Environmental Issues – Page 4

Can You Trust Your Local Government?

Citizens are supposed to be able to trust their elected governments, local, state and national. But, surveys show that Americans have very little trust in government. In fact, an October 2015 Pew Study shows that only 19% trust the federal government “all or most” of the time.

This brings us to Flint Michigan. Flint’s citizens have been drinking, cooking and bathing in poisonous water.

The decision to expose Flint residents to known risks of lead poisoning were made by an unaccountable “emergency manager” who was installed by the governor, Republican Rick Snyder, in order to solve the fiscal problems created by the city’s declining tax base.

In April 2014, Flint’s emergency manager, in order to save money, directed the water company to begin drawing water from the Flint River rather than from Detroit’s water system, which was deemed too costly ($1.5 million/month). But the river’s water was high in salt, which helped corrode Flint’s aging lead water pipes, leaching lead into the water supply.

Problems were apparent almost immediately: The water started to smell like rotten eggs. Engineers responded to that problem by increasing the chlorine level. GM discovered that city water was corroding engines at their Flint factory and switched sources.

Then children and others started getting rashes and falling sick. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech environmental-engineering professor, found that the water had nearly 900 times the recommend EPA limit for lead particles. Yet as late as February 2015, even after tests showed dangerous lead levels, officials were telling residents there was no threat.

But in September 2015, two independent studies found that the lead levels in Flint’s water were absurdly high, and in October, 2015, Flint once again began buying water from Detroit.

On January 5th, 2016, Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency due to lead in the water supply. The same day, the US Department of Justice announced that it is investigating what went wrong in the city. Several top officials have resigned, and Snyder apologized. But that’s cold comfort for Flint residents, particularly children, who are being poisoned by lead, which can cause irreversible brain damage and affect physical health.

And it could cost $1.5 billion to fix the problem, a staggering sum for a city struggling financially like Flint. Worse, six months ago, Rick Snyder’s Chief of Staff knew about it and expressed concern:

These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we’re just not sympathizing with their plight).

So, the Flint story is hands down one of the worst abuses of government power in a long time. Money took precedence over people’s health. An unaccountable emergency manager who in a possibly well-intended effort to save the city $1.5 million a month in water fees, changes the source to the Flint River. In December 2014, a city employee tested the water of a woman whose son had gotten a rash after swimming in a pool.

He found that the lead level in her water was 104 parts per billion, about seven times greater than the lead level the EPA deems “actionable.”

BTW, Michigan voters repealed the Emergency Manager Law in 2012, but the Republican-controlled state legislature then passed a more far-reaching, emergency-manager law, one that could not be repealed.

So, what conclusions can we draw? Could the failure in Flint be used by conservatives to say?

See? You can’t even trust government to provide you with clean water anymore. We need to privatize the water company right now!

Or, the really damning take away is the emergency manager tried to save some money in a way that actually requires more money be spent, but did it anyway, apparently after being told about the problem, which poisoned people!.

OTOH, the fine citizens of Michigan re-elected Mr. Snyder, who took away the democratically elected team in Flint, and granted power to his appointed Publican. But the voters are not to blame. It is one thing to accept some right-wing economic BS, or to be too lazy to vote.

The penalty for either of those shouldn’t be that your government poisons you and your children.

St. Ronnie told us government was the problem, not the solution. And Rick Snyder’s cost-cutting steps seem to prove Ronnie was right (at least if government is run by the GOP).

It is hard to care about “Islamic terrorism” when your government knowingly poisons your city’s water supply in order to save money (in the short term).

And what is the criminal penalty for 10,000 cases of child endangerment?

Climate Talks

The climate is speaking to us, but is anybody listening? Here is what the climate is telling us:

50% of Forest Bird species will go extinct in 50 years
99% of Rhinos gone since 1914
97% of Tigers gone since 1914
90% of Lions gone since 1993
90% of Sea Turtles gone since 1980
90% of Monarch Butterflies gone since 1995
90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950
80% of Antarctic Krill gone since 1975
80% of Western Gorillas gone since 1955
60% of Forest Elephants gone since 1970
50% of the Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985
40% of Giraffes gone since 2000
40% of ocean phytoplankton gone since 1950
70% of Marine Birds gone since 1950
97% – Humans & Livestock are now 97% of land-air vertebrate biomass, while 10,000 years ago humans were just 0.01% of land-air vertebrate biomass
1,000,000 – The number of humans, net, that are added to earth every 4½ days

But, you gotta admit, antibiotic resistant germs are doing really, really well!

