Occam's Razor

Recipe for extinction

Last winter, during our record snowstorms here in the East, various Republicans and climate skeptics took advantage of the extreme weather to tout that global warming was not happening. After all, what could be more convincing that a couple double-digit snowfalls? They had a good time with it and the media shamefully went along. Politicians in general seem anxious to deny the reality of global warming. The Senate seems unable to do anything to move legislation to reduce greenhouse gases, meaning instead being a leader on the global warming issue, the United States prefers the role of laggard. At this point, I would be happy if we could just be laggards. Instead, we prefer to just stick our heads in the sand and ignore the issue altogether.

To complement the near record snowfalls last winter, the East Coast (where I live) has been suffering through record high temperatures. It is not our imaginations. No less than NOAA has formally declared that the March through June of this year has been the hottest months on record. Doubtless these records will be easily broken, likely next year. As much as we would prefer to ignore global warming, chemistry is what chemistry is. Keep dumping more carbon into the atmosphere and average temperatures are going to increase.

Storm events on average are also getting more severe. We here in the mid-Atlantic witnessed this again this weekend when a powerful cell of thunderstorms raced through our area, taking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers and causing three deaths. The thunderstorms came with seventy mile an hour winds that toppled trees like matchsticks and killing a boy in nearby Sterling, Virginia.

It just so happened that about an hour after the thunderstorms blew through, my wife and I had a party to attend in Montgomery County, Maryland. We ended up on roads blocked by trees. We encountered downed power lines stretching across the road. Needless to say, we turned around and tried other routes. At least half of the traffic lights were out as well. The lights were also out at the house where our party was held, but daylight and cooler temperatures from the storms made the party endurable. Most likely the house is still without power, as is much of the more rural parts of Montgomery County. Power crews from as far away as Ohio are coming to help restore power. One thing is clear: with record heat, there was plenty of energy driving these massive thunderstorms.

July in the Washington region is always a time you sweat your way through. Triple digits are not uncommon, nor are Code Red, Orange, Yellow and Purple days when the air quality is poor. The air quality doesn’t have to be this bad but, of course, we refuse to look toward renewable forms of energy. Instead, Midwestern power plants along with power plants hidden in the Appalachian Mountains grind out the energy our air conditioners need, almost entirely using coal. The greenhouse gases of course go into the atmosphere, turn our local atmosphere toxic soup and make the already dangerous triple digit heat even more dangerous.

I thought I had seen everything global warming had to offer at this point until on Sunday when I took a shower. In sweltering ninety degree plus heat and humidity I found I had to replace a post with our mailbox on it. I tried to minimize my misery by doing it during the mid morning, but it was still a sweaty and exhausting job. I looked forward to a tepid shower when I finally finished the job, knowing that a cold shower was out of the question.

The last thing I wanted though was a hot shower, so I kept dialing back the hot water until nothing was coming from our water heater at all. Instead of tepid water, though I was getting warm water. If I was hoping to cool down from a shower, I had hoped in vain. Our land was so hot and so cooked that our water pipes, buried more than a foot underground, now carried only warm water.

This was new. Eighteen sweltering summers in my house but only now in 2010 have I had no choice but to endure a warm shower.

Nothing will convince climate skeptics, but if I were looking for proof this warm shower experience would be very alarming. But not for long. Soon, I will expect to take warm showers during the summers. As for climate skeptics, if they acknowledge it at all, they will probably say it’s entirely natural. It’s part of God’s plan or something, when all it really is is us humans thoughtlessly and recklessly throwing trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. All this global warming is entirely preventable. All we have to do is choose to act.

Instead, we seem to be embracing our extinction. Climate skeptics tend to be pro-life, so to me the irony of their position is inescapable. Let’s just hope that on our way to extinguishing our own species a few other species can cling on. Perhaps they can find a way to live in balance with nature. We sure haven’t. Nor do we seem inclined to do anything meaningful that would at least halt our extinction.

Unlike the millions of species that went extinct due to natural selection, at least we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Future generations trying to survive in an overpopulated and overheated world will rue us for our current thoughtlessness. We won’t care. We will be dead but oh, the memories we will take to our graves: driving big and dirty cars, eating greasy artery clogging food and comfortable summers spent indoors in air-conditioned houses. These climate skeptics might as well give our children and grandchildren the finger, because it’s obvious they don’t really care about them or their children. All they care about is living selfishly and recklessly and letting others in the future pay the consequences.

July 27th, 2010 at 05:39pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2010 | no comments

The age of limits

The motto for the University of Central Florida (where I got my bachelor’s degree) is “Reach for the stars”. For a university less than an hour’s drive to Cape Canaveral it is an appropriate motto. While UCF will continue reaching for the stars, the world in general and America in particular is realizing that reaching for the stars is unaffordable.

I am not speaking specifically about the space program although we are “reaching for the stars” a lot less than we used to. For example, the Obama administration is trying (wisely, I think) to retire the space shuttle. It also has the novel idea that in the future, the private sector should provide the government with a service to get astronauts into earth orbit and back. High unemployment and exploding deficits seem to be generating a bipartisan consensus that we now have more government than we can afford.  Believe it or not, I agree.

It is my opinion that given our modern world we probably need more government, at least for select programs. However, I don’t see how to pay for these programs without cutting others. Granted, the government can be staggeringly inefficient. While certain agencies are very efficient and indeed innovative, others are hugely wasteful. This week’s Washington Post investigation into the proliferating and apparently overlapping authorities working in the murky and high-classified world of counterterrorism shows good intentions gone seriously awry. There appears to be no central authority managing all this. We do have a Director of National Intelligence but in reality, the DNI is more of a coordinator than a director, as he does not have budget authority. This explains the high turnover among DNIs. Even if he did have the authority, it would prove a Herculean task to align our counterterrorism priorities with this kudzu of agencies and contractors and their proliferating and overlapping missions.

The main reason the United States is not reaching for the stars is that a lot of genuinely needed government is squeezed by the steadily increasing costs of entitlements. These entitlements are principally Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, although the list could also be expanded to include items like federal pensions. Arguably, we could actually get both health insurance costs under control, push it out on the private sector, pay a whole lot less and cover all Americans if we adopted the Japanese health care model. Perhaps we will get there someday but right now, we prefer to dither around the edges. The recently enacted health care legislation is a step in the right direction, but only a step.

Efficiencies in government programs are fine, but ultimately all government must be paid for with taxes. However, you can only pay taxes in relation to your income. With less income, less discretionary money to spend, and with more of it allocated toward health care, the consumer can no longer prop up the economy, which reduces economic growth. Moreover, if economic growth slows or halts, tax revenues must slow as well.

As Joe Bageant depressingly points out, future economic growth also assumes that nature will keep providing us with its bounty in endless supply. It assumes that we be able to find new affordable sources of mineral wealth and endless new tracts of land for agriculture and housing needed for a burgeoning population. Unfortunately, it appears that most of the easily available minerals have been extracted, which means the cost of living is going up. If our income does not keep pace then our standard of living is likely to be lower. Moreover, land is also finite. We cannot continue to grow forever by developing unspoiled land. Survival itself is predicated on the existence of nature. In short, growth is becoming more expensive. The more we grow, the more it costs to grow, and the less benefit there is to growth.

