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News of the Best of Times and the Worst of Times—Living in Paradox
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Multiplication Saves the Day
 Bill McKibben writes: In my last column for the magazine I wrote about numbers. Now I'd like for us to do some math.
Let's assume, generously, that 5 percent of Americans are deeply
concerned about climate change- concerned enough that they will change
all their light bulbs, scrimp and save to put a solar thermal hot water
system on the roof (or really scrimp and save to put some photovoltaic
electricity up there), unplug all their vampire appliances when not in
use, cut the number of car trips that they make in half and use a
hybrid for the remaining journeys, buy only local food in season, use a
clothesline to dry their clothes whenever the temperature tops fifty
degrees (1,016 pounds of carbon saved right there), cut their air
travel by two-thirds and learn to enjoy the pleasure of "staycations,"
take showers with an egg timer so they don't stay under too long (350
pounds of carbon), and do all the other things that every website
recommends for reducing your carbon footprint. And then let's assume
that they go buy offsets for the rest from a company like NativeEnergy,
which will use the money to build windmills on Indian reservations.
Okay, add it up, carry the one, dum de dum, here we go, yes-the impact
on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is, hmm, zero. Okay, not
precisely zero. Every bit helps. But if your concern is somehow slowing
the onrush of global warming in the short window of time the scientists
give us, then the number is close enough to zero that it gives you
pause. Even if that 5 percent then hector their in-laws, each of whom
somewhat grudgingly does half of what they could, the net effect is
still, well, right around zero.
I mean, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Rajendra Pachauri, said recently, "If there's no action before 2012,
that's too late." By "action" he did not mean going down in the
basement and adjusting the knob on your water heater to no higher than
120 degrees Fahrenheit. James Hansen, our premier climatologist,
recently said that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to
that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is
adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that
CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350
ppm." It is true that if you clean the coils beneath your refrigerator
it will run more efficiently, and it is also true that it won't do
anything to "preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization
developed and to which life on Earth is adapted."
I am exaggerating here to make a point. Of course I believe
in energy conservation. I've got a plaque that says I built the most
energy-efficient house in Vermont, I drove the first hybrid Honda Civic
in the state, I subsist mostly on food from my Champlain Valley. I'm
typing this article with electrons currently assembling themselves on
my roof. All these things are good. I highly support them. Please do them too.
But in a world where we need massive change at lightning speed, the
usual equations are turned upside down. We're used to thinking that
being practical is what really counts-that you can only reduce carbon
by, in fact, reducing carbon. Hence the light bulb, or the farmers'
market, or the hybrid car. If we think globally, to use the hoariest of
green clichés, we should act locally. In the fight against global
warming, though, the practical acts are for the most part symbolic,
while the symbolic acts might just save the day. Say you have a certain
amount of time and money with which to make change-call it x, since that is what we mathematicians call things. The trick is to increase that x
by multiplication, not addition. The trick is to take that 5 percent of
people who really care and make them count for far more than 5 percent.
And the trick to that is democracy. (11/27/08)
Classes of LIfe
 Alfred Korzybski
writing in 1921: THE problems to be dealt with in this chapter are exceedingly important. To classify phenomena correctly, they must be correctly analysed and clearly defined. For the sake of clearness I will use the simplest illustrations and, avoiding as much as possible the difficulties of technical terms, will use language easily to be understood by every one. In some cases the words will indeed have a technical meaning and it will be necessary to exercise great care against the danger of giving false impressions; for clear ideas are essential to sound thinking. As a matter of fact our common daily speech is ill adapted for the precise expression of thought; even so-called "scientific" language is often too vague for the purpose and requires further refining. Some may say that it is useless and unnecessary to lay so much stress on correct thinking and precise expression; that it has no practical value; for they say that "business" language is good enough to "talk business", or to put "something over"-the other fellow. But a little explanation will show that precision is often of the greatest importance.Humanity is a peculiar class of life which, in some degree, determines its own destinies; therefore in practical life words and ideas become facts-facts, moreover, which bring about important practical consequences. For instance, many millions of human beings have defined a stroke of lightning as being the "punishment of God" of evil men; other millions have defined it as a "natural, casual, periodical phenomenon"; yet other millions have defined it as an "electric spark." What has been the result of these "non-important" definitions in practical life? In the case of the first definition, when lightning struck a house, the population naturally made no attempt to save the house or anything in it, because to do so would be against the "definition" which proclaims the phenomenon to be a "punishment for evil," any attempt to prevent or check the destruction would be an impious act; the sinner would be guilty of "resisting the supreme law" and would deserve to be punished by death.Now in the second instance, a stricken building is treated just as any tree overturned by storm; the people save what they can and try to extinguish the fire. In both instances, the behavior of the populace is the same in one respect; if caught in the open by a storm they take refuge under a tree-a means of safety involving maximum danger but the people do not know it.Now in the third instance, in which the population have a scientifically correct definition of lightning, they provide their houses with lightning rods; and if they are caught by a storm in the open they neither run nor hide under a tree; but when the storm is directly over their heads, they put themselves in a position of minimum exposure by lying flat on the ground until the storm has passed. It will be explained later that one of the energetic phenomena of organic chemistry-the "mind," which is one of the energies characteristic of this class of phenomena, is "autonomous," is "self-propelling" and true to its dimensionality. ...If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function. A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and well known function-the transformation of solar energy into organic chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life.The animals use the highly dynamic products of the chemistry-binding class-the plants-as food, and those products-the results of plant-transformation-undergo in animals a further transformation into yet higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power which the plants do not possess-I mean the freedom and faculty to move about in space; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. (11/26/08)
Zombie Economics
 James Howard Kunstler writes: Though Citicorp is deemed too big to fail, it's hardly reassuring to know that it's been allowed to sink its fangs into the Mother Zombie that the US Treasury has become and sucked out a multi-billion dollar dose of embalming fluid so it can go on pretending to be a bank for a while longer. I employ this somewhat clunky metaphor to point out that the US Government is no more solvent than the financial zombies it is keeping on walking-dead support. And so this serial mummery of weekend bailout schemes is as much of a fraud and a swindle as the algorithm-derived-securities shenanigans that induced the disease of bank zombification in the first place. The main question it raises is whether, eventually, the creation of evermore zombified US dollars will exceed the amount of previously-created US dollars now vanishing into oblivion through compressive debt deflation.My guess, given the usual time-lag factor, is that the super-inflation snap-back will occur six to eighteen months from now. And the main result of all this will be our inability to buy the imported oil that comprises two-thirds of the oil we require to keep WalMart and Walt Disney World running. At some point, then, in the early months of the Obama administration, we'll learn that "change" is not a set of mere lifestyle choices but a wrenching transition away from all our familiar and comfortable habits into a stark and rigorous new economic landscape. ...What kind of economy are we going to live in if the old one is toast? Well, it's also pretty obvious that it will have to be based on activities productively aimed at keeping human beings alive in an ecology that has a future. Once you grasp this, you will see that there is no reason to despair and more than enough for all of us to do, so we can recover from the zombie nation disease and get on with the next chapter of American history -- and I sure hope that Mr. Obama will get with the new program.To be specific about this new economy, we're going to have to make things again, and raise things out of the earth, locally, and trade these things for money of some kind that we earn through our own productive activities. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is optional. The only other option is to go through a violent sociopolitical convulsion. We ought to know from prior examples in world history that this is not a desirable experience. So, to avoid that, we really have to put our shoulders to the wheel and get to work on things that matter, and do it at a scale that is consistent with what the world really has to offer right now, especially in terms of available energy.In my view -- and I know this is controversial -- a much larger proportion of the US population will have to be employed in growing the food we eat. There are many ways of arranging this, some more fair than others, and I hope the better angels of our nature steer us in the direction of fairness and justice. The prospects of a devalued dollar imply that we very shortly will not be able to get the all the oil-and-gas based "inputs" that have made petro-agriculture possible the past century. The consequences of this are so unthinkable that we have not been thinking about it. And, of course, the further implications of current land-use allocation, and the property ownership issues entailed, suggests formidable difficulties in re-arranging the farming sector. The sooner we face all this, the better. (11/26/08)