Now, maybe you accept climate change as a reality. Or, you may be a climate change skeptic, or a climate change denier, but no one should misunderstand what the climate is telling us. Slowly, the world is seeing more greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere, destroying ecosystems and encouraging global warming. The greenhouses gases can be caused by many different things, however, a lot of the earth’s greenhouses gases comes from various industrial businesses that burn hydrocarbon fuels. Some of these businesses have been asked to pay carbon tax as a result. The money from this tax gets contributed towards fighting climate change. Hopefully, more businesses will realize the impact they are having on the world and will look to lower the amount of carbon dioxide that they emit.

And, given the above, shouldn’t activists on all sides be discussing what can be done to stop the decline in flora and fauna? There cannot be a more important global problem that needs solving. Even Mr. Market should be working to help solve the die-off of species. Yet, we haven’t heard any ideas from him.

Here’s an idea: Getting human population growth and global GDP growth under control must be job one. Income inequality shouldn’t automatically prompt politicians to make calls for ever higher GDP growth, so that trickle-down will help the masses, since growing our way out of the die-off of species isn’t a viable long-term strategy.

You’d think politicians and economists would be asking: “Do we need to rethink our entire conceptual framework about population and economic growth?” Well, they aren’t interested in that thought.

They offer the same old thinking, just rearranged. If you want a Thanksgiving metaphor, your dinner plate is filled with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. And you take your fork and mix them all up, but they’re still the same. Even when you put gravy over all of it, it’s still not new. But it looks new, if somebody doesn’t think too carefully about what’s behind the new analysis.

Here is a view of the political divide on global warming in the US from The Economist:

And the NYT reported that on Tuesday, Republicans undercut Mr. Obama’s pledge at the Paris Climate Summit by approving two measures that Obama is sure to veto. The vote was largely along party lines. After the votes, Sen. John Barasso, (R-WY) said: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

While the president is at this climate conference, the American people [believe] that [his pledge] has a very, very low priority…

When Republicans in the Senate think the American people see climate change as a low priority when the poll above says they actually think its a pretty big deal, you know why we can’t get at solutions to the die-off of species.

Isn’t it curious that intelligent, educated conservatives denigrate climate change and its consequences, as some kind of phony science? They must see that there are plenty of business opportunities, and fortunes to be made as a result of climate change. This would normally have their hearts all aflutter at the chance to put their money behind a few disruptive innovations. But they have no interest, and are simply standing pat on the problem.

They are not alone. The Economist says the climate change just ain’t a big issue globally: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A giant opinion-gathering exercise carried out by the UN finds that people in highly developed countries view climate change as the tenth most important issue out of a list of 16 that includes health care, phone and internet access, jobs, political freedom and reliable energy. In poor countries-and indeed in the world as a whole-climate change comes 16th out of 16.

It’s beginning to look like a few billion lemmings are just gonna follow their reproductive organs off a cliff.

And even if a few of today’s lemmings think they’re doing something new, for all of them together, well, things look grim.

Shouldn’t Democrats Be Doing Better?

Wrongo watched the first half hour of the Republican Debate. If you feel you must, a transcript of the whole debate is here. The focus was supposedly on the economy. Perhaps the funniest thing was that the media password for WiFi was “stophillary”.

You will be inundated with expert opinion about what was said and who the “winners” were, but none of that is important. All you need are the Wrongologist’s observations: First, the moderators couldn’t be trusted to offer a reality-based picture of the world, any more than the candidates. Maria Bartiromo asked Jeb about unemployment, saying that almost 40% of Americans are without a job and are not even looking. Really? Media Matters checked, and her number included children, retirees, college students, and stay-at-home parents.

Yep, Republican policies will get those kids and retirees into the workforce.

Regarding the candidates:

• There was oratory, little of which sounded informed
• Most denied basic facts about economic and jobs growth
• Most candidates agreed that nobody needs a minimum wage, much less a higher minimum wage
• They agreed we need a small government, but one that still can dominate the world

When a Republican says “small government,” they really mean making the government’s legal and regulatory arm ineffective enough to allow businesses to do whatever the Hades they want until something bad happens. Then Congress can say: “who could have imagined” like the morons they are, and ask the taxpayers to clean up the mess.

