Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb We can boil at the inequities and destructiveness of the current system. There are times and places that are appropriate for that. But our best chance to traverse the the path to a more decentralized world while minimizing harm and maximizing success is to begin building it.
In the cacophony of bad climate stories recently, you’d be forgiven for missing the news that one casualty of Trump’s order was the social cost of carbon (SCC), a measure that’s been called “the most important number you’ve never heard of.” The SCC captures the estimated costs of climate disruption from things like sea-level rise, storms, fires, crop failures and rising death rates.
Not since World War II have more human beings been at risk from disease and starvation than at this very moment. About 20 million people in three African countries — Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan — as well as in Yemen were likely to die if not provided with emergency food and medical aid.
We modern folk are in a bind. We embrace what the sciences and the technology that flows from them have to offer, but we refuse to believe that we live in the world described by those very sciences. Here I’m not merely talking about climate change deniers who, of course, fit this description.
It defies our normal modes of thinking that natural entities such as trees, rivers, mountains, lakes, and glaciers should be given legal standing in courts and public life. And yet we take as a matter of course the legal rights of other inanimate entities.
Conversations that seek genuine understanding by all sides ultimately require a common frame of reference. If we aren’t talking about the same things, how can we understand one another? We usually refer to this as talking past one another. Sometimes this happens because we haven’t taken the time to understand what our conversation partner is … Read more
Why are the Saudis content to allow oil prices to remain this low and possibly drift lower? I believe it’s because their war on shale never ended; they mean to destroy the long-term financial viability of oil from shale deposits–and that job won’t be finished until investors say, “Never again!”
In his book “The End of Normal” economist James Galbraith makes a compelling case that our search for a return to the fast rate of economic growth experienced in the United States from 1945 to 1970 has led to fraud–fraud enabled by government actions that sought to “free the economy” from the shackles of “overregulation” and update the regulatory framework to meet “new challenges” such as globalization.
Americans may not be as dependent on natural gas as the Dutch. But they have rushed into their own torrid love affair with natural gas and lost sight of the fact that affairs which start out torrid are the same ones that tend to flame out quickly, surprising everyone with their sudden demise.
A foolish energy policy gives away Australian energy resources at bargain prices to foreign countries, according to critics.
Those who can imagine the worst ought to be regarded as prudent planners rather than overwrought Cassandras. After all, Cassandra turned out to be right. Her curse was that no one would believe her.
The wall signifies a desire to reduce the number of newcomers and to preserve a way of life that is threatened economically and culturally by the globalism embraced by the country’s bi-coastal elites. Stop the invasion of newcomers and you will stop the forces bearing down on a threatened way of life in flyover country; so goes the visceral logic.