Thinking Americans seem to understand that we have reached a nebulous growth limit. If we can grow our way out of our economic problems, it will be at an unacceptable cost. We saw what the cost was recently with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Moving to an energy economy based on renewable energy is certainly more desirable than our current hydrocarbon-based economy, which among other things made June 2010 the hottest June on record. Our structural problems though are far larger than creating a clean energy future.

The real problem is we have reached a critical mass of people. Since 1970, the United States increased its population roughly by half: another hundred million people. From now on, population growth is going to introduce disproportionately negative effects. Unfortunately, at least in the short term, population growth is unstoppable. This means that the cost of living is going to increase, as more of us compete for fewer and more expensive resources.

The effects are being borne out not just at the federal government, but at state and local governments as well. As costs eat away at income, there is less revenue available for governments. Inevitably, this means fewer services. However, right now it seems impossible to come to consensus on how to address the problem. If government must be cut, what should be cut first? Since we essentially have government by corporation, it is likely that corporate interests will triumph over the needs of citizens.

Inevitably, something must give. In fact, that something is already giving. All sides seem to acknowledge our problems are structural, but parties are unwilling to move from ideology toward pragmatic solutions. Republicans will block any tax increases if they can, even if, as in the case of repealing tax cuts for the rich, there is plenty of ability to pay. Democrats seem loathe to admit that any part of the welfare state needs to be trimmed back. Most think that with the right mixture of pixie dust we can maintain the welfare state without raising taxes on the middle class. Right now Democrats are content with the delusion that health care reform will change the dynamics of runaway spending, when it will not. Even President Obama understands this. He has stated that it will only slow the growth of health care spending.

It won’t help in November if voters respond to their frustrations and visceral fears by electing more ideologues to Congress. This merely extends our national dysfunction, adding to the final bill. Perhaps Tea Partiers secretly hope that if elected they can effectively bring about the collapse of the federal government, thus allowing government to be reconstituted under a smaller federal model. Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995. Maybe it will work in 2011.

Even if they succeed, reducing the scope of the federal government will not really address the central issue. Reducing the scope of the federal government merely pushes costs back on state and local governments. For example, states already pay hefty shares of Medicaid services. If the federal government were simply to stop contributing to Medicaid, states would either need to pick up the slack, drastically cut Medicaid services or end Medicaid altogether. Unfortunately, ending Medicaid altogether does not solve the problem of treating poor people’s medical problems. It would simply extend lines at emergency rooms and push up already high health care premiums, which would make more people lose health care coverage. To “solve” this problem would mean to not solve it at all: simply not treat those who cannot afford to pay. Let ‘em eat cake, I guess.

Unless things are fundamentally realigned in a workable way, many of these sorts of horrible choices are in our future. If we acted united rather than divided, we could manage these problems with much less pain. Social security, for example, is not in much financial trouble and extending the retirement age can make it solvent with no increase in taxes. The real problems are in wasteful and hugely overpriced health care programs, which are exacerbated by our unwillingness to eat right and exercise, perhaps because lower income Americans simply cannot afford healthy food. Our choices here are stark: either do away with health insurance except for the increasingly smaller proportion of people moneyed enough to afford it, or institute the sort of “socialized” medicine anathema to so many on the right, whose effect might well be the rationing they fear. (We already have rationing based on ability to pay. What terrifies the right is that a physician might be required to put someone with less money but a more chronic condition ahead of their ability to get care.)

In an age of limits, other sacrosanct programs must now become touchable. Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understands that in a weak economy runaway military spending cannot be sustained indefinitely. Consensus seems to be forming that our War on Terror, or at least in Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer affordable nor are they buying us national security.

There is plenty of general government bloat that could be removed if we could summon the nerve; it’s not just where a lot of politicians think it is. Bloat includes the excessive and overlapping national security programs The Washington Post documented, huge and wasteful agricultural subsidies, corporate welfare in general, Medicare and Medicaid payment reform, and even our manned spaceflight program. We should not be cutting those services that are vitally needed to run our complex and increasingly interconnected world. Some of these agencies arguably need more money. These include the FDA, FAA, FCC, NIH, TSA and the SEC, to name a few. These agencies in reality spend only pocket change yet provide invaluable and absolutely necessary services.

The glass half-full news is that we are hardly alone. Even China at some point will have to scale back its growth and limit its services. Countries like China less leveraged by debt will have more breathing room, but the dynamics of population growth and resource limitations are inescapable for all nations. The more we resist these dynamics, the harder things are going to be.

Nature is trying to tell us to live simpler. We need to start listening.

July 21st, 2010 at 07:05pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2010 | no comments

Global warming morons

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) lampooned, “It’s going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries ‘uncle’.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), observing the record snowfall in the Washington D.C. area wonders where Al Gore was to defend his thesis on global warming against this outrageous assault by winter. Global climate warming skeptic Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had his kids build an igloo for Al Gore on Capitol Hill and posted photos of it in Facebook.

Meanwhile, over at the Fox “News” network, Fox used the occasion of the record snowfall to also castigate Gore and those scientists documenting the unfolding global warming disaster. Naturally, some of the news that Fox “News” did not choose to air was the unnatural lack of snow in Vancouver where the Winter Olympics are underway and where the snow and refrigeration is largely manmade. Nor did they cover the lack of seasonal snow in places like Vermont, which is usually hip deep in the stuff this time of the year but has settled for ice. Nor are they devoting much airtime to the rains and subsequent mudslides in Southern California, which are exceptionally strong this year.

Back when I was studying communications in college, I learned about the phenomenon of selective perception. Most of us go through life with blinders on, perceiving what we choose to perceive and ignoring or dismissing evidence that doesn’t match our view of the world. This seems to be a reflexive human trait. Sometimes selective perception can get in our way. George Washington, our first president, essentially bled to death at the hands of his physician. At the time, bleeding someone who was ill was considered good medicine. No one was studying whether this practice was stupid or smart, but it was the conventional wisdom, such as it was. Eventually enough research was done and the practice was stopped when it was deemed counterproductive.

In the real world, we hire scientists and researchers to tell us fact from fiction because we need to infer knowledge based on evidence, not fantasy. Unfortunately, to be elected to Congress you do not have to have accreditation as a scientist or researcher, although a law degree helps. An educated American would look at the Jim Inhofes and Glenn Becks of the world and know their opinions on these matters are ill informed. Instead, particularly when it came to topics like global warming, we should be listening to people like Jane Lubchenco. You probably have no idea who Jane Lubchenco is, which is a shame. She is the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as a professional scientist with sterling credentials. Prior to her nomination by President Obama, she had an illustrious career and received a number of notable awards including the 8^th Heinz Award in the environment in 2002. Lubchenco has not abandoned her position on the reality of global warming because of one snowstorm in the D.C. area. She would be a moron to do so.

