There is a lot of talk about immigration right now. It is a teaching moment. Political candidates who want to be President are talking a lot of nonsense.
Start with the basic facts:
The U.S. is overpopulated and creates more ecological destruction per human than any other country on earth (yes, including China).
The economy can not be expanded infinitely.
There has been growing economic inequality.
Immigration amnesties lead to further illegal immigration.
Illegal immigrants mostly compete for the lowest paying jobs. Even legal immigrants tend to compete for entry level jobs, though some are wealthy or educated enough to join the upper class or upple middle class as soon as they get here.
Who else competes for the lowest paying jobs in America? High-school dropouts, and even graduates, of course. That means mainly children of people who themselves are marginally employed or work regularly, but for low wages. Working class and welfare class women. And, disproportionately, people who have traditionally been discriminated against, including African-Americans, American Indians, etc.
The people who advocate for immigration amnesty, and hence for unlimited future immigration to the U.S., are well-intended. They see it as a human rights issue.
And there are long-term benefits to immigration for the economy. More people means more demand and more workers, and so more GDP. Legalized immigrants can better match their talents to the job markets. That is why the Republican establishment used to lead in advocating for more immigration, including immigration amnesty. That is why the largest single amnesty was put in place in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan.
The immediate impact of new immigrants, whether legal or illegal, is pressure on those jobs that require little skill to perform. They are often hard jobs. This includes childcare, cleaning services, and unskilled physical labor. These are exactly the jobs that unskilled citizens, including poor white, black, and hispanic citizens also want. The competition for these jobs pushes down wages, often to below the official minimum wages. It makes finding full time work difficult, except perhaps during brief economic booms. It makes it even harder for families that have been in the United States for generations to accumulate the resources necessary to climb out of the bottom of the working class.
That is why labor unions, otherwise pretty liberal and supporters of the Democratic Party, have traditionally been for minimal immigration.
The effect on the U.S. and global environment is also negative. Most illegal immigrants come here because they are greedy and want to have a higher standard of living than they would have in their native nation. To the extent they achieve that they are using more energy and other natural resources. They are generating more greenhouse gasses, and they are speeding up global warming.
In an ideal world the idea that "all men are created equal" might mean that men and women could move freely, to live wherever they want. We don't live in an ideal world. We live on a dying earth where most nations are already populated beyond what is sustainable. That is particularly true of the United States.
What we really need is a one-child policy in the United States. Mexico needs a one-child policy. So does Canada. So does nearly every nation on earth.
So what is wrong with my dear liberal and leftist friends? They are mostly herd animals, and they are not much for thinking for themselves. They "buy" a package of positions on issues that make them feel good about themselves. They want an environmentalist merit badge and a human rights merit badge. On many issues those badges are quite compatible.
But not for immigration. Increasing immigration and anything that encourages illegal immigration are positions that have practical consquences. They help rich white employers and bankers. They hurt working class men and women, and disproportionately hurt black workers. And they hurt the environment.
Congress should change the immigration law to allow in a number of immigrants each year that will not have a negative impact on employment for unskilled citizens. Congress should not grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Judge nations by per capital carbon emissions
Americans continue to generate carbon dioxide at unfair levels
Since Nationalist Public Radio (NPR) constantly says that China is the world's largest carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas producer, and they pass for liberal in these United States, I assume most Americans have a distorted view of how our nation fits into the problem of global warming.If all people are created equal, we should set an average target allowance that is safe. Then everyone should work to push down the carbon emissions of those who are, in effect, cheating the rest of humanity (and all living creatures) by consuming more than their fare share.
So let's look at a few national averages, remembering that within each nation there are also high consumption carbon emitting individuals, and below average individuals. The following table is a sample. You can find fuller tables at Wikipedia List of Countries by carbon dioxide emissions.
| Nation | kilotons CO2 emitted | tons per person |
| United States of America |
5,334,000
|
16.5
|
| Russia |
1,766,000
|
12.4
|
| European Union |
3,415,000
|
6.7
|
| China |
10,540,000
|
7.6
|
| India |
2,341,000
|
1.8
|
| Mexico |
456,000
|
3.7
|
| Indonesia |
452,000
|
1.8
|
There are a few nations with per person carbon emission higher than the U.S.: Australia at 17.3, a coal producing nation; and Saudi Arabia at 16.8 are notable. But the E. U., with a standard of living similar to the U.S., is under half.
China is, on a per person basis, is at 46% of the U.S. Its total emissions are higher than the U.S. because of its much larger population (1.38 billion vs. 322 million).
When you throw in history, the unfairness of the situation is heightened. The industrial revolution started in Great Britain in the late 1700s, in Europe in the early 1800s, and in the U.S. around the mid 1800s. So we have had very long periods of carbon emissions compared to the rest of the world.
In the aftermath of World War II pretty much every factory in the world had been damaged. Except the factories of the U.S. With our vast petroleum fields and array of factories, we dominated the world economy and dwarfed the emissions of other nations. Other nations' factories came on line gradually. By the 1970s Americans had to compete again, and had grown soft, and so began losing the economic competition to other nations. We were just so wealthy by then that it took a while for the truth to sink in.
China made stabs at industrializing going all the way back to the 1800s, but did not really start to grow production faster than America, Europe, Japan and Russia until the 1980s.
The competitive advantages to nations that continue to burn fossil fuels are enormous. Clearly, if it were about fairness, the U.S.A., which has done the most historic damage, should do the most to cut its per capita fossil fuel consumption. Instead gasoline and natural gas are cheap right now, so consumption is increasing rather than decreasing.
Fairness is all fine in a game of tennis or baseball, but in the real world people who are unfairly privileged typically don't want to play fair. I've talked to people across the spectrum of American wealth and poverty, and the response is almost uniform. People want scientists to fix the problem without any substantial personal impositions on themselves.
Scientists can't change the laws of thermodynamics. That is why they are called laws. It takes energy to keep buildings warm in winter and cool in summer. It takes energy to move cars and planes around. It takes energy to fertilize farms, plant and harvest food, and get it to markets. It even takes energy to separate silicon from silicon dioxide to make solar panels, or to extract and transport fossil fuels.
It is clear that their are too many people in the world and that their standard of living is too high. In the United States we should probably do our share by immediately limiting families to one child, turning off all air conditioning systems (except, perhaps, hospitals), and adding a punitive tax to sales of fossil fuels, something like $3 per gallon of gasoline. Also all flying of any kind should be prohibited.
But we won't. The rich will buy Teslas and pretend they have done their part. They will meet with politicians in exotic locations and pat themselves on the back for closing the occasional coal-fired generating plant and putting in a few solar panel. The middle class will continue to aspire to the luxuries of the rich, and the working class will aspire to middle-class luxuries.
The coral will die, and the plankton will die, and sooner or later crops will wilt. Nature will will unleash plague and famine, and balance will be restored. Hopefully when humans die off, it won't be entirely random. Hopefully the humans that survive will give birth to an improved species.
Agree? Disagree? You can comment on this post at Natural Liberation Blog at blogspot.com
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Air Conditioned Nightmare, a History
I was born on a Marine Corps base in North Carolina, in 1955, near the ocean. That is a temperate climate by most standards. It got hot in summer and cold in winter, but as a child I did not worry about it. We had no air conditioning, almost nobody did back then, but we certainly had heat. I remember being seriously cold only once, when Legendary Mother locked me out of the house during a snow storm in Greenville, Texas when I was four, to punish me (Legendary Father was stationed in Japan that year).
In 1955 the human population of the United States was about 165 million. The population of the planet Earth was about 2.6 billion.
When I was six years old Legendary Father was retired from the Marine Corps (they failed to anticipate the need for trained, reliable murderers starting in 1965 in Vietnam) and we moved to Florida. It was hot! But again, no air conditioning. Our house was in a suburb that had recently been a swamp. My grade school was not air conditioned either.
Then around 1964 we moved into a fancier neighborhood and the house had central air. Legendary Mother set the thermostat at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.1 degrees C.) In summer it was 70, and in winter it was 70. Whatever budget strains the family had, no thought was given saving a bit of electricity by letting the house vary from 70. The electricity, in that place and era, came from burning fuel oil.
In 1965 the human population of the United States was about 190 million. The population of the planet Earth was about 3.4 billion.
I have to admit I became a bit of a weenie. Cold was seldom a problem. I continued to play outside when I could, and I continued to sweat profusely while sitting still at school, in the fall and spring. But I also enjoyed walking into our air conditioned house and cooling off. At some point a new car was bought that had air conditioning.
In school I never, ever had air conditioning. Not in grade school, not in high school, not in college.
But in the winter of 1973-74 I ran into a different problem. That was a result of the Arab Oil Embargo. I had no budget for clothing for college (Legendary Father and Legendary Mother had thrown me out of the family), or I should say that working for minimum wage to pay for college made me extremely careful about buying anything. My freshman year I had endured the cold of New England dressed in Florida appropriate clothes. But at least the dorms and classrooms were well heated.
Not so the winter of 1973-74. My college economized. I was cold all the time, in my dorm room and in classrooms. But I did not die, and when Spring rolled around, I had largely acclimatized. My Florida clothes (now becoming rags) were adequate because my body had adapted.
In 1975 the population of the U.S. was about 215 million. The global population was about 4.1 billion.
My body had adapted to cold despite spending most of my childhood in Florida. In the meantime, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, America was converting vast amounts of fossil fuel into carbon dioxide. In 1975 Global Warming itself was still somewhat hidden among the ordinary fluctuations of weather, but we, the human race, had built a big ol' Greenhouse by burning fuel to run heaters and air conditions, cars and trucks, factories and armies.
Now political leaders (well, heads of state anyway) are gathered in Paris to pretend to do something about greenhouse gasses and global warming.
