Archive for the ‘culture’ Category
This one’s a little dark. You’ve been warned.
I’m amazed at how little attention is paid to climate change in the U.S. Sure, we talked about the Copenhagen summit for a news cycle, and we loved chirping about the dastardly U.K. scientists and their suspicious emails. But given the potential costs of climate change, it’s alarming how little attention it gets. Future historians will be utterly bewildered as they sift through the clues we leave behind and wonder how we so willingly brought collapse upon ourselves. We have completely failed at weighing the relative costs and benefits and have likely sealed our own fate.
Climate change critics generally start by [drastically] overstating the level of disagreement within the scientific community regarding the anthropogenic causes of climate change. I won’t waste much text here, but to be clear, there is no disagreement. Climate change is happening and humans are causing a large part of it; the only debate remaining is whether our share of the blame is 95% or 96%.
Once the seed of doubt is placed, the critics then scare us with dire predictions of a possible future. Dealing with climate change would require significant changes to the way we live, it would require significant investment in new infrastructure and technologies, and would alter the institutions we’ve been familiar with for the past century. Therefore, the theory goes, we should do nothing.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume there is a legitimate debate within the scientific community (remember, there’s not). I’ll even be so generous as to assume a 50/50 split. If that were the case, how should we respond?
The costs of unmitigated climate change are immense. The path we are on leads to massive population displacement, food shortages caused by flooding and draughts, accelerated species extinction, and (eventually) economic and civilization collapse. Yes, collapse.
What about the costs of attempting to stem the tide of climate change? These, too, would be large. The standard of living for developed nations would be altered forever. Air travel would no longer be available to the public. Nor would personal automobiles. Meat would be a luxury instead of a staple. Our cities and towns would contract and the massive suburban developments would transition back to agricultural land. The number of farmers would increase 10-fold (at least). Many industries would cease to exist and those that remained would look completely different. Our national wealth would have to go into buying things like wind turbines and solar panels instead of HDTVs and fancy cars. Make no mistake, life would be very very different. But we would have a real fighting chance at staving off the total collapse of our civilization.
When presented in these terms, is there really any question of which path to take? I’m so tired of hearing about the “energy tax” and the costs of transitioning to a carbon neutral energy mix. Money won’t buy you much if the global economy fractures under the strain of climate change.
[ . . . ]
Easter Island (the place with the giant stone heads) was once covered in thick forrest. Poor resource management and fanatical obsession with erecting the giant stone heads lead to 100% deforestation of the island. At some point, some one cut down the very last tree left standing. What do you suppose that felt like?
Soon, we all will know.
Filed under climate change, culture, economics, energy, politics : Comments (0) : Feb 27th, 2010
DDT then, BPA now
Back in the 1940s, DDT was a miracle of modern science. It quickly and conveniently killed bugs without disturbing larger animals (or so we thought). It was so safe, in fact, that we produced DDT-laced wallpaper for your children’s bedroom.
Today, we know about the dangers of DDT to all living things and we wouldn’t dream of exposing our children to the chemical.
But have we really learned? Now we use BPA in food packaging and containers (like baby bottles). BPA is a hormone disrupter and is not safe for human exposure (especially in babies and growing children). Yet,
A study by the Environmental Working Group tested commonly eaten canned foods from grocery stores in three US cities, including Oakland. Out of 97 cans, 57 percent contained detectable and often high levels of BPA. Pastas, soups, and infant formula accounted for some of the highest levels. The group estimates that BPA exposure is unsafe in 10 percent of all canned food and a staggering one-third of infant formula.
[Source]
In another 10 years will we look back on BPA the same way we think about DDT now? What have we learned?
Filed under Healthcare, culture, environment : Comments (0) : Jan 25th, 2010
JibJab’s 2009 year in review
It may be corny.
It may be kitschy.
But damn it if the team at JibJab isn’t consistently funny and spot-on the mark.
Filed under culture, sites i like : Comments (0) : Dec 29th, 2009
Marshalls destroyed by post-Christmas shoppers
I walked through Marshalls today on my way back from Target. It was a wreck. Most aisles had merchandise strewn about the floor and haphazardly stacked on shelves. It was as if the stocking crew had gone home for the year.
It reminded me of a great Onion article from a year ago: Difficult To Tell If T.J. Maxx Hit Hard By Recession
This pull-quote sums it up nicely
Financial analysts, observing more than 100 locations nationwide, cited large quantities of off-brand and wildly scattered merchandise as evidence that T.J. Maxx has either been devastated by the economic downturn, or is carrying on as usual in spite of it.
God bless America’s shopping fetish.
Filed under culture, economics : Comments (0) : Dec 29th, 2009
Chomsky gets it.
From an interview with Noam Chomsky, the best description I’ve seen yet for how to understand the contemporary conservative populism:
So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It’s very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that’s not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it’s kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I’ve never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, “I’ve done everything right all my life, I’m a god-fearing Christian, I’m white, I’m male, I’ve worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I’m supposed to do. And I’m getting shafted.” And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there’s nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered – it’s the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don’t care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.
Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren’t we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren’t getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].
I mean, the liberal democrats aren’t going to tell the average American, “Yeah, you’re being shafted because of the policies that we’ve established over the years that we’re maintaining now.” That’s not going to be an answer. And they’re not getting answers from the left. So, there’s an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they’re very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it’s an answer. And it’s our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don’t ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, “Take over your factories.”
Sadly, I doubt that any of the current Democratic leadership will either read or grasp the meaning of Chomsky’s analysis.
Filed under culture, politics : Comments (0) : Dec 13th, 2009