Could it be possible that Fox News is just a wee bit biased on the whole global warming question? Could it possibly be that they are far more interested in returning Republicans to political power at any cost than they are in learning the true about global warming as a result of human activity? As if I needed more proof, this reality was driven home to me yesterday at the health club where I happened to watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox “News” redefine the term socialism. Before, it has always meant that the government controlled the means of production. In O’Reilly’s weird world, socialism is anything the government does to shift wealth from one class of Americans to another class of Americans. Clearly, O’Reilly was asleep during the lectures on socialism when he was in school. Communism attempts to make everyone live at the same socioeconomic level, not socialism. Such ignorance is appalling, particularly when the whole point of government is to redistribute wealth. If it didn’t redistribute wealth, there would be no roads, no public schools, no bridges, no military, no regulated airwaves, no assurance that our drugs would be reasonably safe, ad nauseum. If it didn’t redistribute wealth, there would be no food stamp program, which due to the bad economy now feeds one in eight Americans. These fellow Americans would be starving, but that apparently is okay in O’Reilly’s world. (O’Reilly does seem to be okay with redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich, which has been underway for years.)

In short, the people who are spouting such opinions are either delusional, have an agenda or both. If they really believe that thirty something inches of snowfall on the Washington region means there is no global warming, then they are really morons who cannot see two inches beyond their own nose. Rather than taking them seriously, the media should be laughing them off for being such fools. Meanwhile, glaciers keep melting, the Arctic sea ice recedes to lowest levels ever, mountains of evidence shows winter snow melts beginning earlier every year, tiny Pacific countries are in imminent danger of disappearing due to rising sea levels, and devastating droughts are happening both here in the United States and elsewhere. Climatologists have overwhelming evidence that these are a direct result of shifting climate patterns due to global warming.

The last time I had the flu back in 2005, I remember regularly monitoring my temperature. For much of it I had a temperature in the 102 to 103 degree range. There were other times that I took my temperature and it was normal. Then it would go back up again. The moment it reached 98.6 did I no longer have the flu? My experience suggested this was the wrong inference to draw. The same is true with large snowstorms. One large snowstorm does nothing to disprove global warming. Scientists record temperatures across the globe, look at available evidence, measure carbon emissions and carbon levels in the atmosphere and draw inferences.

In fact, our snowstorms if anything give more credence to global warming, not less because they are more extreme. What makes a snowstorm bigger? It is the amount of water vapor in the air. How to you put more water vapor in the air? Well, if the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic is warmer than it was, the atmosphere above it is capable of holding more water vapor. This is why we get hurricanes during the warm part of the year and not in the middle of the winter. If you move that body of water vapor over a part of the country that is still cold enough in the winter to generate snow, not only do you get snow but a whole lot more snow. Looking for evidence? Look at the length of the Gulf Stream this year, which extends further north than usual. Why? Well, I am not a climate scientist but it seems likely to be that if you have a warmer body of water it has more energy so it can push further north. These changes are likely causing the unusual snowfalls experienced in Great Britain and elsewhere in Northern Europe this year, where it is still cold enough to turn rain into snow, but where there is also more water vapor to turn into snow.

If you “get” global warming, I think you have a duty to get the facts out. We must vigorously challenge these global warming Luddites. If these people succeed in their agenda, not only will the planet rapidly warm up but also we will also likely be dooming ourselves as a species on this planet. Climate change will also drive human migration and competition for resources, increasing the probability of war, conflict and endangering our national security. Speak up! Do not let the sirens of ignorance get away with these outrageous claims.

February 15th, 2010 at 09:58am Posted by Mark | Politics 2010 | no comments

An era is passing

My family and I are making plans to vacation in New England this August. We have never really explored it so it makes for a convenient destination. Also part of our calculus is that New England is not that far away (we live in Northern Virginia). Like many Americans, with gas over $4 a gallon we are downsizing our vacation. We will be staying closer to home and will not be as extravagant with our spending as we were.

An era is passing that I do not think will return. Just as my parents remember an era when the milkman arrived every morning and their parents remembered a world where personal transportation meant a horse, our era, centered on the convenience and affordability of the automobile, is ending. Let’s call it The Era of Living Large. The evidence is everywhere but it will take a while before this fundamental reordering of our society will be apparent. Yet there are signs aplenty.

Amtrak, our stodgy national rail system that almost everyone ignored, is getting record usage. Despite our increasing population, we drove 1% fewer miles from November through April than we did during the same period a year earlier. At our local Silver Diner today, there were plenty of empty parking spaces right near the front door. A year ago, we would have had wait for a table. Perhaps the statistic that cemented it for me was this story in The Washington Post. The Washington region has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. House prices are dropping in most areas but less so the closer you are to the city or to public transportation. In Fairfax County, where I live, home prices have dropped on average 3.2 percent between April 2007 and April 2008. In our outer suburbs, the change is dramatic. In Loudoun, Prince William and Frederick counties, all about an hour’s drive (in no traffic) from the capital, house prices dropped on average 25 percent during that period. Within the city of Washington D.C., most home prices have stayed steady or have even risen.

Since 9/11, there has been a national malaise. We are trying to enjoy the same lifestyle we always have had but it is harder to come by and not as enjoyable when acquired. The economy throughout much of this period did relatively well, but little of it was felt where it mattered most: in our wallets. In 2005, when we traveled to Chicago I remarked how surreal it felt to pay nearly $2.50 a gallon for gasoline. There was a sense of unease even then. Three years later, we would pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate buying gas at that price.

Americans are discovering a new and inconvenient truth: we can never go back to the way things were. To expect that we will have the lifestyle that our parents knew is folly. Those days are swiftly passing. We do not know what the new order will look like, but we have a good idea what it will not look like. This uncertainty breeds unease and malaise. It contributes to polls that show Americans are far more disgruntled about the shape of the economy than the statistics merit.

The era of the SUV is ending. We are not all ditching our SUVs at once but news stories like this one are a harbinger. We demand fuel-efficient cars. I am trying to order a Honda Fit for my daughter only to discover there are few on the lots. We will have to wait for one to be delivered. I hope that it will arrive before her classes start. When we add on the cost of $4 a gallon gasoline, her choice to go to a community college now looks a little less affordable,

The far-flung suburbs are likely to disappear too. What may eventually replace them is the quaint notion of a village. It is hard for many of us to imagine actually living in the same community where we work. In the future employees may be forced to give preference to employees with short commutes. My friend Sokhama lives in Columbia, Maryland. Columbia is about halfway between Baltimore and Washington. She quit her job at a D.C. law firm a few months ago and is currently unemployed. She has had a few job offers, but she has spurned them because all involve a bad commute. She has decided that her next job will be much closer to home.

She is one example of a general trend. Americans everywhere are realizing that they have to rethink their lifestyles. This is why in D.C.’s far-flung suburbs house prices are down 25% from a year ago. Certainly, the sub-prime housing debacle has a lot to do with it. Yet $4 a gallon gasoline is also a major factor. We crave certainty in our lives. Uncertainty is lowered by moving closer to diverse sources of employment and public transportation. A new urban migration is beginning. Modern prospectors know that this is an excellent time to buy before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon.

Bicycle commuting, which I took up a few years ago, is becoming chic. Among all the new light rail projects, expect many communities to also construct bike trails for easy commuting. This will give them a competitive edge against other communities and help encourage progressive businesses to move to their cities. Many families are trying to orient their lives so they need only one car. This will give these families thousands of dollars a year to spend.

