Scientific Articles on Global Warming

“The accompanying pie chart [see below] should be instructive. It was produced by James Lawrence Powell [Ph.D. in Geochemistry from MIT], a former member of the National Science Board under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He did a broad search in scientific journals for every peer-reviewed study of climate change and/or global warming since 1991. He found 13,950 of them, the combined work of 33,690 scientists from around the world. Precisely 24 of the 13,950 studies rejected global warming. That piece represents 17 hundredths of 1 percent of the pie. End of debate.” Source: Editorial: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12-27-12.

“The articles have a total of 33,690 individual authors. The 24 rejecting papers have a total of 34 authors, about 1 in 1,000.” Source: http://www.jamespowell.org/  

According to Powell, about one tenth of one percent of scientific authors who published in peer-reviewed journals on global climate change issues in the last twenty years do not believe that that change is caused by humans. One tenth of one percent. But I suppose some people believe that’s not a consensus or that all the other scientists who believe in AGW are intentionally falsifying or skewing their results, or are getting paid by some nefarious liberal organization.

But one tenth of one percent seems incredibly persuasive, given that the top ten countries where the research was performed are, in numerical order: USA, England, China, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Persuasive only if you have an open mind.

Again, according to Powell, the results of his study demonstrate the existence of a hoax targeted on misleading the public about global warming. A small group of global warming deniers has created the illusion that scientists disagree about climate change by using a well-funded campaign of smoke and mirrors and every form of communication except peer-reviewed scientific papers. But that campaign hasn't succeeded. Source: James Powell. “The State of Climate Science: A Thorough Review of the Scientific Literature on Global Warming. Science Progress, Thursday, November 15th, 2012. Found online at: http://scienceprogress.org/2012/11/27479/

It turns out conservatives have been caught wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes with their bare asses hanging out for all to see. Readers who yearn for documentation of the existence of an organized movement on the part of conservatives to obscure the science of global warming are encouraged to examine the following peer-reviewed sources. Please note that this list is far from all inclusive.

Aklin, Michael, and Johannes Urpelainen. 2014. Perceptions of scientific dissent undermine public support for environmental policy. Environmental Science & Policy 28: 173-177. Abstract: This article shows that even modest amounts of scientific dissent reduce public support for environmental policy. A survey experiment with 1000 Americans demonstrates that small skeptical scientific minorities can cast significant doubt among the general public on the existence of an environmental problem and reduce support for addressing it. Public support for environmental policy is maximized when the subjects receive no information about the scientific debate, indicating that the general public's default assumption is a very high degree of scientific consensus. Accordingly, a stronger scientific consensus will not generate public support for environmental policy, unless skeptical voices become almost silent.

Anderegg, William R. L., James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider. 2010. Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 12107-12109.

Anderegg, William R. L.; and coauthors (December 28, 2010). Reply to Bodenstein: Contextual data about the relative scale of opposing scientific communities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (52): Available online at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3012517/.

Bodenstein, Lawrence (December 28, 2010). Regarding Anderegg et al. and climate change credibility. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (52): Available online at: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/52/E188.short.

Boykoff, M. T., & Boykoff, J. M. (2004). Balance as bias: Global warming and the US prestige press. Global Environmental Change 14(2): 125-136.

Bray, D. 2010. The scientific consensus of climate change revisited. Environmental Science & Policy 13(5): 340-350. Abstract: This paper first reviews previous work undertaken to assess the level of scientific consensus concerning climate change, concluding that studies of scientific consensus concerning climate change have tended to measure different things. Three dimensions of consensus are determined: manifestation, attribution and legitimation. Consensus concerning these dimensions are explored in detail using a time series of data from surveys of climate scientists. In most cases, little difference is discerned between those who have participated in the IPCC process and those who have not. Consensus, however, in both groups does not amount to unanimity. Results also suggest rather than a single group proclaiming the IPCC does not represent consensus, there are now two groups, one claiming the IPCC makes overestimations (a group previously labeled skeptics, deniers, etc.) and a relatively new formation of a group (many of whom have participated in the IPCC process) proclaiming that IPCC tends to underestimate some climate related phenomena.

Cook, John, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce. 2013. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters 8(2). Available online at: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
Cook et al examined 11,944 abstracts from the peer-reviewed scientific literature from 1991–2011 that matched the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. They found that, while 66.4% of them expressed no position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), of those that did, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. They also invited authors to rate their own papers and found that, while only 35.5% rated their paper as expressing no position on AGW, 97.2% of the rest endorsed the consensus. In both cases the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position was marginally increasing over time. They concluded that the number of papers actually rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

The Cook et al. (2013) 97% consensus result is robust. 2014. Skeptical Science. http://www.skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust.htm

Doran, Peter T., and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman. 2009. Examining the scientific consensus on climate change. Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 90(3): 22-23. Abstract: Fifty-two percent of Americans think most climate scientists agree that the Earth has been warming in recent years, and 47% think climate scientists agree (i.e., that there is a scientific consensus) that human activities are a major cause of that warming, according to recent polling (see http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm). However, attempts to quantify the scientific consensus on anthropogenic warming have met with criticism. For instance, Oreskes (2004) reviewed 928 abstracts from peer-reviewed research papers and found that more than 75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities. Yet Oreskes’s approach has been criticized for overstating the level of consensus acceptance within the examined abstracts (Peiser 2005) and for not capturing the full diversity of scientific opinion (Pielke 2005). A review of previous attempts at quantifying the consensus and criticisms is provided by Kendall Zimmerman (2008). The objective of our study presented here is to assess the scientific consensus on climate change through an unbiased survey of a large and broad group of Earth scientists.

Dugan, Andrew. 2014. Americans most likely to say global warming is exaggerated. Gallup. Available at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/167960/americans-likely-say-global-warming-exaggerated.aspx

Feygina, Irina, John T. Jost, and Rachel E. Goldsmith. 2010. System justification, the denial of global warming, and the possibility of “system sanctioned change.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36: 326-338.

Fisher, Dana R., Joseph Waggle, and Philip Leifeld. 2013. Where does political polarization come from? Locating polarization within the U.S. climate change debate. American Behavioral Scientist 57(1): 70-92.

Flynn, James, Slovic, Paul, & Mertz, C. K. 1994. Gender, Race, and Perception of Environmental Health Risks. Risk Analysis 14(6): 1101-1108. Abstract: This paper reports the results of a national survey in which perceptions of environmental health risks were measured for 1275 white and 214 nonwhite persons. The results showed that white women perceived risks to be much higher than did white men, a result that is consistent with previous studies. However, this gender difference was not true of nonwhite women and men, whose perceptions of risk were quite similar. Most striking was the finding that white males tended to differ from everyone else in their attitudes and perceptions–on average, they perceived risks as much smaller and much more acceptable than did other people. These results suggest that sociopolitical factors such as power, status, alienation, and trust are strong determiners of people's perception and acceptance of risks.