One Shot Left
 George Monbiot writes: Just a year ago the Intergovernmental Panel warned that the Arctic’s “late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost completely towards the end of the 21st century … in some models.” But, as the new report by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) shows, climate scientists are now predicting the end of late-summer sea ice within three to seven years. The trajectory of current melting plummets through the graphs like a meteorite falling to earth.Forget the sodding polar bears: this is about all of us. As the ice disappears, the region becomes darker, which means that it absorbs more heat. A recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the extra warming caused by disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland, covering almost the entire region of continuous permafrost(4). Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the entire global atmosphere. It remains safe for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting has begun. Methane gushers are now gassing out of some places with such force that they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter.The effects of melting permafrost are not incorporated into any global climate models. Runaway warming in the Arctic alone could flip the entire planet into a new climatic state. The Middle Climate could collapse faster and sooner than the grimmest forecasts proposed.Barack Obama’s speech to the US climate summit last week was an astonishing development. It shows that, in this respect at least, there really is a prospect of profound political change in America. But while he described a workable plan for dealing with the problem perceived by the Earth Summit of 1992, the measures he proposes are now hopelessly out of date. The science has moved on. The events the Earth Summit and the Kyoto process were supposed to have prevented are already beginning. Thanks to the wrecking tactics of Bush the elder, Clinton (and Gore) and Bush the younger, steady, sensible programmes of the kind that Obama proposes are now irrelevant. As the PIRC report suggests, the years of sabotage and procrastination have left us with only one remaining shot: a crash programme of total energy replacement. ...The costs of a total energy replacement and conservation plan would be astronomical, the speed improbable. But the governments of the rich nations have already deployed a scheme like this for another purpose. A survey by the broadcasting network CNBC suggests that the US federal government has now spent $4.2 trillion in response to the financial crisis, more than the total spending on World War Two when adjusted for inflation. Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse? (11/26/08)
Children "Falling Silent"
 BBC Health -- When did baby Richa finally fall silent?Social workers direct the question about the three-year-old girl to an extended family living in a mud-and-thatch hut in the bleak landscape of Jamoda in Madhya Pradesh. It is the country's second biggest state in size and also one of its poorest.The workers belong to a group that is raising the issue of chronic hunger and malnutrition."She died recently. She had measles. The quack gave her an injection, but she did not survive," says Kolai Bai, grandmother of the dead girl, matter-of-factly. She is now left with six grandchildren.In these parts, more and more children like Richa are "falling silent" because of diseases associated with malnutrition and hunger. But their deaths remain cold statistics; they largely escape the attention of political parties battling to win the upcoming state elections.Groups like the Right to Food Campaign insist that malnutrition is chronic in vast swathes of Madhya Pradesh. Some 325 children, they say, have died of diarrhoea, measles and acute respiratory distress - diseases typically associated with severe malnutrition - in just four districts between May and October this year.More worryingly, they say, the government is in complete denial. ...Many other children are struggling to stay healthy and alive. Eighteen-month-old Sanju Silale (in the photograph) is one of them. The boy has bone for arms and legs and has already lost an eye to measles. He lets out a dull, incessant cry from his mother's lap.The mother, Tulsa, says she lost her earlier child, a boy, when he was two years old. "I could not breast feed my boy and he died. These days I cannot breast feed Sanju much because I have very little milk," Tulsa says. The father, Kamal, is away working on a farm in a neighbouring district because work is scarce in Jamoda.In the dark recesses of another village hut, one-year-old girl Drupta weighs merely 2.5kg and coughs incessantly in her mother's arms. "There's not enough food at home to feed an infant. Parents go out looking for work, leaving the children at home who end up sharing a roti (Indian flatbread) between them," says a family member. (11/25/08)
Time to Protect Earth's Oceans?
 BBC Ocean Science -- Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at least 10 times faster than previously thought, a study says.Researchers say carbon dioxide levels are having a marked effect on the health of shellfish such as mussels. They sampled coastal waters off the north-west Pacific coast of the US every half-hour for eight years. The results, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that earlier climate change models may have underestimated the rate of ocean acidification.Professor Timothy Wootton from the department of ecology and evolution, University of Chicago, in Illinois, says such dramatic results were unexpected as it was thought that the huge ocean systems had the ability to absorb large quantities of CO2."It's been thought pH in the open oceans is well buffered, so it's surprising to see these fluctuations," he said.The findings showed that CO2 had lowered the water pH over time, demonstrating a year-on-year increase in acidity. ...The researchers say they were surprised that the plants and animals in their study are so sensitive to CO2 changes. These organisms live in the harsh inter-tidal zones, they may be submerged under water, exposed to the sun, then lashed by waves and storms.Professor Wootton says the most troubling finding is the speed of acidification, with the pH level dropping at a much greater rate than was previously thought. "It's going down 10 to 20 times faster than the previous models predicted," he says.The research team are now working together with chemical oceanographers to see how their coastal observations can be matched with large scale observations, to try to explain why the decline in pH levels seems to be happening so quickly."We actually know surprisingly little about how ocean acidity is changing over time, we need a broader network of measurements," said Professor Wootton. (11/25/08)
Changing Times Require that Humans Change
 BBC Environmental Awareness -- An opinion poll in 11 countries has produced what organisers term a "global mandate" for action on climate change. About half of the respondents wanted governments to play a major role in curbing emissions, but only a quarter said their leaders were doing enough.In developing countries, a majority of people were prepared to make "lifestyle changes" to reduce climate change. ...The survey revealed that 43% of people questioned put climate change ahead of the world's financial instability as an issue of current concern, even though the surveys ran in the turbulent months of September and October."Despite the fact this research took place at a time when the global financial crisis was taking off, climate change was very much in the minds of the general public as an issue of concern," commented Francis Sullivan, HSBC's environmental advisor and a former director of conservation with the environment group WWF.Sizeable majorities in most of the developing countries polled - Brazil, India, Malaysia and Mexico - saying they were willing to make changes.In China it was just under half, as it was in the industrialised countries taking part - Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and US.The findings broadly agree with a survey commissioned by the BBC last year, which found that two-thirds of people polled in 21 countries backed urgent action on climate change. (11/25/08)
Way Beyond Silly
 Ilargi writes: It may seem sort of hard to decide which idea is sillier. But then again, that's not really fair. The nonsense oozing from Bush and Canadian PM Harper in Peru about how free trade will solve all our problems within the next 18 months goes way beyond silly. We can rest assured we'll see more protectionism than we hold possible, and the US will lead the pack. Bailing out Detroit is one thing the rest of the world will label protectionist, and we can just take it from there. Think Washington will bail out Toyota and Honda’s US factories as well? Not much choice. But I still have hope they'll let them all go in freefall.Yet, the fact that the free trade mumbo trumps Obama's 2.5 million job rescue plan doesn’t mean the latter makes any sense. I took a look at the financial team, well, all of the team really, and none of my confidence is being boosted. Hillary Clinton is that woman who wanted to bomb all kinds of people, remember? The armored pant-suit? And how can you change anything by keeping your financial staff full of the same kind of folks who are there now? Geithner is an insider with direct responsibility for Bear amd Lehman, Larry Summers is a power-hungry bigot, and Rob Rubin was for Citi was Paulson was at Goldman: the worst gambling addict in the house. These folks won’t make decisions in favor of the American people, they'll save their own status and investments. And by picking them Obama makes clear that’s what he'll do too.Building highways for cars that nobody can afford any longer is nuts. Paying for it with borrowed money also is. Printing money is out of the question: the global bond markets will be relentless and out for blood. The US needs to produce things, not repair them. Most of all, it needs to produce its own basic needs, and after that is done, goods that can be exported. And no, I don't mean cars. (11/23/08)
