Tag Archives: current events

People and the Planet: A Report by the Royal Society

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On April 26, The Royal Society, the UK’s 350 year old academy of science, released the results of a 21 month study of patterns of population and consumption.  Sir John Sulston, chair of the working group, put it very simply:

“The world now has a very clear choice.  We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption.  We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption, to reframe our economic values to truly reflect what our consumption means for our planet and to help individuals around the world to make informed and free reproductive choices.  Or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills, leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future.”  http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Society-calls-for-a-more-equitable-future-for-humanity/

The Society issued a 132 page report that makes several key recommendations  http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/:

  1. The international community must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute poverty, and reduce the inequality that persists in the world today. This will require focused efforts in key policy areas including economic development, education, family planning and health.
  2. The most developed and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce material consumption levels through: dramatic improvements in resource use efficiency, including: reducing waste; investment in sustainable resources, technologies and infrastructures; and systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact.
  3. Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes urgently require political leadership and financial commitment, both nationally and internationally. This is needed to continue the downward trajectory of fertility rates, especially in countries where the unmet need for contraception is high.
  4. Population and the environment should not be considered as two separate issues. Demographic changes, and the influences on them, should be factored into economic and environmental debate and planning at international meetings, such as the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development and subsequent meetings.

Please look at this video clip of Sulston summarizing the findings of the report, which he will present at the United Nations on May 1, ahead of the Rio+20 conference.

Of special interest to me was Sulston’s critique of GDP as the key measure of economic wellbeing for nations.  GDP, he says, drives growth to levels that cannot be sustained.  Michael Meade once observed that unbridled growth in the body is cancer, and unbridled growth in the body politic is a parallel ill.

Growth is such an ingrained measure of wellbeing that re-imagining global socio-economics will not be simple or easy.  One tactic, according to the working group, is to factor in real costs:  what are the real costs of disappearing forests and species?  What is the real cost of water when the study predicts that 1.8 billion people will live with severe water scarcity by 2025?

The issue of water brings to mind my previous post, “Another Regulation Conundrum,” http://wp.me/pYql4-21e, which describes a couple’s 40 year effort to create an self-sustaining and non-polluting homestead.  One of their projects was recycling household “gray water.”  The county building codes have no provision for such experimental ways of doing things, and the couple has racked up large fines and an eviction notice.  In a very real sense, the status quo is the problem.  According to the Royal Society, not only our building codes but the mindset behind them must change or the quality of life for everyone will continue its spiral of decline.

One parting thought:  the study was released on Thursday.  Why haven’t we heard it mentioned on any US media?

Another Regulation Conundrum

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My previous post centered on regulations to force bloggers to disclose seemingly small-fry issues, like whether they were comped with an ebook for reviewing independently published authors.

Thursday’s paper ran a story from the New York Times on a more weighty and poignant regulatory issue.  The article, “Marin County battles hippie holdout,” tells of David Lee Hoffman, an entrepreneur of artisan teas, who designed and built 30 structures during the 40 years he lived on a rural hillside.  Inspired by youthful treks through Tibet and Nepal, Hoffman, 67, and his wife, Ratchanee, have tried to create a sustainable, non-polluting, homestead.  In the process, by ignoring repeated notices of violations of county building codes, they racked up $200,000 in fines and have just been ordered to vacate their home until the violations are fixed. The case is now before a judge.  http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/26/4443307/hippie-askldj-flaksj-dfklaj-sdlfkj.html

photo by Jim Wilson, New York Times

The Hoffman homestead contains such fanciful structures as the Worm Palace, a Solar Power Shower Tower, and a moat, which is integral to recycling household water.  One of the county’s chief concerns is their method for disposing of human waste, which uses worm colonies to help turn human waste into humus.  Composting toilets are not legal in Marin.  The county also says it’s worried about an excess of rain, which could flood the moat and send the gray water into nearby creeks.

Hoffman says, “I did what I felt was right.  My love of the planet is greater than my fear of the law.”