Freudenburg, William R., and Violetta Muselli. 2013. Reexamining climate change debates: Scientific disagreement or scientific certainty argumentation methods (SCAMs)? American Behavioral Scientist 57(6): 777-795. Abstract: Despite strong scientific consensus that global climate disruption is real and due in significant part to human activities, stories in the U.S. mass media often still present the opposite view, characterizing the issue as being “in dispute.” Even today, the U.S. media devote significant attention to small numbers of denialists, who claim that scientific consensus assessments, such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are “exaggerated” and “political.” Such claims, however, are testable hypotheses—and just the opposite expectation is hypothesized in the small but growing literature on Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods, or SCAMs. The work on SCAMs suggests that, rather than being a reflection of legitimate scientific disagreement, the intense criticisms of climate science may reflect a predictable pattern that grows out of “the politics of doubt”: If enough doubt can be raised about the relevant scientific findings, regulation can be avoided or delayed for years or even decades. Ironically, though, while such a pattern can lead to a bias in scientific work, the likely bias is expected to be just the opposite of the one usually feared. The underlying reason has to do with the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge, or ASC—so named because certain theories or findings, such as those indicating the significance of climate disruption, are subjected to systematically greater challenges than are those supporting opposing conclusions. As this article shows, available evidence provides significantly more support for SCAM and ASC perspectives than for the concerns that are commonly expressed in the U.S. mass media. These findings suggest that, if current scientific consensus is in error, it is likely because global climate disruption may be even worse than commonly expected to date.

Gauchat, Gordon. 2012. Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010. American Sociological Review 77: 167-187.

Kahan, Dan M., Ellen Peters, Maggie Wittlin, Paul Slovic, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Donald Braman, and Gregory Mandel. 2012. The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change 2: 732-735.

Kahan, Dan M., Hank Jenkins-Smith, and Donald Braman, 2011. Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus. Journal of Risk Research 14: 147-74.

Kalof, Linda, Dietz, Thomas, Guagnano, Gregory, and Stern, Paul C. 2002. Race, gender and environmentalism: The atypical values and beliefs of white men. Race, Gender & Class 9(2): 112-130.

McCright, A. M. 2007. Dealing with climate change contrarians. In: Suzanne. C. Moser, and Lisa Dilling, (Eds.), Creating a climate for change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (200-212). New York: Cambridge University Press.

McCright, A. M., 2010. The effects of gender on climate change knowledge and concern in the American public. Population and Environment 32: 66-87.

McCright, Aaron M. and Riley E. Dunlap. 2000. Challenging global warming as a social problem: an analysis of the conservative movement’s counter claims. Social Problems 47(4): 499-522.

McCright, Aaron M. and Riley E. Dunlap. 2003. Defeating Kyoto: the conservative movement’s impact on U.S. climate change policy. Social Problems 50(3): 348-373.

McCright, Aaron M. and Riley E. Dunlap. 2010. Anti-Reflexivity: the American conservative movement’s success in undermining climate science and policy. Theory, Culture, and Society 27(2-3): 100-133.

McCright, Aaron M. and Riley E. Dunlap. 2011. The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001-2010. The Sociological Quarterly 52: 155-194.

McCright, Aaron M. and Riley E. Dunlap. 2011. Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States. Global Environmental Change 21(4): 1163-1172. Abstract: We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States.

McCright, Aaron M. and Riley E. Dunlap. 2013. Bringing ideology in: the conservative white male effect on worry about environmental problems in the USA. Journal of Risk Research 16(2): 211-226. Abstract: Extending existing scholarship on the white male effect in risk perception, we examine whether conservative white males (CWMs) are less worried about the risks of environmental problems than are other adults in the US general public. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from nine Gallup surveys between 2001 and 2010, focusing on both a single-item indicator and a composite measure of worry about environmental problems. We find that CWMs indeed have significantly lower worry about environmental problems than do other Americans. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate regression models reveal that this CWMs effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender and the effects of nine social, demographic, and temporal control variables – as well as the effect of individuals generalized (non-environmental) risk perceptions. We conclude that the white male effect is due largely to CWMs, and that the latter’s low level of concern with environmental risks is likely driven by their social commitment to prevent new environmental regulations and repeal existing ones.

Oreskes. Naomi. 2004 (Erratum January 21, 2005). The scientific consensus on climate change (PDF). Science 306 (5702): 1686. doi:10.1126/science.1103618. PMID 15576594

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

How Likely Is Gun Control in America?

Like many Americans, I have been consumed over the past days by the senseless murder of innocents and the American love affair with weapons. Like many who have spoken out recently about the horror at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in my heart I too believe that gun control is the only answer.

But as a rational observer of American politics I do not see a realistic scenario in which guns will not continue to be an ordinary and familiar element in our lives. Keep in mind that the 2nd Amendment speaks directly to weapons that would be used to support a militia, in other words, an Army. Thus, assault rifles are precisely the type of weapon the 2nd Amendment wants to have in the hands of citizens.

But, the only legitimate first step, repealing the 2nd Amendment, is not realistic, not with so many Americans opposing such a move. With weapons already in the hands of the citizenry numbering in the hundreds of millions, effective gun control is not much more than a pipe dream. Physically, those existing weapons have been made to last for 100 years or more and would almost certainly be grandfathered into any gun control legislation that may pass. Those weapons will not disappear from our lives — their confiscation is unthinkable — no matter how weapons are restricted in the future. How can they be controlled? Not by any scenario I believe is politically feasible.

Americans should admit that we live in a country where gun ownership is worshiped and guns themselves are objects of quasi-sexual fetishistic fantasies and dead children are quickly forgotten by most, with the exception of close relatives and friends. That’s the harsh lesson taught by Columbine High School and too many other examples.

The bottom line concerns a realistic scenario I see that’s based on our recent history with gun violence. People will rant and rage over the bloody slaughter of innocents for a few months, demanding politicians pass meaningful gun control legislation while the powerful gun lobby wraps their arms around politicians from both parties and pressures them to protect the right of every American to own weapons. What we will get in the end is pablum that will allow both sides to declare some sort of moral victory. Then we’ll hope and pray that we've seen the last of senseless mass killings. But when it does happen, as it inevitably will, outraged voices will be raised once again for meaningful gun controls. That’s life in America, where people love their guns.

