The Everlasting Population Problem

It's good to see some people trying to work together to fix this nuisance of a climate problem. Something that needs to be considered is what "constants" we assume will continue as normal all the way to 2050. Growth of course is paramount but if you think of the cuts in comparison to population growth the real nature of the cuts is astounding.

Each American would emit 3 tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2050, down from 24 in 1990, if President Barack Obama achieves his goal of an 80 percent cut in national emissions from 1990 and the population rises to 400 million by 2050.

This is quite a reversal in sustainability. Dmitry Orlov loves to point out that the world can sustain 300 million people who earn $1/year or 300,000 who make $100,000/year. Think about the lifestyle that we will live if we have 400 million living at 80% of the carbon footprint of people in 1990! Think back to 1990. The population was a shade under 250 million. Cars, lot smaller and fewer, non-existent personal portable technology. (The Gameboy just came out in 1989). Think to 2009 terms where nearly everyone has a car, cellphones, ipods, computers, fancy audio/visual setups, etc.

I can think of two things: either we are going to inherit alien technology from Area 51 to make all these things run on farts or really all the world leaders know we are going to be at carbon footprint level of A.D. 200 due to a combo of peak oil/peak soil/peak water/peak fish/climate change.

Shingle Thievery

What would drive a human to steal roofing shingles? How about peak oil and/or global warming.

Investigators believe some thieves are part of an organized operation, stockpiling the materials in anticipation of hurricanes, tornadoes and other roof-ripping storms that would heighten the demand for their stolen wares. Other thefts may be isolated incidents from people looking to sell the shingles to roofers for a quick buck. Also, the soaring price of shingles, which are petroleum-based products, has driven the demand for cheaper, black-market roofing material.

Is it too early to start the insanity?

Climate Crock

DeSmogBlog has another great video from Peter Sinclair's series "Climate Denial Crock of the Week", this week we get to watch one come to life. To be able to watch a statement be chopped up, taken out of context and then blabbered all over the airwaves is something to behold. If news centers actually had people to fact check, like Peter Sinclair does, the world we be a much safer, saner place.

Also, DeSmogBlog's proprietor, James Hoggan, gets a shout out from climate-awesome blogger Climate Progress for his new book Climate Cover-Up. If you feel like crying yourself to sleep at night or need motivation to keep writing your congressman everyday than this book which covers the climate denier atrocities is right up your alley.

Real Humans, Real Hunt

Humans were built to do many things but maybe our greatest asset was endurance. Check out this "persistence hunt" from possibly the last remaining tribe to do so.

Note all the respect he pays to the animal and the personal sacrifice in energy he commits to taking down his prey. The hunter takes down a kudu (big antelope) with little more than a spear, a water bottle and some tracking knowledge. A minuscule carbon footprint compared to Western hunters and their disposable shells, scout cameras, and ATV's.

A Jumble That's for Sure

Douthat tries to make sense of something in his GOP screed today. I would say this editorial is a fairly good description of the bankrupcty of ideas that comprise the Republican way of thinking. Not once in the entire piece is there any allusion to anything that would remotely appear to be a GOP suggestion on how to fix the problems associated with the income gap.

Douthat offers us typical GOP gripes: taxes ("soaking the wealthy with higher tax rates and cutting taxes for everybody else "), big government ("one way that a Democrat majority can plausibly bring down inequality: Just let government keep growing.") and competition (" Democrats, the heroic efforts of some liberals notwithstanding, remain the party of the education bureaucracy, resistant to all but the most incremental efforts to bring choice and competition to our public schools.")

Same old, stuff right? Yup.

Douthat does touch on an interesting point:

this is because the Democrats have become as much the party of the rich as the
Republicans,

This is where it takes skill for a humble reader to read between the lines. There is no two-party system. It's one big party that just yells about different things but always does the same thing. See lobbyists for example.

Douthat also touches on immigration, taxation reform, education policy and it's all good. But aruging about these symptoms is like being trapped in an avalanche and arguing if the snow is runny or fluffy. You're already in waaaaay to deep and it won't be a clean way of solving how to get out. Not when one party won't even talk about a solution. This whole system is busted, top to bottom. It needs to be completely thrown out and rebuilt.

Douthat reaches his conclusion on the following note:

That combination could eventually create the more egalitarian America that Democrats have long promised to deliver. The question is whether Americans will thank them for it.

Will they? As the income gap increases to widen and more people fall into the crappier half of that equation with the every continuing rece-depression, more people are going to need a helping hand. How else will their kids eat? It's like when you walk into a nice government facility or get a tax break and you say to yourself "ah, this is nice". I think people will like it just fine.

What Does it Really Mean

Star Wars as were it written by environmentalists. The parody is funny but its implications for actual action are a bit more unsettling than the humor lets on.

Hallelujah

Friedman laid it all out yesterday in his End of We editorial:

The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.

Those factors are: the wild excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that makes all politics a daily battle of tactics that overwhelm strategic thinking; and a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world. Finally, on top of it all, we now have a permanent presidential campaign that encourages all partisanship, all the time among our leading politicians.

There was a great doc that came out a couple years ago called Why We Fight. The closing line came from Karen Kwiatkowski and I think it applies here.

I think we fight because basically not enough people are standing up saying, "I'm not doing this anymore."

I, for one, am not.