The Truth about Bailouts
 Peter Schiff writes: As the Federal bailout bonanza prepares to spread beyond the mortgage and financial sectors to fill Detroit's depleted coffers, few economic or policy analysts have spared a thought for the destitution of the U.S. government itself. Put simply, our government doesn't have enough spare cash to bailout a lemonade stand let alone a bloated and failing industry that is losing tens of billions of dollars per month. Washington can only offer funds that it has borrowed from abroad or printed. Unfortunately, the nation is in the grips of a delusion that money derived from these sources has the power to heal. But history has clearly shown that borrowed or printed money only has the power to destroy. ...With no money of our own, our ability to bailout our own citizens is completely dependent on the world's willingness to foot the bill. While I am sure that Bush and Paulson are doing their best to convince the world that open ended financing of the United States is in the global interest, my guess is that, unlike Congress, our foreign creditors will see through the self-serving nature of our plea.Like any bailout, our foreign creditors should consider the moral hazard of rewarding bad behavior, and the old investment adage of not throwing good money after bad. By continuing to "lend" us money, the world is merely delaying the necessary rebalancing of our upside down economy. By continuing to subsidize our reckless and outsized consumption, the world merely delays the inevitable re-balancing and exacerbates the underlying problem at the root of the current global financial crisis.If Washington bails out General Motors, the funds will never be recovered. GM will simply burn through the bailout money and then be back for more. Talk of designing a new fleet of "green" cars that will pave the way to profitability by spurring a new buying spree is simply delusional. Given the staggering "legacy" costs of health care and pensions for millions of current and former workers, Detroit cannot produce cars profitably. Unless these costs are seriously brought down, and there is very little chance that they will be, Detroit will remain a bottomless money pit.Similarly any money that the world lends to America to finance more consumption will never be repaid. We will simply blow through it, and be back, hat in hand, begging for more. As we painfully learned in the housing bust, lending people money that they cannot pay back makes no sense. This applies equally to foreign central banks lending to America as it does to commercial banks lending to homeowners.So for the same reasons that Washington should not bail out General Motors, the world should not bailout America. Like GM, our economy is in desperate need of a restructuring. Spending must be replaced with savings, and consumption with production. The service sector must shrink and manufacturing must expand to fill the void. The dollar must fall, wages in America must be brought down to a competitive level, and hopefully government spending and burdensome regulation can be reduced.This transformation will not be fun, but it is necessary. Our standard of living must decline to reflect years of reckless consumption and the disintegration of our industrial base. Only by swallowing this tough medicine now will our sick economy ever recover. By accepting a lower standard of living today, we will eventually be rewarded with a higher one tomorrow. (11/24/08)
Global Trends 2025
 National Intelligence Council reports: "Global
Trends 2025: A Transformed World" is the
fourth unclassified report prepared by the National
Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that
takes a long-term view of the future. It offers
a fresh look at how key global trends might develop
over the next 15 years to influence world events.
Our report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction
or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many
possible "futures," we offer a range of possibilities
and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening
our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.
Some
of our preliminary assessments are highlighted below:
The whole international system—as constructed
following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not
only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India
and China— have a seat at the international
high table, they will bring new stakes and rules
of the game. The
unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from
West to East now under way will continue for the
foreseeable future. Unprecedented
economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more
people, will put pressure on
resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raising
the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips
supply. The
potential for conflict will increase owing partly
to political turbulence in parts of the greater
Middle East. As
with the earlier NIC efforts—such as
Mapping The Global Future 2020—the project's
primary goal is to provide US policymakers with
a view of how world developments could evolve, identifying
opportunities and potentially negative developments
that might warrant policy action. We also hope this
paper stimulates a broader discussion of value to
educational and policy institutions at home and
abroad. (11/23/08)
Our World is Finite
 Gail E. Tverberg writes: We all know the world isn’t flat. Any of us would be laughed out of
the room if we built a model with a flat earth as one of its major
assumptions. We also know that the world isn’t infinite. There are
a finite number of atoms in the earth and its atmosphere. The ability
of our atmosphere to absorb pollutants is limited. The ability of our
soil to withstand repeated mistreatment is limited. The amount of our
non-renewable resources is limited. Fossil fuels, especially oil,
are a particular problem. Even though the amount of resources seems
huge, the cost of extraction (in terms of fossil fuel resources,
man-hours, and fresh water) increases greatly after we have extracted
the easy-to-extract oil, natural gas, and even coal. Substitutes (such
as ethanol and solar voltaic) are expensive in terms of fossil fuel
use, man-hours, and fresh water. It is also difficult to ramp up
quantities to the level needed to substitute for fossil fuels.In spite of the clear issue of a finite world, the financial community has taken as one of its central beliefs that Economic Growth is Good, and is in fact to be expected. A close corollary is that Leverage is Good.
Our monetary system is very closely tied to debt, and would come to a
screeching halt if lending stopped. Our banks and insurance companies
depend on lending, with banks using lending as their primary source of
revenue, and insurance companies using bonds for much of the asset side
of their balance sheets.How did we come to believe that never
ending growth was possible? One way was a simple look backward. Growth
has continued since the industrial revolution. There was a tie-in with
energy resources all along. The industrial revolution brought coal to
make creation of goods easier. We later added oil, natural gas, and
uranium as additional energy sources. The world’s use of energy has
ramped up over a long period, practically without interruption.Another
way we justified the idea of unending growth was through economic
models that ignored the contribution of energy and, of course, ignored
the fact that we are living in a finite world. Economic models of this
type include the Solow-Swan Growth Model that considers the
contributions of labor and capital, and the Cobb-Douglas production
function that considers labor, capital, and productivity. Neither of
these models has built in limits, either. ...In a finite world, we will soon find ourselves in a level or
declining economy, simply because there are not enough
easily-extractible resources to support growth without causing huge
price spikes, followed by debt defaults, and another round of credit
contraction and commodity price crashes. The only solution I can see is
to develop a new monetary system that is not debt based, and is not
expected to grow. Ideally, it would decline as there are fewer
resources, and as the economy naturally declines.With a flat or
declining economy, long-term debt no longer makes sense. The likelihood
that borrowers will be able to repay loans with interest becomes quite
low, because the economic system as a whole is not growing and
producing a surplus that can be used toward interest payments. It is
much easier for a borrower to repay a 20-year mortgage with interest
when he is getting promotions and salary increases than when his
employer is downsizing and cutting hours. Somehow, a monetary
system needs to be devised which operates without debt, except for very
short-term debt to facilitate commercial transactions. In addition, we
need to extract ourselves from the debt morass we have created. There
is now far more debt and far more promises like Social Security and
Medicare than can possibly be honored with existing resources. The
only way I can imagine transitioning to a new form of monetary system
is by having an overlap period in which both monetary systems are in
place. The new money might initially be limited in supply and only be
good for food and energy products (somewhat like a rationing system).
