?
Friday, June 12, 2009
Barack Obama Blasts Mountaintops
The Obama administration today announced that it would continue to facilitate the blasting off of mountain tops by coal mining companies. Environmentalists had hoped President Barack Obama would put an end to the practice, which is extremely destructive to the environment.
In an astonishing display of hypocrisy, even for the political arena, administration officials are pretending that not changing the mountaintop removal policy is a change in policy.
Read the EPA News Release on Mountaintop Removal for a 1984ish double dip into double-speak.
In an astonishing display of hypocrisy, even for the political arena, administration officials are pretending that not changing the mountaintop removal policy is a change in policy.
Read the EPA News Release on Mountaintop Removal for a 1984ish double dip into double-speak.
The Obama administration is not going to stop the coal corporations from destroying mountains. It is going to "strengthen oversight and regulation." In other words, the paperwork must be done right before you can destroy the environment to dig out the coal that adds to much to global warming. So far the Obama administration has approved 46 permits. Think of it: 46 entire mountains blasted to rubble to get the coal underneath. How is that for a little more than 100 days in office?
“The steps we are taking today are a firm departure from the previous Administration's approach to mountaintop coal mining, which failed to protect our communities, water, and wildlife in Appalachia,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “By toughening enforcement standards, by looking for common-sense improvements to our rules and regulations, and by coordinating our efforts with other agencies, we will immediately make progress toward reducing the environmental impacts of mountaintop coal mining.”
The Obama camp thus distinguished themselves from those evil Bush Republican approvers of blasting off mountaintops.
Can we blast ancient mountains to smithereens while protecting "our communities, water, and wildlife in Appalachia?”
YES WE CAN!
See also: EarthJustice on Mountaintop Coal Mining decision "What the administration is proposing today is essentially rearranging the bureaucratic deck chairs on the disastrous ship that is mountaintop removal."
Monday, May 12, 2008
Cynthia McKinney Rallies Greens in Fort Bragg, California
On Saturday I drove up to Fort Bragg see Cynthia McKinney, who is seeking the nomination of the Green Party to run for President of the United States of America. Cynthia McKinney, a former Democrat, served in the Georgia state legislature and then four terms as Georgia's 11th district Congresswomen. Saturday night she was scheduled to speak in Ukiah, California, where she would be joined by another former Democratic Party congress person, Dan Hamburg, who is also now in the Green Party. Here I am with Cynthia:
Local singer/songwriter Chris Skyhawk started off with some political folk songs, and Cynthia pulled shakers out of her purse and got with the rhythm: 
Cynthia gave an excellent speech touching on many of America's problems and their solutions. She pointed out how racism can still be a problem in the United States. She recounted how she was attacked by the press and both the Republican Party and Democratic Party when she stood up on the floor of Congress and asked the obvious question after the 911 attacks on the World Trade Centers: "What did the administration know and when did they know it?"
She said history has shown a nation can't have both Guns and Butter without crippling its economy. Joining the Green Party was her own declaration of independence from participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. She also talked about how hard it is to take on the political establishment. Her father had begun protesting against racism in Georgia (an all Democratic Party state back then) when he returned from serving in World War II. Supporting the Green Party now is difficult, but it is creating a path to a United States that is at peace with the world and where there is true democracy, social justice, and an environmentally sustainable economy.
Cynthia McKinney with Carol Wolman while taking questions from the audience:
The audience of about 50 people gave over $500 to Ms. McKinney's campaign. Run Cynthia Run!
More data:
Cynthia McKinney's campaign web site: www.runcynthiarun.org
Carol Wolman's campaign web site: http://www.carolwolmanforcongress.com/
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Bush and Beyond
I don't like President George W. Bush's politics, but I try to stay away from the kind of emotional Bush-bashing that delights many leftists, Greens, and Democrats. I don't think W. is the worst president ever. Bad in a mediocre way, sure. I can't think of one single ex U.S. President I would put in the "good" category. Certainly not President-for-Life Franklin D. Roosevelt, the closest thing the U.S. has had to a dictator. War crimes? Sure, George W. Bush committed them by bombing and then invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but I doubt even a half dozen U.S. Presidents who had a full term of office failed to commit some sort of war crime or crime against humanity. General Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party, was a model war criminal and destroyer of humanity. President Truman, a Democrat, is the only world leader who has ever used an atomic weapon against people, thus managing to commit both a war crime and a crime against humanity.
Harry Truman also split up Korea with Stalin the same way Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland. Koreans had been fighting the Japanese and expected to be allowed to form a free and independent nation.