America is an “exceptional” nation favored God over all others, or so the conservatives would have us believe. Just tell me how it is that, when the far greater majority of those conservatives proclaim themselves as born-again Christians, they are such fanatical gun worshipers? Was it Jesus who told them to buy assault weapons, or 30-bullet magazines? Would Jesus arm himself to the teeth and shoot the first person who tried to break into his house or steal a loaf of bread? What in the world happened to love thy neighbor as thyself? Or turn the other cheek? Naturally, that hypocrisy fits right-wing ideologues like a glove.

So, to finally answer the question posed above, America will adopt meaningful and effective gun control when an openly gay woman Cardinal is elected Pope.

Mayan Calendar Doomsday Prediction

Oh my God. Doomsday approacheth on high. Tomorrow we’ll all wake up dead. Oh, shit! Oh shit! What to do? Should I quickly wrap up my Christmas shopping? Pun intended. Should I run to church for final absolution or shoot the pastor because he’s way too friendly with the altar boys? Should I run across the street and punch that asshole I've hated forever in his stupid mouth? What to do? What to do? I’m so confused I feel blonde.

Well, one thing for shit sure I’m not paying all those bills that have piled up from Christmas shopping. Fuck ‘em. Let’s see if those bastards can collect when I'm taking the deep dirt nap. Ha ha.

But wait. What if the Mayans were wrong? Hey, think about it. If the Mayans were so smart why didn't they kick the Aztecs’ ass? And what about Columbus and all those rapacious Conquistadors? Why didn't the Mayans sink the Spaniards’ boats and engage in a little creative cannibalism they were famous for? Maybe the Mayans were as stupid as we are and didn't know shit about shit.

Still, doomsday is doomsday. So, after giving it a lot of thought I’m gonna hedge my bets. Tonight I’m going to bed with a crucifix in one hand and a miniature plastic Mayan calendar in the other that I bought off some Chinese guy in Chichen Itza for one-third the going rate. Maybe one will balance out the other and I’ll wake up in a brave new world with Winston Smith sitting on my bed. It could happen.

What Dave Brubeck Meant to Me.

It was somewhere in my late teens (1961-1962) that I discovered Dave Brubeck. At that time in my life I was mostly listening to classical music and was transitioning from regarding Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven as my drop dead favorites to Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Shostakovich. I was starting to really dig dissonance and rhythmic atonality.

Of course I had heard the Take Five single on the radio and thought it was terrific. But, when a friend who also was into classical music told me that if I liked the counterpoint in Bach and Mozart I should buy Brubeck’s album, I ran out and bought it. And immediately fell in love with every track on the album. I was hooked, big time, by the incredible, almost indescribably pulsating, complex rhythms that the Quartet generated (especially by Paul Desmond’s soaring interpretations of Brubeck’s chords). That first listening was almost a religious experience; I'll never forget the thrill of hearing Blue Rondo a la Turk or Pick Up Sticks for the first time.

From that moment the Dave Brubeck Quartet was my favorite jazz group. Well, followed very, very closely by John Lewis’s fantastic Modern Jazz Quartet and then by Stan Getz's great tenor sax.

What wasn't obvious to me then but is in retrospect was that at least part of my admiration for and fascination with Brubeck was his insistence on playing with an integrated group, first in the Army during WWII and later with Eugene Wright as his bassist. When Brubeck cancelled a number of engagements in the early 1960s at concert halls and college campuses because he refused to appear without “The Senator” on bass, I was pumped up by his principled stand and his refusal to let money overrule his convictions. It matched my personal commitment and felt exactly right.

Brubeck’s stand was an affirmation of the role art can play in the real world, especially if artists are committed to living their principles. It somewhat counteracted the searing revulsion I felt for the morally challenged assholes in Hollywood, especially Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, who made sure actors, writers, and directors were blacklisted and denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or associations, real or imagined. Brubeck had the courage of his convictions and I loved him for it. Of course, his music made that all the easier.

America without Romney as President

So, exactly what will America be like now that the Mittster is dragging his whipped butt back to wherever it is he and Ann have decided to live with their hundreds of millions in the lap of luxury? Let’s explore those things, starting with ripping down the famous signs that boast “We Built It!” and brag that “It’s a great time to be Republican.” Can I have an AMEN, brothers and sisters?

Right up front I want to be brutally honest. With this election America is rolling asshole over elbow straight downhill to perdition. Sweet Jesus, save us from our sins.

In entire Red States, like Tennessee and Utah, the old white Republican guys line one side of the fence staring daggers at America’s future: the young, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, and women of all ages. Diversity, brother, it’s all about diversity and there’s a lesson yet to be learned by the GOP.

The worst is we will live in a world of creeping liberalism where marijuana is legalized, gay marriages are accepted and homos aren’t treated like the repugnant moral scum they are, and workers have the right to unionize. In short, we have resoundingly reelected a president (Electoral College votes, of course) who will accelerate the nation’s decline into the black hole of secularism. No racism is meant by that comment. Really.

The liberals will drag our country’s great name into the barnyard stink and slime of ordinariness. America will no longer be regarded as truly exceptional, a shining city on a hill — a place apart with a better way of life, one to which all other peoples and nations aspire, which is the way it should be. Now, we’ll be ordinary, plain vanilla ordinary. Just another Westernized country with kids who can’t do math and don’t know science from shit. Oh, the sinful shame of it all. Why, oh why has God abandoned us to the Democrats and given us the arid desert instead of sweet dessert?

Sob, sob. Obamacare will never be repealed. We’ll weep salty tears and have to live with the frightful prospect of covering 48 million uninsured, with making sure people with pre-existing conditions won’t be hosed by health insurance companies, and infants and children can stay on the WIC Program. Catastrophes one and all for what should be a Red State nation that believes in the power of rugged individualism and fuck the losers.

No longer will vigilant patriotism be a must — America, right or wrong. America first. America, land of the free, home of the brave. America, love it or leave it. And now that Romney-Ryan are history, the federal government won’t be able to emphasize law and order to control the unruly, lawless, free-thinking, and godless masses. But, perhaps worst of all, a Republican President and Vice-President won’t be there to remind all of us that chaste, spiritually minded, and religious people are vastly morally superior to those who are not. Oh, the bitter loss.

Of course, the strong Republican women who voted for Romney en masse, those who are the type of “feminist” who believes in what they call the “natural order of the household,” will continue to volunteer, build wonderfully meaningful scrapbooks, make red-white-blue quilts for their boring colonial houses, and exult in “Godly Life” weekend getaways with female friends and their look-alike, milk-white skinned daughters with blond hair and long flowing dresses. A guess is Republicans never made the connections drawn by Ira Levin in Stepford Wives.

