November 7th, 2008
The President Elect met with his econoteam and then answered press questions for the first time today.
Meanwhile the people running GM and Ford told the world that time is running out.
Brusque types are saying “Let them go.” Down the drain.
But the employment consequences nationwide would be catastrophic, and it’s clear that Hammerin’ Hank Paulson, after fucking the globe royally with Lehman, is on the case. A Treasury spokesman indicated that some of the TARP $700 billion might get thrown over the automakers to keep them dry awhile.
The full resolution may be nationalization (perhaps through the equity-kicker provisions of the TARP) — leaving something like Airbus in Europe:Â a unified quasi-nationalized auto company.
Such an enterprise could be effectively directed by the incoming Donkey regime to the ends often indicated across the campaign years: a native auto industry fully dedicated to green cars.
Similar initiatives were crushed by the Reaganites immediately upon assumption of power in 1981, as they shut down Jimmy Carter’s Energy Department in support of the Oil Mafia status quo ante.
It illumines American democracy to look back across that expanse of time — lost time — and to think that it may take the triple whammy of high oil prices, a ruined financial system and bankrupted Ford and GM to finally pry loose the Oil Mafia’s grip on Washington.
(It’s often left unsaid that the core of the OM’s political power these many decades has been the Pentagon — which cannot run its tanks and aircraft on natural gas or the sun or the wind or nuclear power.)
The first Earth Day was in 1968. Everything in the way of knowledge needed to act on our energy problems was known in the wake of the oil crunches of the 70s. Instead we got Reagan. This time … We shall see.
September 20th, 2008
People in California are already driving hydrogen-fueled cars made by Honda.
People in France are saying they will have cars running on compressed air on the road by 2010.
People in Detroit are still trying to keep their heads above water, still crazy after all these years.
April 24th, 2008
As we pack our lives into pickup trucks and head down the dusty road of dearth for Depression, the Times is good to point out that by at least one measure of socioeconomic production the US is still number one.
An old friend who was raised to hate the Soviet Union always refused to grasp that since the advent of the War on Drugs the US has a higher rate of incarceration than the Reds at the height of Stalinism.
(One angle: Seems we freed the slaves then put them in jail.)
Do we live in a Sane Society?
There are other measures. Suicide rates. The now fairly well entrenched fad of adolescents massacring fellow students.
I’ve never, at least since the passing of Santa Claus, been a faithful Christian. But since that same time it has also been clear, in the bones if not between the ears, that the American Civilization (as certain stodgy Brit historians insist on calling it) or, better, the Scientific Civilization, which in the west succeeded Christendom immaturely when the latter blew its brains out in 1914, is off its rocker.
Ungovernable. At odds with the Kind-of-Being-that- is-Human. Chronically mass murderous. And (the most Inconvenient Truth of all) suicidal.
But the new Grand Theft Auto is dynamite. And there’s always Second Life when your first one gets snuffed. (Or …? How does that work?)
January 23rd, 2007
“Climate change” seems to have become, across 2006, the authorized euphemism in the corporate press, where “global warming” is now rare.
Opinion at Davos seems mixed re global warming seems mixed:
A. John McCain is on one of 17 panels on “climate change” at the annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland of the brutish masters of business administration who run the so-called western democracies. Apparently “the environment” is atop the To Do List. Busy beavers.
B.  January 23, NY TIMES:Where are the snows of yesteryear? That is a question that many attendees of this year’s conference are pondering as they arrive in Davos and notice that the scenery looks a lot less wintery than in previous years. Coincidentally or not, the strange weather comes as Davos has put the issue of climate change high on its agenda, scheduling 17 sessions to discuss it.
Floyd Norris of The New York Times was struck by the difference even before he pulled into town. He sent us this report:
The first thing I noticed as the bus approached Davos for this year’s World Economic Forum was how green and beautiful the hillsides are. There are patches of snow, but it looked like a magnificent spring.
But it isn’t spring.
“It’s a catastrophe,” sad the shuttle bus driver taking me to my hotel. “It should be 10 degrees colder.”
There is skiing in the mountains above Davos, but in town most of the roads and sidewalks are clear. This is my fourth forum, and I’ve never seen anything like it.
C.  January 24 NYT
The Times’s Floyd Norris spoke with one Davos attendee, PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Sam DiPiazza, about climate change and sent us this account:
It is not just the politicians in the United States who are unconcerned about global warming.
PricewaterhouseCoopers does a survey of chief executives every year, and this year it asked if they were concerned about climate change. For the world as a whole, 40 percent said they were at least somewhat concerned. In the United States, the figure is 16 percent.
Sam DiPiazza, the chief executive of PWC, had one explanation: “It won’t affect next quarter’s earnings.”
But he said some chief executives were showing more concern, and added: “Maybe the North American C.E.O.’s will notice there is a lot more green outside than snow.”
January 18th, 2007
Strange, ahistoric hurricane-force winds have been killing people and pushing cars around these past days from the British Isles to Germany.
Those who have never seen harmonious Amsterdam should perhaps book a trip (when master permits) before it becomes a watery necropolis.