But just because George W. Bush is a model of mediocrity doesn't mean we should not strive for better, or at least try to avoid worse. Mediocrity has its merits at times. You might hate the fact that the President promoted fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity, but it could have been worse. Look at the record. Women can still get abortions and birth control pills and own property. You don't get shot for not going to church on Sunday, or for going to the wrong Church. We still don't force children to say prayers in public schools.
If anyone failed to benefit from the George W. Bush presidency, it was the Christian Right. These guys asked for religion and got tax cuts for the rich. A few of Bush's cronies made out like kidnappers in Baghdad, but very little tax payer money went straight to religious nutcases below the assistant-to-the-secretary-of-the-department level.
On the environment Bush was also a study in mediocrity. The air is still mostly what would pass for breathable, especially if you compare it to what passed for air in 1965. Cleanups of waterways and toxic waste sites continued at the same generally slow pace we saw under Clinton, Carter and Reagan. Anti-environmentalist victories, while occasionally real, tended towards the symbolic. They were more a tool for raising funds for the Republican Party than any real attack on the environment (beyond the general, background attack from industrial civilization). Just like the greenish reforms passed by Democrats tended to give environmental groups symbolic wins that allowed the Democrats to raise money for their partying.
Probably the most important achievement of the Bush administration was the revival of Islam. In Iraq and most Islamic nations people were moving towards a secular society where most people were peace-loving atheists or nominally Islamic. The various sects were more concerned with slowing this secular erosion than they were with fighting each other. Has that ever changed in a big way. Now it is dangerous to not at least to pretend you believe in Islam and Mohammed in Iraq. Fanaticism is rampant. And this rallying around the black flag of the Prophet has spread to almost the entire formerly nominally Muslim population of a world. Osama Bin Laden and Muktar whatever converted a net of about 87 people to Islam (subtracting out the back sliders) before Bush came along. Bush converted about 600 million people to Islam.
Now that is outstanding. So maybe that Yale education and all the helping hands from Dad's friends were not wasted after all.
[find more of William P. Meyers's thoughts at www.iiipublishing.com]
Monday, July 16, 2007
Of Salmon, Green Voters and Vineyards
Mike Thompson has a lot of environmentalist voters in his district. The predominantly Democratic 1st Congressional District of California is mostly rural, covering the northern California coast from the Oregon border to southern Mendocino County, then swinging inland to lap into the suburbs of Sacramento.
As recently as twenty years ago the votes of citizens who worked in the timber industry, as loggers, foresters, and mill workers, were important in this district. But as all the trees were clearcut and the mills closed down, the new people who moved into the district saw it as a place to live amidst natural beauty. They mostly consider themselves environmentalists, whether they are registered to vote Republican, Democrat, Green Party, or independent (called Decline to State in California).
Mike Thompson has a Democratic Party constituency that is much more liberal than he is. During the years of Republican dominance in Congress he prided himself on being a centrist who voted with the Republicans on issues like tax cuts for the rich. In return the Republicans had no problem with doing some things for Congressman Thompson's donors in the timber and wine industries.
The Democratic political party in his district is formidable. Republicans have mostly been relegated to winning county supervisor seats in the most conservative areas. No Republican has provided a serious contest for a seat in Congress or the state assembly or state senate in over a decade. In a recent election in Mendocino County the Green Party candidate came in second after the Democrat. A number of Green Party members have been elected to seats in "minor" offices.
So it is important to the Democratic party machine that they appear to be environmentalists, and serious environmentalists at that. They have to balance that against their traditional financial support from the timber industry, real estate interests, and wine industry. The timber industry is dying, so that is not a problem. The wine industry is the most environmentally destructive business in the area. Democratic Party politicians and paid staff don't want to talk about that. Mike Thompson was instrumental in creating the Wine Caucus in Congress and is its Democratic Party co-chair.
So the Democrat machine has specialized in being for environmentalist causes, but being unable to actually get enough votes in Congress to hurt their campaign donors.
That is no longer enough now that the Democrats control the state legislature and Congress. The Democrats have gone to great lengths to secure their power; they don't want to endanger it by alienating donors or environmentalists voters. Democrats in the rank-and-file want action on the environment and on Iraq, not empty gestures.
Mike Thompson illustrates traits of a consummate politician. He has found two magic keys that make it unlikely a Green Party candidate will ever threaten to take his seat based on his environmental record.