Couldn't they just agree to Turn Off the Goddam Air Conditioners! No one on earth had air conditioning until the 20th century. People can acclimatize to heat. They can wear shorts in summer, even at places of business. The first year will be tough, sure, as we get used to sweating again (and other people sweating).
Instead the Air Conditioned Nightmare (Henry Miller's term) is spreading like a cancer on the earth. As soon as people have the dough, they want their first air conditioner. Just like my Legendary Mother.
Sure, do all the other things. But turning off all air conditioners can be done quickly and would have a major impact.
An estimate of the current human population of the United States is 322 million, and of earth is 7.2 billion.
The other important item that should be on the Paris agenda is lowering the human population by setting up a global One Child policy. Half the population would produce only half the environmental problem. But sadly, that idea is not on the agenda. It is not on the agenda of most environmental non-profits, either, because they are afraid of the fundraising repercussions of speaking the real core truth to Power. Better to blow up skirts and reap the rain of donations.
In 1955 the human population of the United States was about 165 million. The population of the planet Earth was about 2.6 billion.
When I was six years old Legendary Father was retired from the Marine Corps (they failed to anticipate the need for trained, reliable murderers starting in 1965 in Vietnam) and we moved to Florida. It was hot! But again, no air conditioning. Our house was in a suburb that had recently been a swamp. My grade school was not air conditioned either.
Then around 1964 we moved into a fancier neighborhood and the house had central air. Legendary Mother set the thermostat at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.1 degrees C.) In summer it was 70, and in winter it was 70. Whatever budget strains the family had, no thought was given saving a bit of electricity by letting the house vary from 70. The electricity, in that place and era, came from burning fuel oil.
In 1965 the human population of the United States was about 190 million. The population of the planet Earth was about 3.4 billion.
I have to admit I became a bit of a weenie. Cold was seldom a problem. I continued to play outside when I could, and I continued to sweat profusely while sitting still at school, in the fall and spring. But I also enjoyed walking into our air conditioned house and cooling off. At some point a new car was bought that had air conditioning.
In school I never, ever had air conditioning. Not in grade school, not in high school, not in college.
But in the winter of 1973-74 I ran into a different problem. That was a result of the Arab Oil Embargo. I had no budget for clothing for college (Legendary Father and Legendary Mother had thrown me out of the family), or I should say that working for minimum wage to pay for college made me extremely careful about buying anything. My freshman year I had endured the cold of New England dressed in Florida appropriate clothes. But at least the dorms and classrooms were well heated.
Not so the winter of 1973-74. My college economized. I was cold all the time, in my dorm room and in classrooms. But I did not die, and when Spring rolled around, I had largely acclimatized. My Florida clothes (now becoming rags) were adequate because my body had adapted.
In 1975 the population of the U.S. was about 215 million. The global population was about 4.1 billion.
My body had adapted to cold despite spending most of my childhood in Florida. In the meantime, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, America was converting vast amounts of fossil fuel into carbon dioxide. In 1975 Global Warming itself was still somewhat hidden among the ordinary fluctuations of weather, but we, the human race, had built a big ol' Greenhouse by burning fuel to run heaters and air conditions, cars and trucks, factories and armies.
Now political leaders (well, heads of state anyway) are gathered in Paris to pretend to do something about greenhouse gasses and global warming.
Couldn't they just agree to Turn Off the Goddam Air Conditioners! No one on earth had air conditioning until the 20th century. People can acclimatize to heat. They can wear shorts in summer, even at places of business. The first year will be tough, sure, as we get used to sweating again (and other people sweating).
Instead the Air Conditioned Nightmare (Henry Miller's term) is spreading like a cancer on the earth. As soon as people have the dough, they want their first air conditioner. Just like my Legendary Mother.
Sure, do all the other things. But turning off all air conditioners can be done quickly and would have a major impact.
An estimate of the current human population of the United States is 322 million, and of earth is 7.2 billion.
The other important item that should be on the Paris agenda is lowering the human population by setting up a global One Child policy. Half the population would produce only half the environmental problem. But sadly, that idea is not on the agenda. It is not on the agenda of most environmental non-profits, either, because they are afraid of the fundraising repercussions of speaking the real core truth to Power. Better to blow up skirts and reap the rain of donations.
Friday, November 27, 2015
Pope Francis Pushes for Global Destruction through Overpopulation
"Countries are frequently pressured to adopt policies typical of the culture of waste, like those aimed at lowering the birthrate."
— Pope Francis in Nairobi, November 27, 2015
Pope Francis has excited the left-to-liberal spectrum of Americans with his "progressive" statements. Progressive, at least, compared to his predecessor, the neo-Nazi Pope Benedict (who was an actual Nazi as a teenager).
But while he talks of social justice, protecting the environment, and allowing divorced Catholics to receive Communion, he harbors the traditional destructive, anti-environmental and anti-woman culture of his predecessors.
If there is one thing that causes more global warming and environmental destruction, it is more people in the world. They go hand in hand. Apparently Pope Francis does not feel that the current population of over 7 billion is high enough. He is against lowering the birthrate, and against contraception and abortion.
Which means that in practice he is for global warming, for war (over resources), for the oppression of women, and for trying to keep the Roman Catholic religion alive by out-breeding religious and social rivals.
But what else could we expect from an organization that was founded by two masterminds of evil? Christianity was a loose confederation before it was given a top down structure by Constantine the Great, a mass-murderer and Roman Emperor fro 306 to 337, and Sylvester I, Pope from 314 to 335. Over time the bishops of Rome, styling themselves Popes, set themselves up as supreme leaders, in the process re-writing history and editing Scripture to support their claims.
The suppression of secular knowledge and freedom of religion were key to the success of Roman Catholicism. Violence was used to convert many nations to Catholicism, including Poland, Mexico, and the nations of South America. In many other cases a King converted to Catholicism and enforced the religion on his subjects as a means of tightening control on them.
After about 1500 the Catholic Church gradually lost its ability to kill everyone who disagreed with it in Europe. In the 1930's it made one last grasp at world dominion, promoting the dictators Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and eventually Philippe Petain in their attempt to crush Protestant Christianity (including the planned conquest of the U. K.) and atheism (including the failed conquest of the U.S.S.R.).
Preventing people from having access to birth control creates poverty and lack of education, two keys to substituting Catholic bullshit for a modern outlook based on science and reason. It leads to environmental destruction.
As Catholic Popes to, Francis seems reasonable in contrast to Benedict. Where points of agreement can be reached, there is reason to work with him, just like it is with any political or religious leader. But beware of buying the package. The Roman Catholic package is a lie will continue causing environmental and human destruction until it is dead and buried for good.
Many American and European Catholics believe the church should change its doctrine on birth control, or even abortion. Instead of accepting this enlightened view, Francis is pushing a Dark Ages view, which is still favored by the bishops of Africa. He deserves thorough criticism for this mistaken and cowardly view.
— Pope Francis in Nairobi, November 27, 2015
Pope Francis has excited the left-to-liberal spectrum of Americans with his "progressive" statements. Progressive, at least, compared to his predecessor, the neo-Nazi Pope Benedict (who was an actual Nazi as a teenager).
But while he talks of social justice, protecting the environment, and allowing divorced Catholics to receive Communion, he harbors the traditional destructive, anti-environmental and anti-woman culture of his predecessors.
If there is one thing that causes more global warming and environmental destruction, it is more people in the world. They go hand in hand. Apparently Pope Francis does not feel that the current population of over 7 billion is high enough. He is against lowering the birthrate, and against contraception and abortion.
Which means that in practice he is for global warming, for war (over resources), for the oppression of women, and for trying to keep the Roman Catholic religion alive by out-breeding religious and social rivals.
But what else could we expect from an organization that was founded by two masterminds of evil? Christianity was a loose confederation before it was given a top down structure by Constantine the Great, a mass-murderer and Roman Emperor fro 306 to 337, and Sylvester I, Pope from 314 to 335. Over time the bishops of Rome, styling themselves Popes, set themselves up as supreme leaders, in the process re-writing history and editing Scripture to support their claims.
The suppression of secular knowledge and freedom of religion were key to the success of Roman Catholicism. Violence was used to convert many nations to Catholicism, including Poland, Mexico, and the nations of South America. In many other cases a King converted to Catholicism and enforced the religion on his subjects as a means of tightening control on them.
After about 1500 the Catholic Church gradually lost its ability to kill everyone who disagreed with it in Europe. In the 1930's it made one last grasp at world dominion, promoting the dictators Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and eventually Philippe Petain in their attempt to crush Protestant Christianity (including the planned conquest of the U. K.) and atheism (including the failed conquest of the U.S.S.R.).
Preventing people from having access to birth control creates poverty and lack of education, two keys to substituting Catholic bullshit for a modern outlook based on science and reason. It leads to environmental destruction.
As Catholic Popes to, Francis seems reasonable in contrast to Benedict. Where points of agreement can be reached, there is reason to work with him, just like it is with any political or religious leader. But beware of buying the package. The Roman Catholic package is a lie will continue causing environmental and human destruction until it is dead and buried for good.
Many American and European Catholics believe the church should change its doctrine on birth control, or even abortion. Instead of accepting this enlightened view, Francis is pushing a Dark Ages view, which is still favored by the bishops of Africa. He deserves thorough criticism for this mistaken and cowardly view.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Natural Gas Solution to Global Warming?
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.
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.
Monday, October 12, 2015
Parable of the Drunk and Sober Drivers
"When you (or somebody else) finally has the good idea, you feel very stupid for not having seen it sooner." — H. M. Georgi, "Grand Unified Theories" in The New Physics
One evening two men went to a social club event. One of the men had quite a bit of alcohol, the other stayed entirely sober.
Each man drove home in his car in the darkness. The sober man got distracted and drove off the road and smashed his car into a tree, but he was not hurt.
The drunk man weaved around a bit on the road and almost hit a car, a dog, and a mail box, but kept it together and made it home without scratching his car. He even managed to stumble unhurt into bed before passing out.
The men at the social club analyzed the event. The concluded that in the interest of safety, every man would be required to drink a minimum of two alcoholic beverages at all future events.
Obviously this is a false parable, but it illustrates some very interesting aspects of reality and the human mind. In shows the difference between anecdotal evidence and statistics. Also that drinking is preferable to sobriety, until it isn't.
Statistically driving drunk is a bad bet. Take a sufficiently large sample and a trend will appear. Not everyone who drives sober drives safely every time. Not everyone who drives drunk gets in a wreck every time. But the frequency of accidents is quite a bit higher for drunk drivers than for sober drivers. The frequency of accidents also climbs as the amount of alcohol measured in the blood climbs.
I originally made up this parable to explain to my friends why one of my friends did not believe in global warming. Most of my believer friends have only the vaguest idea of how statistics work. That does not prevent them from sharing statistics that confirm their beliefs, even if it is easy to show the statistics are falsified. Math is just not a strong point with them. Let's call them artists, rather than math disabled.
On the other hand my global warming denier friend is a very capable guy. He is good at logical argument, at accounting, and at statistics. He knows more about the history of temperatures of the ancient earth than I do. So what are the chances that he is wrong and the artists are right?
We can know he is wrong by looking at the work of people, scientists, who know even more than he does. Those scientists have vast arrays of data available for analysis and know what can go wrong when data is collected.
We know he is wrong because we can step into a greenhouse during a sunny day in winter and notice it is warmer than outside. We can check (should we have the time and interest) the spectral characteristics of sunlight, of carbon dioxide, and of the radiation of heat from the earth, and see that carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas. And we can measure (in a home lab, if you have the money for equipment and the skill) the level of carbon dioxide in the air, and compare it to older measurements. And of course there are all those thermometers the scientists have set up around the world, starting in the 1700s.
But for a lot of stuff is even harder to distinguish between anecdotes, belief systems, and factual statistics. Recent studies showed many science experiments are difficult to reproduce, and that difficulty seems to be driven by mental (and ethical) problems of the scientists. In other words, Publish or Perish drives the survival of the best liars. In particular it seems like the entire profession of Psychology is run by nut cases. When specifically asked why their experimental techniques were so bad, most psychologists did not even seem to understand there was a problem. Yikes. [See How Scientists Fool Themselves]
Of course my global warming denier friend would take this information and say exactly: my global warming denier scientific minority has it right. Your ecology-warped green scientists are misinterpreting the data.
Even stay-at-home paranoid Internet mavens don't have time to check every fact. Politics and many other professions depend on lying as a basic tool. Yet we need truth or we will suffer bad consequences.
Fortunately most lies don't pass the basic smell test. My first order guess is that the scientists are right and the theologians are wrong. Scientists are not always right, and theologians are not always wrong. But it you drink the theological kool-aid, you are going to crash into reality at some point.
One evening two men went to a social club event. One of the men had quite a bit of alcohol, the other stayed entirely sober.
Each man drove home in his car in the darkness. The sober man got distracted and drove off the road and smashed his car into a tree, but he was not hurt.
The drunk man weaved around a bit on the road and almost hit a car, a dog, and a mail box, but kept it together and made it home without scratching his car. He even managed to stumble unhurt into bed before passing out.
The men at the social club analyzed the event. The concluded that in the interest of safety, every man would be required to drink a minimum of two alcoholic beverages at all future events.
Obviously this is a false parable, but it illustrates some very interesting aspects of reality and the human mind. In shows the difference between anecdotal evidence and statistics. Also that drinking is preferable to sobriety, until it isn't.
Statistically driving drunk is a bad bet. Take a sufficiently large sample and a trend will appear. Not everyone who drives sober drives safely every time. Not everyone who drives drunk gets in a wreck every time. But the frequency of accidents is quite a bit higher for drunk drivers than for sober drivers. The frequency of accidents also climbs as the amount of alcohol measured in the blood climbs.
I originally made up this parable to explain to my friends why one of my friends did not believe in global warming. Most of my believer friends have only the vaguest idea of how statistics work. That does not prevent them from sharing statistics that confirm their beliefs, even if it is easy to show the statistics are falsified. Math is just not a strong point with them. Let's call them artists, rather than math disabled.
On the other hand my global warming denier friend is a very capable guy. He is good at logical argument, at accounting, and at statistics. He knows more about the history of temperatures of the ancient earth than I do. So what are the chances that he is wrong and the artists are right?
We can know he is wrong by looking at the work of people, scientists, who know even more than he does. Those scientists have vast arrays of data available for analysis and know what can go wrong when data is collected.
We know he is wrong because we can step into a greenhouse during a sunny day in winter and notice it is warmer than outside. We can check (should we have the time and interest) the spectral characteristics of sunlight, of carbon dioxide, and of the radiation of heat from the earth, and see that carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas. And we can measure (in a home lab, if you have the money for equipment and the skill) the level of carbon dioxide in the air, and compare it to older measurements. And of course there are all those thermometers the scientists have set up around the world, starting in the 1700s.
But for a lot of stuff is even harder to distinguish between anecdotes, belief systems, and factual statistics. Recent studies showed many science experiments are difficult to reproduce, and that difficulty seems to be driven by mental (and ethical) problems of the scientists. In other words, Publish or Perish drives the survival of the best liars. In particular it seems like the entire profession of Psychology is run by nut cases. When specifically asked why their experimental techniques were so bad, most psychologists did not even seem to understand there was a problem. Yikes. [See How Scientists Fool Themselves]
Of course my global warming denier friend would take this information and say exactly: my global warming denier scientific minority has it right. Your ecology-warped green scientists are misinterpreting the data.
Even stay-at-home paranoid Internet mavens don't have time to check every fact. Politics and many other professions depend on lying as a basic tool. Yet we need truth or we will suffer bad consequences.
Fortunately most lies don't pass the basic smell test. My first order guess is that the scientists are right and the theologians are wrong. Scientists are not always right, and theologians are not always wrong. But it you drink the theological kool-aid, you are going to crash into reality at some point.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
A Hot Shower before the Apocalypse
More to save on the electric bill than on California's water, I habitually have showered only twice a week for years. I can get away with that partly because I work at home. You can't smell me over the Internet.
I was brought up to bath or shower once a day, and I do enjoy a hot shower. I enjoy it especially when I think about how the Apocalypse could come any day. No, I am not expecting the return of Jesus. He said he would return during the lifetimes of his Apostles, and he didn't.
By Apocalypse I mean all the ways the civilized world as we know it could fall apart.
I am a child of the Atomic Era, so my earliest apocalyptic worries were about Atomic War. Apparently that came pretty close to happening several times both before I was born (in 1955) and on up until the end of the Cold War. It still could happen. Even a single atomic bomb going off in New York City, Washington, London, or perhaps Moscow could bring on a kind of lesser economic apocalypse that could turn hot showers into luxuries.
I live about a half mile from the San Andreas fault, so a major earthquake is a real possibility. That could bring on a local apocalypse, but would not effect people outside of California much.
Some people think storms will get worse due to global warming. But I see storms as just temporary apocalypse lite events. If it takes a long time to repair the electricity lines I would long for a hot shower.
Famine might leave us with hot showers, but hungry. It is hard for Americans to grasp how bad a famine could be. Most post Civil War hunger in America has been due to screwed up economic priorities, not due to an actual shortage of food. But look at the recent egg shortage. What would happen if the corn and wheat crops failed in a major way two years in a row? We don't have a lot of food in storage in the U.S. any more, not like we had during the Cold War. People would fight over food, with the relatively rich probably getting most of it.
I live in the country, but not in a food-producing region. My soil is lousy, it required fertilizer to produce anything edible. The only thing I typically have a surplus of is apples. Apple trees love it here. I know how hard it is go grow enough food on a small scale to do more than just supplement food that comes from professional large-scale agriculture. Don't kid yourself. A suburban backyard garden won't keep you from starving to death (if you can't get food from outside), it will just slow down the process. Assuming your water supply is even working.
But the most likely and scary form of apocalypse would be economic and social collapse. I don't see that coming until we have another bubble of some sort first. Even then if people have done some saving in the meantime and keep their heads, we might muddle through. My main concern as an analyst is the National Debt. It has become a balloon, and if interest rates rise enough, it will balloon so fast it could take down the government and economy.
Sometimes people just go nuts. Enough nutty people and the economy tanks, the government falls, and the next thing you know food does not get distributed, and neither does electricity, and so: the end of hot showers.
Or it could be a combination of things. Like when people walk out on a balcony with wood rot. Dry rotted wood can be surprisingly strong, but put enough weight on it, and at some point it reaches the snapping point.
A sudden jump in the rate of global warming, a tightening of world food supplies. A war in the Middle East spilling over into India or Europe. Too much debt. Too much political gridlock. Too many people unwilling to give up their oversized piece of the pie for the common good. A blight striking down grain crops, or perhaps knocking down a good proportion of the human population. Plans based on growth suddenly up in smoke, defaults on loans, low tax receipts, a default on the federal debt, Dr. Strangelove firing off a nuclear missile thinking that, somehow, will make things better.
Of course the Apocalypse might kill you, or me, but I enjoy thinking about surviving it.
Enjoy your next hot shower. It is not likely to be your last, but it could be.
I was brought up to bath or shower once a day, and I do enjoy a hot shower. I enjoy it especially when I think about how the Apocalypse could come any day. No, I am not expecting the return of Jesus. He said he would return during the lifetimes of his Apostles, and he didn't.
By Apocalypse I mean all the ways the civilized world as we know it could fall apart.
I am a child of the Atomic Era, so my earliest apocalyptic worries were about Atomic War. Apparently that came pretty close to happening several times both before I was born (in 1955) and on up until the end of the Cold War. It still could happen. Even a single atomic bomb going off in New York City, Washington, London, or perhaps Moscow could bring on a kind of lesser economic apocalypse that could turn hot showers into luxuries.
I live about a half mile from the San Andreas fault, so a major earthquake is a real possibility. That could bring on a local apocalypse, but would not effect people outside of California much.
Some people think storms will get worse due to global warming. But I see storms as just temporary apocalypse lite events. If it takes a long time to repair the electricity lines I would long for a hot shower.
Famine might leave us with hot showers, but hungry. It is hard for Americans to grasp how bad a famine could be. Most post Civil War hunger in America has been due to screwed up economic priorities, not due to an actual shortage of food. But look at the recent egg shortage. What would happen if the corn and wheat crops failed in a major way two years in a row? We don't have a lot of food in storage in the U.S. any more, not like we had during the Cold War. People would fight over food, with the relatively rich probably getting most of it.
I live in the country, but not in a food-producing region. My soil is lousy, it required fertilizer to produce anything edible. The only thing I typically have a surplus of is apples. Apple trees love it here. I know how hard it is go grow enough food on a small scale to do more than just supplement food that comes from professional large-scale agriculture. Don't kid yourself. A suburban backyard garden won't keep you from starving to death (if you can't get food from outside), it will just slow down the process. Assuming your water supply is even working.
But the most likely and scary form of apocalypse would be economic and social collapse. I don't see that coming until we have another bubble of some sort first. Even then if people have done some saving in the meantime and keep their heads, we might muddle through. My main concern as an analyst is the National Debt. It has become a balloon, and if interest rates rise enough, it will balloon so fast it could take down the government and economy.
Sometimes people just go nuts. Enough nutty people and the economy tanks, the government falls, and the next thing you know food does not get distributed, and neither does electricity, and so: the end of hot showers.
Or it could be a combination of things. Like when people walk out on a balcony with wood rot. Dry rotted wood can be surprisingly strong, but put enough weight on it, and at some point it reaches the snapping point.
A sudden jump in the rate of global warming, a tightening of world food supplies. A war in the Middle East spilling over into India or Europe. Too much debt. Too much political gridlock. Too many people unwilling to give up their oversized piece of the pie for the common good. A blight striking down grain crops, or perhaps knocking down a good proportion of the human population. Plans based on growth suddenly up in smoke, defaults on loans, low tax receipts, a default on the federal debt, Dr. Strangelove firing off a nuclear missile thinking that, somehow, will make things better.
Of course the Apocalypse might kill you, or me, but I enjoy thinking about surviving it.
Enjoy your next hot shower. It is not likely to be your last, but it could be.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Back to the Permian (Or: Some Like It Hot)
Only the most idiotic and hatefully prejudiced members of the human population of the globe can be in denial of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses emitted by our industrial civilization. 2014 was the hottest year on record, and most climate models show the heating up to be accelerating. At best politicians dither, and of course in most countries they are backed by the vast majority of people who don't want to give up the benefits of industrial civilization, much as they might whine about some of the negative consequences.
Where it will end exactly is hard to predict even with computer models, but as a rule of thumb I am going with the earth going back to conditions last seen during the Permian.
The Permian was hot, by our current standards. It ran from about 300 million to 250 million years ago. It followed the Carboniferous, which was when much of the coal and petroleum we've been burning started to from. It ended with a mass extinction, followed by the Triassic (which featured large lizards and the first dinosaurs).
The Permian is not a bad time to go back to, on the whole. In fact it was warmer (on average) than the Carboniferous, but not as hot as the Triassic. It was about 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than it's been on earth lately. Of course then, as now, some places were considerably hotter than others.
But life thrived anyway. It was an important period in the evolution of life, as amphibians began to give way to reptile-like creatures and even the earlier mammal-like creatures. In the oceans Trilobites were still in good supply, but going extinct. Seed ferns appeared, but some of the landscape might seem familiar to us, as the earliest conifers appeared. On the other hand, cockroach like insects did pretty well. If you don't like cockroaches, you won't like the New Permian.
Cockroaches should do well as things heat up, but in the evolution of life, predictions are just guesses. Maybe rats will do well. Maybe reptiles will start getting bigger again. But it won't be just a repeat of the Permian. Because I think Homo Sapiens will survive. Perhaps renamed Homo Stupidius.
Another difficult guess is how many humans will survive the coming die off. Will most of us cooperate to stay alive, with the population reduced to maybe 1 billion from the current 7 billion? I doubt that, but it is possible. I think people will cut each others throats for the last remaining air conditioned theater tickets, or grass-fed beef, or whatever else has not disappeared but reminds the survivors of the good old days.
I expect humans to evolve after the winnowing. We'll see who can take the heat. Small noses are probably out. Big noses help to cool hot air on the way to the lungs, and to retain moisture as air leaves the lungs. While cold-blooded animals will likely get bigger, humans may get smaller. Body mass, which generates heat, shrinks at a faster rate than skin surface, which helps cool the body off. Unless it is so hot that skin surface admits more heat, so it is better to be big ... in which case people will evolve to be the size of elephants. Or at least Rhinos. Which would give Republicans an advantage.
But most promising is the potential for what biologists call radiation. Not atomic radiation, but the evolutionary branching out of one life form into different niches, followed by specialization and eventually by forming new species or even whole new groups of species.
Radiation typically occurs when a dominant life form is wiped out. That is how a few mostly small mammals that had been hiding in holes came to replace the dinosaurs. A few million years later there were mammals of all sizes occupying all kinds of niches, from herbivore to omnivore to carnivore. So you might, in a million years or so, get cow-like homo species and wolf-like species and certainly sloth like species, snake like species, and maybe even bird men.
But can't we do anything to stop this disaster? Can't we save the current flora and fauna and temperature range? Clearly no. It is over. Industry won. It bought politicians and scientists and propagandists and the general public. They delayed and weaseled and made money on the side selling solar cells and wind mills.
So adapt or perish. Of course, it make take a few hundred generations to see what type of humans will ultimately emerge from the die off.
Of course I could be wrong. We could be headed to the Devonian instead. Average temperature 6 degrees Centigrade above the current era. Giant insects and scorpions dominate a landscape of primitive plants, with a few amphibians walking around. Happy hunting. Or avoiding predators.
Where it will end exactly is hard to predict even with computer models, but as a rule of thumb I am going with the earth going back to conditions last seen during the Permian.
The Permian was hot, by our current standards. It ran from about 300 million to 250 million years ago. It followed the Carboniferous, which was when much of the coal and petroleum we've been burning started to from. It ended with a mass extinction, followed by the Triassic (which featured large lizards and the first dinosaurs).
The Permian is not a bad time to go back to, on the whole. In fact it was warmer (on average) than the Carboniferous, but not as hot as the Triassic. It was about 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than it's been on earth lately. Of course then, as now, some places were considerably hotter than others.
But life thrived anyway. It was an important period in the evolution of life, as amphibians began to give way to reptile-like creatures and even the earlier mammal-like creatures. In the oceans Trilobites were still in good supply, but going extinct. Seed ferns appeared, but some of the landscape might seem familiar to us, as the earliest conifers appeared. On the other hand, cockroach like insects did pretty well. If you don't like cockroaches, you won't like the New Permian.
Cockroaches should do well as things heat up, but in the evolution of life, predictions are just guesses. Maybe rats will do well. Maybe reptiles will start getting bigger again. But it won't be just a repeat of the Permian. Because I think Homo Sapiens will survive. Perhaps renamed Homo Stupidius.
Another difficult guess is how many humans will survive the coming die off. Will most of us cooperate to stay alive, with the population reduced to maybe 1 billion from the current 7 billion? I doubt that, but it is possible. I think people will cut each others throats for the last remaining air conditioned theater tickets, or grass-fed beef, or whatever else has not disappeared but reminds the survivors of the good old days.
I expect humans to evolve after the winnowing. We'll see who can take the heat. Small noses are probably out. Big noses help to cool hot air on the way to the lungs, and to retain moisture as air leaves the lungs. While cold-blooded animals will likely get bigger, humans may get smaller. Body mass, which generates heat, shrinks at a faster rate than skin surface, which helps cool the body off. Unless it is so hot that skin surface admits more heat, so it is better to be big ... in which case people will evolve to be the size of elephants. Or at least Rhinos. Which would give Republicans an advantage.
But most promising is the potential for what biologists call radiation. Not atomic radiation, but the evolutionary branching out of one life form into different niches, followed by specialization and eventually by forming new species or even whole new groups of species.
Radiation typically occurs when a dominant life form is wiped out. That is how a few mostly small mammals that had been hiding in holes came to replace the dinosaurs. A few million years later there were mammals of all sizes occupying all kinds of niches, from herbivore to omnivore to carnivore. So you might, in a million years or so, get cow-like homo species and wolf-like species and certainly sloth like species, snake like species, and maybe even bird men.
But can't we do anything to stop this disaster? Can't we save the current flora and fauna and temperature range? Clearly no. It is over. Industry won. It bought politicians and scientists and propagandists and the general public. They delayed and weaseled and made money on the side selling solar cells and wind mills.
So adapt or perish. Of course, it make take a few hundred generations to see what type of humans will ultimately emerge from the die off.
Of course I could be wrong. We could be headed to the Devonian instead. Average temperature 6 degrees Centigrade above the current era. Giant insects and scorpions dominate a landscape of primitive plants, with a few amphibians walking around. Happy hunting. Or avoiding predators.
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.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Prairie Dogs and Global Warming
I just read a great article in the February 2011 issue of Earth First! Journal. It is by Lierre Keith and it is called "It takes a Village to Raise a Prairie."
Unfortunately the Journal does not seem to have a copy of this article up at their web site. Lierre's web site seems almost non-functional. But wait, a search reveals that it can be read here: It Takes a Village to Raise a Prairie. That is at Mother Earth News.
Lierre calls for whole villages of eco-friendly people to take over the prairie regions. She claims that "Grass is so good at building soil that repairing 75 percent fo the planet's rangelands would bring atmospheric CO2 to under 330 ppm in 15 years or less." Remarkable, if true.
This made me think of the importance of sequencing in the processes of creating complex things, and of dismantling them. Pick the wrong sequence for a project and the project may never get done.
I was looking at a giant sequoia (not a coast redwood, though some are nearby) in my back yard yesterday, wondering how much carbon is holds. When I arrived here is was about 1 yard in diameter; now it is approaching 2 yards in diameter. Does that make up for all the driving, using fossil fuel, my family does, living at such a remote place? I don't know.
Can 7 billion people live on this planet without destroying it? I think not. But dismantling the situation in a humane manner is no easy task. Sure there are ways to discourage reproduction, but the political will is not there, not yet. As Warren Buffet said, (but not about population) we have a global "political system that rewards legislators with reelection if their actions appear to produce short-term benefits even though their ultimate imprint will be to compound long-term pain."
Unfortunately the Journal does not seem to have a copy of this article up at their web site. Lierre's web site seems almost non-functional. But wait, a search reveals that it can be read here: It Takes a Village to Raise a Prairie. That is at Mother Earth News.
Lierre calls for whole villages of eco-friendly people to take over the prairie regions. She claims that "Grass is so good at building soil that repairing 75 percent fo the planet's rangelands would bring atmospheric CO2 to under 330 ppm in 15 years or less." Remarkable, if true.
This made me think of the importance of sequencing in the processes of creating complex things, and of dismantling them. Pick the wrong sequence for a project and the project may never get done.
I was looking at a giant sequoia (not a coast redwood, though some are nearby) in my back yard yesterday, wondering how much carbon is holds. When I arrived here is was about 1 yard in diameter; now it is approaching 2 yards in diameter. Does that make up for all the driving, using fossil fuel, my family does, living at such a remote place? I don't know.
Can 7 billion people live on this planet without destroying it? I think not. But dismantling the situation in a humane manner is no easy task. Sure there are ways to discourage reproduction, but the political will is not there, not yet. As Warren Buffet said, (but not about population) we have a global "political system that rewards legislators with reelection if their actions appear to produce short-term benefits even though their ultimate imprint will be to compound long-term pain."
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Capitalists Announce Five Year Plan
The new capitalist five year plan for the economy of the United States of America (including its empire of affiliated nations) was announced August 26, 2009, in a secret underground bunker in Manhattan. The plan covers the years 2010 through 2014.
The usual report on the prior five year plan was handed out in advance. Although there were some minor glitches in 2008 and 2009, the plan was deemed to be highly successful. The political baton was successfully handed off between the two parties without any real change in policy. Large numbers of workers were impoverished, which will ensure their loyalty and hard work during the coming years, if they are rehired. Almost all value was squeezed out of the economy and into a much smaller number of individual capitalists and banking institutions than had been necessary in the past. The heroin supply from Afghanistan was assured, military spending increased, and China and India got in lockstep with the plan for global development.
The key components of the new five year plan can be summarized as: maintain a stable trajectory. Military spending is to grow, but not so much as to jeopardize other segments of the economy. Unemployment is to recover, as its primary purpose of indebting large numbers of people and insuring their future loyalty has been largely accomplished. Stock market and housing price booms are designed in towards the end of the plan, to be facilitated by easy credit from the Federal Reserve. New regulations are planned to minimize competition, and new loopholes have already been worked into them that can be used to advantage only by the largest corporations.
The health care system in the United States is to remain mainly as it is, with only the most minor of reforms. Sick people are an economic liability once their wallets have been drained, but using tax dollars extracted from workers, high prices for drugs, insurance, and doctor services will be maintained.
The view on global warming has changed since the last five year plan. Super profits will be made by reluctantly accepting government and private dollars for "clean energy" projects. Meanwhile, heavy equipment manufacturing plans will be laid for the vast system of dikes that will be needed to protect sea coasts from flooding.
"Above all," said Michael Milkem, this year's chairperson, "we must remember to not try to micromanage the situation. Our strength is in sticking to fundamentals. Don't sweat the small stuff. Control the politicians, interest rates, and bank lending policies and the small stuff will take care of itself."
The usual report on the prior five year plan was handed out in advance. Although there were some minor glitches in 2008 and 2009, the plan was deemed to be highly successful. The political baton was successfully handed off between the two parties without any real change in policy. Large numbers of workers were impoverished, which will ensure their loyalty and hard work during the coming years, if they are rehired. Almost all value was squeezed out of the economy and into a much smaller number of individual capitalists and banking institutions than had been necessary in the past. The heroin supply from Afghanistan was assured, military spending increased, and China and India got in lockstep with the plan for global development.
The key components of the new five year plan can be summarized as: maintain a stable trajectory. Military spending is to grow, but not so much as to jeopardize other segments of the economy. Unemployment is to recover, as its primary purpose of indebting large numbers of people and insuring their future loyalty has been largely accomplished. Stock market and housing price booms are designed in towards the end of the plan, to be facilitated by easy credit from the Federal Reserve. New regulations are planned to minimize competition, and new loopholes have already been worked into them that can be used to advantage only by the largest corporations.
The health care system in the United States is to remain mainly as it is, with only the most minor of reforms. Sick people are an economic liability once their wallets have been drained, but using tax dollars extracted from workers, high prices for drugs, insurance, and doctor services will be maintained.
The view on global warming has changed since the last five year plan. Super profits will be made by reluctantly accepting government and private dollars for "clean energy" projects. Meanwhile, heavy equipment manufacturing plans will be laid for the vast system of dikes that will be needed to protect sea coasts from flooding.
"Above all," said Michael Milkem, this year's chairperson, "we must remember to not try to micromanage the situation. Our strength is in sticking to fundamentals. Don't sweat the small stuff. Control the politicians, interest rates, and bank lending policies and the small stuff will take care of itself."
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, June 8, 2009
The Air Conditioned Nightmare
The United States Congress apparently appropriated some $5 billion to help certain American citizens decrease their air-conditioning bills. This is supposed to be green and a stimulus to the American economy at the same time. Low income people get their houses insulated. Their air-conditioning becomes more efficient, so their electricity bills go down. Less electricity means less carbon dioxide emissions, so less global warming. At the same time, jobs are created for unemployed construction workers. Who could argue against that?
Me, of course. I don't see why low income citizens need air conditioning at all. Put me in charge, and I would ban air conditioning except for special circumstances, such as hospitals and nursing homes.
I don't advocate that simply because the amount of electricity used in the United States would plummet the first summer after such a law is enacted. Although that should be a good enough reason for an environmentalist.
I think air-conditioning has deconditioned the human species in the United States more than heat and humidity ever did.
I speak from experience. From the ages of 6 to 9, I lived in a house in Jacksonville, Florida that was not air-conditioned. We did have fans, but mainly we just adjusted to the heat. The schools I went to in Jacksonville never had air conditioning. Somehow we survived. We even played in the heat in the summertime. Sure, we liked to go swimming in cool waters too. But you can't play baseball in a swimming pool.
My family moved into a house with central heating and air conditioning when I was 9. My mother controlled the thermostat, setting it to 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and 72 degrees in the winter. Man oh man, had we arrived in the middle class. It threatened to ruin the outdoors for me. If the inside of a house is 95 degrees and outside it is 95 degrees, you might as well be outside. At the age of 8 I had been well-acclimated to the heat. At the age of 12 I was acclimated to the "perfect" indoor climate. I still went outside in summer, but I often had a bad attitude about the heat.
A lot of people did not just play outdoors in the heat. They worked outdoors in the heat. A man who would not work in the heat, if that was the work that was available, was considered a lazy man.
So, when did air conditioning become a human right? Not just a luxury for the rich, but such a necessity that taxpayers are required to pay for it for poor people? Even though it is a major creator of greenhouse gasses?
Some early cultures had primitive versions of air conditioning, but the modern versions were based on cooling engines of various types first created in the 1800's. Willis Haviland Carrier is credited with the first practical air-conditioner, invented in 1902. The invention of Freon in 1928 made air-conditioning more practical, but mostly until the 1950's air conditioning was a luxury item. In the 1960's air conditioning became a standard feature of middle class homes in the southern sweep of the United States. Air-conditioned automobiles did not become common until the 1970s. But some time between then and now air conditioning came to be considered a necessity, not a luxury or just something nice.
Which means, we can do bloody well without them. Let us stop denying nature. Let us feel nature's summer heat. Let us feel that Autumn is a relief and that even Winter has its merit.
Me, of course. I don't see why low income citizens need air conditioning at all. Put me in charge, and I would ban air conditioning except for special circumstances, such as hospitals and nursing homes.
I don't advocate that simply because the amount of electricity used in the United States would plummet the first summer after such a law is enacted. Although that should be a good enough reason for an environmentalist.
I think air-conditioning has deconditioned the human species in the United States more than heat and humidity ever did.
I speak from experience. From the ages of 6 to 9, I lived in a house in Jacksonville, Florida that was not air-conditioned. We did have fans, but mainly we just adjusted to the heat. The schools I went to in Jacksonville never had air conditioning. Somehow we survived. We even played in the heat in the summertime. Sure, we liked to go swimming in cool waters too. But you can't play baseball in a swimming pool.
My family moved into a house with central heating and air conditioning when I was 9. My mother controlled the thermostat, setting it to 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and 72 degrees in the winter. Man oh man, had we arrived in the middle class. It threatened to ruin the outdoors for me. If the inside of a house is 95 degrees and outside it is 95 degrees, you might as well be outside. At the age of 8 I had been well-acclimated to the heat. At the age of 12 I was acclimated to the "perfect" indoor climate. I still went outside in summer, but I often had a bad attitude about the heat.
A lot of people did not just play outdoors in the heat. They worked outdoors in the heat. A man who would not work in the heat, if that was the work that was available, was considered a lazy man.
So, when did air conditioning become a human right? Not just a luxury for the rich, but such a necessity that taxpayers are required to pay for it for poor people? Even though it is a major creator of greenhouse gasses?
Some early cultures had primitive versions of air conditioning, but the modern versions were based on cooling engines of various types first created in the 1800's. Willis Haviland Carrier is credited with the first practical air-conditioner, invented in 1902. The invention of Freon in 1928 made air-conditioning more practical, but mostly until the 1950's air conditioning was a luxury item. In the 1960's air conditioning became a standard feature of middle class homes in the southern sweep of the United States. Air-conditioned automobiles did not become common until the 1970s. But some time between then and now air conditioning came to be considered a necessity, not a luxury or just something nice.
Which means, we can do bloody well without them. Let us stop denying nature. Let us feel nature's summer heat. Let us feel that Autumn is a relief and that even Winter has its merit.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Groundhog Day Forecasting
Groundhog Day is rapidly becoming the most important day for reflection and celebration of the year. Will Spring come? It isn't just a question of whether there will be a few more weeks of winter. There will be more than that in Alaska, less than that in Florida. What will the weather bring? What strange tidings of global warming and human folly can be seen?
Most Americans have been enduring a fiercely cold winter. In Mendocino County, California, the opposite is true. It usually rains here most days in winter. This year we are in a drought, or have perfect winter weather, depending on how you look at it. There has not even been the usual ocean fog to obscure the sun. Highs in the 60's. Just plain weird. One of my apple trees began blooming in December. Jan and I have been taking Hugo to Schooner Gulch Beach to run in the sun and sand. Schooner Gulch, normally a strong stream in winter, is a trickle. Neighbors report that other seasonal streams are dry.
America is in trouble, friends, and I can't say we don't deserve it. We built our economy on false premises. "Free trade" and unregulated greed were supposed to bring us prosperity, instead they have brought us to grief. Too many Americans drove SUVs they could not really afford to places they did not need to go to buy crap they did not need to buy. Americans who were incapable of working within a budget rewarded themselves with McMansions. Now we have McMansion ghost towns to add to the collapsed city centers of the old mill towns. We won't let immigrants in to fill up the empty housing. If we did let them in, it would add to a population that is already environmentally unsustainable. The United States of America can no longer feed its own population, after centuries of being one of the world's great food exporters (we still export food, but we import more than we export).
Our government is set up to be conservative. It is very time consuming to make any fundamental change in the government's structure or even policy (See Is America a Democracy?). The government was not designed to change as fast as technology its consequences. Our "sacred" U. S. Constitution was designed to protect the property of the then nascent economic aristocracy, including their property in slaves. It has been improved by some of its amendments, but it was not designed for our modern society.
The Obama administration, while potentially an improvement on the Bush and Clinton administrations, is off to a pretty bad start. The good things President Obama has done [closing the extra-legal foreign prisons and allowing California and other states to set better miles-per-gallon car requirements] are just observing the basic laws of the land that W. had been breaking. Having the tax-and-spend Democrats trying to appoint tax-cheating jackasses to Cabinet posts sends a very bad signal to the citizens.
No President is preparing the United States or the world for what is coming down the line. The weather is going to get heavier. Ecosystems really are changing or collapsing fast enough to see within a few years. The economy needs a total reorientation. We need to think about what we want to produce and consume given the environmental impacts of that consumption. We need to design and implement a new economy that can do this. We need a plan to lower the size of the human population to a long-term sustainable level in a fair and humane manner.
Let me just predict we are not going to get those things from the federal government. The much heralded economic stimulus package only hints at solutions. It does not look to me like it will do much unless you are in one of the special interest groups, like construction firms and workers, that it targets.
At least maybe the frothing-mouthed Republican Party of the past 30 years is going into hibernation. Moderates are taking over the Republican Party in former ultra-right strongholds like Texas. Take away the evolution-denying, wife-cheating, IRS-cheating Christian hypocrites and there are some basic, ancient lessons in the culture of the Republican Party that should not be thrown out with the bath water. The most important one is personal responsibility. If you are not willing to take responsibility for your life and for your community, no amount of government bossing around is ever going to make things right. At the leftist end of the spectrum, Personal Responsibility is one of the Ten Key Values of the Green Party.
Things may change quickly, or they may change slowly. But the weather is changing. Most likely scenario: America looks like the Sahara in 50 years. On the other hand, higher temperatures mean more water vapor from the oceans, and it has to come down somewhere, so parts of America could be in for a Deluge. Maybe Obama can start building the giant irrigation canals that people once thought they could see on Mars.
Most Americans have been enduring a fiercely cold winter. In Mendocino County, California, the opposite is true. It usually rains here most days in winter. This year we are in a drought, or have perfect winter weather, depending on how you look at it. There has not even been the usual ocean fog to obscure the sun. Highs in the 60's. Just plain weird. One of my apple trees began blooming in December. Jan and I have been taking Hugo to Schooner Gulch Beach to run in the sun and sand. Schooner Gulch, normally a strong stream in winter, is a trickle. Neighbors report that other seasonal streams are dry.
America is in trouble, friends, and I can't say we don't deserve it. We built our economy on false premises. "Free trade" and unregulated greed were supposed to bring us prosperity, instead they have brought us to grief. Too many Americans drove SUVs they could not really afford to places they did not need to go to buy crap they did not need to buy. Americans who were incapable of working within a budget rewarded themselves with McMansions. Now we have McMansion ghost towns to add to the collapsed city centers of the old mill towns. We won't let immigrants in to fill up the empty housing. If we did let them in, it would add to a population that is already environmentally unsustainable. The United States of America can no longer feed its own population, after centuries of being one of the world's great food exporters (we still export food, but we import more than we export).
Our government is set up to be conservative. It is very time consuming to make any fundamental change in the government's structure or even policy (See Is America a Democracy?). The government was not designed to change as fast as technology its consequences. Our "sacred" U. S. Constitution was designed to protect the property of the then nascent economic aristocracy, including their property in slaves. It has been improved by some of its amendments, but it was not designed for our modern society.
The Obama administration, while potentially an improvement on the Bush and Clinton administrations, is off to a pretty bad start. The good things President Obama has done [closing the extra-legal foreign prisons and allowing California and other states to set better miles-per-gallon car requirements] are just observing the basic laws of the land that W. had been breaking. Having the tax-and-spend Democrats trying to appoint tax-cheating jackasses to Cabinet posts sends a very bad signal to the citizens.
No President is preparing the United States or the world for what is coming down the line. The weather is going to get heavier. Ecosystems really are changing or collapsing fast enough to see within a few years. The economy needs a total reorientation. We need to think about what we want to produce and consume given the environmental impacts of that consumption. We need to design and implement a new economy that can do this. We need a plan to lower the size of the human population to a long-term sustainable level in a fair and humane manner.
Let me just predict we are not going to get those things from the federal government. The much heralded economic stimulus package only hints at solutions. It does not look to me like it will do much unless you are in one of the special interest groups, like construction firms and workers, that it targets.
At least maybe the frothing-mouthed Republican Party of the past 30 years is going into hibernation. Moderates are taking over the Republican Party in former ultra-right strongholds like Texas. Take away the evolution-denying, wife-cheating, IRS-cheating Christian hypocrites and there are some basic, ancient lessons in the culture of the Republican Party that should not be thrown out with the bath water. The most important one is personal responsibility. If you are not willing to take responsibility for your life and for your community, no amount of government bossing around is ever going to make things right. At the leftist end of the spectrum, Personal Responsibility is one of the Ten Key Values of the Green Party.
Things may change quickly, or they may change slowly. But the weather is changing. Most likely scenario: America looks like the Sahara in 50 years. On the other hand, higher temperatures mean more water vapor from the oceans, and it has to come down somewhere, so parts of America could be in for a Deluge. Maybe Obama can start building the giant irrigation canals that people once thought they could see on Mars.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Stop the General Motors Bailout
Some members of Congress appear to be getting ready to bailout General Motors, aka GM. This would be bad for America. Allowing GM to go out of business would be a very good thing. And it GM is to stay in business, the money should come from its shareholders, not the taxpayers.
The pimps in Congress who want money for GM, and the corporate press, will be careful not to remind you of all the dividends that were drained out of GM over the last century. If even the dividends paid out in the last ten years had been kept and used to create a cash reserve, or invested in producing small, energy-efficient cars, GM would be fine right now.
How about sucking the dividends back in? Have GM send to its stockholders notices saying that if they don't send back the dividends, GM will go under. See what happens.
Think of the enormous benefits America will see if GM goes under. Ford and Chrysler have plenty of capacity to supply U.S. consumers with cars. In addition, when GM goes under, everything it owns will go for sale under the bankruptcy court. Maybe a foreign car manufacturer, Tata or Toyota or Fiat, that has more competent management will buy the whole thing. Maybe some parts of it will go here, some parts there. Maybe GM will be broken up into four or five smaller American-owned companies that are better managed, nimbler, and capable of operating in the 21st century.
So why is the Democratic Party leadership so keen on giving your taxes to a bunch of old corporate capitalist types. They will say it is jobs. That is their sales pitch. But the same money could create a lot more jobs if put into any industry other than auto manufacturing.
To be efficient, robots have to be used to run modern automobile factories. So there are two choices for your taxpayer dollars: recreating an inefficient GM with human jobs, or creating an efficient, competitive GM with robots replacing workers.
Let us just face up to the fact that when push comes to shove, the Democratic Party uses taxpayer dollars to do its campaign donors bidding. Between the United Auto Workers, the GM bosses, and hedge fund managers, Barack Obama and other Democratic Party officials were flooded with money this campaign cycle. Those donors want to be repaid. Job creation is just one Democratic Party standard marketing tool. I am not against job creation, but I know when it is a sales pitch instead of the real deal.
GM purposefully made and promoted miles-per-gallon, expensive SUVs that they knew were killing the planet (see Global Warming) and impoverishing consumers. They were happy to make us dependent on foreign oil and lobbied for drilling for oil in ecologically sensitive areas of the United States.
If GM's management deserve anything from the government, it is the gallows.
More data:
General Motors
The pimps in Congress who want money for GM, and the corporate press, will be careful not to remind you of all the dividends that were drained out of GM over the last century. If even the dividends paid out in the last ten years had been kept and used to create a cash reserve, or invested in producing small, energy-efficient cars, GM would be fine right now.
How about sucking the dividends back in? Have GM send to its stockholders notices saying that if they don't send back the dividends, GM will go under. See what happens.
Think of the enormous benefits America will see if GM goes under. Ford and Chrysler have plenty of capacity to supply U.S. consumers with cars. In addition, when GM goes under, everything it owns will go for sale under the bankruptcy court. Maybe a foreign car manufacturer, Tata or Toyota or Fiat, that has more competent management will buy the whole thing. Maybe some parts of it will go here, some parts there. Maybe GM will be broken up into four or five smaller American-owned companies that are better managed, nimbler, and capable of operating in the 21st century.
So why is the Democratic Party leadership so keen on giving your taxes to a bunch of old corporate capitalist types. They will say it is jobs. That is their sales pitch. But the same money could create a lot more jobs if put into any industry other than auto manufacturing.
To be efficient, robots have to be used to run modern automobile factories. So there are two choices for your taxpayer dollars: recreating an inefficient GM with human jobs, or creating an efficient, competitive GM with robots replacing workers.
Let us just face up to the fact that when push comes to shove, the Democratic Party uses taxpayer dollars to do its campaign donors bidding. Between the United Auto Workers, the GM bosses, and hedge fund managers, Barack Obama and other Democratic Party officials were flooded with money this campaign cycle. Those donors want to be repaid. Job creation is just one Democratic Party standard marketing tool. I am not against job creation, but I know when it is a sales pitch instead of the real deal.
GM purposefully made and promoted miles-per-gallon, expensive SUVs that they knew were killing the planet (see Global Warming) and impoverishing consumers. They were happy to make us dependent on foreign oil and lobbied for drilling for oil in ecologically sensitive areas of the United States.
If GM's management deserve anything from the government, it is the gallows.
More data:
General Motors
Saturday, June 7, 2008
John McCain and Barack Obama Already Failing
The Friday, June 6, 2008, vote to kill the progress of the Climate Change bill in the Senate of the United States of America should be like a cold shower on Monday morning after a long weekend of partying. John McCain may offer experience and Barack Obama may offer hope, but whichever one gets elected will be the President of a quagmire of special interests, giant egos, and partisan back stabbing. The two-party system has failed, or at least the two current parties are both failing to deliver what America needs. Both McCain and Obama promise to bring the two parties together, to end partisan feuding. But they intend to do this by compromise, by standing in the middle of the quagmire and inviting everyone to drown.
The bill is Senate Bill 3036, Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, meant to address the issue of global warming. In the Senate, having passed out of committee, the bill needed 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a vote. It gathered only 48 votes. The Democratic Party leadership refused to allow a full debate, and the offering of amendments, on the bill. Four Democrats [Brown, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu] voted against the bill and six [Biden, Byrd, Clinton, Conrad, Kennedy, Obama] could not be bothered to vote. McCain was also too busy trying to lead us around the quagmire to vote. Republicans voting Yes included Collins, Dole, Martinez, Smith, Snowe, Sununu, and Warner.
While the bill itself could be criticized from any perspective, mostly not strong enough for environmentalists and too strong for those who don't take global warming seriously, at least it would have gotten the ball rolling. Policy could be tweaked in future bills. Now there will be no action until at least 2009. Given that Al Gore was Vice-President to Bill Clinton and nothing was done about climate change, nothing at all, for those 8 years, you might think environmentalists in the Democratic Party would be wondering about the quality of their party leadership.
There are things, sociopathies if you will, that are wrong with the American people, and those sociopathies are reflected and amplified in the two alternately ruling parties. We have become a lazy, greedy, immoral, and spineless people. We whine about conditions, but won't even vote for independents or third party candidates on the one day a year (or every two years), the five minutes every two years we are given the opportunity to vote.
Don't forget that the Senate is an undemocratic institution by design. States with just a few people in them get as many Senate votes as states like California, Florida, Texas and New York.
Send both the ruling class and your fellow Americans a message this November. Yell it from the roof tops. Vote for Cynthia McKinney for President and for the best candidates in each race regardless of political party. Vote for Cindy Sheehan and Carol Wolman for Congress. I can't vouch for each and every Green Party candidate, but here is a list of California Green candidates [See also my Green Party pages].
And plan on a social system based on anarchism. America is falling apart so quickly, that might be your only real choice anyway when the government collapses. At least when the government collapses the national debt will disappear. Setting up a new national government, which would have to re-assume the national debt, would be economic folly of the first order.
Yes, it is true. If the Democratic Party succeeds in crushing the Green Party, my fallback position is not to become a war crimes supporter by becoming a Democrat. For voting purpose I would become independent, but for organizing purposes I would promote an anarchist social organization.
The bill is Senate Bill 3036, Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, meant to address the issue of global warming. In the Senate, having passed out of committee, the bill needed 60 votes to end debate and proceed to a vote. It gathered only 48 votes. The Democratic Party leadership refused to allow a full debate, and the offering of amendments, on the bill. Four Democrats [Brown, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu] voted against the bill and six [Biden, Byrd, Clinton, Conrad, Kennedy, Obama] could not be bothered to vote. McCain was also too busy trying to lead us around the quagmire to vote. Republicans voting Yes included Collins, Dole, Martinez, Smith, Snowe, Sununu, and Warner.
While the bill itself could be criticized from any perspective, mostly not strong enough for environmentalists and too strong for those who don't take global warming seriously, at least it would have gotten the ball rolling. Policy could be tweaked in future bills. Now there will be no action until at least 2009. Given that Al Gore was Vice-President to Bill Clinton and nothing was done about climate change, nothing at all, for those 8 years, you might think environmentalists in the Democratic Party would be wondering about the quality of their party leadership.
There are things, sociopathies if you will, that are wrong with the American people, and those sociopathies are reflected and amplified in the two alternately ruling parties. We have become a lazy, greedy, immoral, and spineless people. We whine about conditions, but won't even vote for independents or third party candidates on the one day a year (or every two years), the five minutes every two years we are given the opportunity to vote.
Don't forget that the Senate is an undemocratic institution by design. States with just a few people in them get as many Senate votes as states like California, Florida, Texas and New York.
Send both the ruling class and your fellow Americans a message this November. Yell it from the roof tops. Vote for Cynthia McKinney for President and for the best candidates in each race regardless of political party. Vote for Cindy Sheehan and Carol Wolman for Congress. I can't vouch for each and every Green Party candidate, but here is a list of California Green candidates [See also my Green Party pages].
And plan on a social system based on anarchism. America is falling apart so quickly, that might be your only real choice anyway when the government collapses. At least when the government collapses the national debt will disappear. Setting up a new national government, which would have to re-assume the national debt, would be economic folly of the first order.
Yes, it is true. If the Democratic Party succeeds in crushing the Green Party, my fallback position is not to become a war crimes supporter by becoming a Democrat. For voting purpose I would become independent, but for organizing purposes I would promote an anarchist social organization.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Polar Bears, Wheat Futures, and Nuclear Reactors
What could Polar Bears, Wheat Futures, and Nuclear Reactors have in common?
There are millions of things in the world that can be measured (quantified, in science speak). At any given time roughly half of all measured things will be headed lower and half headed higher. Sometimes when two sets of numbers are headed in the same direction there is a causal link. One thing influences the other, or both are influenced by a third cause.
So, as many an oil company executive has observed, if indeed global temperatures are rising and so is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that in itself does not prove that carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming. Of course oil-industry types and anti-environmentalists often will not even admit that global temperatures are rising.
This summer the ice in the arctic melted on an unprecedented scale. Reports are that a number of scientists who were reserving judgement on global warming threw in the towel and are finally agreeing that we are not just seeing some normal fluctuations in climate. Global warming is real and its root cause is carbon dioxide emmissions from burning fossil fuels.
Polar bears, of course, are a large species of mammal that is seeing a dramatic impact from global warming. The melting ice means starving and drowning polar bears.
Wheat has become very expensive. Here the causes are more complex, but go back to global warming. The consequences are dire, as well. Already the increased price of wheat means that budgets, from family budgets to humanitarian aid budgets, can't buy as much wheat flour. Calory counts are heading lower, and where famine is already a problem some carefully constructed statistics would probably show that the mortality rate for humans is climbing.
Wheat production has fallen for two reasons. One is widespread drought in key wheat producing areas, including in the U.S. and Australia. Droughts come and go, but most climate scientists believe that global warming is making them worse. The other factor is ethanol (which is the same subtance found in alcoholic beverages). Rather than raising the mileage per gallon requirements of automobiles, the Federal Government in its wisdom has decided to subsidize ethanol production as a substitute for gasoline. Corn (maize) is used to make ethanol in the U.S. That new use competes with corn for fattening animals, and making corn bread, popcorn, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. The value of corn sold by farmers has zoomed upward. So farmers started planting more corn and less wheat. The demand for wheat did not decrease, so the price of wheat has climbed as well. Wheat futures are the buying and selling of wheat in advance of its physical availability; they tell us where prices are heading. Up.
Next year, reacting to higher prices, farmers might plant less corn and more wheat. But the amount of viable agricultural land is limited; both cannot go up at the same time.
Which brings us to nuclear reactors. These formerly discredited (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island) machines can produce energy without significantly contributing to global warming. Does that mean they are a good idea?
Suppose nuclear power meets all new demand for energy, and even picks up some of the slack from carbon-based fuels as oil production continues to decline. Suppose the problems of disposing of radioactive waste and protecting the plants from terrorists (and more likely and dangerous: incompetent engineers, builders, and operators) were solved. What would that get us?
Very little. With unlimited power and ever-intensifying agricultural efforts we would just do one more lap of the Malthusian spiral. A larger human population would mean more ecological destruction. More polution. And more people just a few calories a day from starvation. It would buy the earth's ancient life-culture a few decades at most.
I see only two viable paths. One is cutting way back. Cutting back on the number of children people have, so that in a generation or two the earth's biped population falls substantially. Cutting back on energy consumption in rich nations. Cutting back on jet-enabled tourism. Cutting back on automobiles. Cutting back on air-conditioning.
The other is moving energy-intensive processes off-planet. Put the nuclear reactors on the moon, make the toasters and flat-screen TV's and Priuses there, then slip them down the gravity well to earth for distribution.
Best of all, do both. Even with much production moved off-planet, I don't think this earth can support more than about 1 billion humans over the long run.
There are millions of things in the world that can be measured (quantified, in science speak). At any given time roughly half of all measured things will be headed lower and half headed higher. Sometimes when two sets of numbers are headed in the same direction there is a causal link. One thing influences the other, or both are influenced by a third cause.
So, as many an oil company executive has observed, if indeed global temperatures are rising and so is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that in itself does not prove that carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming. Of course oil-industry types and anti-environmentalists often will not even admit that global temperatures are rising.
This summer the ice in the arctic melted on an unprecedented scale. Reports are that a number of scientists who were reserving judgement on global warming threw in the towel and are finally agreeing that we are not just seeing some normal fluctuations in climate. Global warming is real and its root cause is carbon dioxide emmissions from burning fossil fuels.
Polar bears, of course, are a large species of mammal that is seeing a dramatic impact from global warming. The melting ice means starving and drowning polar bears.
Wheat has become very expensive. Here the causes are more complex, but go back to global warming. The consequences are dire, as well. Already the increased price of wheat means that budgets, from family budgets to humanitarian aid budgets, can't buy as much wheat flour. Calory counts are heading lower, and where famine is already a problem some carefully constructed statistics would probably show that the mortality rate for humans is climbing.
Wheat production has fallen for two reasons. One is widespread drought in key wheat producing areas, including in the U.S. and Australia. Droughts come and go, but most climate scientists believe that global warming is making them worse. The other factor is ethanol (which is the same subtance found in alcoholic beverages). Rather than raising the mileage per gallon requirements of automobiles, the Federal Government in its wisdom has decided to subsidize ethanol production as a substitute for gasoline. Corn (maize) is used to make ethanol in the U.S. That new use competes with corn for fattening animals, and making corn bread, popcorn, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. The value of corn sold by farmers has zoomed upward. So farmers started planting more corn and less wheat. The demand for wheat did not decrease, so the price of wheat has climbed as well. Wheat futures are the buying and selling of wheat in advance of its physical availability; they tell us where prices are heading. Up.
Next year, reacting to higher prices, farmers might plant less corn and more wheat. But the amount of viable agricultural land is limited; both cannot go up at the same time.
Which brings us to nuclear reactors. These formerly discredited (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island) machines can produce energy without significantly contributing to global warming. Does that mean they are a good idea?
Suppose nuclear power meets all new demand for energy, and even picks up some of the slack from carbon-based fuels as oil production continues to decline. Suppose the problems of disposing of radioactive waste and protecting the plants from terrorists (and more likely and dangerous: incompetent engineers, builders, and operators) were solved. What would that get us?
Very little. With unlimited power and ever-intensifying agricultural efforts we would just do one more lap of the Malthusian spiral. A larger human population would mean more ecological destruction. More polution. And more people just a few calories a day from starvation. It would buy the earth's ancient life-culture a few decades at most.
I see only two viable paths. One is cutting way back. Cutting back on the number of children people have, so that in a generation or two the earth's biped population falls substantially. Cutting back on energy consumption in rich nations. Cutting back on jet-enabled tourism. Cutting back on automobiles. Cutting back on air-conditioning.
The other is moving energy-intensive processes off-planet. Put the nuclear reactors on the moon, make the toasters and flat-screen TV's and Priuses there, then slip them down the gravity well to earth for distribution.
Best of all, do both. Even with much production moved off-planet, I don't think this earth can support more than about 1 billion humans over the long run.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Korea: Brotherhood of War Review
Speaking of quagmires (in Iraq), most people forget we (United States citizens) are still bogged down in Korea. We've been in that bog since 1946. Even though South Korea is one of the richest nations in the world and has taken many jobs away from American workers, we still pay a small fortune in taxes each year to keep American troops stationed there. How did this come about, and is change possible?
Most Americans have seen films set in the Korean War. U.S. Soldiers are the good guys, communist North Koreans or Chinese are the bad guys. Some films of this genre are Pork Chop Hill, The Bridge at Toko Ri, Retreat Hell, Men in War and Mash. The historical context is simple: bad people (communists) attacked good people (South Koreans) and the U.S. cavalry rode in to the rescue, with much heroic sacrifice.
I have been studying Korean history lately, and find it fascinating. The Korean film industry makes first class films these days, and one of the best I have seen so far is Brotherhood of War (Tae Guk Gi). We see the war through the eyes of two brothers in South Korea who are "drafted" when the war breaks out (they are captured and forced to fight the North Koreans). They are apolitical; their concerns were about the economic survival of their family. As they fight and fellow soldiers are blown to bits around them (beware, it is hyper-real, along the line of Private Ryan) the older brother becomes a vehement anti-communist. The younger brother toughens up into a good soldier, but loses it after watching his squad murder POWs in cold blood.
What is only slightly unbelievable is that such animosity between the north and south Koreans would have existed in 1950, only four years after an occupation by allies Russia and the U.S. ended a five-decade long occupation by Japan. In 1945 most Koreans were united in opposing the Japanese and believing that if Japan lost the war Korea would be "free at last." The brutal occupation and political suppression (the U.S. had communists, socialists, nationalists, and anarchists suppressed in the south; the Russians promoted communists, who quickly put the screws on everyone else in the north) of 1946 probably pleased very few Koreans.
I thought the war was going to be just another propaganda film, glorifying the South and denouncing the North, but it grew more complex as the plot unravelled. By the end it was hard to sympathise with anyone but the dead.
The acting was top-notch, as was the directing. The pace good and I had only occasional difficulty keeping track of the characters. Brotherhood of War can be watched by war movie enthusiasts, but mostly it illustrates the old adage that war is hell.
I think Korea could be reunited. I believe North Korea has no foreign troops helping it. South Korea is a rich country. It should defend itself until reunification.
For more information on Korea see my Korea page.
For more of my film reviews see my Film page.
Most Americans have seen films set in the Korean War. U.S. Soldiers are the good guys, communist North Koreans or Chinese are the bad guys. Some films of this genre are Pork Chop Hill, The Bridge at Toko Ri, Retreat Hell, Men in War and Mash. The historical context is simple: bad people (communists) attacked good people (South Koreans) and the U.S. cavalry rode in to the rescue, with much heroic sacrifice.
I have been studying Korean history lately, and find it fascinating. The Korean film industry makes first class films these days, and one of the best I have seen so far is Brotherhood of War (Tae Guk Gi). We see the war through the eyes of two brothers in South Korea who are "drafted" when the war breaks out (they are captured and forced to fight the North Koreans). They are apolitical; their concerns were about the economic survival of their family. As they fight and fellow soldiers are blown to bits around them (beware, it is hyper-real, along the line of Private Ryan) the older brother becomes a vehement anti-communist. The younger brother toughens up into a good soldier, but loses it after watching his squad murder POWs in cold blood.
What is only slightly unbelievable is that such animosity between the north and south Koreans would have existed in 1950, only four years after an occupation by allies Russia and the U.S. ended a five-decade long occupation by Japan. In 1945 most Koreans were united in opposing the Japanese and believing that if Japan lost the war Korea would be "free at last." The brutal occupation and political suppression (the U.S. had communists, socialists, nationalists, and anarchists suppressed in the south; the Russians promoted communists, who quickly put the screws on everyone else in the north) of 1946 probably pleased very few Koreans.
I thought the war was going to be just another propaganda film, glorifying the South and denouncing the North, but it grew more complex as the plot unravelled. By the end it was hard to sympathise with anyone but the dead.
The acting was top-notch, as was the directing. The pace good and I had only occasional difficulty keeping track of the characters. Brotherhood of War can be watched by war movie enthusiasts, but mostly it illustrates the old adage that war is hell.
I think Korea could be reunited. I believe North Korea has no foreign troops helping it. South Korea is a rich country. It should defend itself until reunification.
For more information on Korea see my Korea page.
For more of my film reviews see my Film page.
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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