Well, at the very least we Godless progressives know that eventually the devout Republicans will swallow their tears, choke back the rising vomit, remember their Tea Party Christianity, and drop to their knees to pray for their misguided fellow Americans. Who against all that is right and holy committed the grievous sin of voting for Obama and other black-hearted Democrats like Claire McCaskill and Elizabeth Warren. What they won’t do for certain is stop listening to assholes like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the murder of crows hanging around Fox News. Some things take a while to change. Other things just take longer.

The Missing Ingredient in American Politics

Note that this post first appeared in the St. Louis Suburban Journal on 10-24-12

When I was young I loved to watch my mother bake all kinds of desserts. Not much time passed before I was asking if she would teach me; and so, eventually, she did. Since I was an independent sort, it wasn’t long after that I boldly insisted I was ready to bake a cake from scratch without her help. Although reluctant, she finally agreed and wrote out the list of ingredients.

I eagerly donned one of her aprons and got busy measuring, pouring, mixing. And then I waited anxiously, not able to open the oven in fear of spoiling all my hard work. But when the pans came out the cake was flat. I forgot to add baking powder and the batter hadn't risen. The cake was ruined.

A similar situation has developed today with American politics. The polls reveal that people across the country have very low opinions of politicians. For example, a Gallup poll on Confidence in Institutions found Congress ranked last out of the 16 institutions rated and half of the people polled said they had "very little" or "no" confidence in Congress.

Most of those disgruntled people would probably find comfort in Samuel Clemens’s famous quip, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Or with that consummate politician, Ronald Reagan, who hit the nail on the head when he said, “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”

Something vital is missing in our relations with our elected leaders. From my point of view that missing ingredient is trust.

Most people I talk to in West County, Republicans and Democrats, express uneasiness at the role big money now plays in election campaigns and in Washington. Getting elected to national office takes enormous campaign chests, so aspiring politicians cozy up to people with money and brazenly hold their hands out. We all know where that leads. Joe Lieberman has been accused of being a shill for the insurance industry. Chris Dodd was roundly criticized as Wall Street’s front man. And George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were attacked for being in bed with the energy industry. No small amount of truth resides in each of those characterizations.

Of course, the ridiculous promises politicians make and the out and out lies they tell about their opponents during election campaigns stretch the trust factor well past the breaking point. I mean, does anyone really believe the nonsense you hear crawling out of the mouths of politicians on the make? Today, lying in political campaigns is a must, especially given an electorate that does not demand honesty and integrity from candidates. It’s almost as if most Americans no longer care that they are being lied to if the lie strengthens their preconceptions.

Congress made the trust problem worse when they exempted themselves from Social Security and Medicare and created retirement and healthcare programs for themselves that are shockingly generous. How can you believe in someone who has purposely elevated himself above life’s uncertainties but has the nerve to tell you that he understands your plight? Get real. Add to that the role lobbyists play today in influencing the passage of legislation and you have what has become a nearly perfect storm of voter mistrust.

Here’s how things have changed in my lifetime. Although I didn't always agree with Senator Jack Danforth, I greatly admired and respected him. I was convinced that if he told voters something it was because he believed it. I looked up to Danforth because of his unimpeachable integrity. But he’s long gone from office and couldn't be elected in today’s political climate. To top it off, a few months ago we learned that Senator Olympia Snow, always a voice of reason, is retiring. She and Susan Collins are two of the few moderates in Washington and now Snow, like Danforth, will also be gone.

I don’t have a magic formula for putting that missing ingredient back into national politics, not with rivers of money flowing into election campaigns from sources that the Supreme Court has allowed to hide under the cloak of anonymity. To find a solution acceptable to both parties, Republicans and Democrats would have to sit together and hammer out a meaningful compromise. No one who follows current events believes that will happen soon, not given that recent polls show the gulf between Republicans and Democrats has never been wider. How sad for all of us that an essential ingredient in representative democracy seems destined to stay missing well into the foreseeable future.

Why Global Warming Will Triumph

Last week something happened that I came to realize represented why I'm absolutely convinced modern culture as we know it is doomed. Naturally, I'm thinking here about the coming catastrophic effects of global warming.

What happened was a 40^th birthday party for one of my daughter's best friends, a lovely young woman I'll call Katie, which of course is not her real name. The celebration was held at a local, up-scale, private country club to which Katie and her husband belong. It is, I must admit, an organization that would not have me were I so foolish as to apply for membership

.

The club and its golf-tennis-swim facilities are situated in the midst of a sprawling, park-like subdivision of large single-family houses well set back from the road on expansive lots (ranging from one to more than three acres). It is a place that exudes comfort and a certain upper middle-class style, though one remarkably absent architectural charm or merit. But, if your taste runs to large, design-bereft subdivision houses you might feel perfectly at home.

But, I digress. I chanced to witness the celebration owing to my wife's sudden illness. She had been invited to participate but was trapped in her sick bed, unable to move other than to bemoan her miserable fate. So, the task of delivering the appropriately salacious card and a few well-chosen gifts fell to me.

The first thing I noticed on driving into the main country club parking lot around 2:00 in the afternoon was that all the vehicles were monster SUVs or luxury sedans made by Mercedes Benz, BMW, Cadillac, Jaguar, or Lexus. My poor little Hyundai resembled Ashputtle before attending the prince’s ball.

Once in the club I went straight to the 19^th Hole but only saw some 20 or so tipsy men dressed strangely in lime green or bright yellow pants decorated with little blue whales, brightly colored ducks, or crossed golf clubs. And belatedly remembered that that watering hole was restricted to male members only (pun intended). On hearing quite a commotion from the bar I headed in that direction and spotted Katie surrounded by more than a dozen female friends in a state of considerable gaiety.

Half eaten plates of finger food and glasses in varying stages of emptiness occupied the tables and competed with stacks of opened presents. In short, the women were having a wonderful time, having started drinking at their 9:00 tee-off and continued unabated throughout the day. I delivered the obligatory kiss on the cheek, card, gifts, and my wife's genuine apologies for having to miss all the fun. After taking my leave, I walked past four or five tables of older women playing cards or just drinking and talking in the comfort of the plush surroundings.

Over the next several days I couldn't stop thinking about that experience and what it portends for our collective future. First, I must say that that club is one of some two dozen private country clubs in a metropolitan area of nearly three million people. Second, the far greater majority of the members of those clubs are upper-income and successful in their business ventures. Third, although I cannot make this statement based on anything other than personal opinion informed by several decades working as an urban planner, I am certain that the greater majority of those individuals are Republicans by party and conservatives by ideology who scoff at global warming/climate change and oppose doing anything whatsoever to combat its adverse effects, largely because they believe it doesn't exist.