You would think that the debate performance by Republicans, and their relative lack of political experience, opens up a window for Democrats in 2016. It should, but Democrats may not be in a position to take advantage. Since the Reagan era, they have deserted the world view and policies that gave them an upper hand politically. They have left the New Deal and Great Society behind, and failed to replace them with anything that anyone thinks is worth getting excited about.

They have morphed into “Republican Lite.” Republicans don’t like Democrats because they won’t agree to the GOP’s fringe ideas on guns, climate change and gutting the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts.

Most of the rest of the country just doesn’t care about these new Dems. Some detest their support of abortion and gay and transgender rights. Democrats aren’t doing better because it is obvious that they have become what we used to call moderate Republicans, and why should right-of-center voters settle for the imitation flavor?

A pundit said last week that Barack Obama is only slightly to the left of Richard Nixon. Judge for yourself: Nixon instituted national price controls, ended convertibility of the dollar into gold, signed legislation that started the EPA, and endorsed the failed Equal Rights Amendment. Would Obama we know today have done all of those things?

Since 2008, Democrats have lost the electoral argument in the states. Republicans now control both houses in 31 state legislatures, and have gained 900 seats in those state legislatures on Obama’s watch.

That doesn’t sound like Democrats are following a winning strategy.

Bernie Sanders is attempting to help the Democratic Party rediscover who they once were. However, that re-discovery is not widespread, and may be occurring too late to be of service in this election cycle. If the re-awakening does not occur in this cycle, there is reason to believe that the oligarchs will have all the votes they need both in Congress and on the Supreme Court to ensure a semi-permanent reign.

So Democrats, the choice is yours: You can endorse centrist, middle-of-the-road issues, or you can represent the issues that the American people actually care about. If you go middle of the road, know that you’re putting the millennial vote in play, since they are a generation that, for the most part, remains politically independent.

This strategy may lead to Hillary taking the White House, but it will make taking back the Senate harder, and it will not reduce the Republican majority in the H0use.

Democrats need to do better.

Hillary?

An important survey by Pew released this week says that Republicans are looking for “New Ideas”: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Since March, the share of all registered voters who say it is more important for a presidential candidate to have “new ideas and a different approach” has surged – with virtually all of the increase coming among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Today, by more than two-to-one (65% to 29%), Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say it is more important that a candidate have new ideas than “experience and a proven record.”

(The survey was conducted on Sept. 22-27 among 1,502 adults, including 1,136 registered voters.)

Pew reports that Democrats have less interest in new ideas: 50% say it is more important for a candidate to have experience and a proven record, while 42% view new ideas and a different approach as more important. This is little changed from March (46% experience, 49% new ideas).

And Pew reports that Hillary has a bigger lead over Sanders than other polls show. Their poll includes Biden:

This is a very different result from other polls which tend to show Sanders just a few points behind Clinton, (at least in New Hampshire) and which say that Biden hurts Clinton enough to open a path to the nomination for Sanders, should Biden enter the race.

But despite the Pew results, many Democrats think 2016 looks grim. Here is the Denver Post reporting that Colorado’s Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper used those exact words:

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday became the latest Hillary Clinton supporter to express doubt about her candidacy for president, telling a Denver audience that the 2016 election is ‘kind of grim, to be blunt’.

The Denver Post also quoted former Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm, who (speaking about the email issue) said he believes:

There’s a one in three chance that if something worse does happen, that will cost her the nomination.

From 30,000 feet, the presidential race includes Hillary, a person many people don’t trust, who seems to lack the vision thing, and Bernie Sanders, who self-describes as a democratic socialist when he’s merely an FDR Democrat.

It just shows how ingrained the memes of the right are in our society, when a New Deal Democrat honestly believes that he is a Democratic Socialist.

Bernie should call himself an FDR Democrat, since he has to deal with corporate media in order to win. The Democratic Socialist label easily morphs into socialist, and then on to Marxist by our media elite. This means that intellectually lazy voters will misunderstand what Sanders is really about. Better for him to conflate his candidacy with a period of American economic recovery than for him to get twisted by the media echo chamber into a second coming of Lenin, or a Jewish Fidel.

