"How to Defeat Putin & Save the Planet" by Thomas Friedman w/ Introductory Commentary

 This is a MUST-READ piece from Tom Friedman. In short, he agrees with me and I with him. To wit, we need to move quickly away from fossil fuels to score a double-win. First, we can stop funding both sides of so many wars. We do so by our “addiction” (his word--appropriate) to fossil fuel. We finance petrostates like Putin's Russia, Saudi Arabia, the late Saddam Hussein, the thugs in Venezuela, and the Iranian regime. Need I go on? Our addiction to fossil fuels warps our entire foreign policy.

And the other half of the win? Climate change. This past month, temperatures in Antarctica have been 70F degrees above normal. In the Arctic, 50F above normal. I hope you don't own any oceanside property.

But some good news: renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels. By going electric--soon, fast--we can reduce the cost of energy that we use. We can also use less energy (let's be frank: we Americans are energy hogs) and we can develop more efficient systems.

Finally, the Biden Administration, like administrations before them, can stop going hat-in-hand to petrostates begging for more or less oil production, depending on the circumstances. The fossil fuel giants can see the end of their cash cow in sight & begin making plans for their demise. They have the money, and they've had the time to plan for the wind-down of their polluting ways. But we, the American people, have to accept that we must undertake this transition and that the price of fossil fuels will (and should) increase.

Now's the time. We can reduce a twin pair of evils by acting decisively now.

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | How to Defeat Putin and Save the Planet

by Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman on the Folly of Trump-Iran

Thomas Friedman looking beyond the immediate headlines. My summary: we need to end our addiction (yes, ADDICTION) to fossil fuels. Our addiction is literally killing us. Dying to get more of what's killing us is the life of a drug addict. Leave the oil in the ground, and let the Sunnis and Shias to fight if they choose. Let's leave oil in the ground and leave the Middle East as a permanent war project. Friedman:

"When I step back and get some distance on this latest clash between President Trump and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it becomes obvious to me that what we have here are two bald men fighting over a comb.

We have two old men, with old ideas, fighting over a country that neither should want — Iraq — and over a 20th-century resource — oil — that is decreasingly relevant to a 21st-century nation’s economy and for a strategic goal — to dominate the Middle East — that no sane leader should want to achieve, because all that you win is a bill.

In short, it’s just so much fury that will change so little.

Which is why, when I hear Fox News’ flag-waving commentators claiming that those who don’t support Trump in his careening around the Middle East are being unpatriotic, I want to burst out laughing, because it is so pathetic."

They can each claim some victory. But what did they win?

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | Did Trump and Iran Just Bury the Hatchet, or the Future?

They can each claim some victory. But what did they win?

Uninhabitable Earth; Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells--Creating Hell on Earth (or not)

Usually, I write a book review to share a sense of joy or insights or pleasure that I've gained from reading a book. Not so with this book. I'm writing this book review in an attempt to purge the angst that I suffered from reading it, to turn the sense of dread and potential for despair I often felt while reading it into something more positive, into courageous action. Can I succeed? I hope so, for my sake and for the sake of any reader. 

Wallace-Wells undertakes two tasks in this book. First, he brings us up to date with the latest climate science and the most reliable prognostications about the effects of climate change. The works of thousands of scientists converge around a variety of hellscapes that would make Dante swoon. As Wallace-Wells points out, we've been conditioned to think that climate change is just rising sea levels or some warmer temperatures here and there. It's not nearly so simple. It's not "I don't live near the coast, so what's my worry," because the problem is manifold and ubiquitous. No one can escape. Yes, sea levels will rise. Temperatures will rise so that some areas to become nearly unhabitable, especially around the Middle East and India (and having lived in northern India, I have a sense of what extreme temperatures feel like). Droughts and floods will increase in frequency and severity. Wildfires, as Americans have seen within the past year in California and the Pacific Northwest, will increase in severity and frequency. Severe weather events, such as hurricanes and tornados, will proliferate and become stronger. Get ready for the designation of a Category 6 hurricane. Established diseases will spread (malaria, dengue fever, and zika will move north), and new pathological organisms will evolve in our hothouse atmosphere. Crops will fail and yields decline. Nature will survive, of course, but species and whole ecosystems will disappear. We'll see Nature altered in ways that we don't recognize and won't enjoy. Human beings will be forced to migrate to survive. And conflicts will proliferate and intensify, from domestic quarrels (and undoubtedly physical abuse) to wars and civil unrest. We seem intent on creating a perfectly Hobbesian world of the war of all against all. 