The global climate change skeptics are reduced to a crazy handful. Academics suggest that recent flooding in the Midwest is likely a direct result of global warming and using the land in ways for which it was not meant. So far, hurricane season has proven to be benign, but it is just beginning. However, this year tornadoes have been unusually numerous and powerful and have begun earlier. It is hard to escape the feeling that we are reaping the results of ignoring our impact on the environment.

One of our retirement goals is to take a cruise around the world. We are allocating $60,000 for the once in a lifetime experience. Now I am wondering if this is enough money. Perhaps we will have to settle for a cruise of the Pacific instead. With the cost of diesel exceeding the cost of gasoline, I have to wonder if the cruise industry will be one of the casualties of this new reordering.

Our round the world cruise, along with the cross country car trip I had planned, are possible activities we will have to give up due to the societal reordering underway. Perhaps instead of using a car we will take a train across the country. It will likely to be crowded.

I am also looking at my third of an acre lawn, which I meticulously mow weekly with $4 a gallon gasoline. I am wondering if it is time to give up the lawn in favor of a more natural terrain. A lawn is yet another invention of man. Grass has been around for millions of years, but keeping it neatly trimmed is not possible without either a lawn mower or many goats. I do not see our homeowner’s association approving us keeping a herd of goats in our backyard.

If oil prices continue to skyrocket, society may look a lot shabbier in the future. I passed a tree service truck today. Will there be the petrol to fuel these behemoth trucks in a couple decades? If there is petrol available, will anyone be able to afford it but the rich? It is hard for me to escape the feeling that thirty years from now, if I am still alive, that I will hardly recognize the crowded, denser and noisier world that I will be passing to my daughter.

June 20th, 2008 at 03:04pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

My meatless Mondays

A few weeks ago, I preached about the virtues of vegetarianism. I did so hypocritically, because I am not a vegetarian. I have been getting the vegetarian gospel from many sides lately. My friend Wendy likes to say she belongs to the Church of Vegetarianism. She points me to sites like Grist to encourage me to become one and educate me about environmental choices. I also have a sister who is a vegetarian of a quarter century standing. My new sister in law is also doing the vegetarian / all organic food thing. It is a very Boulder, Colorado-ish thing to do.

It seems unlikely to me that after fifty years of eating meat generally at least once a day that I could give it up forever. However, as an experiment I have been having Meatless Mondays. It is not much but if all Americans went meatless one day a week, we would cut our meat consumption by one seventh. Assuming a stable population, that would mean fewer feedlots and fewer animals consuming our nation’s grains. By redirecting these grains from animals and biofuel plants, more grains would be available for human consumption. This would be good news for much of the Third World. The high price of grains, driven by our need to direct so much of it to animals and biofuels, is putting basic carbohydrates out of reach for the poorest, meaning millions are malnourished who were not a few years ago. Some are starving to death because they cannot afford something as basic as a bag of rice. In addition, with fewer livestock there would be less animal waste, fewer pollutants and fewer greenhouse gases. It would be no panacea to global warming, but this strategy in conjunction with many other efforts could perhaps change the current global warming dynamic.

To my friend Wendy, the primary reason she is a vegetarian is because she believes that slaughtering any animal is inhumane. There is no way of knowing how an animal feels about being dismembered, although I suspect it is something far more abstract to them than it is to us with our large prefrontal cortexes. It strikes me as reasonable to assume that animals above a certain brain size probably have some idea of what is going on when they before they are slaughtered. If we must eat meat, then animals should be killed in a way that minimizes animal trauma and suffering. Most cattle are killed by having a bolt shot through their brain. This supposedly rapidly leads to the animal’s death, or at least allows it to be dismembered without being aware that it is happening. I suspect if I paid a visit to a slaughterhouse then I would suddenly find the wherewithal to become a vegetarian. If we were serious about global warming, we would send meat-eating students on slaughterhouse tours so they could see how it is done. Like most Americans, I prefer to have my animals killed far away where I cannot hear them complain.

Not eating meat with breakfast is not a problem for me since I typically do not eat meat with breakfast anyhow. Lunch is more challenging. I am used to a sandwich or some soup where meat is one of the ingredients. One can always have a salad with lunch. I know salads are very healthy but no matter how much I dress them up, they are never interesting to eat so I want to add something more substantial, which I equate with dense food. One can claim to be a vegetarian and have an egg or tuna salad sandwich with lunch. It seems like cheating somehow. Eggs come from chickens, which produce them by eating grain. Calorie for calorie, feeding a chicken is better for the environment than feeding a cow, but an egg salad sandwich defeats my modest goal of making more grain available for human consumption. I should really avoid any dairy or egg products on meatless Mondays. Eating tuna also feels like I am cheating. Logically there is virtually no connection between harvesting seafood and solving global warming and hunger, providing species are not over-harvested. If you are a sea creature, there is no humane way to die. Unless you are a very large creature like a whale, you are likely to die by being gorily dismembered by some other sea creature. Thus far, I have avoided both egg and tuna salad sandwiches on my meatless Mondays. More typically, a cheese sandwich with some lettuce and tomatoes suffices and feels filling. It is not perfect, but it demonstrates intent. If I feel like being bad, a slice of cheese pizza is another easy substitute.

For me, the only challenge comes at dinner. This is when my desire for consuming meat becomes almost Pavlovian. The first couple of weeks I found that I had to exercise mind over matter, because my body told me to eat meat. Meat substitutes help. If you buy the right veggie burgers, you will not feel denied. However, one can quickly get tired of veggie burgers. I am not much of a burger fan in general. It is rare that I consume more than one burger a month.

Most meat substitutes tend to be rather poor imitations of the real thing. They rarely come close to either the taste of meat or its texture, nor do they usually have meat’s heft and density. Perhaps if you eat them religiously your taste buds adapt. I suspect for most vegetarians meat substitutes are transitionary products. At some point, you do not want them anymore.

Other dinner meat substitutes are more prosaic. Peanut butter and grill cheese sandwiches qualify, with a peanut butter sandwich being the better substitute. After three weeks, going without meat one day a week no longer seems particularly difficult. I may well choose to try two meatless days a week soon, and see if that is as simple. All I have to do is be mindful not to eat meat that day. Nor do I feel the compunction to eat more meat on the other six days to make up for the day without meat.

My solitary actions do feel rather pointless. I am just one of 300 million Americans. Perhaps by blogging about it I can help start a trend. Less than 3% of Americans are vegetarians. I cannot claim to be one, but I have found cutting back on meat was simple and relatively painless. Going through this exercise once a week serves another important purpose: it keeps me mindful of my values. If like me you are concerned that your meat eating habit is indirectly causing people elsewhere to starve, you should not hesitate to try my approach of going without meat just one day a week. I suspect that you will find as I did that soon for that day you will not miss the meat at all.