People would receive some pay in each monetary system. Eventually, the
new monetary system would replace our current seriously problematic
system. (11/21/08)
In the Reality Lounge
 James Howard Kunstler writes: Alas, the financial impairment is still on-going world-wide and has quite a ways to run before it's finished working its hoodoo on the so-called advanced economies. The lame duck US economic posse so far has done everything possible except the two things that really matter: allow the fraudulent securities at the heart of the problem to be exposed to the light of day to determine their actual value; and allow those companies who trafficked in them to suffer the full consequences by going out-of-business. For the moment, they're content to shovel cash into the truck-bed of every enterprise in America that shows up at the Treasury loading dock. This can only have the effect of eventually destroying the value of that cash. ...The world has changed faster than anyone realizes. One big question is how long the American people will stumble around in a daze before we get back to work doing constructive things in this country -- and by that I mean activities scaled to the resource realities of the years just ahead. More specifically, I mean how we are going to grow the food we eat without massive quantities of diesel fuel and petroleum-based "inputs" and also how we are going to make any of the useful products we need in an energy scarcer time. Perhaps Mr. Obama knows that we're not going back to anything even close to the business-as-usual that shaped our lives for the generations born after 1945. I would advise him to begin thinking about this by dividing the problem into two parts. The first part is how his government might handle the sheer emotional fallout of a people whose standard-of-living will be pulled out from under them. For a while, perhaps the first year or so, the public is apt to be trusting and generous, especially regarding a president who has had some acquaintance with being short of cash himself, and who can speak English both clearly and empathetically. Mr. Obama stands a good chance at playing that role successfully, at least for a while. The second part, though, is the more difficult operational and administrative matter of promoting the necessary downscaling of all the essential activities of daily life. This is especially difficult given the current trend of the government suddenly taking ownership of everything, from the banking system perhaps to certain areas of heavy industry (if Detroit gets its way). The Obama government will have to resist the temptation to prevent enterprises from failing. These failing things have to get out of the way before new activities can get underway. It will also require government leaders to tell the public the hard truth that it can't do everything we would like it to do. (11/21/08)
Childhood of Humanity
 Alfred Korzybski writing in 1921: THE conclusion of the World
War is the closing of the period of the childhood of humanity.
This childhood, as any childhood, can be characterized as devoid
of any real understanding of values, as is that of a child who
uses a priceless chronometer to crack nuts.
This childhood has been unduly
long, but happily we are near to the end of it, for humanity,
shaken by this war, is coming to its senses and must soon enter
its manhood, a period of great achievements and rewards in the
new and real sense of values dawning upon us.
The sacred dead will not have
died for naught; the "red wine of youth," the wanton
waste of life, has shown us the price of life, and we will have
to keep our oath to make the future worthy of their sweat and
blood.
Early ideas are not necessarily true ideas.
There are different kinds
of interpretations of history and different schools of philosophy.
All of them have contributed something to human progress, but
none of them has been able to give the world a basic philosophy
embracing the whole progress of science and establishing the life
of man upon the abiding foundation of Fact.
>Our life is bound to develop
according to evident or else concealed laws of nature. The evident
laws of nature were the inspiration of genuine science in its
cradle; and their interpretations or misinterpretations have from
the earliest times formed systems of law, of ethics, and of philosophy.
Human intellect, be it that
of an individual or that of the race, forms conclusions which
have to be often revised before they correspond approximately
to facts. What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas
with realities. The World War has taught something to everybody.
It was indeed a great reality; it accustomed us to think in terms
of reality and not in those of phantom speculation. Some unmistakable
truths were revealed. Facts and force were the things that counted.
Power had to be produced to destroy hostile power; it was found
that the old political and economic systems were not adequate
to the task put upon them. The world had to create new economic
conditions; it was obliged to supplement the old systems with
special boards for food, coal, railroads, shipping, labor, etc.
The World War emergency compelled the nations to organize for
producing greater power in order to conquer power already great.
If there is anything which
this war has proved, it is the fact that the most important asset
a nation or an individual can have, is the ability "to do
things."
"In Flanders Fields the
poppies blow . . .," that is too true; they blow and they
are strong and red. But the purpose of this writing is not the
celebration of poetry, but the elucidation and right use of facts.
Normally, thousands of rabbits
and guinea pigs are used and killed, in scientific laboratories,
for experiments which yield great and tangible benefits to humanity.
This war butchered millions of people and ruined the health and
lives of tens of millions. Is this climax of the pre-war
civilization to be passed unnoticed, except for the poetry and
the manuring of the battle fields, that the "poppies blow"
stronger and better fed? Or is the death of ten men on the battle
field to be of as much worth in knowledge gained as is the life
of one rabbit killed for experiment ? Is the great sacrifice worth
analysing ? There can be only one answer-yes. But, if truth be
desired, the analysis must be scientific.
In science, "opinions"
are tolerated when and only when facts are lacking. In this case,
we have all the facts necessary. We have only to collect them
and analyse them, rejecting mere "opinions" as cheap
and unworthy. Such as understand this lesson will know how to
act for the benefit of all.
At present the future of mankind
is dark. "Stop, look, and listen"-the prudent caution
at railroad crossings-must be amended to read "stop, look,
listen, and THINK"; not for the saving of a few lives in
railroad accidents, but for the preservation of the life of humanity.
Living organisms, of the lower and simpler types, in which the
differentiation and the integration of the vital organs have not
been carried far, can move about for a considerable time after
being deprived of the appliances by which the life force is accumulated
and transferred, but higher organisms are instantly killed by
the removal of such appliances, or even by the injury of minor
parts of them; even more easily destroyed are the more advanced
and complicated social organizations.