***

There’s nothing simple about the regulations that govern our lives, and many of them serve us well.  I like clean water and knowing the content of the food I eat.  I want pure aspirin when I have a headache, and I want to trust the odometer when I shop for a used car.  If I buy a hot dog during a ballgame, I don’t want to have to think , of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle.  And I might not want to live downstream from the night soil in the Hoffmans’ garden.

And yet…

Most of us know, in the corners of our awareness, that many of our problems are beyond the capacity of our current institutions.  We know that business as usual is part of the problem.  That regulators do not create solutions.  As Einstein said, “One cannot alter a condition with the same mind that created it in the first place.”

How do we enable people like the Hoffmans, willing to devote their lives to imagining new ways of living?  If we fine and evict people for living their dreams, pretty soon we’re going to run short of dreamers.

Regulating Bloggers?

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Disclaimer: I certify that I have received no financial renumeration, goods, or services for the content of this post.

I know you’re all shocked that the superPacs have yet to contact me, but under a proposal before the California Fair Political Practices Commission, bloggers expressing political opinions might have to insert such a disclaimer.  Last Thursday, FPPC chairwoman, Ann Ravel, announced plans to make such disclosure “suggested” for this November’s elections, and mandatory thereafter.  http://tinyurl.com/773olq2

This stirs up many questions, the first and foremost being, why?  Why focus on bloggers when we all know victory in this election will cost hundreds of millions of SuperPac dollars?  For attack adds on TV, not a few hundred blog posts.

The current FCC push to force TV stations to post the sponsors of political adds is news.  A district court decision to allow superPacs to solicit political add time on PBS stations is news.  The fact that bloggers post their opinions is not.

I believe some politicians cannot abide a medium that is beyond their control, and political blogging is a macguffin as defined in Neal Gabler’s marvelous book, Life, the Movie (look under Book Reviews here for more info). Gabler writes:

“It was with Kennedy in mind that Norman Mailer in 1960 prophesied that ‘America’s politics would now be also America’s favorite movie’…Candidates were the putative stars, the primaries open costing calls, the campaign was an audition, and the election itself the selection of the lead, while the handlers served as drama coaches, scriptwriters, and directors.  As for substantive issues, though they couldn’t be purged entirely, they largely became what film director Alfred Hitchcock…once called macguffins-that is, they were the excuse for setting the whole process in motion though they have virtually no intrinsic value.”

That helps me understand why Ms Ravel would float such a silly proposal.  How would the California FPPC try to regulate bloggers living out of state?  How much money would I have to rake in to be required to disclose?  Five dollars?  Fifty?  Five-hundred (I wish)?  Will twitter or Facebook users have to disclose as well?  What about book reviews?  Will I have to disclose which publishers are buying my pearls of wisdom?  What about lucrative Hollywood kickbacks for my movie reviews?

I think this proposal is a bluff intended to float the notion that bloggers need to be regulated, a move toward the slippery slope of controlling what we can and cannot say.  This being America, the pols still have to tie such actions to some concept of “fairness,” although here it’s pretty thin.  To go after bloggers who might somehow make a buck when Citizens United rules the day is like meeting a Martian invasion with mosquito spray.

But now it’s time for a quick commercial break:

Come on, SuperPacs, make me an offer!  Show me the money!  This space for sale!  Get it while you can!  Bargain prices!  Show me the money!  Will write for loot.  Everyone has their price.  Show me the money!  Did I say that already?  Try me out!

Call me….

Google Glasses, Anyone?

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A video released by Google earlier this month serves as an introduction to their Project Glass, which aims at putting smartphone apps on a pair of voice controlled glasses.  You can watch the clip now or at the end of this post.  I suggest you invest the 2 1/2 minutes  upfront, since the clip is kind of wild and provides the context for the rest of the article.