But, the most critical reason that I believe people like my friends, Katie and her husband, people I genuinely care for, oppose action on countering the effects of global warming is neither their party affiliation nor their ideology but is an intense desire to remain entrenched in and deeply nourished by their comfort zone. Let's be honest. Who would not relish a life with maids, nannies, luxury cars, country clubs, elite private schools for the kids, vacations to Hawaii or Aspen (in winter), and trust funds sufficient to bail you out of trouble when the occasion arises? A life where wives don't work and husbands take off from their jobs whenever they feel like it.

Who would voluntarily give up such a genuinely comfortable and enjoyable life? I can guarantee no one in that country club would. No one. Simply asking people like that to shed their security blankets would be thought absolutely and mind-bogglingly insane. Or, far worse, socialist. And what about the millions of Americans who do not enjoy that lavish lifestyle but dream about attaining it one day and living in the lap of luxury? How likely are they to give up that dream voluntarily? What about close to zero?.

If you multiple that club times the well more than 4,000 similar institutions in the U.S. and by the many millions of Americans who want a better life you have a small inkling of the problem we face. Polls in the U.S. tell us that about 40 percent of the general population believes global warming is a hoax. The far, far greater majority of those deniers are Republican. Although I have seen no polls conducted with those who make more than $250,000 annually, I bet most of those people would be global warming deniers who would adamantly oppose reducing their lifestyles or their patterns of consumption to cut the nation’s carbon footprint. What, me sacrifice? Get real.

So, we have a national situation where all top Republicans, including Romney Ryan, oppose implementing policies to reduce our carbon footprint and a global situation where nearly two billion Asians desperately want a consumption-oriented Western lifestyle with access to energy, cars, clothing, and food in amounts commensurate with that desire, and are working hard to get just that. What those situations must lead to, since neither Americans nor Asians are likely to change their desires, is global geo-engineering “solutions” to climate change and all the unintended consequences we are unable to foresee. The critical assumption, of course, is that those currently poorly formulated “solutions” will work fast enough, meaning within the next 30 to 40 years, to significantly reduce CO2 so that the worst effects of greenhouse gases can be avoided.

My bet, if one were possible, would be to go short against that assumption. But I'm 70-years-old so it's neither here nor there as far as my life is concerned because I'll be dead before the shit really hits the fan. My grandchildren and their children are another story entirely. I'm very, very happy I'll miss all that.

Thomas Sowell’s View of the Housing Bubble

As is typical of Thomas Sowell, his argument concerning the role of the collapse of the housing bubble in the Great Recession is blatantly and intentionally one-sided. According to Sowell, the federal government basically forced banks to give loans to unqualified buyers who then went into a financial nose dive and defaulted on their mortgages. He does correctly, at least in part, pin-point actions of the federal government that caused a rise in risky mortgages. But if people defaulting on their mortgages was the only problem the national economy faced, collapse of those risky mortgages alone would never have caused the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Contrary to what Sowell writes, the causes of the Great Recession were very complex and required the cooperation of Democrats and Republicans in Congress and Presidents Clinton and Bush. Without getting into mind-numbing detail, basically what happened was the 1999 Congress repealed the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act, which regulated the way banks operated (what it did was prevent banks from gambling with their clients and their own funds). The 1999 bill that paved the way for the Great Recession was sponsored by Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa). The third lawmaker associated with the bill was Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-Virginia), Chairman of the House Commerce Committee from 1995 to 2001. During debate in the House of Representatives, Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan) argued that the bill would result in banks becoming "too big to fail." Dingell further argued that, if passed, the bill would necessarily result in a bailout by the Federal Government. But Dingell’s voice was in the minority and the bill was passed into law in 1999 as the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.

At nearly the same time, the federal government deregulated financial instruments/agreements called mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), credit-default swaps (CDSs), and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Specifically, in 1999, Congress passed legislation prohibiting the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that oversees the futures and commodity options markets, from regulating financial derivatives — MBSs, CDSs, and CDOs. That deregulation, coupled with the result of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, allowed financial institutions to gamble big time by bundling housing mortgages and selling them as secure financial instruments to investors around the world. That deregulation was vigorously supported by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and by two U.S. Treasury Secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. The head of the CFTC, Brooksley Born, resigned in protest, stating publically that deregulating exchange-traded financial derivatives dramatically increased risk to the national economy.

Shortly after that, the Federal Reserve, pushed by Alan Greenspan, kept interest rates very low, increasing the home buying trend by encouraging thousands of marginally qualified buyers to jump into the market. Add to that the federal government’s move to get more minorities in the housing market (Sowell’s argument) by loosening mortgage restrictions.

So, what most main-stream economists think happened is that banks desperately wanted to rapidly expand their services and profits and lobbied hard for massive federal deregulation. The Congress and the President(s) were happy to oblige and passed legislation that opened the door to the practices that brought about the Great Recession.

Certainly, Sowell’s one-sided idea (the federal government did it) is largely supported by conservative organizations, like the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, but are rejected by most main-stream economists. Nearly every open-minded person who has examined what led up to the Great Recession sees multiple precipitating causes, including massive federal deregulation of banks that led to an unsupervised market, Alan Greenspan’s keeping interest rates way too low in 2002-2005, federal loosening of mortgage restrictions, and the housing bubble.

Note that my brief description above doesn’t go into what happened in Congress during W’s first few years in office when additional financial deregulation laws were passed.

I must conclude with a personal observation. Real life is seldom as simple or straightforward as hardline ideologues, conservatives or liberals, want it to be.

Paul Ryan’s America

What’s not to like about Paul Ryan? He’s a young, handsome, engaging, articulate, hard-working politician, a devoted family man and a practicing Catholic who says he lives his faith and has been called “an intellectual leader of the Republican Party.” He’s also running for Vice-President, which makes his views all the more critical to the national electorate. So, it behooves us, as voters with inquiring minds, to try to understand exactly what Ryan stands for as a politician and what he would like to accomplish. So, let’s go to his documented record.

Ryan has stated in public speeches and in documents released to Congress and the media that his vision for America is “protecting the weak.” Here’s a direct, related quote from Ryan the candidate: “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” But out of the other side of his mouth he advocates cutting Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program in half by 2050 (CHIP provides health coverage to nearly eight million children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but who cannot afford private health insurance). That’s a 50 percent reduction from current spending levels in less than 40 years.

Let’s do some very simple math. In 2010, the total U.S. population was about 308.75 million. In that year the official poverty rate was 15.1 percent so the number of U.S. residents living in poverty was about 46.5 million. For sake of providing a conservative estimate of exactly what Ryan’s ideas for America entail, I will not assume that current trends will continue into the future but will use the more conservative estimate of the national poverty rate in 2050 of 12.5 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates a 2050 population of 438 million, which means the number of U.S. residents living in poverty would be about 54.75 million. So if Ryan’s vision for the future were to be implemented through 2050, that means 65.75 million poor Americans would receive exactly one-half of the Medicaid and CHIP funds currently in our national budget that is allocated for 54.5 million poor (46.5 million plus 8 million).