And right now, Pew says that the Republican voters are more engaged in the process:

This shows that Dems are about as engaged as they were when Barak Obama was running against Hillary for the nomination, but Republican engagement has increased steadily since 2007.

Considering that the Democratic base seems mostly on auto pilot, it could be a lot worse, particularly since the Democratic National Committee is headed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who gave us a Republican House and Senate.

The key question is which candidate can keep the Obama coalition together. Today, it seems to be Hillary:

• If Bernie is the candidate, money is going to be a huge problem and not just for him. How does the DNC raise money? How do other Democratic candidates raise money with Bernie running against the big money donors? It’s all well and good to rail against the campaign financing laws, but Senate and Congressional candidates have to raise money too.
• Can the Dems win the White House AND the Senate on $30 individual donations?

If Hillary is the candidate, the issue will be Hillary making the case that she won’t preside over a third Obama term. Or, the central issue in Hillary’s candidacy could be her husband Bill, and a third Clinton term.

The assumption by Democrats in the primary contests should be that Republicans will still control the House. Even with a Democratic win, neither Hillary nor Sanders would be able to get much of a domestic agenda passed.

Either way, 2016 will be a repeat, more or less, of 2012, with the significant addition of Iran, Russia, and ISIS on the foreign policy front. That may make 2016 more of a balanced issue election.

All Dems can reasonably expect from a presidential win in 2016 is Supreme Court nominations, holding on to the Obama gains, and pushing the country to return towards more economic equality than in the years since 2008.

Friday Cartoon Blogging??

It sounds like an old story, but the Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right are again headed to a wedding in Vermont, so there will be no new posts until Monday. Therefore, cartoons!

We can’t ignore the visit of Pope Francis. Yesterday, he spoke to the Congress, and the usual spin ensued. Like the Liberty U folks when Bernie spoke there, the defining political issue for 90+% of Republicans is abortion. As long as the Pope remains with them on that issue, there’s no contradiction between their faith and political affiliation.

They will no more listen to this Pope on other issues than they did to John Paul II’s anti-war messages.

Liberals, including liberal Catholics, appreciate Francis because he says some things that they’ve believed for a long time. It’s always nice when an authority figure affirms one’s beliefs. But the three Catholic POTUS candidates, Christie, Jeb, and Santorum, have already rejected anything Francis has to say on climate change and income inequality. As have all the GOP members of Congress regardless of their religious affiliation.

The Pope’s big job:

Brian Williams returned from banishment to anchor coverage of the Pope:

We may see a government shutdown this fall. One thing to keep in mind about the Republican debate over whether or not to risk a government shutdown for the “defund Planned Parenthood” movement is that this isn’t a fight over goals or principles. There isn’t a single Republican presidential candidate who does not favor “defunding Planned Parenthood:

The GOP is moving on to Carly:

Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday over the emissions cheating scandal, saying “I’m not aware of any wrongdoing on my part.” Strange choice of words, probably written by his PR team. This is a rogue company that undertook anti-social activities for profit. Anyone can see that this is the outcome we should expect if Mr. Market is allowed to run free:

The Beetle morphs:

Pope Francis on Capitalism

With the Pope starting his visit to the US, most focus will be on Conservatives’ support for the Catholic Church’s views against abortion and gay marriage. Conservatives are far less enthusiastic about Francis’ views about climate change and capitalism, both of which are covered in Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’.

While the Wrongologist has not read Laudato Si´, he did read an extensive and thoughtful review by William Nordhaus in the NY Review of Books, who says the Pope thinks that the degradation of our environment is a symptom of deeper problems: rapid change, unsustainable over-consumption, indifference to the poor, and the decay of social values.

Nordhaus notes that the encyclical contains an extensive discussion of the features of markets and modern capitalism. It emphasizes dysfunctional tendencies and distortions, witness his criticism of excessive consumption:

Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals. [Paragraph 203]

And Francis’ criticism of the distorting effect of the drive for profit:

Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals. Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations? [Paragraph 190]

Nordhaus quotes Francis, who argues that profit-seeking is the source of environmental degradation:

The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment; as long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity or the increased pollution. In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. [Paragraph 195]

Francis singles out financiers for special disapproval:

In the meantime, economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment…. [Paragraph 56]

The Pope criticizes capitalism’s push to make ultra-consumers of everyone:

This paradigm [consumerism] leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. [Paragraph 203]

Pure capitalism ignores two major shortcomings of those economies run by Mr. Market: The first is the emergence of monopolies, or things like unregulated pollution, which distort market outcomes. The second is inequality of opportunities and income. And much has been written about rising income inequality, particularly by Seitz and Piketty, and Joseph Stiglitz.