One is throwing tiny bits of federal money at conservation projects. These typically take farm or timberland and convert it to a park or conservancy district. Often most of the money is raised by private donors. The work is done by environmental groups, but they must beg a Congressman, in this case Mike Thompson, to grease the skids. In return they are expected to praise Mr. Thompson's somewhat sketchy environmental record when he runs for office.
The second method is not always available, but the Klamath River and its related irrigation projects have provided the perfect opportunity for Mr. Thompson, who seized it with gusto. In 2002 large number of salmon died in the Klamath River due to low water flows. Mike Thompson earned his environmentalist Red Badge of Courage by piling up some 500 pounds of dead fish in front of the Interior Department. It was a great photo shoot. To this day ask most people in this district what they know about Congressman Thompson, and they will say "he's the guy who was mad about the dead salmon."
Lately Democrats in Congress have revived the issue. They believe they can link Vice-President Dick Cheney to the salmon kill. It was politics: the water the salmon needed was diverted to farmers in Oregon, likely Republican voters. Actually, they just took their regular amounts of irrigation water, but it was a low-water year, so the salmon suffered.
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat said: "Thompson said the reduced river flow "wasn't about salmon or water, it was about electoral votes in Oregon."" The important political lesson to note here is that these farmers (and voters) were not in Mike Thompson's district.
A real test of Mr. Thompson's environmental credentials would be: is he willing to close down his vineyard and winery friends in his own district by no longer allowing them to suck water out of the rivers and aquifers? Ask the environmentalists who live on rivers like the Navarro about how much water is left for the Salmon once vineyards finish taking their sips. Ask environmentalists in Napa County about pesticides in ground water and runoff.
More Data:
Mike Thompson Watch Main Page
Mike Thompson is the current elected member of the United States House of Representatives for California's 1st Congressional District.
As recently as twenty years ago the votes of citizens who worked in the timber industry, as loggers, foresters, and mill workers, were important in this district. But as all the trees were clearcut and the mills closed down, the new people who moved into the district saw it as a place to live amidst natural beauty. They mostly consider themselves environmentalists, whether they are registered to vote Republican, Democrat, Green Party, or independent (called Decline to State in California).
Mike Thompson has a Democratic Party constituency that is much more liberal than he is. During the years of Republican dominance in Congress he prided himself on being a centrist who voted with the Republicans on issues like tax cuts for the rich. In return the Republicans had no problem with doing some things for Congressman Thompson's donors in the timber and wine industries.
The Democratic political party in his district is formidable. Republicans have mostly been relegated to winning county supervisor seats in the most conservative areas. No Republican has provided a serious contest for a seat in Congress or the state assembly or state senate in over a decade. In a recent election in Mendocino County the Green Party candidate came in second after the Democrat. A number of Green Party members have been elected to seats in "minor" offices.
So it is important to the Democratic party machine that they appear to be environmentalists, and serious environmentalists at that. They have to balance that against their traditional financial support from the timber industry, real estate interests, and wine industry. The timber industry is dying, so that is not a problem. The wine industry is the most environmentally destructive business in the area. Democratic Party politicians and paid staff don't want to talk about that. Mike Thompson was instrumental in creating the Wine Caucus in Congress and is its Democratic Party co-chair.
So the Democrat machine has specialized in being for environmentalist causes, but being unable to actually get enough votes in Congress to hurt their campaign donors.
That is no longer enough now that the Democrats control the state legislature and Congress. The Democrats have gone to great lengths to secure their power; they don't want to endanger it by alienating donors or environmentalists voters. Democrats in the rank-and-file want action on the environment and on Iraq, not empty gestures.
Mike Thompson illustrates traits of a consummate politician. He has found two magic keys that make it unlikely a Green Party candidate will ever threaten to take his seat based on his environmental record.
One is throwing tiny bits of federal money at conservation projects. These typically take farm or timberland and convert it to a park or conservancy district. Often most of the money is raised by private donors. The work is done by environmental groups, but they must beg a Congressman, in this case Mike Thompson, to grease the skids. In return they are expected to praise Mr. Thompson's somewhat sketchy environmental record when he runs for office.
The second method is not always available, but the Klamath River and its related irrigation projects have provided the perfect opportunity for Mr. Thompson, who seized it with gusto. In 2002 large number of salmon died in the Klamath River due to low water flows. Mike Thompson earned his environmentalist Red Badge of Courage by piling up some 500 pounds of dead fish in front of the Interior Department. It was a great photo shoot. To this day ask most people in this district what they know about Congressman Thompson, and they will say "he's the guy who was mad about the dead salmon."
