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 clichÈs, 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)
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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)
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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)
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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 Ö 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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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