May 28th, 2008 at 08:40pm Posted by Mark | Life 2008 | no comments

Carbon offsets alone aren’t going cut it

It is not often that a sermon gets to me. This could be because most sermons, while they may be very well written and passionately delivered, have topics that hit my snooze button. Occasionally though I hear a sermon that does resonate. Even more rarely, I hear one that chimes all my bells. Such was the case last Sunday when the Reverend Dennis Daniel (co-minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston that I attend) gave a sermon entitled Footprints, Bootprints and Tireprints… If you have the time, please read it. It deserves a much wider audience than the couple hundred people who heard it in person.

Rev. Daniel articulated the real tradeoffs required to seriously address global warming. I am all for replacing incandescent lights with fluorescent or LED lights. Nevertheless, if this is how we intend to respond to global warming we might as well try to bail out the Titanic with a teacup. Not only is global warming a real problem, it is much, much worse of a problem than we are really prepared to think about.

Perhaps it is best to stay in denial. At least if you stay in denial you can leverage hope. I do not wish to sound like the problem is completely hopeless. However, given our current culture and our human dynamics, to soberly address global warming it will take a seismic shift in attitudes the likes of which have never occurred in human history. Perhaps all it will take is to have a few atolls submerged by rising seas for the worldwide consensus to become overwhelming. However, given our human history it is much more likely that the challenges of global warming will be manifest in massive migrations, war and pestilence. I suppose that if we were to engage in enough global genocide we could seriously reduce our carbon footprint. Dead men are carbon neutral.

The Rev. Daniel nailed it. In his sermon, he suggests that if we could regress our lifestyle to 1950 (with its requisite population) then maybe we could get a handle on global warming. In 1950 because our expectations and salaries were modest, instead of having two or three cars, we felt fortunate to have one. That was all most families could afford. Our electricity needs were similarly downsized. Lacking air conditioning, we got by on fans. Books and a radio were our entertainment. We got most of our produce locally because it was too expensive to ship it from far away places. It was easier to survive without a car because we tended to live either in well-connected cities or in smaller villages.

Could Americans revert to such a lifestyle again? I am dubious but I notice one other telling statistic. In 1950, the population in the United States was about 150 million. In a little more than fifty years, we have doubled our population. To have the same carbon footprint we had in 1950 not only would we have to radically downsize our lives, but also we would have to kill one out of every two of us. Umm, you first.

That is not going to happen of course. We will address global warming by tackling the relatively easy stuff first. Changing out light bulbs is the easiest. We will work at creating more energy efficient cars and appliances, and there is a lot we can do to make our homes more insulated. Solar energy and wind power is there for the taking too. There is promising research that suggests that solar panels can be made as cheap per kilowatt-hour as power generated from coal burning power plants. All this will require a massive amount of reinvestment and research. Instead of using teacups to bail water out of the Titanic, we might be using pails instead. The ship though will still go down rather quickly.

Many of us think we can resolve our guilt by being “carbon neutral”. In case you are not familiar with the term, some speciously claim they can buy enough offsets to compensate for their carbon addicted modern lifestyles. Typical offsets include funding organizations that plant new trees. As the Rev. Daniel points out, this really does little to address global warming either. It is not that we cannot replace the carbon dioxide for our jet trip to Portugal elsewhere. It is just that our real carbon footprint is far bigger than this.

Consider the carbon burned just to get a newspaper to your door. The whole newsprint supply chain is carbon intensive. Of course, it is but one example. Every convenience of modern society brings with it its carbon footprint. Just writing this blog entry, I am consuming carbon, because my computer is using something like 200 watts of power. In some coal-burning power plant a couple hundred miles from here, some chunk of coal is being incinerated so I can post this online.

To be carbon neutral as a society, massive changes are required. Everything in our supply chain must be reengineered to minimize its carbon footprint. Of course we are unlikely to get rid of the carbon altogether. If we are extraordinarily lucky, we may squeeze 30% to 50% of the carbon out of our manufacturing and distribution processes over the next 50 years.

However, all this efficiency reduces, but does not eliminate, the carbon required to run our modern society. Yet this alone means nothing as long as population growth increases. I have seen a number of studies that say the Earth can sustain no more than a billion humans without it having a negative carbon impact on the planet. In short, 5 out of 6 of us need to be planted six feet under, and arguably those of us in first world countries should be the first to be planted.

What we need is for all countries to reduce their population growth, but especially in first world countries, which produce a disproportionate amount of the carbon causing climate change. China seemed to be on the right track when it limited family sizes to three. However, it is currently engaged in its own frantic plan to become a first world nation, and its carbon footprint is becoming huge. It is hardly alone.

What is the likelihood that humanity can peacefully come together, agree to reduce its population, aggressively move toward carbon neutral technologies, end deforestation and peacefully figure out how to spend generations in a negative growth cycle? Sure, it can be done with enough will. Will we get that kind of will? If past behavior is a predictor of the future, our chances are slim to none.

To end global warming means that each generation should expect to have fewer opportunities and less comfort than the previous generation. It is a depressing prospect, and hardly the sort of scenario that inspires us toward hope. Instead, we will likely choose selfishness and convenience. We will choose it because we can. Let someone else be carbon neutral, is what we will decide. We will take measured steps toward being carbon neutral, but if it involves more than a modicum of pain (and God forbid that it raises our taxes), it will become politically unacceptable.

I have a fantasy that I am carbon neutral. My roof and backyard are covered with solar cells. I have an enormously tall windmill in my backyard that generates electricity too. With these steps, my energy efficient windows and my insulated walls I am all set and guilt free.

Except that I still would need to get to market to buy food. I could not grow it all in my backyard. I would still need to see doctors. I would still need to get to my job. I am fortunate enough where I can bike to work and I could even walk to work if required. I doubt all these things would be enough. I would still need someone to haul away my garbage. If I still had a child in school, she would need a way to get there. I would still need to buy clothes and appliances. All of that takes infrastructure. If it can all be made carbon neutral, it is many generations away.

For me what it comes down to is that at some level to be an environmentalist you have to hate your own species. The reality is that modern man is incompatible with the Earth. We are driven to destroy it. Our selfishness may in turn destroy us and much of life as we know it on this planet. When we go the way of the dinosaurs, perhaps the Earth will become carbon neutral again.

February 23rd, 2008 at 10:02pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

Is mutual interdependence the solution?

That is what I have been asking myself this evening. As often happens, I was getting dishpan hands this evening while listening to the radio. Tonight, C-SPAN Radio was featuring speakers at yesterday’s Republican Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa. I happened to tune into a speech given by candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He was winning kudos from the friendly crowd by speaking of the virtues of energy independence. He proposed a plan that within ten years would make our country energy independent. He also warned of an even bigger national security issue: food independence. A nation that cannot grow the crops to sustain itself could be blackmailed, he warned. He warned the crowd that we could not let this happen. He received warm rounds of applause for these points.

I too have made similar points in the past. When discussing illegal immigration, I pointed out the consequences to our nation if much of our agriculture disappeared because we could not find sufficient migrant labor to pick our crops. When discussing global warming, I pointed out that conservation and renewable fuels could help us become energy independent. Once we were energy independent, the consequences of another war in the Middle East would trouble us a lot less.

While I still think that both goals are laudable it occurred to me that there is a downside to all this independence. What we are really saying when we talk about energy or food independence is we want our nation to be completely self-reliant. If we can take care of ourselves, then, if necessary, we can seal our borders and live in relatively happy isolation from the world’s chaos.

