Hard Not To Be Worried About America’s Children
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The presence of so many young families in the airports resulted in our talking at length about the plight of these parents, and especially of their children. Obviously, we all hope for a return to the land that offered us Baby Boomers the level of opportunity with which we grew up, though it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which that happens, given:
• Long-term environmental damage. As the years pass and our corporations are encouraged to use our oceans and skies as their own private sewers, someone’s going to eventually have to pay for this. Of course, if you ask the families of the million+ people who died last year from the inhalation of the aromatics of coal plants (or who died in climate-intensified floods, etc.), you’ll learn immediately that someone is already paying the price.
• National debt. Something else that young people are eventually going to have to pay for is the trillions of dollars of additional debt that has been tacked on to cover the tax cuts for billionaires. This, of course, will come in the form of extremely onerous taxation.
• Intensifying racism and xenophobia. No one, neither the oppressed nor the oppressors, wins in this situation. Most people are, at their core, good and kind, and only miserable people like to live in a world of tension, distrust, and hate.
• Growing chasm between rich and poor. The steady demise of the middle class means a nation of largely apathetic and disenfranchised people. If the majority of people realize that the rampant corruption that has become the mainstay of the American political process has brought us to the point where their votes really are meaningless, the super-wealthy will be in a position to really turn the screws and to continue to loot the U.S. treasury for their personal enrichment.
• Horrific moral collapse. It’s arguable when and how American culture became so completely wrapped around tribalism, greed, substance abuse, predatory sex, and indifference to the suffering of others. What’s inescapable, however, is that’s where we are. Turning this around is going to be like unscrambling an egg. This, of course, is what destroyed the Roman empire; once the swan dive into moral filth is made, it’s hard to climb back up the ladder.
Most of all, it appears that we’re marching toward the growing irrelevance of the U.S. due to declining competitiveness in the global market base, via:
• Isolationism. Trump may convince his followers that it is better off if the U.S. isolates itself from the world, but this is clearly incorrect. The current escalation of trade wars has already begun hurting huge sections of the U.S. economy, not to mention consumers.
• Attacking/threatening allies. Trump’s denigrating comments about our allies in Western Europe, his embarrassing bald-faced lies about his accomplishments, his withdrawal from the Iran deal and the Paris Accord, have made the U.S. a combination of pariah and laughing stock.
• Demise of public education. As the qualification of the average worker falls, so do these people’s prospects for financial success, as other countries become more productive in relative terms and receive bigger pieces of the global economic pie.
• Refusal to participate in cleantech. It’s clear that the development of technology that enables environmental sustainability is destined to become the defining industry of the 21st Century, given the mega-changes that are taking place in the global economy: the electrification of transportation, mobility as a service, the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, energy efficiency solutions, water management and purification, as well as smart grid and cities. The U.S. has a combination of response to all this: a) climate change denial, b) environmental deregulation, c) encouraging the consumption of coal, d) opening up public lands for oil and gas exploration, e) litigation against state and local governments that are trying desperately to protect what’s left of the environment.
In a word, this is pathetic.
It’s easy to look into the smiling faces of young children and their doting parents and see nothing but good roads in front of them. God willing, perhaps we’ll find a way to make it so, but there’s really no good reason to believe that.
I feel so bad for future generations. Trump and climate change deniers everywhere are making the earth a terrible place to live. They’re using up resources faster than they can replenish, they are releasing greenhouse gasses that are causing global warming, and they are making it impossible to live unless you’re rich. If only we could do something about it before it’s too late.
Craig,
God bless your mother and all the women of her era that endured growing up through the great depression and War years. 92 is a magnificent age to reach and retain all her faculties, (most of my contemporaries seem to be losing any they once possessed !:)). You are most fortunate indeed, to be able to access such a repository of wisdom and perspective.
We baby boomers are a uniquely optimistic generation. Hell, we not only believed we we would be better of that our parents, but also were indestructible and never become old or irrelevant.
In 1965 the Who sang, “I hope I die before I get old (talkin’ ’bout my generation)”.
The damage done to the environment by Western Corporations is significant, but minuscule in comparison to the absolutely heart breaking pollution created by the ‘socialists’ of the old USSR and Eastern Europe!
The shocking calamity of the Aral Sea, once one of the four largest lakes in the world covering 26,300 sq mi, it’s now largely a bleak arid desert destroyed in the 1960’s by the USSR.