However, it would be inaccurate to point solely to the depletion of resources or pollution as major causes of rising poverty. Instead, it is forces such as the labor-saving nature of new technologies like robots, rising imports from low- and middle-income countries, and the capture of our income taxing system by corporations and the wealthy that have distorted our markets.

Specifically, as economist Arthur Okun has written, markets do not have automatic mechanisms to guarantee an equitable distribution of income and wealth:

Given the chance, [the market] would sweep away all other values, and establish a vending-machine society. The rights and powers that money should not buy must be protected with detailed regulations and sanctions, and with countervailing aids to those with low incomes. Once those rights are protected and economic deprivation is ended, I believe that our society would be more willing to let the competitive market have its place.

So, as this week rolls out, expect to hear many voices on the right argue that Francis is an unrealistic economic fool. In particular, expect to hear George Will’s arguments this week in the National Review echoed by the media. Here is a representative quote from Mr. Will: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Francis’s fact-free flamboyance reduces him to a shepherd whose selectively reverent flock, genuflecting only at green altars, is tiny relative to the publicity it receives from media…He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.

See what George Will did there? He says that climate denialism is pro-science, while belief in climate change is anti-science.

Know the enemy by their arguments.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 20, 2015

Pope Francis, Russia’s President Putin and China’s President Xi walk into a bar…Well, it won’t be that type of week exactly, but all will be in the US over the next few days. There will be summits and mini-summits, and a few hallway meetings between them and individually, with Mr. Obama. But the game-changer is likely to be Pope Francis, who is bringing his message about Mr. Market, and how Mr. Market isn’t working for the average Joe. In fact, many Republicans are suspicious of the Pope:

Rep. Paul Gosar, (R-AZ) says he’s boycotting Pope Francis’ appearance before Congress. He said:

If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so on his personal time.

Rep. Gosar, who has received campaign contributions of $12,500 from oil and gas companies and $28,850 from electric utilities, doesn’t believe in climate change. Apparently, he would rather the Pope devotes his speech to abortion, Planned Parenthood, and to the threatened religious liberties of County Clerks.

This Pope’s message causes discomfort for people on both sides of the aisle. Conservative Catholics used to welcome Francis’ predecessors ecstatically, and with open arms, but that was in the old days, when Popes were Popes:

Even when in the Reagan Library, today’s GOP candidates can’t duplicate St. Ronnie’s message:

The GOP debate brought the smell of roasted pig:

Views now differ on Paradise:

Monday Wake Up Call – June 1, 2015

How many hours does it take to make rent at the minimum wage? The National Low Income Housing Coalition looked at the number of hours minimum-wage employees have to work per week in each state just to rent an apartment and survive financially. Their headline conclusion is there is no state where a minimum wage worker can earn enough to make the fair market rent for a two-bedroom place on 40 hours a week. West Virginia tallied the fewest hours at 63 to make the average fair market rent. Hawaii was 175 hours. California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, DC were all over 130 hours. So, no chance to get an average place for a family while working 40 hours. Here is a chart from their report:

The Wrongologist would have preferred if the study had used median rents rather than average rents. The red bars show the gap in hourly wages between the state’s minimum wage and the cost of an average two bedroom place. This is another artifact of the Great Recession. Let’s recap what has happened since it ended:

• The percentage of people employed in the US has never recovered
• All income gains went to the top 1%
• There has been a huge bull market in stocks, despite stagnant income for all but the top few

If we don’t wake up, America will be a banana republic, with the emphasis on the “banana”, since the “republic” is already dying. The US will be small enclaves of massive wealth run by a few oligarchs. Think of it as Manhattan, a few square miles where the Corporations and their top employees reside, surrounded by a sea of low wage cast-offs.

None of this is inevitable. We could increase wages, we could rebuild our decaying infrastructure. This approach is dismissed as “Keynesian” by our right-wing brothers. The only kind of Keynesian stimulus they will accept is military Keynesianism. It’s not that peaceful Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work, it’s just that they won’t benefit from it. They see war as prosperity. China is next in their battle sights.

Wake up America, time is running out to keep us on a course that avoids our demise as a middle class economy. The next election may be the most important in our lifetimes. Here is today’s wake-up call, Amy Speace, a folk singer featured in a NYT Money section article. Here is her song, “Spent,” about trying to make rent:

Sample lyric:
We’re head over heels,
In over our heads,
We borrow and steal
To pay the rent.
How are we gonna save any money
When it’s already spent?

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Today’s breakfast links:

Study shows human attention span now lags that of a goldfish. Who is behind the study? Microsoft, who wants to learn how modern technology impacts the attention span of people who use it. (Insert your own joke here)

Sudden loss of ice in Antarctica was large enough to affect Earth’s gravity. The ice loss causes small changes in the gravity field of the Earth, which were detected by a satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine. This new turbine is a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet up in the air and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind blows. Its 50% cheaper than blade turbines, and while it is also 30% less efficient at capturing energy, a wind farm can double the number of bladeless turbines that occupy a given area. That’s a net energy gain of 40%. The company is Vortex Turbines. Invest at your own risk.

A new salt reactor will use spent nuclear fuel to make energy. This nuclear reactor generates 75 times the electricity per ton of uranium compared to today’s light-water nuclear reactors, since it burns 96% of its fuel, compared with only 4% in light-water reactors. The company is the venture-funded Transatomic Power. They hope to build a 20-megawatt demonstration reactor by 2020. With nearly 80,000 tons of radioactive waste in the US (and with 2,000 tons added every year), it could turn something toxic into something useful. Invest at your own risk. With this being said, it could be as simple as doing some research into something like uranium mining stocks and finding out about this sector in this particular industry. The more people know about investing, hopefully, the more clued up they will become and potentially make better decisions.

A PA newspaper published a letter calling for President Obama to be executed, but now they’re apologizing. The paper says: “We will strive to do better in the future.” Another example of our media’s inexorable descent. They are only sorry they got caught.

Here is a list of Zagat’s best brunches in Manhattan.

Maximizing Shareholder Value

The Guardian highlights a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about the level of global subsidies paid by governments to the fossil fuel industry:

Fossil fuel companies are benefiting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

That’s $5.3 trillion per year. The subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total annual health spending of all the world’s governments. The subsidy is created by polluters not paying the many costs imposed on countries by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused by air pollution.

The IMF said that ending subsidies for fossil fuels would cut global carbon emissions by 20%. They argue that ending the subsidies would also slash the number of premature deaths from outdoor air pollution by 50%, or about 1.6 million lives a year.

It is difficult to get behind the IMF headline to the methodology that leads to their findings. They are basically estimating how much damage global warming is doing and listing that as a government subsidy. The benefits that fossil fuels have delivered to mankind are massive. The pro-fossil fuel argument is that if you could put a price on these things, it would outweigh the $5.3 trillion figure by many thousands of times.

That is true, but the argument misses the point. We need fossil fuels. We use fossil fuels. The issue is why are the costs socialized, while the profits are privatized?

This again highlights the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the “Maximize Shareholder Value” movement in corporate governance. The 1970-era Clean Air and Water Acts and the 1980-era Superfund, TSCA, and RCRA Acts were among the first attempts to shift the costs of the socialized pollution costs back onto the corporate and municipality originators. Ironically, given today’s political environment, all of the major environmental acts (except the 1980 Superfund) were signed into law by Republican presidents Nixon and Reagan.

In the IMF report, China provided $2.3 trillion of the subsidies. The US was 2nd with $700 billion.

China will be focusing on reducing their pollution and other impacts as their society gets wealthier. Once people’s basic needs are met, they will be looking to improve their lot, and breathing in poisonous smog and living next to putrid water will not be high on their list of desires. As an example, it only took 25 years after the end of WW II for Americans to insist on an improved environment.

And all of the above ignores the costs of wars to keep the fossil fuel supply lines open, as well as the regular costs of our defense and intelligence establishments, and the destruction of democracy as necessary collateral damage.

All that for something we burn. Along with our tax dollars, that is.

Cartoon of the Day: The real truth about DC’s Think Tanks:
Links:

Hillary Clinton on Trade Agreement: “I have been for trade agreements, I have been against trade agreements.” Anybody want syrup with those waffles?