In our interconnected world, we will never be isolated from the world’s problems again, if we ever were. It is still said that when Wall Street sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. This seems to be borne out by the turmoil the last few weeks in our risky sub-prime mortgage market. Now it is also true that when stock markets tank in South Korea or in China, Wall Street catches a cold. These effects of course simply reinforce my point that we are increasingly interdependent. There is no way to go back to our isolationist past. We need to accept this reality. That our economy is growing at all is largely a result of our interdependence. Imagine how you would feel as a shareholder of Microsoft if it could only sell inside the United States.

So what does this mean? It means, as I have suggested before, that nation-states are moving toward obsolescence. I see this in small ways in my own life. I earn a few bucks on the side installing software for clients. I have yet to meet any of my clients in person. There is one client twenty miles or so away, but even in his case, all of our interaction was accomplished through email. Most of my clients live in the United States, but I have had clients in Israel and Great Britain too. It is not hard to transact business. They send me money via PayPal. I do the work over the Internet. At least in my case I can state that the Internet has made such things that used to matter, like the country where someone lives, irrelevant. Their money may be in a different color when they go buy groceries, but it is green when it arrives in my PayPal account.

It looks like before we ingloriously leave our debacle in Iraq will cost us at least a trillion dollars. Why did we do it? President Bush was quite candid about his rationalization before we invaded: because he perceived a real threat from Iraq to our national security. We thought that given more time Iraq could create atomic weapons that it might lob at us. Apparently, that was unacceptable to the cost of about one trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. Our ability to remain an independent nation apparently trumps all other needs including the need for all nations to peacefully coexist.

Most economists tout the virtues of free trade. They see it as a cure to the world’s economic ailments. Free trade, they intone, raises all boats. If it is cheaper to import vegetables from Mexico because the labor is cheaper there, this is ultimately good. Consumers benefit. Our farmers may be a bit put out but overall both the United States and Mexico would benefit. Our agriculture would change to be more efficient, or we would develop new industries to replace it. However, what free trade also does is that it promotes our world’s mutual interdependence.

From listening to politicians running for office, I am left to conclude that the world’s mutual interdependence is a bad thing. Is it? Maybe what we really need is to encourage our interdependence. Maybe nation-states are entities that are on their way out. Maybe what the world needs is world federalism instead. If this is where we need to go, from a world of autonomous states, to a world of federated nation-states then we need more interdependence, not less.

My firm conviction is that these dynamics are already well underway. Those who adapt to this new reality, like Europe, are likelier to prosper. The longer that the United States of America deludes itself into thinking that we will always be completely sovereign the more painful and costly our adjustment will be. Arguably, the debacle in Iraq is a one trillion dollar consequence of our delusion.

Imagine a different world where this is no my country vs. your country competition except in sports. I am not naïve enough to think that such a world will happen overnight. However, I do think that since the process is already well underway, the longer we delude ourselves then the more painful our transition will be. We need to discard ourselves of foolish notions like we can provide entirely for our country’s needs. While energy independence may help us find cleaner means of generating energy to reduce global warming, its ultimate goal is to find ways for the world to also do this. For global warming, like much of what ails us, can only be solved globally.

The more we rely on other countries, and other countries rely upon us, the more natural incentive there is for all of us to get along together in peace and harmony. These ties truly bind us together as a planet. We need to listen to the message. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India and many other countries need to listen too. The European Union has already heard the message and is prospering.

We cannot solve our national problems by being independent in all things, or even in areas that we consider critical to our sovereignty. This is delusion. However, the world can solve its problems by engaging in them together. Economic interdependence is the means by which a newer and saner world order could emerge. It is likely to be messy, as are most things in human affairs, but it offers a hopeful vision, and seems more viable than our current tactics.

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

- John Lennon, “Imagine”

August 12th, 2007 at 09:35pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | no comments

Adventures in Lighting

Like all obsessions, this one started out as something relatively innocuous. In my case, I was at the Home Depot and strolling down the light bulb aisle when I noticed a four pack of compact fluorescent light bulbs. In case you do not know what a compact fluorescent bulb is, they are fluorescent lights designed to fit into the sockets of regular light bulbs while putting out a similar amount of light.

Admittedly, these compact fluorescent lights look a little odd. However, their odd shape hardly matters, since most light bulbs hide inside lampshades anyhow. Nor were they particularly expensive. I was able to purchase the pack of four 60-watt compact fluorescent bulbs for about eight dollars. When I arrived home, I replaced the bulbs in the lamp in our living room, TV room and in the hallway. I could not discern any real difference in the quantity of light put out. I expected that when I flipped on the switch there would be a delay until the light came on. However, there was none. I smiled. This was not hard at all! Moreover, one compact fluorescent light should last for years, meaning I would have to spend less time replacing light bulbs. I would save both money and time.

Like many Americans waking up to the reality of global warming, I understand that replacing incandescent lights with fluorescent lights is just one small step. Compact fluorescent lights use sixty percent less energy and generate little heat. If I could replace all our incandescent lights with compact fluorescent lights, my family will not be dumping 300 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere every year. It seemed like something tangible and relatively painless that I could do to reduce global warming.

The next time I went to Home Depot, I bought two more four packs of compact fluorescent lights. This time I changed lights in the laundry room, the hallway going to my basement, and assorted ceiling lights. I put one in a light with a dimmer switch. It took only a couple weeks experience to discern this was not a good idea. At full power the lights, well, fluoresced, pulsing and flickering. Within a couple of weeks, it gave out. Reluctantly, I put an old-fashioned incandescent bulb back in that fixture. I placed the used compact fluorescent bulb in a bag for special disposal since the mercury vapors inside the light were potentially dangerous.

We have four vanities in our house. Each has above the sink a set of four to six soft white incandescent lights. As I was repainting one of the bathrooms, I kept looking at the light fixture. It was not particularly attractive and so 1980s. I wondered if I could replace the light fixture with a fluorescent one that was reasonably attractive. Those four 60-watt bulbs must be drawing a lot of power. I shuffled back to the Home Depot and wandered through their lighting aisle. Their stock mostly consisted of the usual incandescent and halogen lights. Close to the standard ugly fluorescent lights suitable for workshops were a small number of classy looking fluorescent light sets. There I found this light set. It was designed to be mounted on a ceiling, but with a bit of jury-rigging I was able to place it above the bathroom mirror where the old vanity light fixture sat. With its brushed nickel frame, it looked classy.

The final authority though was my wife, who gave it the thumbs up. I took that as an okay to buy another one. The next one went over the vanity in our master bedroom. We noticed that it put out a brighter and whiter light than what it replaced.

Yesterday, I tackled the master bathroom’s vanity light set. This set was particularly environmentally unfriendly because it consisted of six incandescent lights in a row, which used special soft white bulbs. It put out a lot of heat. Moreover, my daughter was in the habit of leaving them on. This vanity was particularly annoying because its lights were constantly blowing out anyhow. Unfortunately, I could not find quite what I was looking for at Home Depot. I drove to Lowe’s, traversed their light aisle, and I found just the thing, this Newcastle Fluorescent Bath Bar. It fit perfectly into the existing space and looked similar to the other light set. It was both brighter than the old set and cast a more natural bright white light. Its only defect was that it took a second to come on, unlike the others.

