Mitigating Climate Change Requires a New, Less Selfish Way To View Life’s Challenges
Frank for Florida writes: Hi Craig. I think that people need to go back in history, and they will find that the renewable energy industry is NOT the first major industry to get subsidies from the government. In the next 25 to 50 years, we will have been sitting around looking at each other over a very depleted earth as far as natural resources go, and say. “What the hell happened?”
We should be so thankful that our government had the foresight to give the industry the help it needed. So, we can get on with life as we know it today and possibly tomorrow. If the progress of renewable energy doesn’t happen, my granddaughter will probably be going to the super market in a space suit, just to be able to breathe fresh air.
Frank, you make an excellent point, as always. That’s the tragic thing about human beings, and especially Americans: we have no appetite to fix problems that are not right in our face, right now. We’re more likely to be killed by falling furniture than we are in a terrorist attack, but that doesn’t demote terrorism from the number one slot in voters’ priorities in the Iowa caucuses.
We’re also incredibly selfish. We look at the suffering of others, now and in future generations, and we’re just glad it isn’t happening to us. It’s really disgusting, when you think about it. See cartoon above.
Here’s my (and many millions of other’s) favorite poem by Elizabethan writer John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
We may admire the turn of phrase, but too many of us just don’t get this at the core of our being.
At one time, hydroelectric power was heavily subsidized by the federal government. Perhaps the best example is the Hoover Dam.
It’s been observed that government subsidies to oil firms began ostensibly as a matter of national security. How shall we best define “national security” today…?
Abraham Lincoln reminded us of the counsel recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 12:25 in the New Testament, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
Similarly, first-century Greek historian and essayist, Plutarch, is said to have warned us, “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
There is a cavernous divide between the rich and the rest of us in the US today. It’s wider and deeper than at any time since the raging inequity that pushed our nation into the depths of the Great Depression. The Gilded Age of the Robber Barons holds little against our present state.
US citizens are not alone in this phenomenon. James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks and Edward N. Wolff are researchers in Canada the US and Finland working with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University. They completed a study in 2009 called “The World Distribution of Household Wealth.” That study provides a window into part of the chasm across our global human society:
· The richest 5% of Earth’s people own 71% of all assets; the richest 10% own 85% of all assets.
· Compare this with the poorest 50% of Earth’s people, who, altogether, own barely 1% of global wealth.
· 80% of Earth’s people live on under $10 USD/day; 50% of Earth’s people obtain under $2 USD/day.
Data from Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, 2013 & U.S. Census Bureau, 2012 allows us a simple but stark equation:
· In mid-2012, global wealth was about $223 trillion USD, and there were about 7 billion people globally.
What would it look like if we divided that global $223 trillion evenly among Earth’s population of seven billion? It would equal just $31,857.14 per person – not per year, but TOTAL.
Few would even consider enforcing the equal distribution of that modest lump sum per person. Still, in contrast, consider this next stunning extreme that was documented by OXFAM in January 2015:
Just eighty people in the world possess more wealth than 3.5 billion people combined. …Think about that for five seconds… Each of these 80 people holds an average of $23.7 billion.
Want some scale? $23.7 billion is $36,073.06 every single hour, around the clock, for seventy-five years.
Can it be rationally argued that such hoarding is just and defensible, or even sustainable? …So much for economic justice around the globe.
What about our home soil? Information from Forbes, Pacifica News, CNN, Robert Reich, and Business Insider shines a rather painful light:
· As of January 2014, income inequality in America is worse now than the divide in 1920’s that triggered The Great Depression.
· Corporate profits are also now at an all-time high, while wages are at an all-time low.
· In the 1950’s, over a third of private sector workers were in unions, but today only 7% of private sector workers are in unions.
Some folks are tempted to believe there’s a racial or national origin linkage to these poverty figures. Those folks should understand that most Americans living in poverty are white and native born. Likewise, most of the people in this country taking government welfare benefits or food assistance are white and native born. A great many of our citizens work full time, at jobs none of us want, and are still in poverty. Upward mobility in the US is far worse now than it has been in generations.
Marketwatch reported, “while the jobs market is improving and the Affordable Care Act has given an estimated 15 million people access to medical care, the Great Recession does appear to have taken its toll on Americans’ finances; in fact, they’re 40% poorer today than they were in 2007.”
“Among those who had savings prior to 2008, 57% said they’d used up some or all of their savings in the Great Recession and its aftermath. What’s more, only 39% of respondents reported having a “rainy day” fund adequate to cover three months of expenses and only 48% of respondents said that they would completely cover a hypothetical emergency expense costing $400 without selling something or borrowing money.”