Is Japan becoming extinct? The Japan Times wonders what the projected drop in the country’s population says about its future. They cite a report, “Local Extinctions”, which says that that 896 cities, towns and villages throughout Japan are facing extinction by 2040. Factoid: In 2013, 8.2 million of the more than 60 million homes nationwide were empty, and 40% percent of the 8.2 million empty homes were not being offered for sale or rent.

Here’s how much of your life the United States has been at war. The link shows a ginormous chart of how many years of your life were in wartime. For the Wrongologist, it is 43.8% of his life.

Millions of tiny spiders rained from the sky in Australia. Residents of Goulburn, Australia woke one day this month to find their town shrouded in silken webs, while millions of tiny spiders rained down from above. Apparently this is called “Spider rain.” It happens when large groups of arachnids migrate all at once, using a technique called “ballooning.” Creepy much?

After decades of maintaining a minimal nuclear force, China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple warheads, or MIRVs. China has had the technology for decades, but the decision to put three or more warheads atop a single missile is recent. So far, China has declined to engage in talks with the US about their decision to deploy MIRVs. If America treats China like an enemy, then China WILL BE our enemy. Maybe that’s what the Pentagon and CIA want. They need something to justify their big budgets, and their secret slush funds.

See you on Sunday.

Monday Wake Up Call – March 30, 2015

Today’s wake up is for the science deniers. Gallup conducted a poll that correlates political ideology, education level and acceptance of the consensus of scientists about climate change. 74% of Republicans with a college degree say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, while the opposite is true among well-educated Democrats, only 15% of whom think the risks of climate change is exaggerated. More education apparently will not mitigate the partisan divide on global warming.

The same seems true with evolution. Here is a snippet of an article by James Krupa, Professor of Evolution at the University of Kentucky:

…one of the most misused words today is…theory. Many incorrectly see theory as the opposite of fact. The National Academy of Sciences provides concise definitions of these critical words: A fact is a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it; a theory is a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence generating testable and falsifiable predictions.

So “theories” and “facts” co-exist by definition. Krupa quotes the late Stephen Jay Gould:

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.

The public acceptance of evolution in the US is the 2nd lowest of 34 developed countries, just ahead of Turkey. Half of Americans reject some aspect of evolution, so it must be a steep uphill climb in states like Kentucky to fight against the power of fundamentalism.

Why does this have to be a battle of faith(s)? Among the religious groups that support the teaching of evolution are the Episcopal Church, Lutheran World Federation, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, United Unitarian Universalists, Roman Catholic Church, and the American Jewish Congress.

In fact, 77% of all American Christians belong to a denomination that supports the teaching of evolution. The question that should be asked is: “Why can’t evolution and faith in God co-exist”? Why can’t the physical body spring from one source of life, and the soul from another?

So, wake up deniers! Today is Eric Clapton’s 70th birthday. This wake up is from the movie, “The Last Waltz”, celebrating the career of The Band, directed by Martin Scorsese. You must see this movie. Here is “Further On Up The Road“, first recorded by Bobby “Blue” Bland. That’s Levon Helm on drums and Robbie Robertson on guitar along with EC:

Your Monday Hot Links:

Willie Nelson will be offering his own brand of weed. The legendary pot smoker is trying to get out ahead of big business in those states where pot is legal with “Willie’s Reserve”.

Prospect Magazine is out with its annual list of the top 50 world thinkers. Any list like this is always good for a laugh, and this year, Prospect doesn’t disappoint: They have Russell Brand at #4 on their list.

Amazon is now requiring warehouse employees to sign a non-compete agreement. The requirement extends even to seasonal workers. The agreements can last for up to 18 months. But, seasonal workers can be employed by Amazon for as few as three months. That’s a hell of a trade-off.

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews. The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the UK, which publishes 277 peer-reviewed journals. In a sad commentary on scientific scholarship, there is a blog that tracks scholarly paper retractions called Retraction Watch.

A scientific team in Myanmar rediscovered a bird previously thought to be extinct. The bird is Jerdon’s babbler, and had not been seen in Myanmar since July 1941. The team found the bird on 30 May 2014. Jerdon’s babbler is not to be confused with Boehner’s babbler, which is immortal.

5 years after its launch, there are 5 things that Americans still don’t understand about Obamacare.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Environmental Issues