Sandy and democracy
This area, the northeast, has witnessed two big hurricanes in as many years. Irene came this way in August 2011 and we've just been hit by monster storm Sandy.
Luckily, neither caused any damage worth mentioning here. There wasn't even any significant power outage. The day after Sandy struck, I noticed a piece of vinyl siding in the frontyard. Fortunately it had been torn off the neighbor's house, not this one. It was, as far as I could see, the only kind of damage on this street, except for a few downed branches.
Elsewhere, of course, Sandy was devastating. Why have storms increased in frequency and severity in recent years? That's probably because of global warming. Essentially, hurricanes are a natural means of transferring excess heat from the lower latitudes to higher ones. The excess heat likely is of anthropogenic origin, or due to CO2 output. The storm problem seems likely to continue, or worsen, until global warming is effectively addressed. Yet again, the solution involves sacrifices, such as less driving. It appears, therefore, that democratic government is as helpless in the face of environmental problems as it is in the face of economic ones. Long touted as the great panacea (or cure-all) of today's world, democracy is really anything but.
Luckily, neither caused any damage worth mentioning here. There wasn't even any significant power outage. The day after Sandy struck, I noticed a piece of vinyl siding in the frontyard. Fortunately it had been torn off the neighbor's house, not this one. It was, as far as I could see, the only kind of damage on this street, except for a few downed branches.
Elsewhere, of course, Sandy was devastating. Why have storms increased in frequency and severity in recent years? That's probably because of global warming. Essentially, hurricanes are a natural means of transferring excess heat from the lower latitudes to higher ones. The excess heat likely is of anthropogenic origin, or due to CO2 output. The storm problem seems likely to continue, or worsen, until global warming is effectively addressed. Yet again, the solution involves sacrifices, such as less driving. It appears, therefore, that democratic government is as helpless in the face of environmental problems as it is in the face of economic ones. Long touted as the great panacea (or cure-all) of today's world, democracy is really anything but.
posted by starman at 5:46 AM
16 Comments:
Something definitely needs to be done about global warming. It has many detrimental effects, including, but not limited to monster storms of abnormal proportions. Extinction of species can easily result from global warming. For example, warming of areas that were previously cooler can cause migrations of invasive spcies from places that were warm to begin with. That can cause problems for indigenous species.
Now I'm going to have to lecture. HERE ARE FOUR THINGS YOU need to know about global warming that I'll bet you don't because I don't hear anybody else pointing them out and I had to figure them out for myself.
1. Though Buckminster Fuller also figured this out forty years ago and the idea has been lost due to endlessly stupid and rottern governments ever since: I mean it makes me mad that I have to say this, it ought to be self-evident to thinking people and perhaps it is but the reason nobody says it is they know we have such stupid rotten gov'ts that they'll never do it; but I say that with a great enough world revolution we can overthrow those gov'ts. THE THING IS THIS: You have to have a plan for long-range sustainable global economic ecological development. Part of the problem is that too many GD environmentalists are affluent so they neither know nor care about world poverty which is only the greatest problem on Earth not only killing millions of people a year--far more than wars do--but ruining the lives of billions. The question is, then, how do we solve world poverty and create equal opportunity and prosperity for all the world's people, given our constraints of available resources and the need to limit pollution, etc. This will require a great plan, with, as Tim points out, lots of sacrifice--but those burdens must be shared fairly. This brings us to the second point:
2. Democracy could do this; your problem is that you are looking narrowly at democracy within a rich country. What is needed is WORLD democracy, and I predict that if the masses of the world could vote, they would vote to redistribute the world's wealth on a colossal scale from the rich countries to the poor. The world's poor billions would vote for the Great Plan because it would impose the sacrifices on those most able to pay, the rich, and rightly so.
Now I have two more points to make but I am going to put them in my next comment because there is a limit to how long a comment you are allowed to make and the damned system doesn't let you know when you are going over that limit, one time I must have typed for half an hour that I then had to cancel because my comment exceeded 4,096 characters, this is so unfair
HERE are the other two important things you need to know about global warming that you don't but that you would if you would only stop and think, EXCUSE ME if I seem to be insulting anyone--I am a little bit extremely angry because I seem to be the only person who has given these matters any thought and nobody listens to me.
3. You know, you have to help people who are suffering, why should I have to tell you this? It seems like many people could probably comprehend that if there were a famine in Africa that were caused by America's CO2 emissions, then we would have a MORAL obligation to feed the poor starving people. But, the problem is, there are famines--or more often, poverty caused by droughts or floods or heat waves etc., that you can never PROVE were caused by our CO2--and so, therefore, I guess what people think is that we don't necessarily have any moral obligation to help them.
Well, that is all just totally wrong and wherever on Earth people are suffering we have a moral obligation to help them if we can, regardless of whether it was on account of any behavior of ours.