I have also replaced a defective floor lamp in our living room. I purchased a compact fluorescent bulb for it that was supposed to have three brightness levels, like a three way incandescent bulb. Unfortunately, I could not get it to work with in that fixture, but at least the light is usable.

I am ending up with a quite a collection of used incandescent light bulbs. I am not sure what to do with them. I still need to replace more incandescent lights in our basement with fluorescent lights. I am pondering what do to about the ceiling mounted lights in our basement, all of which work off a dimmer switch. So far, I have not found a fluorescent light that actually works with a dimmer switch, although some claim to work. Other specialty lights like the ones we use for our bedstead and our outdoor porch light do not appear to have ready compact fluorescent alternatives.

Nonetheless, I now feel compelled to try to replace every incandescent and halogen lighting fixture that I can. I still have one vanity light set to replace in the downstairs bathroom. As compact fluorescent lighting technology matures with new demand, I figure there may come a time when every light in my house will be a fluorescent light. It may not be possible to replace lights like the one in my refrigerator with a fluorescent light, but perhaps in time appliances will come with fluorescent fixtures too.

To reduce the impact of global warming, we can all take action. You may find as I did that ridding yourself of non-fluorescent lights in your house can be a fun project. I use other energy saving devices such as a programmable thermostat. A large energy saving project we need to take up one of these days is to replace our windows (which are already double pane) with more energy efficient windows. I would prefer to wait until we have the money saved, since this looks like it will be at least a $10,000 project.

I may be naïve to think that my contributions will amount to much. As I noted in an earlier entry on global warming, the increase in our population growth alone suggests these efforts will not reduce emissions, but only help check their growth. Nonetheless, for a culture that supposedly believes in life, and the survival of our species in particular, it seems suicidal not to at least try. If nothing else my small actions replacing lights encouraged me to keep committing toward a path where my family and I will live more harmoniously with the planet.

February 11th, 2007 at 11:22am Posted by Mark | Technology | one comment

A Dubious Passage

If you are in the transportation business, geography is rarely your friend. Due to the nature of air travel, the air freight business can somewhat ignore geography. However, even in that business the great circle routes between destinations are not always available. If you are involved in ground transportation there are mountains that must be scaled, swamps that must be bypassed, rivers that must be spanned, and traffic that will slow you down. Transportation by sea means navigating around continents, islands, wrecks and shoals. All add time and expense to their desire to move goods quickly and cheaply between two points.

For centuries, one of the biggest obstacles for transporters has been the Americas. Prior to the Panama Canal, trips to the Pacific typically involved arduous and dangerous journeys around the aptly named Cape Fear at the tip of South America. The Panama Canal cut off thousands of miles. However, if you look at a globe you will quickly see that from departure points like London, even the Panama Canal does not come close to being a direct route to the Orient. Consequently, for centuries one of the dreams of mariners has been a reliable Northwest Passage over the top of Canada, through the Arctic Ocean, and thence into the Pacific. It approximates a great circle route taken by airplanes. Such a venture by sea would save weeks and about four thousand miles of unnecessary travel.

There was, unfortunately, one small problem: the mass of arctic ice that tenaciously extended over much of the Arctic Ocean. Trying to get through that seemed about as likely to happen as the Second Coming. British mariners were among the first to try and fail to find a navigable Northwest Passage. The wrecks of many ships along Canada’s eastern and northern coasts demonstrated that such ventures were futile. Modern icebreakers are usually successful and cutting paths through the Arctic ice. However, their paths often do not remain open for long. During the summer, a few commercial ships have succeeded in claiming the Northwest Passage. However, even today such crossings are dangerous. The season is sort. Icebergs and shoals along the Arctic Ocean remain very real threats. For these reasons, even after all these years, a Northwest Passage to the Orient remains too dangerous for all but a handful of shippers to try. Those that try have to do so only during a very short period of Arctic summer.

The times may be changing. Because of global warming, the Arctic ice is rapidly receding. The average temperature of the Arctic has increased five degrees Fahrenheit in just 30 years. As a result, the Arctic ice mass is quickly receding. A Northwest Passage is looking to be commercially viable at last.

The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen weaves in graceful slow motion through the ice pack, advancing through the legendary Northwest Passage well after the Arctic should be iced over and shuttered to ships for the winter.

The fearsome ice is weakened and failing, sapped by climate change. Ultimately, this night’s ghostly procession through Icebreaker Channel will be the worst the ship faces on its late-season voyage. Much of the trip, crossing North America from west to east through the Northwest Passage, will be in open water, with no ice in sight.

You would think that maybe this would be a cause for alarm. However, in the world of commerce, this may be an event worth toasting.

“Shipping companies are going to think about this, and if they think it’s worth it, they are going to try it,” says the captain of the Amundsen, Cmdr. Alain Gariepy, 43. “The question is not if, but when.”

Environmentalists are, to say the least, alarmed:

Satellite imagery has shown that the Arctic ice cap is thinning and already is nearly 30 percent smaller than it was 25 years ago. In the winter of 2004-05, the Arctic’s perennial ice, which usually survives the summer, shrank by 280,000 square miles, the size of Turkey. This past August, a crack opened in the ice pack from the Russian Arctic to the North Pole, an event never seen before.

Arctic ice reflects sunlight; its absence may accelerate global warming. The intricate chemistry that occurs in the rich Arctic waters could go haywire with unaccustomed heat and sunlight. Whole species seem destined to disappear while others move northward in their place. Inuit who thrived here for millennia are finding the thin ice and changed wildlife inhospitable.

Opponents often chastise us environmentalists (not to mention Democrats). “They look at the glass as half empty, instead of half full,” they say about us. Look on the bright side of global warming: a Northwest Passage in fact would cut the costs of commercial shipping, expanding free trade and helping to lift all boats.

This is a poor turn of phrase, under the circumstances. Because all that melting ice will definitely lift all boats, as well as likely cause the relocations of millions of people to higher grounds. In fact, when looking for evidence of the effects of global warming, the Arctic, while remote, is where its affect is most clear and dramatic. The sheets of ice that cover most of Greenland are cracking, pouring fresh water into the ocean, decreasing ocean salinity and rising sea levels. The Ward Ice Shelf in the Arctic Ocean, which has stood unchanged for three millennium, has been cracking since 2000. Glaciers in Alaska are melting. Polar bears may soon be an endangered species: there are not enough ice flows for them to move across the Arctic Ocean. As Arctic ice retreats, more sea pups die because adult seals have to swim further for food.

Even though commercial shipping possibilities may expand in the Arctic Ocean, this is one time when it is better to say the glass is half-empty. Global warming is happening beyond any doubt and it may soon change much of the delicate ecosystem above the Arctic Circle. It is hard for us to know now what ripples this will have on the rest of the planet, beyond increased sea levels. However, it should not be cause for just concern, but for alarm. For all life is tied together. What happens in the Arctic is likely to effect all of us in profound ways, many of which we cannot yet imagine.

