Freeman Allan sent me a link to a “wake up and smell the crisis” video, to the effect we should be grateful for Trump phenomenon here.
Scott Pruitt: No, No, No, and No
SEND THIS FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY STOOGE BACK TO OKLAHOMA AND PRAY FOR OKLAHOMA.
To have Scott Pruitt heading the EPA is not so much a matter of hiring a fox to guard the henhouse as it is to hire a demolition crew to bulldoze the henhouse and crush the detritus to a pulp.
At least the damage Jess Sessions will inflict as Attorney General may potentially be reversed. But the damage Scott Pruitt can do to the environment as head of the EPA—to include pretty much dismantling the organization itself, as he has already attempted to do as Oklahoma Attorney General—can cascade down for decades. Toxins such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic released by coal burning are natural elements that can poison air and water for eons to come. Not quite as permanent is atmospheric carbon dioxide (it is a compound, after all, not an element), but it naturally persists for centuries, plural.*
I’ve thrown in some links below ⇓ to pump up your level of outrage and hope you’ll ask your Senators to send Pruitt back to the fracking-riddled, earthquake-rattled state of Oklahoma whence he came.**
Two-and-a-Half Reasons Not to Confirm Rex Tillerson That Will Not Work
Rex Tillerson: the Man and the Phenomenon
FIRST: Rex Tillerson, most obviously, represents the interests of Big Fossil. No matter how much he divests financial holdings, the social proclivities of human nature ensure his bias toward his longstanding friends, and thereby a tilting of the international energy field toward fossil fuel. No one, not even the Pope, is immune to the psychological influences of friends. It’s not just Tillerson’s personal bias, it’s the fact of his being in the position itself that declares to the world: We Like Fossil Fuels.
SECOND: Not quite so obvious is the signal of the nomination of Tillerson not as a person, but as a phenomenon. It’s the tacit agreement that a captain of a key international industry naturally belongs as chief diplomat of the world’s most powerful nation, no matter what industry s/he is connected with. The nomination of Satya Nadella (current CEO of Microsoft) would send the same signal. It’s the signal that we’re now unquestionably in the era of what David Korten wrote in When Corporations Rule the World, first published two decades ago.*
Continue reading “Two-and-a-Half Reasons Not to Confirm Rex Tillerson That Will Not Work”
How Much Does Elephant Slaughter Matter?
Every 15 minutes, a poacher kills an elephant for its tusks.
Does one elephant matter? Check it out:
https://www.paulallen.com/china-takes-aggressive-steps-to-close-ivory-trade/#1545-2
Previously I raised the issue of, how much do we want to pour resources into the protection of “charismatic” species such as the elephant, when more humble unnoticed creatures (and plants) go ignored at the planet’s peril? Not to mention the multitudes of suffering human beings.
It’s a serious question, but let me be irrational for the moment, since it seems that a little irrationality can go a long way toward positive outcomes, where sheer logic falls short (read Antonio Damasio).
Secession: Has Its Time Come?
Tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.
Secession.
I.e. a “Blue” withdrawal from the paradoxically named “United” States.
[sorry Barack, your farewell speech was laudable, but as your mom said, Reality has a Way of Catching Up with You.]
I realize there are many practical obstacles to this split, of which the two biggest are:
(A) Geographic. North Dakota, Montana, and a finger of Idaho break up a Blue Northern Arc extending from Virginia to California. Boundaries could be especially problematic there. If the other side started building walls, access between regions might be managed through Canada.
(B) Asymmetry of Resources & Money:
- The non-Blue portion of What Was the United States (WUSS) has most of the physical resources: oil, coal, natural gas, solar, and land-based wind energy, and most important—if push came to shove—most of the armaments, from handguns to ICBMs.
- The Blue Arc has most of the financial wealth, intellectual property, and potential for innovation. You can see where the above-mentioned asymmetry would interact with this one. But, with enough tribute paid to the non-Blue states—continuing an existing de facto practice—the Blue Arc could minimize the use of force. The Blue Arc, if it joined NATO, would shine among the other NATO countries, in actually paying its way.
Think I’m joking? I’m not sure. I actually don’t believe Secession’s time has come. Yet. But it is time to start thinking about it so that future generations might not have to endure the charade of creating a More Perfect Union from the schizophrenic nation that exists now.
Singh Kaur
I didn’t put “Voice of Transcendence” in my title figuring you would ignore this post as mush. Maybe you will now! But Singh Kaur is one of those apostles of the New Age who was, and is, authentically transcendent. I mean her music. I doubt she was personally (who is?), but sadly I never met her.
Forget the So-Called Warming “Pause”
If you are like me, recently you were willing to be persuaded that there was a 5-year “Pause” in Global Warming early in this century. Not that the world was not getting hotter, but that the rate of getting hotter (the 2nd derivative) had dropped.
T’aint so. Science (for what it’s worth these days) says so. I got this out of The Guardian, so it might have missed the mainstream U.S. media.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/jan/04/new-study-confirms-noaa-finding-of-faster-global-warming
Didn’t the “pause” seem plausible? Thank the fossil fuel industry for that major disinformation campaign (a “hoax” in right wing parlance)—and I fell for it. Now I know better. Satan was subtle, and so are those folks.
Good News, Good News, and Unsurprising Bad News on the Environment: Tigers, Amur Leopards Get a Break, Not So Elephants
For those of us depressed by the continuing hammer blows delivered to the environment by humans, there are a few bright spots. A couple below, although one can’t sugarcoat them.
Bengal Tiger Resurgence
I recently heard that the population of Bengal Tigers is on the upswing in India (they have been increasing in Nepal too). I couldn’t find that recent story with a Web search, but here’s a report from January 2015, with numbers cited by India’s Environment Minister: Bengal Tiger Numbers Up
Assuming we can trust NDTV and India’s environment minister, these are promising numbers—an increase of 58% in seven years.
Unfortunately, there’s a downside to these stats: the populations are scattered, meaning genetic diversity is still low, and the total number of the big cats, unsurprisingly, is 1/50th of what it was circa 1900 (then 100,000). At the same time, India’s human population has gone up by a factor of 4.
World Order 2.0 and National Debt
Richard Haass Stumps for a Reset of World Order, Targets National Debt
Centrist Big Thinker and President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass has a new book out, The World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order. As I gleaned from an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition today, and from the summary offered on Amazon, he’s looking for a reset (my word) of our foreign policy that recognizes our limitations but still projects our strength—reflecting “the reality that power is widely distributed and that borders count for less.”
In case you were wondering, Haass was pretty satisfied with the world order from the Cold War up through September 11, 2001. It may have been a tense world order, but at least it was orderly. Sort of.
Sub-2 Hour Marathon? Science or Stunt?
I’m linking you to a post on a blog I write on the Road Race Management website, dealing with Nike’s program to help a man run a 2 hour. marathon. I poke a little fun at Nike, but also make a serious argument that. . .