I don’t know how you derive the figure of 1million plus people killed in 2017 by coal, it’s a ludicrous figure, impossible to substantiate. With rapidly advancing new clean(er) technology Coal may prove to be one of the most environmentally beneficial sources of industrial energy.
“Horrific moral collapse”, eh ? Each generation makes that outlandish claim as it gets older, it’s just trick of memory caused by aging.
It’s true the US was indeed ” losing relevance due to the US ability to compete internationally and displyed a propensity for entering into foolish, weak international agreements largely to US disadvantage. Fortunately, the new US administration has taken impressive steps to retard this process by cancelling agreements and implementing policies to restore US competitiveness.
Far from weakening US allies, the current administration has successfully demanded they stop relying on the US, and start paying to shoulder the burden of their own defense. It has come as quite a shock to many wealthy European nations (and Japanese) to learn that they need the US more than the US needs them.
The US economy is only able to survive because of recent advances in oil and gas exploration, extraction, management and processing technology. The advances in coal technology must continue and succeed, or both the US economy and world environment is doomed to economic and environmental catastrophe!
To develop new technology these industries need to be profitable and prosperous to attract investment for on going R&D.
Even in the heartland of renewable technology, California Wind technology is faltering. Nancy Rader, the executive director of the California Wind Energy Association complains, almost a third of California’s Wind turbines only operate spasmodically, many a shut down or broken, as once the subsidies ran out, so did the operators.
Fixing turbines can be expensive, and many operators have simply found it cheaper to abandon these turbines. Irritatingly, Wind advocates still include the non-operational machines as “capacity”.
Astonishingly, very little news of this sort is ever admitted by enthusiastic Wind power advocates, but the problems are growing. Meanwhile, the price of Natural Gas is increasing due to competition from Asians and Europeans for export LPG.
In these circumstances the US must rely once again on coal. Wind and solar are just inadequate to provide the sort of demand power required for industrial usage.
The solution is realistic policies and technologies, not symbolism, fantasy and policies that will only increase the already crippling National Debt.
Craig,
I think it’s important you try to re-evaluate understand how what you mistake for “isolationism” is really beneficial for the US,the world, and the environment.
President Trump is not alone in recognizing the hegemony of USA in world affairs is ending.
The President is not taking the US into “isolationism”, the administrations policies are merely responding to the new reality.
Like it’s biggest new competitor, China, the US must concentrate on internal economic and social reform. The excesses of past administration have left the US bitterly divided into two distinct social structures operating under two economic structures.
Crippling national debt and decaying institutions are the legacy of the delusion of US “imperialism” and excessive globalization.
The President’s “America First” campaign, sounds simple, but is in reality very complex and subtle in implementation.
As usual, the wiseacres and chattering classes in the mainstream media have completely misunderstood how the shift in policy actually works.
Firstly, the American consumer will be no worse off ! US consumers will not suffer discernibly, since the mechanism of the President’s actions are designed to only redress trade imbalances.
Anti-Trump naysayers predicted President Trump’s tariffs on billions of dollars of goods China exports to the United States at artificially low prices, would collapse the US stock market, create mass unemployment and drive the economy into recession.
In reality, the opposite has occurred ! The Dow is posting record gains, unemployment is at a 49-year low and the economy is improving !
Why ?
US tariffs are often misunderstood as a sort of “sales Tax” imposed on the final retail price of an item. In fact, US tariffs are not even calculated on the wholesale price, or unlike other nations what the importer pays when goods enter the U.S. US duties are imposed on the price of the goods leaving the factory where they originated.
How does this complex system work in practice ?
Lets use the example of a typical US importer of Chinese electric can openers. The majority of US companies usually deal Hong Kong or Chinese middlemen who take the order and deal with the mainland manufacturers.
An electric can opener which retails for $20 in the US, probably started life with a sale price of $2 from the factory. It’s this price the tariff is imposed upon. So a 10% tariff will not increase the price to a US consumer by $2, but a mere 20 cents which is easily absorbed by the middlemen.
much of the confusion is caused by the uniquely American method of imposing “last sale” tariffs which for nearly 100 years have withstoodll attempt at reform.
The whole point of the “America First” tariff campaign is to inflict maximum cost China while protecting American businesses and consumers. For the most part, the tariffs don’t target finished consumer goods, but component parts American companies use to assemble finished products.