The United States is the world’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions come principally from our cars and our coal burning power plants. As a nation, we can choose to take aggressive steps to rein in our emissions of greenhouse gasses. Alternatively, we can keep burying our heads in the sand and pretend the consequences will not affect us. There are other more benign ways to generate energy other than through burning things. We can move beyond hybrid cars to other forms of transportation, such as light rail, that have much less effect on the environment. We can each do small things that can have enormous impact, such as setting our thermostats down two degrees in the winter and up two degrees in the summer. Al Gore has a number of other ideas we each can do that can help the global warming crisis.

As important as our personal actions are, we must demand a national energy policy that not only makes us energy independent, but which rewards conservation. We need larger incentives for greater degrees of conservation. We can make it more expensive to tear down virgin forests and less expensive to redevelop urbanized lands. We can even demand that manufacturers calculate the cost to the planet for the use of their products, such as the European Union plans to do soon.

It may be that by stemming global warming, we will not just save the polar bear from extinction, but our own species as well. If all life is precious, as the right to life crowd asserts, then the lives of all the species on the planet are also precious, for our relationship is mutually dependent. As for all the alleged benefits of finally having a Northwest Passage, let us not make this passage.

November 17th, 2006 at 10:21pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Goodbye Planet Earth

The good news is that virtually everyone, including our president (who typically sticks his head in the sand), agrees that global warming is happening. Perhaps the movie An Inconvenient Truth was the final straw that convinced even the most diehard skeptics. A very vocal but very well moneyed minority (typically representing businesses that are profiting from the status quo) still thinks that humanity’s impact on global warming is minimal. They assert that since global warming is part of a natural trend there is no reason to give ourselves a guilt trip.

As a result, they argue, there is no reason for us to take any drastic actions since we cannot halt it. Moreover, even if we could succeed in taking drastic actions, they will not do any good. On this last point, I grudgingly have to agree with skeptics. I feel an urgency to start doing something concrete and dramatic about global warming. Yet I also get the feeling it is like trying to stop the tide. Humanity’s demographics are working against us. Even if we could enforce the Kyoto Protocols, all it would do is slow the rate of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, since no one can make us stop, humanity will doubtless continue to breed like bunnies. Those new people will put additional demands on the ecosystem. Today there are about 6.5 billion people on the planet. Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth shows a linear relationship between successive years and temperature. Each year the average global temperature creeps up at such a consistent and methodical rate, you can easily predict next year’s average global temperature.

Human population growth, on the other hand, is growing exponentially. Somewhere around 1830, after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the total world population reached a billion people. By 1930, it was two billion. By 1960, it was three billion. By 1974: four billion. By 1987: five billion. By 2000: six billion. Here we are six years later and halfway to adding another billion.

“Choose life,” the pro-life people tell us. They should be cheering. Humanity is choosing life in record numbers. They tell us that every life is sacred. However, you have to wonder about our quality of life when every year more and more people are competing for the same resources. Naturally, those who live in third world countries are not too thrilled about their plight. Therefore, when they can they choose prosperity. They cross borders in search of better lives. Those of us in first world countries are choosing life too. And we are choosing to live a large life. In the process, we exacerbate global warming. We tear down the trees that can convert our excess carbon dioxide to oxygen. We drive vehicles that emit carbon dioxide. The infrastructure that gives us life’s many amenities exists largely because of the ready availability of petroleum, which, when burned it emits carbon dioxide that causes global warming. We are determined to have a better quality of life than our parents had, or die trying. We think micro, not macro. We think me not we. We try to ignore our interdependence.

Nature has been knocking on our doors. It has been trying to give us a wakeup call. For example, over the last few weeks California has experienced sustained record heat. These heat spells are not just a little hotter than things used to be, but much hotter. High temperatures passed 110 degrees in many places in California. It reached 99 degrees in San Francisco. Fortunately, brownouts were minimal. Yet in order to keep cool, Californians pushed the power system for all it was worth, driving record demand. Since most of that energy came from non-renewable energy forms like coal burning power plants, cooling ourselves to deal with global warming also exacerbated global warming.

Meanwhile, China is no longer content to be a country full of peasants and water buffalo. It is Great Leap Forward, Version 2 underway right now in China. In a generation, the country will go from the second world to first world. Soon its carbon dioxide production will equal that of the United States. The pollution in China has gotten so bad that it is making it all across the Pacific Ocean. It contributes not only to California’s high temperatures, but also to its poor air quality too. Other emerging economies are probably learning unwise lessons from China’s success: hang the pollution control equipment. Deforest, defile and pollute as necessary until you are first world.

Democracy is the answer, President Bush tells us. When he visits third world countries, he says that industrialization is the answer. He preaches that nations do not have to choose to be miserable. He says any nation if it works hard enough can industrialize itself into first world status. Coming with that industrialization, of course, will be new environmental problems, including more carbon dioxide and global warming. Yes, it may be a wee bit hypocritical of those of us in the first world to suggest to the third world not to industrialize for the good of the planet. Of course, what would be even better would be for us first world countries to devolve into third world countries. Since that is unlikely to happen (barring nuclear war), is it too much to expect us to stabilize our population and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? Yep, apparently it is too much. Republican or Democrat, we have these expectations. America is the land of freedom, and we can never have enough freedom. Since freedom generally translates into, “I get to do what I want to do and hang the consequences for anyone else”, it seems unlikely that we will do sensible things like petition for higher gas taxes to discourage driving.

Perhaps as these increasingly nasty effects of global warming continue to manifest themselves, we will begin meaningful changes to our behavior. Perhaps we will all drive electric cars that will run on renewable sources of energy. Perhaps as our telecommunications infrastructure improves, most of us will work from home. Perhaps we will learn to start biking to work. Perhaps, but I am not counting on it in the short term.

I feel despondent. In a way, I am glad to be mortal. I am pushing 50. With luck will be around this planet another 30 or 40 years. Nevertheless, along with my natural angst associated with growing old, I am already feeling deeply sad about the seemingly unstoppable problem of global warming. I also feel nostalgic for a time within my memory when the earth seemed in balance. Our environment, on which we all depend, is now fragile. We are the bull in the china shop, largely heedless of the carnage that we are causing and the effect it will have on this and future generations.

I am nostalgic for bone crushing cold winter days I knew in upstate New York, but which now happens much more rarely. I am nostalgic for a time when mountain snowmelts happened in May, not March or April. I am nostalgic for a time when the hottest day all year was 90 degrees. I am nostalgic for a time when I did not have to worry about the air quality index because the air quality was always fine.

I am distraught and sad at how we have raped our wonderful planet. I am angry and frustrated that we are likely to thoughtlessly keep at it. So perhaps my death will be in some way a relief, because by then the earth will no longer the place that I remember. We have remade it, and not for the better. If after death I reincarnate, I hope it is in some greener and fresher world where the citizens live in balance with nature, where glaciers do not melt, and where we treat nature with the reverence of Native Americans. I will be sorry to pass on our trashed and overcrowded planet to my daughter. I will also be angry with myself for not doing more to shake people up. Here is one more futile attempt to do so. It is likely already too late.

July 30th, 2006 at 08:36pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments