If philanthropy is an active effort to promote human welfare, is giving back only in the winter of your life, true philanthropy?
"I expect to pass though life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, [to keep it even as others need it, only to give it back at the end, is not generosity] as I shall not pass this way again."—William Penn
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Economy and Global Warming in a Nutshell
It seems to me that the capital of our planet is the total of its resources maintained by the energy received from our sun. A balance is kept among these resources by the laws of nature. If an imbalance, for example, overpopulation occurs, it is culled by nature. Over time, a balance is maintained in all species of plants and animals (including the human animal) in this manner. And, since the pictures from the moon show our planet in a vast sea of emptiness—it is obvious that its resources are finite.
Whether by intuition or conscious design, some earlier societies, the Native American Indian for example, lived in renewable harmony with nature. Our present-day society, on the other hand, is living on mined resources. We are not in balance and without major changes to our systems, we can never be. If we, on a planet wide basis, do not cure our imbalances and get in renewable step with our worlds’ resources, nature will do it for us—and I am sure we won’t enjoy her methods. The laws of nature and physics do not compromise, they are what they are and our wants and desires will not be considered.
I have written before that unrestrained capitalism only works because of an expansion of itself. How often have you heard the refrain—”to create jobs and get out of this recession we must expand (or grow) the economy”.
Speculation in an economy is expansion on the cuff: If it is introduced and balanced out in the near term, you have expanded the economy. If it causes a retraction, you have created a recession or, if severe and prolonged, a depression.
The bursting of the debt bubble built up by the manic speculation in the 1920’s brought The Great Depression because, as people attempted to reduce their debt there was less spending in the general day-to-day economy and therefore, jobs were lost and unemployment rose.
Neoclassical economists of that day said, to increase employment you need to cut money wages. But that, of course, would just make it harder for an, in debt, worker to pay off their debt and increase the time before they could begin to consume more in the day-to-day economy. And, if their wages were cut to zero (unemployed), how could they do either.
Sadly, the conservatives of today espouse the same failed policy—cut programs and pay off the debt. (I wonder how many of the ones saying this are unemployed—conservatives in congress we know are not. And the Tea Party puppets who are having their strings pulled—do they want their government benefits cut, their Social Security and Medicare perhaps).
The Neoclassical method does not work, history has shown that. What does work is the Keynesian Model, inflationary government spending (either by borrowing or printing) to create aggregate demand in the economy and thereby create jobs—it ended the Great Depression and it would have ended the current deep recession if the conservatives had allowed enough spending—but, of course, they didn’t. I have written about this in a previous E-pamphlet: “Empirical Evidence for Keynesian Model”.
Now comes the big caveat: as I said above, unrestrained capitalism only works if it can expand.
Is there room for more expansion?—maybe, in an economic sense, if the developed nations keep taking more and more of the world’s resources unto themselves. But, this, business-as-usual path, the path that the conservatives insist on taking, will only bring on the dire consequences of runaway global warming and in the end we will all perish.
The other path, the one I hope we travel down, is the one where we phase out, very quickly, the use of fossil fuels (unless and until we are able to capture and sequester the pollutants in them) and switch to all nonpolluting renewable sources.
I realize that a world running on renewable sources may not support the existing population, if and when we get there, but if our species and millions of others are to survive, there doesn’t seem to be another choice—nature will do the culling.
There is a ray of hope though, if humanity is able to pull this off, it will be by stringent government regulations, ones that will change the way unregulated capitalism now operates. And, instead of the few having such a large claim on the world’s resources, more will be made available to others and nature will have less culling to do.
Young people! please get actively involved in all elections, you are the ones who will suffer the most if there is not massive change in the way we treat our environment.
Support only progressive Democrats, they are the ones who try to make the changes in regulations that are needed if the United States is to do its part in saving the planet from dire global warming consequences.
And join 350.org in their worldwide effort to save our planet.
Whether by intuition or conscious design, some earlier societies, the Native American Indian for example, lived in renewable harmony with nature. Our present-day society, on the other hand, is living on mined resources. We are not in balance and without major changes to our systems, we can never be. If we, on a planet wide basis, do not cure our imbalances and get in renewable step with our worlds’ resources, nature will do it for us—and I am sure we won’t enjoy her methods. The laws of nature and physics do not compromise, they are what they are and our wants and desires will not be considered.