The Trump tariffs target items available from sources either within the US or other manufacturers outside China. By this method, competition intensifies on the Chinese when the Chinese product is already artificially cheap due to hidden government subsidies.
The President’s tariffs clear message of; “Do business anywhere but China!” can’t be matched by Chinese retaliation without terrible consequences for the Chinese economy.
For China, there is nowhere else to go but accept the inevitable and accept fairer, more honest and open trade practices while also opening up China’s domestic economy to outside competition.
Although the transition will be hard for both nations, in the long run both America and China will benefit from a more level playing field.
Craig,
The Senate confirmation debacle overshadow an important milestone in President Trump’s trade reform policy.
Despite the hysterical shrill cries from the American (and international) media claiming the President had completely alienated Canada with his rudeness and would never agree to his irrational demands, this weekend saw the successful completion of a new United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement.
The agreement represents a major change in America’s approach to the world and an important step for American workers. The completion of this deal places incredible pressure on China, the primary exploiter of America on trade.
President trump’s policies are working. The policy of isolating and containing China is beginning to bear fruit. It’s no just a matter of time before similar pacts with Japan, South Korea, UK and many other will be negotiated, leaving China more isolated and impotent to dictate trade policy to a resurgent US.
I realize it’s hard for you to grasp that the President’s policies are actually working, but as an American, living among fellow Americans, can you at least acknowlege some good news for their sake ?
Craig,
Like Reagan, Trump is benefiting from policies of his predecessor.
In researching for a talk I gave about green building at Lehigh University in 2007 I found a link between energy conservation and economic growth. If you look at graphs of our energy use on the IEA website you will see that our countries energy use is on a steady upward trend with just a few exceptions. The first was the first OPEC oil embargo of 1973 when we dropped our energy use by about 8% over a year and a half because the supply was limited and the cost doubled. The effect on our economy was disastrous. When Carter took office he got the advice of some smart people like Amory Lovins and created some very successful programs to start to wean us from an unhealthy addiction to oil by enacting the first fuel economy standards along with tax incentives for solar and energy efficiency improvements. At the time the United States was the biggest economy using the most energy, so when we reduced our usage the supply, remaining the same became an excess and the price dropped. The second major drop in our energy use started in 2007 with record high oil and gas prices which caused us to consume less, then due to the economic recession oil use dropped further. That year the oil companies posted the highest corporate profits in US history!
A recent study by Greenbiz explained that if Jimmy Carter had not started our government on a path that promotes energy conservation and renewable energy our CO2 levels would be at 650 ppm rather than the 408ppm we are at now. He created the first fuel economy standards and energy efficiency and renewable energy tax incentives. Those standards and incentives led our country to reduce our use of energy by 18% over ten years which led to lower energy prices for twenty years. Ronald Reagan took credit for lower energy prices citing the deregulation of the oil businesses that he helped get passed, but it was energy conservation that lowered the price of oil and other energy sources. During the ten years that we reduced our energy use by 18% we grew our economy by 93%. This is because energy conservation job create jobs on three levels, manufacturing of the energy saving products, distribution of those products and the labor created installing those products. One of the parts of the economic recovery package passed after Obama took office was a boosting of the tax credits for energy conservation and renewable energy. These credits were so effective that the right leaning NAHB lobbied for their extension, but the Republican Congress wouldn’t pass them not wanting to do anything that Obama could take credit for. Energy efficiency tax credits help to reduce energy use which benefits the climate and costs less than renewable energy.
Hi Bruce,
Firstly, let me say how great it is that you are participating in our conversation, it’s much appreciated.
I afraid President Trump is so different to his predecessor it would be difficult to find two Presidents a diametrically opposed.
Presidential policies must be viewed in the context of the times for which they were formulated.
IMHO, history will record the term of President Obama as a time when idealism triumphed over pragmatism, style over substance and the sunset of the great American delusion.
President Trump is a new President for a different era. A throwback to the founding fathers, a rough, imperfect citizen-President, unskilled in the smooth media savvy, spin doctored attributes of a modern professional politician.
President Trump really means what he says when he speaks of “America First” ! Unlike President Obama, President Trump sees all other nations, even close allies as potential rivals and couldn’t give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks, unless it benefits the USA.
He isn’t interested in playing the “world’s policeman”, or exporting US ideology. He couldn’t care less about rebuilding the world in America’s image, he doesn’t believe the in an American “mission”.
Under Obama, the US was in deep decay, the US economy was largely an illusion propped up on debt and rapidly dividing into two economies.
President trump sees his mission as restoring US prosperity for all, which in turn will cure many of the social ills he inherited.
So far, it’s working !
This is terrific. Thanks, Bruce. Always good to hear from you.
Craig,
Great insight. As for Mr. Marcopolo’s comments on Tariffs, the steel and aluminum industry along with about 60 other industries are all crying foul. The tariff is not based on the price the manufacturer in China sells its product, but the the retail price in the U.S.
Take for instance, the automobile. For example, according to the NHTSA, the Jeep Cherokee compact crossover SUV consists of 72% local content, which is among the highest figures in the industry. At that, under the Trump tariff proposal, the remaining 28% that is sourced from elsewhere in the world would be subject to the 25% penalty, which could mean an instant $1,784 increase based on the Cherokee’s $25,490 starting price, assuming parent company FCA doesn’t absorb some or all of the added cost.
I agree with these quotes and who said them but I find nothing redeemable that has been written here thus far.
“Humanity has pushed the world’s climate system to the brink, leaving itself only scant time to act. We are at about five minutes before midnight.” — Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013
To change the world, we need to combine Ancient Wisdom with New Technologies
~ Paulo Coelheo (Warrior of the light)
A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing
social, economic, and technological powers to make life better
for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
ECO-MODERNIST MANIFESTO
If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies.
~Nikola Tesla
The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
-Steve Jobs
“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”
~Albert Einstein
“We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and we’re the last generation that can do something about it. We only get one planet. There’s no Plan B.”
~ President Barack Obama
Global climate is now and has long been under the control of oil firms and other big fossil fuel corporations and unless the people can come up with $40Trillion its control is not for sale
By Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Michael Shank, opinion contributors — 10/07/18 05:00 PM EDT 263
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill
“Corporations have been enthroned … An era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people … until wealth is aggregated in a few hands … and the Republic is destroyed” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Americans are busy working, taking care of their kids and loved ones and trying to save for the future. It is understandable that many do not have time to read academic journals and detailed scientific reports.
In our system of government, representatives are elected to make decisions on key policy matters. But elected representatives are no different than the people who elect them. With a congressional district representing, on average, more than 700,000 constituents and hundreds of pressing issues, it can be hard to find time to consult with climate science experts or empirically analyze academic articles on climate change.
Elected representatives, however, have a unique responsibility to educate themselves about important policy matters. Ignorance is not an excuse, given the staff and other resources at the disposal of Congress. Worse, willful ignorance — often for crass political purposes — is a dereliction of duty and a disservice to the American people.
It is therefore inexcusable that some members of Congress and other politicians continue to ignore or plead ignorance to the irrefutable science, and dangers, of climate change.
We know the continued argument in their echo chamber, that the science is unclear or the dangers are not real, is a lie — a dangerous lie.
The science is clear. Already, 17 of the 18 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001, and carbon dioxide has reached its highest level in 800,000 years. These record-breaking events are related: Carbon dioxide and global temperatures are rising together, thanks to human activities.
With rising air and ocean temperatures, Arctic sea ice is rapidly disappearing and extreme weather is increasingly frequent and ferocious. We’re now witnessing more wildfires, more flooded coastlines and more heat waves.
This is happening here, now.
The dangers are real. Climate change is outpacing war as the greatest destabilizing force on the planet when it comes to humanitarian crises, creating tens of millions more refugees than current wars combined. Whether it is the rising sea levels that will consume entire countries or the fight over food, water and resources, climate change is threatening our security.
Thwarting America’s ability to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing all this climate chaos, however, is a misinformation industry funded by entities that profit off fossil fuels and by billionaires using their outsized resources to purchase a political agenda aligned with their anti-government beliefs.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being pumped into phony think tanks and political coffers at the federal, state and local levels to protect the carbon economy.
Climate change is impacting every part of our society, from our security to our economy to our health. We know what’s causing it. And we know how to stop it. Yet, a few bad actors are getting in the way, sowing doubt on the airwaves, doubling down on dirty energy and paying off politicians so that no one in Washington, D.C., dare lead us toward a healthier, more sustainable energy agenda.
This effort will not change the fact that climate change is real, it is happening now, it is a threat to our national security and international peace — and burning fossil fuels causes it. Even the Pentagon has prioritized this threat. Yet in response, by funding political campaigns and phony think tanks, the misinformation industry seeks to sow mistrust in science and delay action.
Members of Congress have heard enough about the science. And, as a society, we all know from our experience with the tobacco industry and other corporate entities how the powerful seek to stop progress.
But until Congress is willing to have an honest dialogue, our economy and our security continue to be imperiled.
It is time to talk honestly. Our climate is not for sale.
Susan Crawford there is something we can do about it but Craig is not about to do what he needs to do. Find my FB page under my name Les Blevins of Advanced Alternative Energy and message me on FB and I’ll respond with one of my position papers if you are really wanting to do something about global warming I think you can easily do to put the brakes on induced climate change.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead
Many people just don’t know what they can do. They ask themselves what can one individual possibly do? They suffer from despair. They require direction. They need to get involved. — Rolly Montpellier
Hi Craig.
You paint a very bleak picture with all that.
I am very pleased to report however that I don’t share your doomsday views at all.
Which is just as well, because if everybody felt like you do instead of searching for; focusing on; and mobilizing thoughts about genuine solutions to your headliners; then that overly pessimistic group by extension would be best served by jumping into the ocean and end it all, and leave the task of righting the ship and getting on with the task of global science based solutions development, up to the optimistic, cool headed, thinkers and achievers group left.
You see Craig the global reality is not what you have painted at all. There has never been an era in human history better than the one we all survive in presently. Yes there are social issues; yes there are environmental issues; yes there are equality issues, and these are all connected and symptomatic of each other. But there are science based solutions (and capabilities) to all these issues.
But collectively (governments, institutions, communities and people) we have been week where it really matters; in international leadership, consensus across borders, bi-partisan aspirational goals setting, and identifying the global scientific imperatives necessary to move the world forward.
Foremost is global equalizing technologies (massive energy based wide ranging technologies – yet to come on stream) that provide for real opportunities for infrastructure development for the underprivileged (about 5/8+ of the world population) to lift their standard of living and prosperity for their families, communities and nations.
You have never understood or acknowledged the critical axiom between modern social structural development and new age technologies that provide for this to happen in a profound and meaningful way Craig.
You prefer to harp on about minuscule boutique technologies that are self-indulgent and not at all focused on bigger global imperatives that provide for genuine development to modern day standards for the vast underprivileged. This roller-coaster distraction perpetuated by the small thinkers and opportunists, has cost time and money and resources, at the expense of an international focus on the critically important global new era technology imperatives backdrop.
Start focusing on this subject and you will quite quickly compile an integrated science based manifesto that will reveal an achievable road-map to start the journey to solve all of the issues (they are linked) that you lament.
The Bill Nye’s and McKibben’s and others you often trot out as problem solvers and “expert commentators” are not up to the global job requirements needed.
Proverb: “Men in the game are blind – to what men looking on see clearly”.
Lawrence Coomber
hi Lawrence,
Great to see you taking part in these discussions once again 🙂
While I agree people like Bill Nye, McKibben and others Craig hero worships are little more than pontificating, time wasting weasels and eco-pests, small scale green technology can play an important role in both helping the environment and popularizing practical environmental consumer spending trends.
I always enjoy your contributions and find them informative, even when I don’t always agree !
Welcome to the Real America Craig!!
You point out a few basic home truths about the “State of the Union”, and every Pollyanna in your country is stomping on your head because you haven’t got it safely tucked away in the sand pit.
Firstly, the fact is,as the French philosopher de Maistre pointed out: each nation gets the leadership it deserves. The ” leadership” of the US is a joke, simply because your people are too lazy or stupid to appreciate the fact that hundreds of thousands of good red-blooded American boys (the Feminazis hate the fact that very few women died, but that’s the truth) gave their lives for the right to peacefully change your leaders. Most of your citizens simply don’t appreciate the priceless value of your democracy & and how many lives have been sacrificed for it. You spend your lives working & consuming & ignoring your democratic duty without counting the blessings granted by those who bought your democracy with their blood. Pathetic ignorance is the perfect description for this.
So you’ve elected Donald Trump,a narcissistic egomaniac who is the laughing stock of the world:who is now proposing that a country that made most of its money through free-trade can shut that trade down and expect to keep getting richer. Sure, China needs to adjust some of its more mercantilist policies, but when your dope in the White House thinks he can arrogantly treat China like his Mexican gardener, he’s in for a nasty surprise.