4. We have to study weather modification. This needs to become a major, well-funded science. There are many conceivable ways of making rain fall when and where needed, for one thing (indeed, the most important thing), but there are also conceivable ways to cause heat waves, cool spells, winds, snow, etc., wherever needed or desired, and we must start working on all these projects. The big fat obvious difficulty is that any attempt to change the weather in one place at one time is apt to have unforeseeable and unwanted effects elsewhere later. But this could be worked on.
Interesting points. Your passion is evident.
I'm afraid I have no suggestions or solutions about global warming. At risk or making anyone mad, I am not 100% convinced of global "warming". I see a lot of global weirdness, but reading through history there are many terrifying weather events that have occurred in historic times.
I think the best thing is for me to sit back and read what is posted, and learn more about what others believe.
I don't think the poorer nations or peoples think in terms of redistributing the wealth i.e. transferring wealth from richer ones to them. Just like China and India, Brazil and other nations are building infrastructure and trying to modernize. They seek foreign investment but I never heard of a redistribution movement.
As for poverty and famine elsewhere, much of that stems from misuse of natural resources e.g. slash and burn agriculture, and overpopulation, especially in places like Bangladesh. A good example is Egypt. Economically they've made vast strides in the past 30 years but living standards for most Egyptians are as dismal as ever, because their population has soared. Their economic pie is bigger but it has to be cut into myriad slices so they're not getting more. Had they kept population at its level of 1975, by now they'd have decent living standards.
Globally, population has grown so much I doubt poverty can be addressed without wrecking the environment completely. The environment is in dire shape with only a fraction of earth's inhabitants living well; bring everyone up to our standards and it would be finished. Of course "green" technology would help, but probably not enough.
I agree with Chris that the case for global warming is not proven; what we can say is that it is a possibility that we do have to take into account in our plans for global economic development--and therefore, as I said, we have to focus mainly on what we do know: that we need to solve the problem of poverty and study weather control.
But Tim, I don't think you are giving enough thought to the question of the long-range global economic development plan. It is very easy to shrug off as insoluble if the question doesn't interest you, and yet I think it must interest you, so I hope you will think about it more. We have so many degrees of freedom in developing the plan that I don't see how you can rule out progress, it would take years and years of exhaustisve study and research, for example, to prove that we couldn't convert to solar energy by 2060, say, which would be in time to prevent most of the catastrophes the climate-change scientists predict. And there is so much else, too; I don't know where to begin but let me start with this, basically the world economy could grow at a 4% annual rate, if reasonably well-managed, according to what's been achieved by many countries in the past; but the world population is only growing at 1-2% a year, which means that we could very well achieve rising living standards for all but most importantly for the poor.
A second point I might make is this is that you are right that there is no mass movement in poor countries for redistributing the wealth from the rich worldwide. But I have to make several points about that. One is that this is historic, in that through the 1950s and 1960s, there WAS such a movement, not so much a PEOPLE'S movement as a movement of national leaders of the poor countries, called the Non-aligned movement, starting with a great conference in Bandung, Indonesia, 1955, which was popular and which culminated in 1970 when the UN determined that the rich countries should give 0.7% of their GDP to the poor countries each year.
Some of the rich countries did do that, notably the Scandinavians, and France came close, aiding its former colonies. But the US, while it remained the world's biggest donor nation, always lagged far behind the 0.7% goal--of course, partly because the 1970s turned out to be such a bad decade loaded with rotten leadership from Nixon thru Carter tho Carter was a nice man. But when the poor countries saw that their 0.7% goal was not happening, they basically abandoned it and the ruling classes of those nations gave up on improving the lives of the poor people in their own countries, sort of a parallel development. Of course this is a huge overgeneralization and exaggeration but necessary since the topic so huge, I apologize. But anyhow, some of the reason for the abandonment of the poor countries' demand for 0.7% was the usual difficulty of holding a coalition together, plus the fact that many of them have been able to obtain aid for themselves and/or achieve growth without it, notably China, which got little aid but had spectacular growth, while other poor countries will not be able to follow that model (do you know why?)
(I'm going to continue this in the next comment because I'm afraid of exceeding the 4096 limit)
Anyhow so one reason the Nonaligned movement gave up its unity and demand for aid was that for the last 40 years almost they have mostly been able to achieve growth without too much aid. That era is coming to a close, I believe, for the poor countries just as it is for the rich because I believe that we are in for a Second Great Depression--probably beginning with the famous Fiscal Cliff now drawing nigh. We are now very much in the same spot we were in in 2008 when the economy crashed, because the gov't has put some patches on it but done nothing to address our fundamental economic weaknesses.
When the world economy then collapses, and countries find that they can no longer achieve growth through their own efforts and resources (plus the vital though inadequate aid they do now receive--about .25% of rich countries' GDP), they are bound to look again for foreign resources--as Europe did in its great era of slavery and colonial imperialism. Why should Africa not think that it had the right to do unto Europe and America now as Euro-America did to them then? All that would be required for this to become a popular mass movement would be an ambitious leader--like Hitler, for example. These people have a tendency to arise when needed. Such a mass onslaught by the poor against the rich countries might be similar in some ways to Hitler's drive for liebensraum. He found that Germany could not overcome its horrendous economic problem--25% unemployment and so forth--without obtaining more land for the farmers, so he invaded the USSR.