I have written before that unrestrained capitalism only works because of an expansion of itself. How often have you heard the refrain—”to create jobs and get out of this recession we must expand (or grow) the economy”.
Speculation in an economy is expansion on the cuff: If it is introduced and balanced out in the near term, you have expanded the economy. If it causes a retraction, you have created a recession or, if severe and prolonged, a depression.
The bursting of the debt bubble built up by the manic speculation in the 1920’s brought The Great Depression because, as people attempted to reduce their debt there was less spending in the general day-to-day economy and therefore, jobs were lost and unemployment rose.
Neoclassical economists of that day said, to increase employment you need to cut money wages. But that, of course, would just make it harder for an, in debt, worker to pay off their debt and increase the time before they could begin to consume more in the day-to-day economy. And, if their wages were cut to zero (unemployed), how could they do either.
Sadly, the conservatives of today espouse the same failed policy—cut programs and pay off the debt. (I wonder how many of the ones saying this are unemployed—conservatives in congress we know are not. And the Tea Party puppets who are having their strings pulled—do they want their government benefits cut, their Social Security and Medicare perhaps).
The Neoclassical method does not work, history has shown that. What does work is the Keynesian Model, inflationary government spending (either by borrowing or printing) to create aggregate demand in the economy and thereby create jobs—it ended the Great Depression and it would have ended the current deep recession if the conservatives had allowed enough spending—but, of course, they didn’t. I have written about this in a previous E-pamphlet: “Empirical Evidence for Keynesian Model”.
Now comes the big caveat: as I said above, unrestrained capitalism only works if it can expand.
Is there room for more expansion?—maybe, in an economic sense, if the developed nations keep taking more and more of the world’s resources unto themselves. But, this, business-as-usual path, the path that the conservatives insist on taking, will only bring on the dire consequences of runaway global warming and in the end we will all perish.
The other path, the one I hope we travel down, is the one where we phase out, very quickly, the use of fossil fuels (unless and until we are able to capture and sequester the pollutants in them) and switch to all nonpolluting renewable sources.
I realize that a world running on renewable sources may not support the existing population, if and when we get there, but if our species and millions of others are to survive, there doesn’t seem to be another choice—nature will do the culling.
There is a ray of hope though, if humanity is able to pull this off, it will be by stringent government regulations, ones that will change the way unregulated capitalism now operates. And, instead of the few having such a large claim on the world’s resources, more will be made available to others and nature will have less culling to do.
Young people! please get actively involved in all elections, you are the ones who will suffer the most if there is not massive change in the way we treat our environment.
Support only progressive Democrats, they are the ones who try to make the changes in regulations that are needed if the United States is to do its part in saving the planet from dire global warming consequences.
And join 350.org in their worldwide effort to save our planet.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Young People Beware
Young people beware of becoming or accepting the rhetoric of global warming deniers. I’m guessing that when a climate scientist such as Dr. Heidi Cullen says that most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today comes from natural sources, as she does in her book: The Weather of the Future, you would accept it at face value.
Why then—if you are a denier of global warming—can you not accept her further conclusion that most of the additional CO2 that’s been placed in the atmosphere over the last 250 years (years since the beginning of the industrial revolution) comes from us (human beings); especially since you are not asked to accept it at face value but are given scientific evidence to support that conclusion.
Even if you are not trained in the sciences—I will say that you would probably agree that science is testable knowledge used to explain and make predictions about the real world.
For example, it explains the greenhouse effect—that property of a planetary atmosphere that causes a planet’s surface temperature to be higher than it would be without that atmosphere.
Any gas that absorbs sunlight causes greenhouse effect—on earth the important ones are water vapor, CO2, and methane, of these CO2 is the most long lasting.
Dr. Cullen explains how empirical evidence from mass spectrometer measurements show that most of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has the chemical fingerprint of coal, oil, natural gas, and deforestation because these are the only sources that produce CO2 depleted in carbon13 and carbon14 isotopes.
The planet is getting hotter: arctic ice is melting, glaciers are melting, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting and the only major climate forcing change over the last 10,000 years is the addition of CO2 (from approximately 280ppm in 1750 to 390ppm today) all in just 250 years—a blink of the eye in geological terms. Humans caused this and humans are the only ones who can lessen the dire effects of too much global warming.
You young people must get actively involved; you are the ones who will suffer most. I am seventy-three years old and probably will have died by the time the real bad effects of global warming are here. It is my generation and generations before me who are at fault, but mostly my generation because we have the needed scientific information that shows what has to be done to avert a catastrophe.
As a group, however, we won’t act on this information for any number of reasons—the two main ones are greed and self interests. The backbone of this self interest, unbridled capitalism based on fossil fuel use, is severally flawed; it is set up to benefit the minority of the rich and powerful. It only works at all because of an expansion of itself, and there is no more room for expansion; global warming consequences will see to that.
So, you young people must force change on us by voting. You must vote for progressive legislators, ones who will set up government regulations that will deal with global warming. This will require regulation of our capitalistic system to insure a very large middle class, a very small, if any, upper class, and no very poor class—so different from our present system that it might require a new name.
This means you should not vote for Republicans—their very definition, that of being conservative, calls for little or no change—and there must be massive change if young people are to have a planet they can survive on. And you should not vote for any conservative Democrats for the same reason. Also, any Independent candidates, you might want to vote for, should prove they are for progressive change—but then, of course, they are not really Independents, so they should probably get off of the fence they have been sitting on and become progressive Democrats.
I believe the, somewhat natural, rebellion toward authority by young people should be encouraged in this instance. Don’t be influenced by conservative dogma, they want to leave things as they are, to keep the riches they acquired by depriving others—they are not your friends and never have been.
Did the founders of our country mean, in the Declaration of Independence, that all humans are created equal? They didn’t say that. They said all men, didn’t even mention women. They certainly didn’t mean black slaves; they weren’t even counted as a full whole person. They really only meant propertied men, not poor unpropertied men. And it has remained mostly that way ever since, the rich and powerful giving only enough to the next lower class to keep them from becoming too rebellious.
They have, so far, been able to do this by controlling communication with the voting public. At one time even controlling the voting, e.g., women couldn’t vote, unpropertied men couldn’t vote, blacks couldn’t vote, and there were polling rules that denied some others the vote.
The rich and powerful still control much of the communication through well paid “talking-heads” on T.V. and radio and legislators in government though well paid lobbyists in Congress.
But, young people, you still have a chance, the courts have solved the legal issues of voting—the only, but really important, impediment there is apathy; you must get to the voting booth every election.
And the other problem, that of controlling communication, the internet is still open; the rich haven’t been able to control that yet, but they will keep trying—they already use it themselves very effectively.
The scientific evidence says that these global warming consequences will come about if we continue to use fossil fuels as usual. At some point it will become evident to all that the conservative deniers were dead wrong and they will be pariah but by then it will be too late for all of us. There will be too much warming inertia in the climate change pipeline, it will be humanly impossible to stop.
So, beware young people—my generation and those before have inherited a climate-stable planet to live on but unless you act now and repeatedly at every election, you will only inherit a hell on earth.
Why then—if you are a denier of global warming—can you not accept her further conclusion that most of the additional CO2 that’s been placed in the atmosphere over the last 250 years (years since the beginning of the industrial revolution) comes from us (human beings); especially since you are not asked to accept it at face value but are given scientific evidence to support that conclusion.
Even if you are not trained in the sciences—I will say that you would probably agree that science is testable knowledge used to explain and make predictions about the real world.
For example, it explains the greenhouse effect—that property of a planetary atmosphere that causes a planet’s surface temperature to be higher than it would be without that atmosphere.
Any gas that absorbs sunlight causes greenhouse effect—on earth the important ones are water vapor, CO2, and methane, of these CO2 is the most long lasting.
Dr. Cullen explains how empirical evidence from mass spectrometer measurements show that most of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has the chemical fingerprint of coal, oil, natural gas, and deforestation because these are the only sources that produce CO2 depleted in carbon13 and carbon14 isotopes.
The planet is getting hotter: arctic ice is melting, glaciers are melting, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting and the only major climate forcing change over the last 10,000 years is the addition of CO2 (from approximately 280ppm in 1750 to 390ppm today) all in just 250 years—a blink of the eye in geological terms. Humans caused this and humans are the only ones who can lessen the dire effects of too much global warming.
You young people must get actively involved; you are the ones who will suffer most. I am seventy-three years old and probably will have died by the time the real bad effects of global warming are here. It is my generation and generations before me who are at fault, but mostly my generation because we have the needed scientific information that shows what has to be done to avert a catastrophe.
As a group, however, we won’t act on this information for any number of reasons—the two main ones are greed and self interests. The backbone of this self interest, unbridled capitalism based on fossil fuel use, is severally flawed; it is set up to benefit the minority of the rich and powerful. It only works at all because of an expansion of itself, and there is no more room for expansion; global warming consequences will see to that.
So, you young people must force change on us by voting. You must vote for progressive legislators, ones who will set up government regulations that will deal with global warming. This will require regulation of our capitalistic system to insure a very large middle class, a very small, if any, upper class, and no very poor class—so different from our present system that it might require a new name.
This means you should not vote for Republicans—their very definition, that of being conservative, calls for little or no change—and there must be massive change if young people are to have a planet they can survive on. And you should not vote for any conservative Democrats for the same reason. Also, any Independent candidates, you might want to vote for, should prove they are for progressive change—but then, of course, they are not really Independents, so they should probably get off of the fence they have been sitting on and become progressive Democrats.
I believe the, somewhat natural, rebellion toward authority by young people should be encouraged in this instance. Don’t be influenced by conservative dogma, they want to leave things as they are, to keep the riches they acquired by depriving others—they are not your friends and never have been.
Did the founders of our country mean, in the Declaration of Independence, that all humans are created equal? They didn’t say that. They said all men, didn’t even mention women. They certainly didn’t mean black slaves; they weren’t even counted as a full whole person. They really only meant propertied men, not poor unpropertied men. And it has remained mostly that way ever since, the rich and powerful giving only enough to the next lower class to keep them from becoming too rebellious.
They have, so far, been able to do this by controlling communication with the voting public. At one time even controlling the voting, e.g., women couldn’t vote, unpropertied men couldn’t vote, blacks couldn’t vote, and there were polling rules that denied some others the vote.
The rich and powerful still control much of the communication through well paid “talking-heads” on T.V. and radio and legislators in government though well paid lobbyists in Congress.
But, young people, you still have a chance, the courts have solved the legal issues of voting—the only, but really important, impediment there is apathy; you must get to the voting booth every election.
And the other problem, that of controlling communication, the internet is still open; the rich haven’t been able to control that yet, but they will keep trying—they already use it themselves very effectively.
The scientific evidence says that these global warming consequences will come about if we continue to use fossil fuels as usual. At some point it will become evident to all that the conservative deniers were dead wrong and they will be pariah but by then it will be too late for all of us. There will be too much warming inertia in the climate change pipeline, it will be humanly impossible to stop.
So, beware young people—my generation and those before have inherited a climate-stable planet to live on but unless you act now and repeatedly at every election, you will only inherit a hell on earth.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Empirical Evidence for Keynesian Model
In the United States of America (U.S.A.), if I ask you, is the military a part of the Federal Government, would you answer yes or no
In the U.S.A., if you are a large manufacturer of widgets, do you hire people to help you make the widgets?
If the U.S. military buys widgets from you, is that government spending?
Does this spending create jobs for widget makers?
It is obvious that the answer, to all of the above, is yes.
World War Two forced the government spending that ended The Great Depression. To me, this is empirical evidence that proves, the Keynesian Idea, that aggregate demand determines economic activity. And, because just before the spending on WWII, The Great Depression was still ongoing, disproves the neoclassical idea that free markets will automatically provide full employment, if wage demands are flexible—meaning a cut in money wages.
It is more than just unfortunate that the government spending on WWII was used to buy things that kill people. It doesn’t have to be you know, it could be used to buy and make things that improve people’s lives: new railroads, highways, bridges, clean water utilities, and a very long list of other useful things.
Just as the Roosevelt Administration couldn’t get congress to allow enough spending without the external forcing provided by WWII; so is President Obama hindered from getting enough spending to stimulate our economy out of the 2007 great recession.
Given all the benefits that would arrive with an end to the current recession, why is the large stimulus spending that would end it so adamantly opposed by many of our representatives (those elected in my state and district, however, don’t represent my views) in congress?
My thoughts and answers to the inquiry in the above paragraph are many and varied—some based on plain ignorance of the concepts and history of the subject, some based on dogged adherence to certain ideals, some based on racism, some based on misplaced loyalties, but most based on pure greed.
I’ll put my thoughts and answers in another E-pamphlet (blog); right now I want to finish my ideas on government stimulus spending.
The fact that free market neoclassical ideas were in place leading to The Great Depression and, conversely, that near unlimited government stimulus spending (called for by Keynesian economic theory) was forced by WWII events, shows, overtly, that stimulus spending, if large enough, will bring near full employment.
I have a caveat in all this: I say the above will happen in a capitalistic system if there is room for expansion—there was after WWII, at least as the distribution of things was at that time until now.
But now (2010), I think the limit for expansion has already been exceeded. And if the excess’s of the rich are taken back by the “have not’s” forced by unameliorated global warming consequences, chaos will be the order of the day and the whole system will collapse.
The laws of physics will bring this about if changes are not immediately made in our unlimited use of fossil fuels. Government regulations, very stringent ones (the bête noire of conservatives), are the only things that can force the needed changes.
This will, of course, kill the kind of capitalistic system we have always had (one ruled by the rich and powerful) and in its place, a more progressive, egalitarian one will have to arise—one with enough regulation to permit a very large middle class, one with a very small, if any, upper class, and no poor class.
Think it will happen? Personally, I have always been an optimist but my seventy three year walk down the hallways of life “bumping into the walls on both sides”, as Barbara Kingsolver has written, says no.
Oh! And as an aside, if the above changes to the use of fossil fuels are not made, my thoughts on why the congress is so adamantly opposed to stimulus spending that would end the current great recession are irrelevant. If we insist on using up all the fossil fuels in the ground, we will render our planet unlivable and cease to exist.
In the U.S.A., if you are a large manufacturer of widgets, do you hire people to help you make the widgets?
If the U.S. military buys widgets from you, is that government spending?
Does this spending create jobs for widget makers?
It is obvious that the answer, to all of the above, is yes.
World War Two forced the government spending that ended The Great Depression. To me, this is empirical evidence that proves, the Keynesian Idea, that aggregate demand determines economic activity. And, because just before the spending on WWII, The Great Depression was still ongoing, disproves the neoclassical idea that free markets will automatically provide full employment, if wage demands are flexible—meaning a cut in money wages.
It is more than just unfortunate that the government spending on WWII was used to buy things that kill people. It doesn’t have to be you know, it could be used to buy and make things that improve people’s lives: new railroads, highways, bridges, clean water utilities, and a very long list of other useful things.
Just as the Roosevelt Administration couldn’t get congress to allow enough spending without the external forcing provided by WWII; so is President Obama hindered from getting enough spending to stimulate our economy out of the 2007 great recession.
Given all the benefits that would arrive with an end to the current recession, why is the large stimulus spending that would end it so adamantly opposed by many of our representatives (those elected in my state and district, however, don’t represent my views) in congress?
My thoughts and answers to the inquiry in the above paragraph are many and varied—some based on plain ignorance of the concepts and history of the subject, some based on dogged adherence to certain ideals, some based on racism, some based on misplaced loyalties, but most based on pure greed.
I’ll put my thoughts and answers in another E-pamphlet (blog); right now I want to finish my ideas on government stimulus spending.
The fact that free market neoclassical ideas were in place leading to The Great Depression and, conversely, that near unlimited government stimulus spending (called for by Keynesian economic theory) was forced by WWII events, shows, overtly, that stimulus spending, if large enough, will bring near full employment.
I have a caveat in all this: I say the above will happen in a capitalistic system if there is room for expansion—there was after WWII, at least as the distribution of things was at that time until now.
But now (2010), I think the limit for expansion has already been exceeded. And if the excess’s of the rich are taken back by the “have not’s” forced by unameliorated global warming consequences, chaos will be the order of the day and the whole system will collapse.
The laws of physics will bring this about if changes are not immediately made in our unlimited use of fossil fuels. Government regulations, very stringent ones (the bête noire of conservatives), are the only things that can force the needed changes.
This will, of course, kill the kind of capitalistic system we have always had (one ruled by the rich and powerful) and in its place, a more progressive, egalitarian one will have to arise—one with enough regulation to permit a very large middle class, one with a very small, if any, upper class, and no poor class.
Think it will happen? Personally, I have always been an optimist but my seventy three year walk down the hallways of life “bumping into the walls on both sides”, as Barbara Kingsolver has written, says no.
Oh! And as an aside, if the above changes to the use of fossil fuels are not made, my thoughts on why the congress is so adamantly opposed to stimulus spending that would end the current great recession are irrelevant. If we insist on using up all the fossil fuels in the ground, we will render our planet unlivable and cease to exist.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Will our Inheritance be just The Wind?
While David Roberts, staff writer for Grist, is, at the end of his turbulent flow through the 2010 midterm pipeline, still a positive person at heart—he needed to be, in his own words,”…depressed as hell for a minute.”
In his September1, 2010 article “How bad are the next few years going to suck?” his depression is caused by the very real possibility that the Democrats may lose the House. They probably won’t lose the Senate but, of course, it has been such a “do so little body”, that it rivals the, ”do absolutely nothing Republican Party of No”.
Roberts sees, as many other environmentalists do, a return to the localization of our economies as our salvation: to start thinking in terms of making our local communities better and cleaner. I wholeheartedly agree, from the bottom up is where we’ll win out.
I am old enough to remember that, as a child, I could walk to the grocery store; there was one in every neighborhood. This could be again; what wasn’t produced locally could be delivered to our communities by nonpolluting generated electricity powering electric trains. The local deliveries could be made by battery powered vehicles, recharged with nonpolluting generated electricity. If your local store was a little far to walk to, you could drive there in your battery powered car.
This decentralization will be fought tooth and nail by most capitalists, and, I fear, most American voters will support them until it is too late to make the needed changes. If they were the only ones involved I would say, reap what you sow.
But, unless changes are made now, the rest of us will suffer the same fate: physics will eventually correct the unbalance for the earth but humankind and many other species will only inherit the wind.
In his September1, 2010 article “How bad are the next few years going to suck?” his depression is caused by the very real possibility that the Democrats may lose the House. They probably won’t lose the Senate but, of course, it has been such a “do so little body”, that it rivals the, ”do absolutely nothing Republican Party of No”.
Roberts sees, as many other environmentalists do, a return to the localization of our economies as our salvation: to start thinking in terms of making our local communities better and cleaner. I wholeheartedly agree, from the bottom up is where we’ll win out.
I am old enough to remember that, as a child, I could walk to the grocery store; there was one in every neighborhood. This could be again; what wasn’t produced locally could be delivered to our communities by nonpolluting generated electricity powering electric trains. The local deliveries could be made by battery powered vehicles, recharged with nonpolluting generated electricity. If your local store was a little far to walk to, you could drive there in your battery powered car.
This decentralization will be fought tooth and nail by most capitalists, and, I fear, most American voters will support them until it is too late to make the needed changes. If they were the only ones involved I would say, reap what you sow.
But, unless changes are made now, the rest of us will suffer the same fate: physics will eventually correct the unbalance for the earth but humankind and many other species will only inherit the wind.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Some reasons for Wendall Berry's "Sustainable agriculture and Healthy rural communities"
The idea of growth, that what we need is more of it, won’t work: the pie is not unlimited in size.
We have to get back to local and the reason is not an ideal, or economics, it’s physics! Local ultimately emits less CO2 into the atmosphere; on the retail side, we can walk to the market in many instances, or at the very least, drive fewer miles; on the supply side, the delivery trip from the local farm is also shorter. Sure beats shipping stuff half way around the world, especially for no other reason than to have a larger choice of things at the market.
When it is possible, raise food locally, deliver it locally, and buy it locally—sustainable agriculture.
The World Wide Web made globalization possible but economic globalization won’t work—at least as unregulated capitalism would have it. Same reason as always: unregulated capitalism only works (and then, only partially) when you can have unlimited growth and you can’t have unlimited growth for two reasons, and one of them is not negotiable at all.
The one that is partially negotiable is economics; the social science of deciding how to distribute limited resources, and therein lies the rub, the resources are limited, but so many people don’t seem to understand this.
That so many people don’t understand that the things we all need in our daily lives the world over is in limited supply, has been the backstop for capitalism since its beginning.
But the second reason, the one that will not compromise, is physics. If our carbon based industrial system is allowed to continue unabated, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to rise in an ever increasing manner until it will “cook” humans from the face of the earth, along with most other species. The planet will still be here, but we won’t.
Our legacy? From William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” :
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Please join 350.org as a way to fight back—if we act quickly and fully maybe it doesn’t have to be “…[all] sound and fury signifying nothing.”
We have to get back to local and the reason is not an ideal, or economics, it’s physics! Local ultimately emits less CO2 into the atmosphere; on the retail side, we can walk to the market in many instances, or at the very least, drive fewer miles; on the supply side, the delivery trip from the local farm is also shorter. Sure beats shipping stuff half way around the world, especially for no other reason than to have a larger choice of things at the market.
When it is possible, raise food locally, deliver it locally, and buy it locally—sustainable agriculture.
The World Wide Web made globalization possible but economic globalization won’t work—at least as unregulated capitalism would have it. Same reason as always: unregulated capitalism only works (and then, only partially) when you can have unlimited growth and you can’t have unlimited growth for two reasons, and one of them is not negotiable at all.
The one that is partially negotiable is economics; the social science of deciding how to distribute limited resources, and therein lies the rub, the resources are limited, but so many people don’t seem to understand this.
That so many people don’t understand that the things we all need in our daily lives the world over is in limited supply, has been the backstop for capitalism since its beginning.
But the second reason, the one that will not compromise, is physics. If our carbon based industrial system is allowed to continue unabated, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to rise in an ever increasing manner until it will “cook” humans from the face of the earth, along with most other species. The planet will still be here, but we won’t.
Our legacy? From William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” :
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Please join 350.org as a way to fight back—if we act quickly and fully maybe it doesn’t have to be “…[all] sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Thursday, August 12, 2010
A Fee on Dirty Fuel
A Fee on Dirty Fuel
A simple flat fee on all carbon fuels, collected from all fossil fuel companies at the mine, wellhead, or port or entry, then this money should be returned directly to the American consumer to be used to help offset the rise in carbon fuel prices.
But, more importantly, it would encourage Americans to conserve and search out non carbon sources of energy, which will ultimately be the better bargain.
Go to 350.org to get involved in carbon abatement.
Noble Goal Not Repaid With Success
In an August 9, 2010 story about Huang Ming, chairman of Himin Solar Energy Group, a major solar panel manufacturer based in China, accepting a symbolic gift, to the people of China from Unity College, of a solar panel once installed on the roof of the White House, Ethan Andrews wrote: “In 1979 , President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the West Wing of the White House as a symbolic introduction of the administrations goal of getting 20 percent of the nations energy from renewable sources by the year 2000.” But, alas, this goal was not requited with success.
Why was this noble effort not paid back with tangible results? Wouldn’t it have been nice to have all those jobs in renewable energy manufacturing for us working middle class Americans from then to now? Think about it, good paying clean safe jobs for middle class people, millions of us, instead of a few rich greedy owners and non producing speculators in dirty fossil fuel energy industries, like oil and coal. These people take for themselves such a big slice of the economic pie, while polluting our world with their filthy byproducts until it will, eventually, become unlivable. Are they so obtuse that they can’t see that they will suffer the same fate.
This group, and if you will just dwell on it for a while, you will intuitively know who they are, they are the ones who oppose any real change, those against any real progress—you can never join them (there isn’t room for you), they are not your friends and never have been.
In our U.S. system we need to oppose their, bought and paid for, legislators in government. We need to put the pressure on our representatives, after all, they work for us, to enact an equitable tax on carbon, one that will be fully refunded to all energy consumers,
An organized effort to do just that can be found at 350.org, let’s all get together there.
Why was this noble effort not paid back with tangible results? Wouldn’t it have been nice to have all those jobs in renewable energy manufacturing for us working middle class Americans from then to now? Think about it, good paying clean safe jobs for middle class people, millions of us, instead of a few rich greedy owners and non producing speculators in dirty fossil fuel energy industries, like oil and coal. These people take for themselves such a big slice of the economic pie, while polluting our world with their filthy byproducts until it will, eventually, become unlivable. Are they so obtuse that they can’t see that they will suffer the same fate.
This group, and if you will just dwell on it for a while, you will intuitively know who they are, they are the ones who oppose any real change, those against any real progress—you can never join them (there isn’t room for you), they are not your friends and never have been.
In our U.S. system we need to oppose their, bought and paid for, legislators in government. We need to put the pressure on our representatives, after all, they work for us, to enact an equitable tax on carbon, one that will be fully refunded to all energy consumers,
An organized effort to do just that can be found at 350.org, let’s all get together there.
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