Tag: Barack Obama

Why Nothing Will Be Done to Stop Global Warming

One of the reasons I’ve always liked Stewart Brand is he has a way of cutting through a lot of nonsense and revealing salient points about issues without oversimplifying them. Over at the Long Now Blog, he has a summary — citing engineer Saul Griffith — on what would have to happen in order to make much of a dent in global climate change (emphasis added),

What would it take to level off the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm)? That level supposedly would keep global warming just barely manageable at an increase of 2 degrees Celsius. There still would be massive loss of species, 100 million climate refugees, and other major stresses. The carbon dioxide level right now is 385 ppm, rising fast. Before industrialization it was 296 ppm. America’s leading climatologist, James Hanson, says we must lower the carbon dioxide level to 350 ppm if we want to keep the world we evolved in.

The world currently runs on about 16 terawatts (trillion watts) of energy, most of it burning fossil fuels. To level off at 450 ppm of carbon dioxide, we will have to reduce the fossil fuel burning to 3 terawatts and produce all the rest with renewable energy, and we have to do it in 25 years or it’s too late. Currently about half a terrawatt comes from clean hydropower and one terrawatt from clean nuclear. That leaves 11.5 terawatts to generate from new clean sources.

. . .

Meanwhile for individuals, to stay at the world’s energy budget at 16 terawatts, while many of the poorest in the world might raise their standard of living to 2,200 watts, everyone now above that level would have to drop down to it. Griffith determined that most of his energy use was coming from air travel, car travel, and the embodied energy of his stuff, along with his diet. Now he drives the speed limit (no one has passed him in six months), seldom flies, eats meat only once a week, bikes a lot, and buys almost nothing. He’s healthier, eats better, has more time with his family, and the stuff he has he cherishes.

So in summary, in order to reach the optimistic scenario where there is still massive species extinctions and hundreds of millions of climate refugees, we have to lop off 11.5 terawatts of fossil fuel generation and Westerners have to become semi-ascetics . . . and all in 25 years to have any chance of making a serious difference.

That will never happen. Just look at the United States — this is a country where people were freaking how just a few months ago because gasoline prices briefly hovered above $4/gallon. There were a few voices that said “hey, lets retool our entire society to reduce fossil fuel consumption,” but most people I suspect agreed with our soon-to-be President Barack Obama who blasted oil companies for not build more gasoline capacity,

They have been in fat city for a long time. They are not necessarily putting that money into refinery capacity, which could potentially relieve some of the bottlenecks in our gasoline supply. And so that is something we have to go after. I think we can go after the windfall profits of some of these companies.

. . .

We should also be investing in new technologies so we can replace the internal combustible engine, which has served us well, but it’s time for us to move on, because we want to get rid of fossil fuels.

That the low gas prices are an enormous disincentive for creation of alternative energy is, of course, far too politicaly sensitive to even brook. And, of course, I don’t think you’ll be hearing a President Obama urging a new American austerity to save the planet (in fact, his stimulus proposal is predicated on getting American consumption back on its pre-recession pace).

If Brand/Griffth’s vision is correct, we would be better off focusing our efforts on ameliorating the effects of global climate change rather than some half-assed attempt to forestall it. There is simply no political will, at least in the United States, for the sorts of changes that would actually be required to achieve the sort of dramatic changes that are really required.

Barack Obama, Bill Ayers and Political Violence

Xeni Jardin over at Boing! Boing! highlights an absurd interview with Bill Ayers featuring (in Jardins words) “his suggestions on what those swept up in the current wave of hope following [Barack] Obama’s election might do to harness that excitement.”

Ayers, of course, is the former Weather Underground terrorist and Obama associate whom McCain tried (way too late and in a lousy way) to make an issue of when it was clear that he was going to lose the election.

It is odd to see just how easily left wingers who commit acts of political violence can be mainstreamed. It is difficult to imagine that happening in a similar way on the Right.

For example, imagine that John McCain had repeatedly associated with an anti-abortion activist who had led an underground group that attempted to bomb abortion clinics around the country during the 1980s. Does anyone seriously think that such an association would have been downplayed by the mainstream media the way Ayers was? Would left-liberals like Jardin approvingly cite, say, National Review if it made the mind boggling decision to run a political advice piece from such a former terrorist? In fact, anti-abortion advocates are generally considered beyond the pale when they coordinate plain old non-violent civil disobedience.