The first question is: what
are to be the scientific methods that will eliminate diverse opinions
and creeds from an analysis of facts and ensure correct deductions
based upon them? (11/18/08)
TRANSITION: Gearing Up for the Great Power-down
 Luke Leitch writes: Climate change is upon us and the oil is running out. Is mankind's darkest hours really approaching? If so, a growing army of local heroes is determined to turn it into our finest hours.In Sandpoint, Idaho - birthplace of Sarah Palin, who really wouldn't approve - residents have prepared the community garden for its first winter and plans are under way for a local biomass-fired power plant.In Bell, a district of Geelong, Victoria, Australia, they are making wood-fired pizza ovens in each other's gardens and have negotiated bulk-buy discounts on solar power equipment for local residents. They have also planted more than 150 trees in a push to become the “fruit and nut tree area of Geelong”.Viewed in isolation, these well-intentioned community efforts are laudable, yet insignificant. But Sandpoint and Bell are two examples of something much bigger - the Transition Initiative, a movement barely two years old that claims to have the answer to sustainable living in a world without oil.In some 700 towns, villages and cities worldwide, Transition is under way, and more communities are signing up every day. Most of the groups are “mulling” - Transition-speak for gearing themselves up - but 114 have launched publically, or “unleashed”. ...The concept of peak oil, like that of climate change, was widely pooh-poohed at first but is slowly gaining credence. Last week the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that to compensate for the depletion of existing oilfields and meet a projected rise in world demand from 85 million barrels a day in 2008 to 106 million in 2030, the world will have to find new production equal to the output of ten Saudi Arabias. Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, said: “Current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable environmentally, economically and socially. They can and must be altered.” Which reads like a line from The Transition Handbook.Between 1939 and 1944, food imports to Britain halved - and the nation responded, nearly doubling domestic food production. Peak oil does not concentrate the popular imagination in quite the same way as Hitler did, but at least the Transitioners will be prepared when, as they predict, an energy crisis occurs.In Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia, people started readying themselves in June. Their two-year low-carbon diet is under way, they have met state Anna Bligh, the state premier, and are consulting on a Queensland Government report entitled Towards Oil Resilience. Bush tucker trees are to be planted around the city.Maggie Johns, a Hervey Bay Transitioner, signed off her e-mail to me thus: “Before, it all seemed so futile. What was the good in changing a few light bulbs? There are ice-shelves breaking off, for goodness sake! But when you know that more and more towns are coming online with Transition, and each has an army of dedicated volunteers, it seems much more do-able.” (11/18/08)
Beyond the Bailout
 David Korten writes: The financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when deregulated. Our economic institutions have failed, not only financially, but also socially and environmentally. This, combined with the election of a new president with a mandate for change, creates an opportune moment to rethink and redesign. President-elect Obama has promised to grow the economy from the bottom up. That would be a substantial improvement over growing the top at the expense of the bottom. The real need, however, is a bottom-up transformation of our economic values and institutions to align with the imperatives and opportunities of the 21st century. It involves a five part agenda: clean up Wall Street, play by market rules, self-finance the real economy, measure what we really want, and convert to debt-free money.The recent market meltdown and the resulting bailout commitments of more than a trillion dollars have focused the nation’s attention on the devastating consequences of Wall Street deregulation. This is but the tip of the iceberg of a failed economy in serious need of basic redesign.Our economy is wildly out of balance with human needs and the natural environment. The result is disaster for both. Wages are falling in the face of soaring food and energy prices. Consumer debt and housing foreclosures are setting historic records. The middle class is shrinking. The unconscionable and growing worldwide gap between rich and poor with its related social alienation is producing social collapse, which in turn produces crime, terrorism, and genocide.At the same time, excessive consumption is pushing Earth’s ecosystem into collapse. Scientists are in almost universal agreement that human activity bears substantial responsibility for climate change and the related increase in droughts, floods, and wildfires.We face a monumental economic challenge that goes far beyond anything being discussed in the U.S. Congress. The hardships imposed by temporarily frozen credit markets pale by comparison.This would be a good time to start evaluating economic performance against indicators of what we really want—healthy children, families, communities, and natural systems.The Wall Street bailout package that Congress passed in its moment of panic did nothing to address the structural cause of the credit freeze, let alone the structural cause of the economy’s even more serious environmental and social failures. On the positive side, the financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated. It creates an opportune moment for deep change. (11/18/08)
New Tough Bug!
 BBC Medical Science -- Hospitals need to be vigilant against an emerging drug-resistant bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii, infection control experts have warned.Like MRSA and Clostridium difficile, the bacterium poses the greatest risk to seriously ill patients.Rates of resistance to antibiotics that halt the bug currently stand at 30%, Lancet Infectious Diseases reports.The journal report authors said the infection was a growing public health worry across the world.Measures in the UK to control MRSA and other "hospital-acquired infections" should also bring down Acinetobacter rates, experts said. Acinetobacter shares many of the "superbug" properties of MRSA and Clostridium difficile, such as survival on surfaces and resistance to disinfectants. This makes it difficult to eradicate from wards once it is there, experts say.Typically, the bacterium causes bloodstream infections, pneumonia or infection of a wound. It can be carried on the skin of healthy people and can be passed to patients by poor hand hygiene. It also survives in dust and on objects such as bedding for months, making rigorous cleaning of wards essential to control its spread.The strains of Acinetobacter that are resistant to standard treatments can be treated with other antibiotics, however, and the bug does not usually pose a threat to healthy people.Strict hygiene compliance and more thorough research into drug choice, especially those for multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, are vital to prevent major outbreaks, say the report authors Professor Matthew Falagas and Dr Drosos Karageorgopoulos, of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Athens, Greece. (11/18/08)
Increasing Pollution
 BBC Environmental Science -- Emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised nations rose 2.3% from 2000 to 2006, according to new figures from the UN's climate change agency. The biggest increases were in the former Soviet bloc - and Canada.A UN spokesman said countries had to work much faster to avoid the possibility of dangerous climate change.Next month the nations of the world meet in Poland for the annual negotiations on climate change.The new figures do not offer a great deal of optimism. They show that in 2006 emissions did actually fall by 0.1%, but the UN's climate change secretariat said that this tiny dip was statistically insignificant. The overall underlying trend since 2000 is up, even though the countries in question had promised to cut their emissions.The worst culprit has been Canada. Its emissions since 1990 have shot up 21.3% - they should have fallen 6%.Recently the biggest rise was recorded by the Eastern European bloc, with emissions up 7.4% since the turn of the century. (11/18/08)
Banks Would Cease to Exist!
 Don Malcolm wrote: Technocracy’s proposed plan is
a scientific/social design to produce and distribute a virtual
abundance equally to ALL North Americans with the least possible
wastage of nonrenewable resources, a minimum of human effort, and a
maximum of efficiency. The industrial mechanism would operate 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year. Efficiency could achieve required production
with less infrastructure. Goods would be better built to last longer,
eliminating built-in obsolescence and lessening the production
equipment necessary. Products, wherever possible, would be designed
with total recycling capability thereby decreasing the drain on
non-renewable resources.A viable method indicated by Technocracy’s calendar
would show the population, from age 25 to retirement at 45, working
four days onthree days off for 287 days (165 which are work days) plus
78 days vacation per year. Technological improvements since 1933 have
shortened work time considerably. Citizens up to age 25 would receive
education and training. In their greatly increased leisure time, people
would have an opportunity to engage in a variety of familial,
introspective, artistic, scientific or sporting pursuits or extensive
travel.Money, as we know it, would be replaced with a
non-fluctuating medium of distribution. Instead of having an "elastic
value" (supply and demand) as at present, goods would possess a
measurable energy input and would be distributed on that basis. The
total "cost" of all goods and services produced would be the total
amount of all energy used in their production. Personal consuming power
would be issued to all citizens throughout their lives, in a form of
non-negotiable accounting. It would be used only by the person to whom
it was issued as a medium of distribution. In modern usage it would
likely resemble (physically) the credit card but there the similarity
would end. In conjunction with a modern computer system it would be in
a continual accounting system (detailing expenditure of energy and
natural resources), a continuous inventory, an identification and
record of the holder and a guarantee of security. _ Unlike the credit
card, it would NOT be: a medium of exchange, subject to fluctuation of
"value", subject to theft or loss, subject to hoarding or gambling, a
symbol of wealth or prestige, a means of creating debt. It would be
useless to everyone except the person to whom it was issued. There
would be no personal "saving": the unused remainder of individual’s
energy account would be canceled out at two-year intervals and replaced
with a new account. Banks would cease to exist. (11/14/08)
The Political Problem
 Jay Hanson writes: Many groups are working on the problem of sustainability. I'm an
engineer so I look at sustainability as an engineering problem. First,
it would NOT look like Brundtland's meaningless, "feel good"
definition. Ultimately, sustainability would require limits on human
mobility, reproduction, and consumption.For many years,
thousands of members on my email lists have investigated all, or almost
all, disciplines and historical examples of sustainability that others
have suggested. With a couple of irrelevant exceptions (e.g., a
religious sect that died out) not one example of an
intentionally-sustainable (engineer's definition) society could be
found.The central problem that planet Earth faces today is NOT
a problem of "running out of energy," or "overfishing," or "the wrong
kind of farming," or "the depletion of aquifers," or "too much CO2 in
the atmosphere," or [fill in the blanks]...The problem that
threatens to exterminate most higher forms of life on Earth -- and soon
-- is the problem of "human behavior." Therefore, if one is searching
for "solutions," one must look closely at what one sees in the mirror
every morning. That's the central problem on planet Earth. It lives
with all of us. WE ARE THE PROBLEM.The problem of
sustainability can be neatly divided into two sub-problems: 1) An
engineering problem. 2) A political problem.Even though the engineering problem is gigantic, its solution is fairly
straightforward. We need so much of this type of food here, this much
of that type of vaccine there, water can't be pumped from an aquifer
any faster than that, wastes can't be discharged any faster than this,
fishing can't exceed... And so on. Moreover, the problem must be
approached globally due to the way our ecosystems are interconnected.