I discovered Project Glass in a New York Times op ed piece, “The Man With the Google Glasses,” by Ross Douthat, published April 14. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-man-with-the-google-glasses.html?_r=4

Douthat says that regardless of whether the project comes to fruition, this video speaks volumes about our collective condition – a mix of unbelievable technical expertise and ever-deeper alienation.  As a writer, I couldn’t construct a better illustration of this than the final scene in the youTube clip.  Our protagonist can video chat and share a gorgeous sunset with his girlfriend, and he has to – she’s nowhere near the apartment where he lives.  In a digital world, “sharing a sunset” has more than one meaning!

Douthat quotes an NYU sociologist who says that more Americans now live alone than in nuclear families.  Similar stats tell us similar things that we already know or sense.  Douthat presents both optimistic and pessimistic assessments of the impact of online media on our social connections or lack thereof.

He also adds a note of caution about the political ramifications of the trend.  He quotes sociologist, Robert Nisbet who believed that “in eras of intense individualism and weak communal ties, the human need for belonging tends to empower central governments as never before.”  Douthat suggests that old time totalitarianism is not a likely prospect, but says that “what the blogger James Poulos has dubbed “the pink police state” which is officially tolerant while scrutinizing your every move — remains a live possibility.”  

This reminded me of a piece in February on MSNBC concerning Samsung’s new generation HDTV’s, with internally wired cameras, microphones, and options for 3d party apps, which could allow someone to peer into your living room.  “Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets…Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.” http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/in-america-television-watches-you/

In truth, I’m not too paranoid on that score, since the average evening at our house is so quiet the spies would go to sleep.

What stays with me from the video is the sense that the Google glasses turn the entire world into a version of my computer screen, where the world “out there” is wallpaper for the applications I’m running.  The phrase these days is “virtualization,” though in one sense, it’s nothing new.

Various artists, philosophers, and spiritual masters have told us “reality” is more like a dream than we know.  Physicists teach nothing is really solid.  Biologists explains that we don’t see rocks or trees “out there.”  What we see are photons striking the rods and cones in our retinas.  Behavioral psychologists have established that at a certain level, our brains do not know the difference between  “real” and imagined events.  As James Hillman put it, “Every experience has to begin as a psychic event in order to happen at all.”  In this sense, the human mind and senses perform the fundamental act of virtualization and have done so for millennia.

Does this mean I’m going to sign up for a pair of smart glasses when they hit the market?  Nope.  They’re a bit far along the nerd scale, even for me, and actually, the prototype is more than a little creepy.  It’s not hard to imagine surreal scenes on the street with smart-glassed pedestrians trying to navigate around each other, and even worse, smart-glassed drivers reading and responding to their emails.

All kidding aside, once this idea hits the streets in some refined, future incarnation, it will likely be one more seductive technological tool/toy to learn to use in a way that serves us and not the other way around.

What is Social Darwinism?

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No, I am not playing Jeopardy, I’m considering the phrase Barack Obama used to characterize the recent House budget proposal.  I thought I had a good idea of what he meant:  survival of the fittest, applied to human endeavors.

I learned a lot more from an article in a New York Times opinionater blog post written by Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia.  In his article, “The Taint of ‘Social Darwinism,'” Kitcher credits the birth of the concept to 19th century philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who first talked of “survival of the fittest.”  The phrase was never used to describe evolution but survival in the human jungle.  Kitcher characterizes the Social Darwinist view:

“Provided that policymakers do not take foolish steps to protect the weak, those people and those human achievements that are fittest — most beautiful, noble, wise, creative, virtuous, and so forth — will succeed in a fierce competition, so that, over time, humanity and its accomplishments will continually improve. Late 19th-century dynastic capitalists, especially the American “robber barons,” found this vision profoundly congenial. Their contemporary successors like it for much the same reasons.”  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/the-taint-of-social-darwinism/?src=me&ref=genera

I can’t help thinking of Charles Dickens’ London, where “the fittest” is the pre-repentant Ebenezer Scrooge.