Please tell me what part of that vision involves “protecting the weak.” Shafting the weak and powerless would be a far more accurate assessment, but, perhaps I’m being harsh. Surely Ryan, as a practicing Catholic, is more sensitive than that to the needs of the unfortunate.

But’s that’s not the case, Ryan’s records demonstrates. He also advocates cutting all other federal spending — with the exceptions of Social Security, Medicare, and the Department of Defense — by more than 70 percent. That number is neither a mistake nor an exaggeration, 70 percent and perhaps even more depending on details not yet provided in Ryan’s budget. Those spending cuts would be so draconian that they would adversely affect the entire national budget, with the exceptions noted above. So, what does that mean to the federal government in real world terms? Here’s a brief summary of agencies and programs that would be cut drastically.

Department of Agriculture — Forest Service, food and nutrition assistance, farm price supports, crop insurance.

·     Housing and Urban Development — Community Development Block Grants, Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, Federal Housing Administration (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), public housing, rental assistance.

·     Department of Health and Human Services — Food and Drug Administration, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Head Start, Indian Health Service.

·     Department of Education — student loans and scholarships, vocational and adult education programs.

·     Veterans Administration — health care, National Cemeteries, and veteran benefits including veteran loans, insurance, vocational rehabilitation, employment, and higher education.

·     Justice Department — FBI, DEA, ATF, Federal Marshall Service, the federal prison system.

·    
Federal court system.

·     Department of the Interior — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Geological Survey, National Park Service.

·     Homeland Security — FEMA, TSA, Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

·     Department of Commerce — Census Bureau, NOAA, National Weather Service, Patent Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology.

·     Department of Transportation — Federal Highway Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, and AMTRAK.

·     Department of Labor — Unemployment insurance programs, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Mine Safety and Health Administration, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Veterans Employment and Training Service.

·     Other agencies include NASA, Small Business Administration, EPA, National Transportation Safety Board, National Science Foundation, DOE National Laboratories, energy efficiency programs, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, federal autism programs (Medicaid), job training, national flood insurance, alcohol and substance abuse counseling, federal civilian compensation, foreign development aid, and hundreds more.

In other words, every federal department and program would suffer such brutal budget cuts that many if not most would disappear entirely while the others become so eviscerated as to be unable to carry out their legislated missions. So, Ryan’s vision for this country is, for all practical purposes, to eliminate the role of federal government in our lives. What readers must ask is whether they want their entire lives to change dramatically.

But, wait, Paul Ryan’s vision for America isn’t complete until taxes on the wealthiest individuals and families are cut while taxes on the poor and the middle classes are raised. So, where Ryan stands, based on his own words, is squarely on the side of the trickle-down theory where the wealthy create jobs for everyone else simply because their taxes are decreased. It’s the same idea as feeding horses more oats so sparrows will thrive on their enriched droppings. People like us, of course, are the sparrows. I call it Republican Fecal Economics.

In 1980, the marginal income tax rates for the top income bracket adjusted for inflation was 70 percent. Since then that tax rate has been cut in half, to 35 percent. So, where are all the jobs created by that halving of the top bracket rate? Since the 1980s have the rich been stumbling all over themselves in creating the plentiful new job opportunities as Ryan predicts or am I simply delusional?

Ryan’s cruel vision is that of a heartless nation that turns its back on the poor and needy while allowing the wealthy to get fatter by gorging themselves at the tax relief trough. That’s not the America I know and love. But that is Paul Ryan’s vision for America, without exaggeration.

Why Sustainability Won’t Work

In a world where ever expanding population is reality, we are expected to reach nine billion by 2050, the challenge of meeting the needs of that population in a just and equitable manner within the Earth’s ecological capacity is a major difficulty for people who believe development can be sustainable. One of the most intractable problems facing the “sustainability” movement is how to persuade rapidly developing countries not to follow the development trail blazed by the West. “Do as we say, not as we do,” is the West's increasingly desperate mantra. If that does not happen and rapidly developing nations start consuming energy and water, eating meat and processed foods, and using automobiles and air travel at levels approaching those of Westernized countries, then it's game over for the environment and probably for Western culture as we know it.

The thing that affluent countries—meaning the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc.—are desperate to avoid is to have to radically alter their energy-intensive lifestyles. Although some European countries have made tentative moves in that direction, they have fallen woefully short of genuine progress. Telling people who love their comfortable, energy-intensive lifestyles that the only real solution is to cut back drastically on energy use is political suicide. No sane politician who wants to stay in office is ready to advocate such a position.

Westerners are only willing to make enormous personal sacrifices when faced with direct threats to life (such as war and invasion); indirect threats like global warming do not qualify. Even if every one of the energy hog countries adopted the most technologically advanced, energy efficient solutions to curtail their energy use, if the majority of the people in developing nations would adjust their energy consumption to that level, carbon emissions would be far too high to be sustainable.

Naturally, since we spoiled Americans (among others) will continue to refuse to adopt less energy profligate lifestyles, we will be forced to turn to geoengineering to address rising CO2 levels. Too bad we have an incredibly poor grasp of the unintended consequences of such behavior. But I can guarantee those lessons will be learned the hard way. When it comes to the carbon cycle, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Soon or later, the piper has to be paid.

Fresh Water

Most people I know enjoy taking showers, especially after the scorching summer we've had already. Afterwards, you feel so wonderfully refreshed. Compared to showering, taking a bath is, well, a tepid experience. Obviously, all types of bathing use water. Other things we do also use water but many of those uses are hidden or, at least, not particularly obvious. I was reminded of that recently when I read a Fidelity Investment newspaper ad that was intended to shock readers by informing them it takes 35 gallons of water to produce a single cup of coffee and 635 gallons to produce one hamburger (I believe those numbers are exaggerated but that’s another column).

Naturally, Fidelity wanted readers to think about financial investment opportunities, such as new technologies to produce fresh water in areas that need it. Instead, I thought about how water affects our daily lives. Few people in West St. Louis County think of fresh water as a problem, not even in the drought we have now. Not with the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in our backyards, so to speak. If you stand on the bank of either river and watch the water flowing by it seems almost limitless.