Somehow, I don’t think so. This is the same sort of dynamic that allows some left-liberals to deplore the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet while cultivating the cult of Che Guevera. It’s the sort of dynamic that Bill Clinton relied on when he pardoned 16 members of the Puerto Rican nationalist FALN in 2000, knowing that even though the group was reponsible for carrying out deadly bombings in the United States, his legacy wouldn’t suffer (even after the 9/11 attacks outraged Americans, Clinton’s pardoning of the FALN terrorists has never really harmed his public image).

On the other hand, I assume if George W. Bush pardoned Michael Griffin that this would quickly become a defining incident of his presidency.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

Before I get into my main point, let me make it clear that I think both major party candidates for President this year are about as qualified for the office as my cat. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have repeatedly demonstrated they are more than willing to sell out personal liberty as long as it will get them the votes needed to take office. Since the current administration decided to push the pedal to the floor in accelerating the consolidation of power in the executive, the future under either of these yahoos (or the respective morons each chose as a running mate) is dismal at best.

Okay, with that out of the way, it is hilarious to watch “conservatives” like Andrew McCarthy bemoan the possibility of a “socialist” Barack Obama bringing on “the death of freedom”. It’s not that I disagree with his analysis on Obama, it is that I don’t see how this is a substantive change from the current administration which McCarthy has routinely sold his principles to defend.

On the socialism angle, fine Obama’s a socialist. In a country where the “conservative” president pushes a ridiculous $700+ billion bailout deal, however, who in the major party duopoly isn’t? The difference is at best one of a small degree in details rather than any bedrock principle. McCain and Obama may disagree on specifics, but both stand steadfastly for the continued expansion of federal intervention in the economy. In fact, as was clearly the case with Bush, I’d argue that McCain is far more dangerous on that point because Republicans will fall in almost lockstep behind the creeping “conservative” socialism with little protest (imagine if this were Al Gore’s second term and he was proposing such massive intervention in the market? Then the Republican slugs might actually grow spines).

All the “death of freedom” nonsense against Obama is hard to understand from Republicans who have stood by and excused the use of torture on terror suspects; the ridiculous security theater at airports and elsewhere that instills fear and violates our rights while doing nothing to protect us from terrorist attack; the wholesale re-creation of insidious domestic intelligence operations. And these folks then presume to lecture us that freedom may not survive and Obama administration unscathed?

Frankly it is hard to understand the vehemence with which Democrats and Republicans support their particular presidential candidate or oppose the other party’s selection. Both fundamentally stand for using the power of their office to punish and persecute those whom they deem unworthy — the only point they ever seem to disagree is in the detail of who precisely the victims will be.

Ah, yes, American elections — nothing but year ’round special pleading.

Of Course They Let Bigots Vote

Politico carried an interesting analysis of an AP-Yahoo news poll which is one of the examples of why I’m so ambivalent about voting,

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can’t win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for [Barack] Obama than those who don’t have such views.

Ah yes . . . even bigots get to vote. Of course that’s hardly the only irrational views held by those who will determine the next leader of the free world. Depending on the poll, 40 to 50 percent of Americans believe God created the world in just 6 days — and presumably, those people also go to the polls to vote.

Which is not to say that I have any particular sympathy for Obama (or McCain for that matter) knowing that people who hold irrational views hold the futures of the candidate in their hand. After all, both of the candidates not only hold irrational views but go further and espouse views they clearly do not personally believe in but nonetheless feel they have to make public displays of fealty in order to curry favor with this or that cross-section of voters.

I see ads about the importance of voting, civic duty, the ideals of democracy, blah blah blah, but our presidential elections have always struck me as more like episodes of mass delusion and hysteria that rock the country every four years. Modern political campaigns are simply social versions of ergot poisoning that induce hallucination and madness in true believers.

Praying for Oil

I was going to write a gratuitous slam on Pray At The Pump’s efforts to pray for lower gasoline prices in the United States. Then I realized that Pray at the Pump’s understanding of how oil markets work is no less irrational than either John McCain or Barack Obama’s apparent understanding of oil markets, so what’s the point?

It’s really sad — but so typical — to see the US election boil down to a battle of The Moron vs. The Messiah.

Sigh.