Trump is an unbelievably unqualified president; & if we’re lucky, he’ll be removed from office before he starts WW3.
Don’t hold your breath: these are dangerous times.
Thanks, Dick. I just read this aloud to my wife; you’ve nailed it.
Haha.
Thank you MP and of course the fact that you always qualify and more importantly quantify your views is why I admire your work and always learn something new.
Solid views like yours generally transcend agreement being necessary, they stand alone on merit.
The real nub though is a tough subject for we mere mortals to take on but that’s not an excuse to be supportive of motherhood statements, thin analysis, and soft tones.
Mitigating climate change issues and re-energising an energy starved developing world simultaneously requires hitherto unprecedented levels of international scientific cooperation and rigour at every level of our global society.
It’s a tough subject and needs tough talking from the worlds best and brightest physicists scientists and academics, remaining mindful of couse that the current 7 billion will become 11 billion in a mere 35 years.
This fact alone predicates that new energy intensive technologies are critical for every aspect of our ongoing existence, not the least one being the new technologies required to “feed the troops” with agricultural science as we know it being replaced by food production science from raw materials alone.
The list goes on and on.
The entire debate though is best dealt with through the prism of massive; clean; low cost, and available everywhere, on tap 24/7 energy.
We need to refocus the climate change debate on real technology prospects and global policy settings to move foward, not the fanciful stuff that has hijacked the ordinary persons imagination without justification for the scale of the issues that need addressing for perpetuity.
Lawrence Coomber
Empires and authoritarian leaders always fall, whether through the consequences of economic injustice or ecological exhaustion, or both.
Some folk might opine that the United States is nothing like an empire, and will perhaps assert that we are a democratic republic. While it seems obvious that a truly democratic republic and a genuine empire may not easily coexist, alloyed forms of both may for a time coincide across nations and governments.
Just after the close of the Second World War, US diplomat and foreign service officer George F. Kennan authored a top secret report, which remained classified for a quarter of a century. Those who assert that our nation bears no resemblance to an empire may find the following excerpt of Kennan’s report illuminating.
“…we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.”
One of his subsequent conclusions in the document: “The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
The disparity that Kennan hoped to defend has been largely maintained. The knowledge and resources of the dominant societies are still firmly bent toward unsustainable and destructive processes and policies favoring (or engineering) the concentration of wealth and power among a shrinking few.
In their book, Why Nations Fail, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard economist James Robinson wrote the following:
“In this book we will argue that the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, not most academics and commentators, have the right idea. In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that has organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people. Political power has been narrowly concentrated, and has been used to create great wealth for those who possess it, such as the $70 billion fortune apparently accumulated by ex-president Mubarak. The losers have been the Egyptian people, as they only to well understand.”
They argue that more prosperous and democratized nations benefited from costly popular revolutions that yielded hard won concessions for their populations from their surviving elites, with regard to political and economic participation and power. We might consider the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as examples. Power to the People, yes?
History consistently hammers out one dark destiny for unsustainably exploitative systems. Yet, alternatives are already well proven. Even for the the thorny matter of our swelling global population – a fact that sharply deepens so many of our other challenges – solutions beckon from the mere availability and practical humane application of education and current technologies. (The simple fact is that women with a basic education and access to birth control have significantly fewer babies.)
The persistently prickly barrier against sustainability is the politics of resource allocation. It must be decided anew how much opulence will be permitted to be sacrificed to facilitate the continuing safety and prosperity of the general public.
The question remains how quickly and powerfully those most influential among us decide that it is in their interest to move toward inclusive and sustainable economies – and, as a result, how hard or soft any “landing” will likely be for the globe’s dominant societies, how just and viable the future might be for less powerful nations, and how many poor souls will be consigned to the black holes of Famine, War, and Pestilence.
That lethal trio would likely solve our population problem, but would follow in a wake of collapse and desperation that would render few survivors grateful.
Theodore Roosevelt, for all his flaws, offered the useful admonition, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” I think that’s good advice.
Thank you Cameron.
You have always displayed an uncanny knack of reducing the supposed informative thrust of 2greenenergy.com to one of total irrelevance, by replacing that subject with your own pet subject politics.
Good luck with all that mate.
Some prefer the focus to be climate change and new age technologies to mitigate its global effects.
Lawrence Coomber