Although the problem is immense, I think we could do it.A
solution to the political problem of sustainability does not presently
exist. Moreover, if we can't solve the politics of sustainability, then
nothing else matters. That's Liebig's limiter: politics. To emphasize
the point: if we can't solve the political problem, then more efficient
PV panels, wind turbines, etc., won't help -- and may make the die-off
even worse. (11/14/08)
In Praise of a Rocky Transition
 Naomi Klein writes: The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed—a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice."Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending—for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc.—is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. "There is only one president at a time," we hear from Barack Obama. That's true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama's ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama's renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.Yes, there is only one president at a time, but that president needed the support of powerful Democrats, including Obama, to get the bailout passed. Now that it is clear that the Bush administration is violating the terms to which both parties agreed, the Democrats have not just the right but a grave responsibility to intervene forcefully. ...One thing we know for certain is that the market will react violently to any signal that there is a new sheriff in town who will impose serious regulation, invest in people and cut off the free money for corporations. In short, the markets can be relied on to vote in precisely the opposite way that Americans have just voted. (A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans strongly favor "stricter regulations on financial institutions," while just 21 percent support aid to financial companies.)There is no way to reconcile the public's vote for change with the market's foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks. The good news is that once it is clear that the new rules will be applied across the board and with fairness, the market will stabilize and adjust. Furthermore, the timing for this turbulence has never been better. Over the past three months, we've been shocked so frequently that market stability would come as more of a surprise. That gives Obama a window to disregard the calls for a seamless transition and do the hard stuff first. Few will be able to blame him for a crisis that clearly predates him, or fault him for honoring the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. The longer he waits, however, the more memories fade.When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign. (11/14/08)
Ovary Transplant yields Healthy Baby
 BBC Medical Science -- A healthy baby girl has been born in London following the world's first transplant of an entire ovary, it has been reported. The 39-year-old mother conceived naturally after receiving the ovary from her twin sister. Others have given birth after receiving smaller pieces of ovarian tissue.A UK specialist said the procedure should be used to preserve fertility before cancer treatment, rather than to try to extend it.The baby, weighing 7lbs 15 oz (3.6kg), was born to a German-born woman married to a Briton, who became infertile at 15 when her own ovaries failed. It was reported that she did not actually intend to become pregnant, instead hoping that the transplanted ovary from her identical twin could relieve the symptoms of her early menopause and restore her periods. The ovary was implanted with a minimal risk of rejection by her body, using delicate microsurgical techniques to reattach it to its blood supply and hold it in place alongside the fallopian tube, so that eggs could be expelled and travel down the tube towards the womb in the normal way.Dr Sherman Silber, who carried out the transplant operation at the Infertility Centre of St Louis, Missouri, announced it to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine Conference in San Francisco. He told the conference that the full ovary transplant was likely to last longer than strips of ovarian tissue, and might allow a woman's ovary to be removed and put back after extended storage. This, he said, could allow women who are delaying motherhood for career or other reasons to improve their chances of having a baby later in life. (11/14/08)
Homo Erectus had Big Brained Babies
 BBC Anthropological Science -- A new Homo erectus fossil suggests that females had large, wide pelvises in order to deliver large-brained babies. Being born with a larger brain meant our ancestor became independent far more quickly than modern human infants.The new finding, published in Science magazine, conflicts with earlier ideas that suggest they had a tall, thin body shape adapted for running.Homo erectus is thought to be the first human-like creature to move out of Africa to colonise the world. The now extinct hominid species may also have been the first to control fire.The near-complete 1.4 million-year-old female pelvis was found near Gona in northern Ethiopia. As it was pieced together, the archaeologists were struck by the unusual width of the pelvis.Scott Simpson, a palaeontologist from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, US, was one of those who made the discovery."Proportionally her hips are wider than those of modern humans," he says. Earlier hominids such as the three-million-year-old Australopithicus afarensis, made famous by the "Lucy" skeleton found in 1974, have a much narrower pelvic opening. In comparison, more recent hominids found in China, Israel and Spain have wider pelvises.The researchers say the wider pelvis meant H. erectus could have given birth to babies that were 30% bigger than previously thought.Having a larger brain size meant the young hominid was dependent on its mother for less time than a modern human baby, a useful survival adaptation in the African savannah where they lived. (11/14/08)
HIV Cured in One Patient
 BBC Medical Science -- Doctors in Germany say a patient appears to have been cured of HIV by a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had a genetic resistance to the virus. The researchers in Berlin said the man, who suffered from leukaemia and HIV, had shown no sign of either disease since the transplant two years ago. But they stressed it was an unusual case which needed further investigation.Experts said the result may boost interest in gene therapy for HIV. Berlin's Charite clinic said the 42-year-old patient was an American living in Berlin, but the man has not been identified. He had been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, that causes Aids, for more than a decade and also had leukaemia.The clinic said since the transplant was carried out 20 months ago, tests on the patient's bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clear. ...Professor Andrew Sewell, from the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Cardiff said in theory a bone marrow transplant such as this one "should work" and it was surprising that no one had tried it before. "The problem is most people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa and
this is hugely expensive, you have to find a matched donor, and it's a
pretty severe and painful operation. So it's going to be an option for very few people." He added that gene therapy to knock out the mutation of the key CCR5 receptor was a possibility for future treatment. (11/14/08)
Dropping Oil Prices are an Illusion
 BBC Natural Resources -- One of the world's leading authorities on energy supply says the era of cheap oil is over and prices could soon be back up to $100 a barrel. The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook for 2008, says prices could soar as high as $200 a barrel by 2030.The immediate risk to supply, it says, is not one of a lack of global resources. Instead, it points to a lack of investment where it is needed. The world, the report's authors conclude, is not running out of oil just yet - indeed, there is enough of it to supply the world for more than 40 years at current rates of consumption. But, they point out, field by field, declines in oil production are accelerating and more money will be needed in research and development to extract the oil there is. While world oil supply will rise, the report's authors predict that massive investments in energy infrastructure will be needed - an eye-watering $26 trillion dollars up to 2030. A significant amount of this money - $8.4 trillion - will need to be spent on oil and gas exploration and development.In one scenario considered by the IEA, China and India will account for just over half of the increase in world primary energy demand between 2006 and 2030, and much of the increase in world oil demand. But despite the agency's assessment of oil and gas reserves, the report contains a stark warning of the consequences of continuing to rely on fossil fuels. The consequences for the global climate of policy inaction when it comes to decarbonising the world economy are "shocking", according to the report. (11/11/08)
The "Best" Secretary of Treasury
 Ilargi writes: I want to talk about the economy, Mr. President. I've seen who your
economic advisers are, and that fills me not with pride but with a
frozen chill. You know, Albert Einstein said that "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." That is a very wise observation. Albert was as good a thinker as he was a physicist. ...If you, and the nation that so courageously elected you to be their
leader, are to have a fighting chance at eventually beating the
depression that can not be avoided, you will have to turn to people for
advice who are not part of the banking in-crowd. ...You will have to call a stop to Wall Street, and all of the nation's
finance policies, being a casino. That is as succinct as I can put it,
and I can but hope that you understand how bitter and grave it all has
become. You will need to throw out everybody who has had any dealings
with it, while at the same time they will tell you that they are the
only ones who know what goes on. ...You need to force all casino paper out into the light of day, that is
not some optional item. Yes, it will mean the end for scores of
powerful players, many of whom have financed your campaign. Nothing
easy about it. But if you don't do it, you condemn the American economy
to years more of downfall. US Treasury bonds are under extreme
pressure, and as long as Paulson et al are allowed to continue to cover
up toilet paper with what rightfully belongs to the American people,
faith in the market can and will not be restored.You need to
withdraw all government support for Detroit, and let Ford and GM fail
if they can't stand upright on their own. Same for all financial
institutions. No more bail-outs, they just cut the trust level ever
lower.You must call Nouriel Roubini, now, and form a group of
people around him, like Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, and let them
be your main advisory team. There are many able Americans who are not
too far inside the asses of Lower Manhattan. Talk to Peter Schiff, to
Paul Kasriel, to Marc Faber, George Soros, Bill Fleckenstein and
Meredith Whitney. Give Doug Noland and Bill Bonner a call. Sit down
with Ron Paul. And of course you are always welcome to contact me. I am
not American, and I have no economics degree, but then again, that by
now is a strong point, not a liability. I have called all this
correctly for a long time, and I know what needs to be done.You
have proven yourself to be a very courageous man. There are equally
brave Americans in the world of finance, just one phone call away.
Please sir, believe me: You will need them. And you have not a second
to lose. Your predecessor is handing out trillions of dollars and waves
of pardons behind the wizard's curtain as we speak. (11/06/08)
Yes We Can
 Barack Obama speaking on 11/04/08: If there is anyone out there who still
doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still
wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still
questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and
churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited
three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their
lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that
their voice could be that difference.Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and
Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay,
straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to
the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue
States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so
many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to
put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the
hope of a better day.Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on
this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to
America. ...This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for
generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast
her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood
in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing -- Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were
no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't
vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color
of her skin.And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century
in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress;
the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with
that American creed: Yes we can.At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes
dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for
the ballot. Yes we can.When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the
land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs
and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world,
she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy
was saved. Yes we can.She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham,
a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that
We Shall Overcome. Yes we canA man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world
was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in
this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote,
because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the
darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so
much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children
should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky
to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What
progress will we have made.This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is
our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity
for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to
reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that
out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we
are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant,
we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a
people.Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America. (11/05/08)
Vote for the Best Candidate
 Thomas Friedman writes: Here’s what strikes me this election eve: I can’t remember a
presidential campaign that was so disconnected from the actual
challenges of governing that will confront the winner the morning
after. When this election campaign began two years ago, the big issue
was how and for how long do we continue nation-building in Iraq. As the
campaign comes to a close, the big issue is how and at what sacrifice
do we do nation-building in America. Unfortunately, you’d barely know that from the presidential debates.
Watching them in the context of the meltdown of the financial system
was like watching a game show where the two contestants were kept
off-stage in a soundproof booth and brought out to address the audience
without knowing the context. Since the last debate, John McCain and Barack Obama have unveiled
broad ideas about how to restore the nation’s financial health. But
they continue to suggest that this will be largely pain-free. McCain
says giving everyone a tax cut will save the day; Obama tells us only
the rich will have to pay to help us out of this hole. Neither is true. We are all going to have to pay, because
this meltdown comes in the context of what has been “perhaps the
greatest wealth transfer since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in
1917,” says Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name.” “It
is not a wealth transfer from rich to poor that the Bush administration
will be remembered for. It is a wealth transfer from the future to the
present.” Never has one generation spent so much of its children’s wealth in
such a short period of time with so little to show for it as in the
Bush years. Under George W. Bush, America has foisted onto future
generations a huge financial burden to finance our current tax cuts,
wars and now bailouts. Just paying off those debts will require
significant sacrifices. But when you add the destruction of wealth that
has taken place in the last two months in the markets, and the need for
more bailouts, you understand why this is not going to be a painless
recovery.The Bush team leaves us with another debt — one to Mother Nature. We
have added tons more CO2 into the atmosphere these last eight years,
without any mitigation effort. As a result, slowing down climate change
in the next eight years is going to require even bigger changes and
investments in how we use energy.Given that Times columnists are not allowed to “formally” endorse
candidates and given that the context of this election has changed so
much from the policy positions the candidates started with, all I can
suggest is that you vote for the candidate with these character traits: ... (11/03/08)
Beyond Cars
 Mark Sumner (AKA Kos' "Devilstower") writes: This week, a letter authored by a quintet of governors arrived on the
desk of America's most powerful official -- Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson. Unlike most of the traffic passing over Paulson's transom,
this letter wasn't about another shaky financial giant, instead it was
about an industry "...vital to millions of citizens in our states and
across the country." It was cars. This time it was the automotive
industry hoping to score some of the bailout cash. And their argument
was a familiar one -- the Big Three automakers are too big to fail. ...What's the proposed solution for shaky giants too big to fail? Get
bigger. Wachovia was too big to fail, so arrangements were made for it
to be joined into a bigger entity. The top thing on the automaker's
list was loan guarantees that would allow ailing GM to buy also ailing
Chrysler. A big part of what the treasury is up to right now is
encouraging mergers between financial entities, and even without the
prodding of Treasury, these companies are eying each other like
students at an eighth-grade dance; sure that their misery would be
decreased if they could only find a partner.The trouble with that is, it's the wrong direction. Mega-mergers
aren't the solution to the issue, they're an aggravating factor. And if
we don't revise our thinking, we'll soon reach a new distinction: too
big to survive. Because the truth is, big doesn't make you safer.
Larger equals riskier. ...In another distant age – 1973 – economist E. F. Schumacher
suggested a different approach. Shumacher was an associate of the
ultra-influential John Maynard Keynes and a statistician and advisor to
the British Coal Board. From this you might expect to find Schumacher's
economic insights to be right in the center of the Keynesian ideas that
now dominate our world. Instead, Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is not only revolutionary, but looked on by some economists in the same way Iranian Ayatollahs look on The Satanic Verses.What Schumaker puts forward in Small is Beautiful is the idea that not only are large industries dehumanizing, they're also painfully inefficient.
The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much
and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to
a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its
inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed. --E. F. Schumaker
There's a lot of fuzzy thinking that suggests large companies begat
large profits and they can, but what Schumaker shows is that, on a
piece by piece basis, large companies are frequently less efficient
(and as a bonus, they're much more likely to be miserable places to
work). The best way for large corporations to survive long term is not
by throwing their weight around, but by behaving like a collective of
small organizations. ...Pure unregulated capitalism is a fine system for faultless angels
living in a boundless fantasyland (for that matter, so is pure
communism). However, we live in a world that is populated by errant
human beings facing limited resources. In that world, bigger is rarely
better. Bigger is only more dangerous. A system that depends on smaller
companies and less on expansion may not crank out that last one tenth
of one percent of return on investment that we've seen in the best
times with our current system, but in exchange we get improvements in
stability – and maybe even in personal satisfactionUltimately, we have to learn to measure progress in dimensions other
than growth. Otherwise, we're doomed to keep pressing that growth until
we hit failure.
Greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a
material kind, without proper regard for conservation, and this type of
growth cannot possibly fit into a finite environment. --E. F. Schumaker
(11/02/08)
“There are none so blind as those that will not see.”
 BBC Earth Science -- The rise in temperatures at Earth's poles has for the first time been attributed directly to human activities, according to a study. The work, by an international team, is published in Nature Geoscience journal.In 2007, the UN's climate change body presented strong scientific evidence the rise in average global temperature is mostly due to human activities. This contradicted ideas that it was a result of natural processes such as an increase in the Sun's intensity.At the time, there was not sufficient evidence to say this for sure about the Arctic and Antarctic. Now that gap in research has been plugged, according to scientists who carried out a detailed analysis of temperature variations at both poles. Their study indicates that humans have indeed contributed to warming in both regions.Researchers expected this result for the Arctic - because of the recent sharp increase in the melting of sea ice in the summer in the region - but temperature variations in the Antarctic have until now been harder to interpret. Today's study, according to the researchers, suggests for the first time that there's a discernable human influence on both the Arctic and Antarctica. ...Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said: "Our study is certainly closing a couple of gaps in the last IPCC report. But I still think that a number of people, including some politicians, are reluctant to accept the evidence or to do anything about it until we specifically come down to saying that one particular event was caused by humans like a serious flood somewhere or even a heatwave. Until we get down to smaller scale events in both time and space I still think there will be people doubting the evidence." (11/02/08)
What is Technocracy?
 Howard Scott speaking in 1933: Technocracy is a dual thing. On the one hand it is
an organization of scientists, engineers, technologists and workers in
other technical fields; on the other, it is a body of thought. This
body of thought may be concisely described as a technological approach
to, and an analysis of, all social phenomena. Technocracy is not
premised on any philosophical preconceptions, convictions or beliefs.
Technocracy is based primarily on a study of the rates of growth of all
energy-consuming devices on this Continent as a function of time.
Technocracy is concerned with the natural resources available for
conversion into use-forms and their quantities; with the quantity of
energy and materials consumed in the proper operation of the physical
equipment on this area; with the number of people required in this
total operation and the hours of work within a given time. These are
some of the principal questions with which Technocracy has always been,
and is now, concerned. ... Ever since man was driven from the
jungle by his more agile but less enterprising relative, the ape, he
has been conducting a long and arduous struggle, fighting his way
toward ever more effective sources of energy. In this struggle the
problem of population has come to play an increasingly important part.
For example: in the 200,000 years prior to 1800 the biologic
progression had so far advanced that the total world population of the
human species in the latter year was approximately 850,000,000. In the
subsequent 132 years this population grew until it is now approximately
1,800,000,000--a greater increase than in the previous 200,000 years.The
point to be especially noted is that most of this population increase
is due to the introduction of technological procedures into social
life. By way of contrast, consider China. According to the Nanking
estimates of 1932, China has a population of 470,000,000 today an
estimated growth of only 71,000,000 in the past two centuries.
France--according to the estimates of Reid, Baker, and others--would
require over four hundred years to double its present population of
approximately 40,000,000. Both of these countries are admittedly
backward in their rates of growth on the technological level; that is
to say, neither of them has taken full advantage of the incentive to
population increase afforded by the introduction of technological
procedures into their social life.Compare these examples with
the United States. In 1830, slightly over a century ago, this country
had a little more than 12,000,000 people. Today the figure is
approximately 122,000,000--an increase of 10 times in a century. Now
set these figures against the background of the energy consumption
during the same period: In 1830 we were consuming as a nation less than
75 trillion British Thermal Units of total extraneous physical energy
(derived principally from windmills and domestic animals with some coal
and water power.) In 1929 we consumed slightly less than 27,000
trillion British Thermal Units of extraneous physical energy--an
increase in the century of 353 times. What is the drift of such
facts--which can be supported and strengthened from many sources?Technocracy
points out that in all social systems prior to the last 200 years man
was the chief engine of energy conversion. Efficient from the
mechanical point of view, this engine was severely limited in output,
rating at approximately one tenth horsepower per eight-hour day. All
the work and wealth of human society from the dawn of recorded history
to the beginning of the 18th century depended exclusively upon this
engine. Thus we have Adam Smith, in the opening sentence of his famous
book, (published in the same year as America's Declaration of
Independence and, ironically, within a short distance of the town where
James Watt was developing his steam engine) defining wealth in terms of
human labor which in turn created all values. This was a correct
description of the conditions of which Adam Smith wrote, but it has
since become increasingly evident that man, as a creator of physical
wealth, is receding more and more into the background, yielding, and
not unwillingly, to the rapid growth of technology and of power
procedures. Technocracy emphasizes that in all the older social systems
there was no means of altering the rate of doing work: You could
increase the total number of human beings only up to the physical
limits of the area in which they lived, that limit reached, migration
was the only alternative to the reduction of population by mass famine. (10/30/08)
Copyright 'fair use' Notice
This page was last updated: Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 11:37:19 PMTrustMark 2008 by the SynEARTH.network.
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We Are Time-binders
This means we are synergic
humans. Synergy means working together, operating together as in
Co-Operation, laboring together as in Co-Laboration, acting together as
in Co-Action.
The goal of synergic union is to
accomplish a larger or more difficult task than can be accomplished by
individuals working separately. We are committed to a world where I
win, you win, others win and the Earth wins. Win-Win-Win-Win.
We have a choice in how we go
about trying to make the world safe. If we see the world as half evil,
we can hate that part of the world and try to hurt and kill it. If we
see the world as half good, we can love that part of the world and try
to help and support it.
One human once said that the end
justifies the means. If I intend good than my use of evil means is
forgiven. Jesus of Nazareth said: "No, the means become the ends. If I
use evil in search of good, I become evil."
Life is nothing but choices. What will you choose to do?
We believe that you should, "Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you." What is it that most
of us want others to do unto us? Synergic scientists answer this
question as follows: Help others as you would wish them to help
you. Or "Treat others the way they want to be treated."
Write Me
Timothy Wilken, MD
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