Asking a Favor for a Special Someone

The Blue Marble: our spaceship needs repairs. Now! 

I'm asking for a friend. Actually, our mother. Mother Earth. She's in very bad health now and in need of help. Pronto! We, her children, need to act on her behalf. Oh, she'll survive even if we continue to sit on our hands. But we won't.

So here's my ask: please write your Senator along the lines of the following. This is not the answer to climate change. It's an answer, but it could get the ball rolling in the right direction.

And thanks, on behalf of "Mom."

Dear Senator X:

I understand that the Senate is now in a position to decide whether to adopt a carbon fee and dividend program. I urge you to enthusiastically support this legislation.

We all expect to pay for the costs of sewers, garbage collection, and dump fees as a part of running our household while trying to maintain a safe and livable environment. We now know that we can’t afford (to put it mildly) to continue dumping excess carbon into our atmosphere. That’s why we need to put a price on carbon. A price will allow consumers to know the cost of carbon in the products and services they buy. They can then compare and purchase more carbon efficient (and thus cheaper) alternatives. Businesses that are more carbon-efficient (including American businesses selling abroad) will rightfully gain an advantage as a reward for their ingenuity and investment.

But the important corollary to a price on carbon is that the funds collected will be regularly paid to the American people as a dividend. (The funds will not go to fund the government, and thus the price isn’t a “tax.”) These regularly payable dividends would be divided equally among the American people. This scheme would favor low and moderate income individuals and families. The wealthiest among us, who also are by far the largest consumers of carbon (and therefore dump much more carbon into the atmosphere) would suffer a net deficit. But they’ll adjust.

A carbon border adjustment—to make sure that imports have a carbon price upon them—is another key component of this plan.

This program would be a major step forward in the transition to a low-carbon future. We need to do this now, because, as you no doubt know, the clock is running out on us. Also, you should note that this scheme has a broad range of support, from the Citizens Climate Lobby (where I heard first about this proposal) to the Climate Leadership Council, which includes a number of business organizations, corporations, non-profits, and prominent Republicans (James Baker III is currently at the forefront). And, best of all, there’s significant popular support for such a plan.

Thank you for your consideration. I will look forward to writing you to thank you for your active support and vote of this measure.

Thoughts for the Day: 5 August 2021

 

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

As early as The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes had been battling economic problems that were not principally matters of physical resource constraints. The greatest threats to harvest yields were not a lack of labor, fertilizer, or rainfall but insufficient investment and the mismanagement of money and credit.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

[John Kenneth] Galbraith knew he was exactly the kind of man the McCarthyists hated most—not an outright Soviet collaborator but an idealist with a grand vision of progress who hoped to use economic reforms to break down social distinctions of rank and privilege.

The Constitution of Knowledge

Jonathan Rauch

“Just a reminder, Theaetetus,” I tell my student friend. “When we support the Constitution of Knowledge with our heads and our hearts—with reverence and reason, as Lincoln prescribed—and when others do the same, its enemies are not ten feet tall. We are.”

Science and the Modern World

Alfred North Whitehead

Just as sense-perception seems to give knowledge of what lies beyond individuality, so action seems to issue in an instinct for self-transcendence.

Between Past and Future

Hannah Arendt

On the first page of The Human Condition Arendt speaks of launching a man-made object into space as an “event, second in importance to no other, not even to the splitting of the atom.” The reaction, “curiously enough,” was not “awe” at man’s achievement but “relief” that “the first ‘step toward escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth’” had been taken. [From the Introduction by Jerome Kohn.]

Metabolical

Robert H. Lustig

The field of modern dietetics was borne out of two concepts, both of which turned out to be false. The first is the idea that a “calorie is a calorie,” which was espoused by the Atwater system, developed by agriculturist Wilbur Olin Atwater in 1916. His claim to fame was that he standardized how much heat energy (i.e., how many kilocalories, or kcal) three specific macronutrients would liberate when burned in a bomb calorimeter (a device that measures heat release of organic substances), and he calculated the ratios, which computes the number of kcal in a given food by its protein (4 kcal/gm), carbohydrate (4 kcal/gm), and fat (9 kcal/gm) content. As fat was the most calorie-dense, Atwater thought it was the most egregious in terms of weight gain.

The New Leviathan

R. G. Collingwood

36. 89. Civilization is the process in a community by which the various members assert themselves as will: severally as individual will, corporately as social will (the two being inseparable, 21. 1 seqq.).

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

Erwin Schrödinger spelled out the profound implication: “Mind has erected the objective world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff.”

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

Epicurus saw religion not merely as false but as a fraud perpetrated by the priestly class for their own benefit.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

But exclusive emphasis on the One had gone beyond the point of attributing underlying order to the Many and had ended by subordinating the Many to the One, preparing for Parmenides’ annihilation of it. Heraclitus sought to rectify this situation by restoring balance between the One and the Many...

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Steven Pinker

The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence, and often the attitudes are in the lead.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Critics, Hans Morgenthau among them, were quick to point out the flaw in Kissinger’s reasoning [about the use of tactical nuclear weapons]: there was a bright line between nonnuclear war and nuclear war but no such line between tactical nuclear war and strategic nuclear war. Once the bombs started falling, there was no clear stopping point. Any use of a nuclear weapon, however limited, risked inexorable escalation and universal annihilation.