Meanwhile, according to Princeton University, our greed-and-war-bribed federal government shells out $35 million for each RQ-4 Global Hawk drone. That’s just in actual per-aircraft costs. With development costs also included, the per-aircraft cost rises to $123.2 million each.
Several of our generals have openly admitted that our global war against the tactic of “terrorism” is creating many more terrorists than we’re killing. Donald Rumsfeld’s private fear has come to pass. Despite that fact, our bribed “public servants” endlessly stuff mountains of our tax dollars onto the jaws of our captive government’s self-defeating war machine.
Media Matters reports that the US “defense” budget is higher than the military outlay of the next seventeen highest-spending countries combined. Meanwhile, our congressional leadership does next-to-nothing about our national energy sustainability, our decaying infrastructure, the disruption of our climate, and all the other extreme needs across life in the United States today.
If our nation is to be truly secure, we must have a few key pillars firmly in place:
• A strong and widespread middle class (good jobs, good wages and fair prices)
• A well-educated populace (fully funded and staffed schools, and inexpensive quality universities)
• Good quality, low cost healthcare for everyone (a single-payer national health system)
• A healthy biosphere (tough environmental regulations with strict approval and monitoring)
• Cheap clean abundant energy (a ‘moonshot’ attitude and policy initiative on solar and wind power)
• Honest elections and honorable public servants (public-only campaign finance, and an end to all forms of bribery)
The last of these six pillars is the first place we need to start… because, without that central pillar, none of the others will stand.
The greatest threat to our national security is therefore here at home – it’s the very flood of bribery capital that has taken our state and national Capitols by storm.
The words of Abraham Lincoln illuminate the danger of inaction against the fixated and methodical army of corporate lobbyists – 11,000 strong and pouring out bribery at an average of $6 million per congressperson in 2009 alone…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Ancient traditions have long recognized that the urge to hoard far beyond one’s needs is a sign of irrationality and presents a severe threat to common survival. Too many of us today have lost sight of that wisdom.
Good government is the only hope that We the People have to defend our Public Commons and advance our Common Good. Good government won’t come from people who hate government.
Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms. That’s the most important and central issue that controls all others.
As long as cash reigns as king, we’ll more and more be slaves to the most vicious greed and craven cowardice imaginable.
Cameron,
As you know, this is not the first time in U.S. history that there has been a huge gap between rich and poor. The situation was remedied when enough people finally became fed up. I see the present situation as temporary even though it is serious.
Citizens United has exacerbated the problem. However, as I see it, the Supreme Court had little choice because of legal precedents. Corporations have just about forever been legally treated as persons. It is not the function of the Supreme Court to vote in accordance with public opinion. Now it is the responsibility of us and Congress to take action to undo the harm that the decision is causing.
Actually, the only reason that it is harmful not to have restrictions on how much corporations spend on political campaigns is that people are influenced by the endless repetition of political advertisements that unlimited spending makes possible. If people were not influenced by repetition and were instead influenced only by what is right and what makes sense, the Citizens United decision would not matter.
Why is it those preaching a leftist economic agenda always need to clad the ideology in the disguise of “morality” or “environment”?
Could it be that flawed economic concept’s need disguising to portray complex issues as simple, and allowing a deeply flawed ideology gain some credibility ?
That doesn’t mean that many of the points raised by Frank or Cameron aren’t valid and worthy, nor that there isn’t room for improvement in government practices, especially in the US.
It’s just I believe trying to revive obsolete ideologies will only create more harm than good.
We live in an era of pragmatism and realpolitik. Not as idealistic, and maybe more cynical, but at least realistic. The idea that the global economy is a sort of morality play, with “goodies and badies” , is helpful. Nor can complex societies like the US apply political principles suited to a village government.
Ranting against powerful corporations and organizations, (especially demonizing some while deifying others)is not helpful and counter-productive. With large populations come large organizations. These organizations are become increasingly global and independent of national governments.
The old concepts of “left and right”, political ideologies are obsolete in a globalized world. The US and the rest of the world can no longer afford extravagant, grandiose ideologically driven schemes. Instead, we should be encouraging strong effective governments with administrative talent, cohesion and economic responsibility.
Only strong stable economic growth can afford environmental and social reform.
Well, when I write something like: “Dealing effectively with environmental threats means some sort of coming together as a species,” I grant that I’m being idealistic. It’s why I couldn’t get elected dog-catcher. Note that it’s also the reason Bernie Sanders is under attack: can these ideas work in the world of realpolitik?
You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one……
You write: Why is it those preaching a leftist economic agenda always need to clad the ideology in the disguise of “morality” or “environment”? It’s actually simpler than that. It’s not “clad in” or “in the disguise of”; a progressive agenda IS an ideology of moral decency and environmental stewardship. It’s something we’re proud to say out loud.