When we brush our teeth we use one gallon. A ten-minute shower uses about 25 gallons. A toilet flush takes between one and three gallons. Washing your hands or face takes one gallon. About 100 gallons of water are needed to make one cotton shirt. Producing one pound of wheat takes 80 gallons. (Source: http://ga2.er.usgs.gov/edu/sq3action.cfm)

Although West County residents seldom think about water shortages, we are not insulated from fresh water supply problems. Witness what has been happening over the last thirty years on the Great Plains. Also known as America’s Breadbasket, the Great Plains is one of the world’s most fertile and productive agricultural regions. Agriculture there, from which all Americans benefit in terms of food products, is largely sustained by groundwater irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer. That massive underground system of nearly 175,000 square miles stretches from central Texas through southern South Dakota. Nearly 30 percent of all irrigated land in the U.S. uses groundwater from the Ogallala.

Only problem is, that Aquifer has been depleted over the past several decades by excessive withdrawals for crop irrigation. You might have seen the tell-tale green circles when you fly over the region. That situation isn’t critical yet but needs to be carefully analyzed and viable options pursued before it’s too late.

No matter what your opinion may be on environmental issues in general, water use today and in the near-term future is an important challenge because of present-day tight supply and looming population growth. And here you might think about the one billion plus people in China who are getting used to a diet higher in animal protein, especially beef, and remember Fidelity Investment’s statistic of 635 gallons per hamburger and the 35 gallons used to produce each cup of coffee.

Please note that this essay was first published as an Opinion Shaper column in the Suburban Journals, on July 25, 2012.

Jared Loughner’s Plea

Allow me to start this essay with a brief quote: “Experts had concluded that Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, and officials at a federal prison have forcibly medicated him with psychotropic drugs for more than a year.” Washington Post 8-8-12

So, what we have is a society (and its legal system) that forcibly medicated an acutely mentally ill man, who was found to be so sick and non-functional at the time of his arrest that he could not be tried (because the judge found him so impaired that he was unable to understand the charges or participate in his defense), until he could appreciate exactly how fucked up he was when he pulled the trigger, and then incarcerate him in federal prison for the rest of his life. All because he committed violent acts while mentally ill but was not “insane” under federal law (don’t even ask about Arizona law because that totally fucked up state doesn’t recognize mental illness as affecting individual actions).

It doesn’t take a brilliant legal scholar to see that Americans are so angry with and so frightened of people who have serious mental illness that it is far better to throw them into prison than to recognize and treat their illness. After Ronald Reagan was shot and John Hinckley “got off” by successfully pleading that insanity rendered him incapable of rational judgment, the key federal law dealing with insanity pleas was changed drastically. The goal of Congress was to raise the bar defining insanity so high that practically no one, no matter how mentally ill they are, would be “let off” so to speak by finding them not guilty by reason of insanity and then putting them in a mental hospital for treatment.

As a society we are obsessed with the punishment of those who violate our rules, witness the recent Texas execution of a black man with an IQ of 61 and our coldhearted eagerness to try children as adults and throw them into prison for life. Throwing those sick fuckers and rascally little bastards into prison should make our chests swell with pride to be Americans. Hey, we’re the BEST country in the world. If you didn’t know that all you have to do is ask us. We’ll be glad to tell you exactly how backward all the other countries are and how God has smiled directly on our form of government. We are, after all, an exceptional country.

More Bad News from Coastal Louisiana

People who understand how crude oil affects living organic material must have seen the writing on the wall. And, yes, we’re talking about the April 2010 BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A group of scientists from the University of Florida and two Dutch universities recently reported what they found after studying direct and indirect effects of the oil spill on Louisiana’s coastal marshes. Please note that the study combined biological and geomorphological field investigations with control sites (reference marshes) and coastal morphology modeling techniques so the researchers could understand the complex dynamics of key coastal processes. They were concerned about the health of Louisiana coastal habitats since salt marshes provide critical ecosystem services to plants and sea life.

The researchers found the oil-affected marshes had hydrocarbon concentrations more than 100 times that of unaffected reference marshes, a near total loss of above ground vegetation extending up to 30 feet from the water’s edge, and oil-driven plant death on the seaward margins more than doubled pre-existing rates of shoreline erosion. In simple English that means that the marshes on which most commercial and sport fishing depends on for vital nursery services are disappearing at twice the previously measured rate. Although the study found clear evidence of plant recovery at affected sites, overall the oil spill caused an accelerated decline of salt marshes that were already being degraded at an alarming rate as a result of stress introduced by human activities.

The authors conclude by stating: “It (the study) warns of the enhanced vulnerability of already degraded marshes to heavy oil coverage and provides a clear example of how multiple human-induced stressors can interact to hasten ecosystem decline.”

The trouble is most of us have already put the BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster in the “out of sight, out of mind” category and have moved on, literally and figuratively. We don’t want to think about the consequences or relate them to human actions other than those that can be categorized as technological accidents. We just want to get on with our lives as though nothing happened.

Source: Silliman, B. R., van de Koppel, J., McCoy, M. W., Diller, J., Kasozi, G. N., Earl, K., Adams, P. N., and Zimmerman, A. R. (2012). Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP-Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Published online before print June 25, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1204922109; Retrieved on June 26, 2012, from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/20/1204922109.full.pdf+html

Jon Christensen and Cities of the Future

A few minutes ago I read an article in Grist in which a grad student interviewed Jon Christensen, an environmental history professor at Stanford, about what kinds of cities will we build to encourage human and ecological health. Sad to say, it sort of struck a nerve because it was sooooo pie-in-the-sky. My comment on that interview follows.

Comment

Since we have demonstrated so powerfully as a global civilization that we do not wish to design and build cities that foster both human and ecological health, what possibly could lead anyone to believe that we have the political will or the determination to do that in the future? Academics who live in ivory towers generally know a great deal about theory but are not as well informed about the down and dirty practice of planning and building real cities populated with real people, many of whom are conservatives who soundly reject anything that smacks of green, sustainable, or urban-ecological responsibility.

The visceral desire by certain members of the student generation to do "something" about our mounting ecological crises has to be informed by the applied challenges of identifying and implementing solutions that can pass real-world political tests. To this date, I have seen nothing in the U.S. that would lead me to believe that effective urban-ecological planning solutions can appeal to both progressives and conservatives. Especially not at a time when millions of conservatives believe that Agenda 21 and sustainability are part of a plot by international socialists to deprive Americans of their property rights and individual freedoms. Anyone out there who does not believe that last sentence has probably not attended public hearings on land use planning and urban development in the last several years.

Plus, what in the world would we do about the many trillions of dollars already invested in cities that basically give the finger to ecological health? Too many people are comfortable in large square-foot homes on large lots in low-density suburbs, driving their SUVs everywhere. Check out mall and school parking lots if you want to see the scale of the problem we face.