January 12th, 2007
From The Independent in London:
EU: Climate change will transform the face of the continent
By Michael McCarthy and Stephen Castle
10 January 2007
Europe, the richest and most fertile continent and the model for the modern world, will be devastated by climate change, the European Union predicts today.
The ecosystems that have underpinned all European societies from Ancient Greece and Rome to present-day Britain and France, and which helped European civilisation gain global pre-eminence, will be disabled by remorselessly rising temperatures, EU scientists forecast in a remarkable report which is as ominous as it is detailed.
Much of the continent’s age-old fertility, which gave the world the vine and the olive and now produces mountains of grain and dairy products, will not survive the climate change forecast for the coming century, the scientists say, and its wildlife will be devastated.
Europe’s modern lifestyles, from summer package tours to winter skiing trips, will go the same way, they say, as the Mediterranean becomes too hot for holidays and snow and ice disappear from mountain ranges such as the Alps - with enormous economic consequences. The social consequences will also be felt as heat-related deaths rise and extreme weather events, such as storms and floods, become more violent.
The report, stark and uncompromising, marks a step change in Europe’s own role in pushing for international action to combat climate change, as it will be used in a bid to commit the EU to ambitious new targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.
The European Commission wants to hold back the rise in global temperatures to 2C above the pre-industrial level (at present, the level is 0.6C). To do that, it wants member states to commit to cutting back emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, as long as other developed countries agree to do the same.
Failing that, the EU would observe a unilateral target of a 20 per cent cut.
The Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, gave US President George Bush a preview of the new policy during a visit to the White House this week.
The force of today’s report lies in its setting out of the scale of the continent-wide threat to Europe’s “ecosystem services”.
That is a relatively new but powerful concept, which recognises essential elements of civilised life - such as food, water, wood and fuel - which may generally be taken for granted, are all ultimately dependent on the proper functioning of ecosystems in the natural world. Historians have recognised that Europe was particularly lucky in this respect from the start, compared to Africa or pre-Columbian America - and this was a major reason for Europe’s rise to global pre-eminence.
“Climate change will alter the supply of European ecosystem services over the next century,” the report says. “While it will result in enhancement of some ecosystem services, a large portion will be adversely impacted because of drought, reduced soil fertility, fire, and other climate change-driven factors.
“Europe can expect a decline in arable land, a decline in Mediterranean forest areas, a decline in the terrestrial carbon sink and soil fertility, and an increase in the number of basins with water scarcity. It will increase the loss of biodiversity.”
The report predicts there will be some European “winners” from climate change, at least initially. In the north of the continent, agricultural yields will increase with a lengthened growing season and a longer frost-free period. Tourism may become more popular on the beaches of the North Sea and the Baltic as the Mediterranean becomes too hot, and deaths and diseases related to winter cold will fall.
But the negative effects will far outweigh the advantages. Take tourism. The report says “the zone with excellent weather conditions, currently located around the Mediterranean (in particular for beach tourism) will shift towards the north”. And it spells out the consequences.
“The annual migration of northern Europeans to the countries of the Mediterranean in search of the traditional summer ’sun, sand and sea’ holiday is the single largest flow of tourists across the globe, accounting for one-sixth of all tourist trips in 2000. This large group of tourists, totalling about 100 million per annum, spends an estimated €100bn (ÂŁ67bn) per year. Any climate-induced change in these flows of tourists and money would have very large implications for the destinations involved.”
While they are losing their tourists, the countries of the Med may also be losing their agriculture. Crop yields may drop sharply as drought conditions, exacerbated by more frequent forest fires, make farming ever more difficult. And that is not the only threat to Europe’s food supplies. Some stocks of coldwater fish in areas such as the North Sea will move northwards as the water warms.
There are many more direct threats, the report says. The cost of taking action to cope with sea-level rise will run into billions of euros. Furthermore, “for the coming decades, it is predicted the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events will increase, and floods will likely be more frequent and severe in many areas across Europe.”
The number of people affected by severe flooding in the Upper Danube area is projected to increase by 242,000 in a more extreme 3C temperature rise scenario, and by 135,000 in the case of a 2.2C rise. The total cost of damage would rise from €47.5bn to €66bn in the event of a 3C increase.
Although fewer people would die of cold in the north, that would be more than offset by increased mortality in the south. Under the more extreme scenario of a 3C increase in 2071-2100 relative to 1961-1990, there would be 86,000 additional deaths.
December 31st, 2006
Al Gore focused on the collapse of the Larsen ice shelf into the sea off Antartica in An Inconvenient Truth. I remember watching those photos, across that month in 2002, as the expert commentators reeled. It seems something similar is happening up north:
Ancient Ice Shelf Snaps, Breaks Free in Canadian Arctic
The Associated Press, December 28, 2006
TORONTO — A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a “major” reason for the event.
The Ayles Ice Shelf — 66 square kilometers (41 square miles) of it — broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.
… “This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years,” Vincent said. “We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead.”
The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada’s Arctic. They are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old. They float on the sea but are connected to land.
… Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data — the event registered on earthquake monitors 250 kilometers (155 miles) away — Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005.
… Copland said the speed with which climate change has effected the ice shelves has surprised scientists.
“Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly,” he said.
How long, Adonai, how long?