AND SO SOON the whole Third World is going to find itself in that same predicament!
Great to see your comments, Roger. :) Some time ago, I read Kaku's VISIONS, which suggested fusion will be a widespread power source by 2050. Solar could become ubiquitous sooner, if people were willing to invest more in it.
I don't think the so called Fiscal Cliff will lead to depression. From what I've read, Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich, which you've long favored. The idea of an aggressive Africa conquering the richer nations is pretty far fetched. Militarily, African nations are light years behind the US and Europe.
Tell me more about Kaku, I never heard of her...certainly would be a blessing to have fusion but I believe that as you say, we could convert to solar by 2050 if we would just invest enough. It would probably take a trillion bucks overr 40 years (wild guess only!) while our gov't is already running trillion-dollar deficits EVERY YEAR, I don't see how you think they can continue to do this, we're going the way of Greece and Spain. It is true that Obama wants to tax the rich--a little bit, raising them from 35% to about 40%--NOT ANYWHERE NEAR ENOUGH!! would only raise about $100 billion a year, we need to raise a good TWO TRILLION a year to BEGIN to make any progress in solving our problems--which the rich could easily afford to pay.
With strong leadership, Africa could qickly build huge military forces backed by nuclear weapons, and they'd be willing to die for their cause, both righteous and desperate.
I'm surprised you never heard of Kaku--a man btw. :) I only read one of his books--VISIONS--about what changes may be coming. Like most "futurists" he is focused on purely technical changes, whereas we envisage political and ideological change.
Kaku suggested fusion will become widespread by 2050. AFAIK there haven't been any breakthroughs which support that scenario. I'll have to consult the book; maybe they aren't anticipated for another 10-20 years or so.
Btw I turn 56 today. Born in '56, I'm now 56. :)
Happy birthday! My "magic year" was 1984 :) I'll see if I can find Kaku in my local library--which happens to be the great LA main public Library; but probably more importantly I'll browse through the last 5-10 issues of The Futurist magazine when I get time hopefully soon; but probably better still would be Wikipedia.
I'm trying to avoid sexism when I refer to people whose genders I don't know--the case where we traditionally used "he" or sometimes "he/she" or "(s)he". I think I'll adopt a combination of the Esperanto words for she and he, respectively, pronounced "shili".
Oh, btw did you hear about Linda McMahon here in CT? She's a rich woman who just failed in her second bid to win a US Senate seat. The two failed campaigns cost her $100 million--that's a nice economic stimulus, lol.
I hadn't heard about that. Funny how often those rich folks' campaigns fail, like here in Calif., we've had a number of them, most recently Meg Whitman's (EBay) run for governor. A lot of fools think that just because they know how to run a business like Romney they'll know how to run the country or, particularly, its economy, which is ridiculous partly because businesses make profits by screwing (or, maybe better said, exploiting) workers and customers and outcompeting rivals (cutthroat competition, as it's called), and taking maximum advantage of any monopolistic/oligopolistic/anti-competitive elements (like special laws, patents, connections, lobbyists, etc.) they may have. All these things while good for the Corporation are harmful to the Whole--as I think many people sort of vaguely understand, fortunately.
ON THE OTHER HAND it is certainly conceivable that even a wealthy executive might have some wisdom to offer in public office and they ought not to be shut out like this. McMahon and other losers should get a share of the senate seat or whatever, in proportion to their vote total, rather than winner-take-all.
But the very fact that they aren't demanding this, proves that they are committed to the rotten status quo with its evil winner-take-all rules, and thus well deserve to be shut out (just as the winners ought to be, for upholding this damned system).
Naturally to win votes, Linda McMahon was focused on economic issues like job creation. But a senator is also responsible for foreign and defense policy e.g. the deployment of US tanks, carriers and subs. Not too many girls seem to be interested in such things, lol.
Yeah, it's funny. I sometimes wonder why as a boy I wasn't interested in "tanks, carriers, and subs" nor trucks nor trains nor guns, bombs, nor war--any of the things that most boys find exciting; what an odd kid, I WAS, however, like most, thrilled by dinosaurs and space; and storms and mountains like some but I digress. If I had children, I would want to raise them in a non-sexist way, and would be happy if my daughter took up (toy[!]) guns, tanks, subs and all, but worried if my son took up dolls and dresses. But I just now realized I wouldn't really be worried, I would jsut start getting prepared for him to eventually want a sex-change operation, nothing wrong with that! But I digress. What I want to say is that I hate to see tanks, carriers, subs and all in US hands because they will be used for evil. Now war is breaking out in Gaza and the US might well get involved, all so wrong.
I doubt the US will get involved, except to back Israel, certainly with rhetoric. No matter how serious the loss of Palestinian life, Israel's toadies here will express their solidarity with Jerusalem....But talk about digression; I should write a whole new post for that.
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