Is Wallace-Wells just another alarmist? Is this just a book with cheap thrills like a 50's horror flick? I wish. Wallace-Wells went into this research and writing project as someone who was cognizant of climate change, but who didn't hold it front and center of his concerns until, as a journalist, he saw an increasing flood of scientific papers that revealed a much more frightening future than most of the media was reporting. What Wallace-Wells discovered disturbed him and frightened him. But he hasn't given up hope, and neither should we. 

In fact, the second portion of the book, after establishing the likelihood of various varieties of hell that we humans are creating for ourselves--and we are creating it, and we are choosing it--Wallace-Wells turns to our responses and how individuals, societies, and nations may respond to the increasing pressures that we face. 

We humans, like most of our fellow creatures here on Earth, have three instinctive responses to threats: fight, flight, or freeze (even faint). I couldn't help but think along these lines as I read about reactions (or the lack of response) to our increasingly certain knowledge. As a whole, we've chosen to faint, to swoon at the thought of what we've wrought and then distract ourselves from our plight. We play mind games with ourselves to distract ourselves from the challenge at hand, and 21st-century consumer capitalism is most willing to enable us to do this. The Republican Party in Congress tries to pretend that the science is wrong and the problem unreal, 'another liberal plot" they say.  Some say its just "God's will" and take a fatalistic approach justified on some bit of Bible misreading. Others seek to flee through technological panaceas, some of which may prove useful, but none of which promise reliable remedy and none of which can be attempted without immense costs and tremendous uncertainty about unintended consequences. The super-rich investigate how to govern the bunkers they're building to try to escape the wrath of the masses who will seek both vengeance and access to the resources that the super-rich have squirreled away. (But the super-rich remain worried about how to keep their guardians from turning on them.) 

The last option is to fight (climate change, not my fellow humans), and that's the option I'll take. We'll suffer significant--if not devastating--dislocations. We'll continue to see all sorts of changes, natural, social, economic, political, and cultural. But as Wallace-Wells makes clear, we have options and the potential to dramatically reduce the suffering that the future holds for all humans if we don't take sufficient steps to alleviate our plight. And I believe--or at least I possess a ray of hope--that we humans can respond in time (and time is of the essence). Thomas Friedman recently quoted an elementary but valuable insight from economic thinker Eric Beinhoffer: "there are only two ways to cure political tribalism: 'A common threat or a common project.'” Friedman uses this point to recommend that we need to undertake a common project to repair the foundations of the middle class. I suggest that repairing the foundations of the middle class must be subsumed under the project of dealing with climate change, which is a common threat and can become a common project. Indeed, starting now, we must re-imagine our political structures, our political economy, our entire culture. We have the potential to use the impending catastrophes to attempt to build a more just society. We either seek a just and sustainable world, or we can expect increasing international strife and civil anarchy. The range of possibilities for political, economic, and cultural change is vast, from outcomes that will prove (reasonably) attractive to appalling possibilities for anarchy or totalitarianism (and every nightmare in between). 

In listening to a couple of interviews of author David Wallace-Wells (The Ezra Klein Show & The Joe Rogen Experience), I was relieved to learn that he has an infant daughter, born while he was researching this topic. This fact reinforces his fundamental commitment to strive for the best possible outcome of our climate challenge, and it lets readers know that his hopeful words (there are some) don't represent publisher mandated pablum for readers. Wallace-Wells has to believe that we can take effective action to reduce our suffering and that of those who will come after us. 

One final comment: Again, from interviews, suggestions have been made that millennials will face this problem and must live with the consequences. Of course, this is true. But we baby-boomers have overseen an almost obscene increase in carbon in the atmosphere in the period since Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006). We bear the burden of responsibility for addressing our planetary illness. Alleviating the devastation of climate change must be a cross-generational project. We must begin the think in Burkean terms: society is a contract among generations past, present, and future. (If only there were more true conservatives!) 

Please, read this book and ponder your response. What shall we choose?  

Sunday NYT Round-up

Here's what I found interesting in the paper today:

1. Ground meat. Okay, Devotay restaurant in Iowa City gets a shout-out for its lamb albondigas in the article, so that makes it fun. (Haven't had them yet, but might have to.) But the article gives some sound advice. Don't waste, and use good, appropriately raised product. Yea, yum. I luv Iowa Guru's delicious lamb burgers from the grill, and brats--oh, yea.

2. Gary Taubes on the "carbs make us fat" hypothesis. Taubes is a first-rate science writer, and this piece, in his modest way consistent with his respect for the discipline of science, furthers his argument that all calories are not created equal and that carbs (simple, mostly white), cause us to get fat.