One not so grand irony is that many of our latter day Social Darwinists were born into wealth and opportunity, while truly self-made men and women, like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, understand the value and necessity of supportive social structures.  In Kitcher’s words, “Horatio Alger needs lots of help, and a large thrust of contemporary Republican policy is dedicated to making sure he doesn’t get it.”

I urge everyone who has a stake in this debate – meaning all of us – to give Philip Kitcher’s article a read.

Bill Moyers Interviews Andrew Bacevich on the Middle East

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On January 4, I published a post called, “Sabre Rattling Over Oil:  Better Get Used to It.”  http://wp.me/pYql4-1AT

I quoted from a 2008 interview between Bill Moyers and Col. Andrew Bacevich in which Moyers says, “Our finest warriors are often our most reluctant warmongers.”  Now we the privilege of hearing these two in a new discussion on Moyers & Company as we seem to drift helplessly toward our third war in a decade, and voices of reason and restraint are drowned out in the hysterical ranting of politicians.

Please be sure to look for the show on PBS this weekend, or watch it on billmoyers.com  http://billmoyers.com/episode/moving-beyond-war/

Andrew Bacevich on Moyers & Company

This week, on an all-new Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers and Bacevich explore the futility of “endless” wars, and provide a reality check on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism.

“Are we so unimaginative, so wedded to the reliance on military means that we cannot conceive of any way to reconcile our differences with groups and nations in the Islamic world, and therefore bring this conflict to an end?” Bacevich tells Moyers.

Bacevich also answers the question of whether Iran is a direct threat to America with a definitive no. “Whatever threat Iran poses is very, very limited,” he tells Moyers, “and certainly does not constitute any kind of justification for yet another experiment with preventive war.”

Andrew Bacevich is a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran who retired as a colonel after 23 years in the military, to teach history and international relations at Boston University.

Doh! Now we (guys) are in for it!

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NPR reports that in response to you know what, Democratic women legislators in six states have proposed new limits to male access to reproductive health care. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/15/148695307/in-protest-democrats-zero-in-on-mens-reproductive-health.   Consider:

House Bill 116 in Georgia states that:  “Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies.”

An Oklahoma state senator proposed new legislation to regulate sexual acts:  “Any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”

In Ohio, a female state senator sponsored a bill requiring men seeking drugs like viagra to:

  1. Have a cardiac stress test to ensure they are ready for sexual activity.
  2. Obtain written certification from a recent sexual partner that they are indeed experiencing erectile dysfunction.
  3. See a sexual therapist who would explain certain nonprescription lifestyle choices, such as celibacy, as alternate treatments for the problem.

***

It’s the very passion that people bring to these issues make them such effective smokescreens.  If “they” can get us asking the wrong questions…

We slide toward a third war in a decade with no hint of a national debate.  Recent news on Citigroup and Goldman Sachs reveal that the players who brought us the last financial meltdown are on track to do it again.  People know about Rush Limbaugh.  How many have heard of Greg Smith?

It used to be that “Nero fiddling while Rome burned” was the ultimate paradigm of irresponsible leadership.  Now it’s the 2012 presidential election.

And We Have A Winner!

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That’s right, a winner in the: Caption the Condom Cartoon Contest  (announced here last week http://wp.me/pYql4-1MT).

There were at least a few positive outcomes after Rush Limbaugh’s slur of law student, Sandra Fluke, which inspired the contest.

1) One positive result:  I got to use some great alliteration in the contest name. 

2) Another bit of good news:  eleven sponsors bailed on Rush after his outburst.  Unfortunately, a Republican Super-Pac stepped in with bailout money.  Apparently some consider Limbaugh’s mouth too big to fail.

3) And best of all, at least for this blog, Camille w1ns a $10 Amazon gift card with her caption:

If only Rush’s parents had known how to use me properly… 

Please stop by Camilles blog and see what other clever things she is up to: http://poppycockandsomesuchnonsense.wordpress.com/

And thank you all for your entries and for stopping by to share a laugh!