Lately Democrats in Congress have revived the issue. They believe they can link Vice-President Dick Cheney to the salmon kill. It was politics: the water the salmon needed was diverted to farmers in Oregon, likely Republican voters. Actually, they just took their regular amounts of irrigation water, but it was a low-water year, so the salmon suffered.
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat said: "Thompson said the reduced river flow "wasn't about salmon or water, it was about electoral votes in Oregon."" The important political lesson to note here is that these farmers (and voters) were not in Mike Thompson's district.
A real test of Mr. Thompson's environmental credentials would be: is he willing to close down his vineyard and winery friends in his own district by no longer allowing them to suck water out of the rivers and aquifers? Ask the environmentalists who live on rivers like the Navarro about how much water is left for the Salmon once vineyards finish taking their sips. Ask environmentalists in Napa County about pesticides in ground water and runoff.
More Data:
Mike Thompson Watch Main Page
Mike Thompson is the current elected member of the United States House of Representatives for California's 1st Congressional District.
Monday, June 25, 2007
One Carbon Credit Per Person
It is way past time to ration carbon. The only fair way to do it is to allow for one carbon credit per person. The credits should be worked out on a global basis. A villager in Uganda should get the same carbon credit as a business person in China or a soccer mom in Peoria.
I see no reason why United States citizens should get to burn more carbon than people of other nationalities. True, we are used to burning a lot of carbon. We burn it so we can live in suburbs and commute to work. We burn it for heat, then we burn it for air-conditioning. We are the main contributors to global warming so far. But why should that entitle us to more than our share in the future?
Some people, poor people by global standards, might not be able to use their full carbon credit right away. Should they be allowed to trade their unused credit for money? I am of a mixed mind about that. In the past benefits from such trading schemes have largely gone to aggregators. These are people (or corporations) who buy from the poor at a very low price, bundle credits together, and then resell them at a much higher price to those wealthy enough to bid for them. But limited, person to person trading would probably add to efficiency and community solidarity.
Most carbon credit schemes suggested so far have been based on industrial output. That may benefit corporations and privileged people, but it is unfair and it does not benefit ordinary people.
Interests that oppose a fair carbon credit system will attack the one person - one credit system as being impossible to administer. But the U.S. had a very successful rationing system during World War II, and rationing has also been done on a large scale in other countries. Doing it globally is simply a matter of will power.
I might add that since a growing human population is the underlying cause of all trends towards ecological catastrophe, once a carbon credit number is set world wide, the number should remain constant. If more people enter the world than die, the credits should not expand. There are two systems that could be used to distribute credits when the population fluctuates. One is to just take the whole number of people each year and divide that into the total carbon credit allocated. I don't like that system because it awards more carbon to people who breed quickly. I think the carbon credits should be inheritable. Children don't get them. Adults get one each. Couples get two, and their children have to make do on their parents. When the parents die the next generation gets to divvy up the credits. This will provide incentives against large families.
I see no reason why United States citizens should get to burn more carbon than people of other nationalities. True, we are used to burning a lot of carbon. We burn it so we can live in suburbs and commute to work. We burn it for heat, then we burn it for air-conditioning. We are the main contributors to global warming so far. But why should that entitle us to more than our share in the future?
Some people, poor people by global standards, might not be able to use their full carbon credit right away. Should they be allowed to trade their unused credit for money? I am of a mixed mind about that. In the past benefits from such trading schemes have largely gone to aggregators. These are people (or corporations) who buy from the poor at a very low price, bundle credits together, and then resell them at a much higher price to those wealthy enough to bid for them. But limited, person to person trading would probably add to efficiency and community solidarity.
Most carbon credit schemes suggested so far have been based on industrial output. That may benefit corporations and privileged people, but it is unfair and it does not benefit ordinary people.
Interests that oppose a fair carbon credit system will attack the one person - one credit system as being impossible to administer. But the U.S. had a very successful rationing system during World War II, and rationing has also been done on a large scale in other countries. Doing it globally is simply a matter of will power.
I might add that since a growing human population is the underlying cause of all trends towards ecological catastrophe, once a carbon credit number is set world wide, the number should remain constant. If more people enter the world than die, the credits should not expand. There are two systems that could be used to distribute credits when the population fluctuates. One is to just take the whole number of people each year and divide that into the total carbon credit allocated. I don't like that system because it awards more carbon to people who breed quickly. I think the carbon credits should be inheritable. Children don't get them. Adults get one each. Couples get two, and their children have to make do on their parents. When the parents die the next generation gets to divvy up the credits. This will provide incentives against large families.
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