3. The 'Busy Trap'. Point well-taken. I especially like the Arthur C. Clarke quote. However, to most Americans, this would seem immoral.

4. Tom Friedman on John Roberts's majority opinion. I remain agnostic about Roberts's motives. Perhaps civic virtue, perhaps a desire to preserve the standing of the Court, perhaps he responded to compelling legal arguments--or all (or none) of the above. It was good to see a decision that did not split along strictly ideological lines, that did not privilege the position of Justice Kennedy, and that did uphold Obama's health care plan. And while, I, too, oppose "hyper partisanship", compromise strictly for the sake of compromise or to "meet in the middle" isn't good enough. Sometimes you do have to stand your ground and fight (and risk losing). The Republican Party's main agenda seems to be to defeat Obama, not to move the country in a sensible direction. That's bad, very bad. Democrats, even with Bush, whom no real Democrat could have regarded well, didn't spend all of their time trying to undermine for electoral advantage, I don't think. I hope that voters this fall recognize that.

5. Jim Holt, "Is Philosophy Literature?" . Fun piece that attempts to show some literary merit by the analytic camp. A tough sell, I think, but he makes a case.

6. This review of America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano intrigues me, despite a luke warm review. America, this big, sprawling land of many cultures and traditions, does think, sometimes deeply, sometime quite shallowly, but if we spread our net widely, we find some thinkers worth considering. It seems that Mr. Romano tries to capture this great enterprise, and for this reason alone it seems a worthwhile endeavor.

7. One bummer: is Texas real?  Or to put it more accurately, and fairly to the (I hope) non-crazy majority there, are Texas Republicans crazy? Well, yes, but . . . My goodness, this is mind-bogglingly stupid and more than a bit alarming. Read this & think about it (I don't think that Texas Republicans did).

Republicans, Who Are You?

The linked article by Krugman today and this one yesterday by Tom Friedman point to a glaring fact: the Republican Party has drifted to the real fringe of reality and sensibility. If the electorate follows any Republican nominee, heaven help us all.

As someone who grew up Republican, I have some knowledge of the Republican party as it used to be. Back then, a tussle developed between the "conservatives" and the "moderates" ("liberals" if you're from the New York or New England), and the winner, like Richard Nixon, had a foot in both camps; ditto Jerry Ford. Even Reagan, for all his reputation, was more pragmatic than his legend reveals. But since Regan & old Bush, it's all crazy. Gone are the days of Mark Hatfield and Charles Percy (both of whom died this year). This book review addresses this lost party.

Now we have a no-nothing party. Not that free market perspectives, low taxes, and a strong military are necessarily bad, but from where the current party is coming from, it's just nuts.

Sad, really.

Friedman, Shiller, etc. Miscellaney

Tom Friedman provides a persuasive and succinct description of the Tea Party Movement as a political phenomena. The Tea Party strikes me as having no coherent set of ideas or platform, just a populist outpouring against the world as it is. I think that Obama has the ability and aspirations to reach out and accomplish what Friedman wants, and what he sees as the real problems behind the Tea Kettle party phenomena, but the body politic does seem to be really mired in limited--if not downright stupid--thinking.

In the NYT today, Friedman opens with a quote from Lewis Mumford. This alone merits a shout-out, as Mumford was a great American humanist (for lack of a more specific term), and long-time favorite of mine. In Friedman's article a quote from Mumford is taken from his impressionistic account of history, and more specifically, that of the declining Roman empire. I think that we have to be careful of the "we're the new Rome" stuff, but still, it's a thought-provoking piece, and it allows Friedman to trumpet an important message. Friedman floats the idea of a third-party, a tried and true perspective in American politics (and one that can influence events, but not since the Republican Lincoln, have none have gained power at the presidential level). The problem, as I see it, is that Obama gets criticized for acting too conciliatory and non-partisan. What perspectives or attitudes could a, for instance, Bloomberg add to the national dialogue? If anything, maybe Obama and the Democrats need to act more boldly and move more to the left. Anyway, thanks for quoting Mumford, Tom.

Robert Shiller in the NYT today takes about "animal spirits" (again) in describing how attitudes effect economic outlooks and performance. Yea, Keynes, who wrote in English (although he spoke mathematics very fluently) seems to have his pulse on our situation. Another instance of human behavior not following the guidelines that mainstream economics says that we should.

Finally, a quick note: an article in the NYT about an upcoming series on PBS on religion in America. You cannot understand America if you don't have some grasp of its religious history and its current manifestations in their incredible variety. Sounds promising.