That problem is NOT ecological in nature, it is cultural. And changing cultural direction-orientation is very difficult owing to inertia, indifference, ignorance, mindset, and greed. If that's the goal of student planners and ecologists, good luck; because they are going to need it.

Average Life Span of a High-Tech Civilization

As the question was originally put in the famous Drake Equation (formulated in 1960-1961 by Frank Drake, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California—Santa Cruz), what is the average lifetime of a civilization advanced enough to be detectable by intelligent beings located on other planets? In answer to that question if polled on the streets, many if not most Americans would likely express the opinion that it would last thousands of years. But, what if, as the historian of science, Michael Shermer, predicts, the average lifetime of a technological civilization is only 300 years?

A logical follow-up question is, why would high-tech civilizations only last a relatively short time? If we use our present circumstances as a guide, many might conclude that technological civilizations that fail do not recognize until it is too late that the civilization had become ecologically unstable and self-destructive. In other words, by the time a species has developed technology capable of communicating with intelligent life on other planets, they most likely also have created and are using that technology to destroy their environment and thus the foundation of their civilization. The dark thought we must consider is that when short-term economic gain (meaning self-centeredness and greed), ignorance, indifference, and system-wide inertia—once a system has moved in a specific direction in terms of allocating resources it is extraordinarily difficult for it to change direction—take precedence over ecological health, the results are predictable, disastrous, and nearly impossible to reverse.

That prospect means that the far greater majority of all high-tech civilizations might disappear within 300 years of becoming high-tech owing to the above listed self-destructive propensities. The bottom line is whether Earth’s current civilization has what it takes to work through the technology-ecology conflict we are currently experiencing to the other side in a way that ensures survival for thousands of years. To aid this mini-test, we’ll assume our base year for calculation is the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution, 1800 CE.

The reality should be easy to see. In today’s America, many millions believe global warming/climate change, smart growth, green development, and sustainability are made-up nonsense and constitute socialist attacks on individual freedom, liberty, and property rights. Many if not most of those same people also believe that their elected representatives should get rid of the US EPA or, at the very least, scale it back until it is ineffectual in preventing corporations from doing whatever they please in terms of the environment.

In the U.S. today, many millions are determined to stop or eviscerate federal programs that address the 5.14 billion metric tons of CO2 (2017 estimates) Americans inject into the atmosphere every year. They are determined to ignore the meaning of methane released by the Arctic’s melting permafrost, deny the rapidly increased rate of melting of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic sea ice, deny the implications of ocean acidification and heating, and ridicule the science that documents the rapidly changing geographic range of species that result from global warming.

Who are the people who sneer about global warming? They are voters who have given rise to the current malaise in the White House and in Congress. Americans like them form what is perhaps the most critical reason the U.S. has rejected coherent and effective policies to decrease air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and environmental destruction that threaten our prosperity and our quality of life. People holding that worldview have elected national representatives who refuse to allow the U.S. to engage in international agreements that seek to cut CO2 emission on a global scale.

Although most of us don’t want to think about it, my personal conclusion is our high-tech civilization has already hit the critical tipping point and is on the decline. On those rare occasions we do think about it, we tend to throw up our hands in frustration because solutions are too hard to figure out or too far into the future to worry about. Yet, in reality, we seem hell-bent on ensuring Carl Sagan's chilling but prophetic words are fulfilled: “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” The trouble is the vast majority of us just want to go on living the sweet life as though tomorrow will never come and we will never have to pay the price for our profligate behavior.

Guess what. That tomorrow is around the corner but it will affect the coming generations far more than us. You should be relieved if you are more than 30 years old in 2018 but not so relieved if you have children or if you are over 65 and have grandchildren. Those children are the ones who will have to live with the decisions we’ve made. Isn't it comforting for us to be able to push the risk into the future and on someone else and not worry about consequences?

With all the physical evidence, it is hard not to see a bleak future when you look at our present conditions. Acidifying oceans. Rising sea levels. Warming climates. Increasing drought. Dying coral reefs. Increasing mercury levels and anti-biotic resistant diseases. Every place on Earth has been adversely affected by human agency. Countless species have been lost; others are endangered and are standing on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss.

The way our species has developed over the last several hundred thousand years has ensured we focus the far greater majority of our attention on immediate or short-term challenges, like threats to our current well-being, and basically ignore long-term, slowly emerging issues, like climate change, habitat destruction, or global population growth. What was once an evolutionary advantage has morphed into something far different, far more deadly to our survival.

Here’s my prediction. We are a species with nearly countless individuals who are willfully blind to the consequences of our current actions and will wind up destroying our high-tech civilization with a fatal combination of greed and indifference. Our epitaph should be:

 

Although once we ruled the Earth,

we lacked the intelligence to survive.

Non-Sustainable America—Don't Worry, Be Happy

On 5-22-12 David Roberts wrote a column in Grist Magazine (http://grist.org/article/toward-a-future-that-makes-sense/) about "the intense need these days for positive visions of the future." The material below is my response to that column.

For the last four decades an urban planner I have had to deal with the world as it is, not with the world I wished were there. It would be quite refreshing to chat with Pollyanna over tea and crumpets (or in this particular case David Roberts) about delightful sugar-plum visions of the future or about things that are "more forward-looking, wide-ranging, optimistic, and, well, helpful." Certainly, that would make us feel oh so much better, especially those who have no jobs and gigundus college debt hanging over their heads and are too frazzled even to think about something as non-threatening to their daily lives as 5.5 billion metric tons of CO2 Americans inject into the atmosphere every year.

Quite frankly, despite what Roberts writes, it doesn't matter how many individuals get involved in "bike culture, livable neighborhoods, urban agriculture, sharing economies, distributed energy, and many other ways people in America today are trying to live better, more sustainable lives." Those issues are totally irrelevant to our future if government policy is not adopted and implemented that drastically pushes the envelope of ecological responsibility.

Now, for a dose of that real world I mentioned above. Has anyone out there found one committed right-wing, Tea Party supporter who would go along with federal policy that drastically pushes that ecological responsibility envelope so critical thresholds aren't crossed? And what about all those Republicans elected to office in Washington, surely they’d agree to jump on the environmental bandwagon. Permit cynical me to laugh.

Look at the real world another way. How many people in China and India are anxious to cut their energy consumption and waste production so the world can be better off. Hell, Americans have refused to do it so why should they?

So, go ahead with your feel-good crap about livable neighborhoods and bicycling to work and sustainable growth (what an oxymoron). It's a wonderful narcotic and will prevent people from feeling the pain of thinking about and confronting the real world. Besides, what does it matter? Everyone alive today will be dead before the worst hits. We won't even have the satisfaction of pointing the finger of blame at idiots like Jim Inhofe and the American Petroleum Institute.