As alluded to in an earlier post, the Republicans quite obviously have little offer in the way of constructive environmental policy, and with regards to the issue of AGW, at best perhaps they may promise a bit of tinkering around the margins with cap-and-trade programs, carbon taxation schemes and such (although don’t hold your breath for these to materialize as they would be deeply unpopular with the all-important suburban voters). Unfortunately, the Democrats aren’t really all that much better in this respect. Oh sure, they’ll undoubtedly pay some obligatory lip service to the issue of climate-change, perhaps announce some superficially pleasing “feel good” initiatives replete with "aspirational targets" and they’ll most certainly be less inclined to deliberately undermine and corrupt scientific research about the matter, but don’t expect hard-hitting policies of any real substance or naively imagine for a moment that things will likely change in any significant way even should they be elected later this year.
Maybe however what the political parties think right now about this or that particular measure to mediate or incrementally restrict CO2 emissions, doesn’t really matter, because they’re all just working with a hopelessly outmoded paradigm that needs to be scrapped altogether…
This provocative (although, fair warning – lengthy) discussion with authors Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger who wrote an inflammatory essay called “The Death of Environmentalism” back in 2004 and more recently the book “Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility,” advance the argument that the present conceptual and political model of “environmentalism” that’s “pollution-based” and focused largely on protecting and preserving nature from the activities of mankind is singularly incapable of dealing with the massive challenges presented by global climate change.
Instead of regulatory tinkering and punitive taxation, they call massive public investments of capital (about one trillion from North America and Europe) to develop and build infrastructures of the new technologies required to move beyond the fossil fuel based economy. It is, as they put it an “expansive” vision of innovation and economic growth as opposed to the quite unimaginative and “limiting” one that characterizes much of the present thinking coming from the environment movement. The goal, they suggest should not simply to be one of making “dirty technology” more expensive, but of making alternative, sustainable “clean technology” cheaper.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
The Death of Environmentalism & the Politics of Possibility
The Banality of Evil: Hitler’s Private Life
A short documentary film that examines Hitler's silent home movies taken at his Berghoff retreat and applies new ALR software technology developed by German speech recognition expert Dr. Frank Hubnet to "re-voice" the films. Based on a clip taken from a private conversation with the Finnish marshal Karl Mannheim in 1942 discussing the war in Russia – believed to be the only such recording in existence of Hitler speaking in private – the dubbed results (subtitled) provide a fascinating, if disturbingly banal, glimpse of the Nazi dictator’s private world.
“People often dismiss the trivia of history and they look on the major dates of battles and the major generals and this kind of thing, but history essentially I think is largely about trivia. Our lives are about triva… and if you understand the trivia, maybe it helps you to understand the bigger issues, the larger issues, and how they emerge from the trivia.” — Dr. David Lewis.
Robert Reich : Where is America Going?
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and now Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, looks ahead at US economic trends, the impact of globalization, the “demographic shift” and other domestic policy issues in this often quite funny and thoroughly engaging speech from late 2006.
Sign of the Times: Fanatics Picket Huckabee
Friday, February 8, 2008
Who the Hell is Jeffrey Sacks?
Well, nobody actually asked that question, but this should answer it nonetheless. If you listen to his lecture in the preceding post (and I really do encourage you to wade through it) and ponder the implications of what he’s saying, it speaks to some fairly significant and quite profound “meta” problems that we’re facing at the moment — all of which are interrelated…the concept of economic improvement and the exponential growth of global population; the shift in worldwide demographics; the relentless depletion of finite natural resources; and, the inexorable environmental consequences of all of the foregoing.
So one has to ask… why aren’t we hearing about any of this from our political elite? (Except, arguably from the late, lamented John Edwards, but that was a bit different...) Yes, we are getting tiresome platitudes about the need for some kind of vague “change” together with the old familiar nostrums about family values, tax cuts, terrorism and the sort of thinking that barely extends beyond the tips of their noses (or the next electoral term), but where is the "big picture" in all of this?
Jeffrey Sachs: The Future of Globalization
In addition to the complicated challenge of balancing economic improvement with environmental sustainability presented by Sachs' analysis, allow me to draw your attention back to our seeming inability to understand the exponential function.
"Our politics are very poorly conceived for this."
David Cameron: Toff at the Top - Part 6 & 7
Feel free to draw your on obvious parallels to our own homegrown hypocrites that masquerade as “conservatives” while governing as remarkably like Liberals. That's all well and fine by me because I don’t generally sympathize with the moral and cultural conservatism expressed, at least in form, by the STEPHEN HARPER Party, but please spare me the fraudulent pretense.
David Cameron: Toff at the Top - Part 1
Great documentary film by political commentator Peter Hitchens that, to quote the intro to the Google video (which is no longer available for some mysterious reason) "casts a critical eye over the meteoric rise to prominence of Conservative Party leader David Cameron,tracing his aristocratic roots and Eton education, from his exploits with Oxford University's raucous Bullingdon Club to his astonishingly swift rise through Tory ranks."
Hitchens condems Cameron's opportunistic move to the center/left since becoming leader and decries the lack of any genuinely conservative choice in British poltiics (the BNP notwithstanding). Hitchens views Cameron's social, educational, and foreign policies as being indistinguishable from Blair's. To further emphasize this point, he often refers to the two men in tandem as "Mr. Clair and Mr. Blameron". Gee, kind of like our own Liberal and Conservative Parties...
Note that most of the sections of this YouTube film have a somewhat annoying watermark from the software used to create them, so you have to kind of just look past that.Oh and yes, in case you didn't already know and were wondering, he is the younger brother of Christopher Hitchens.
The "Conservative" Alternative to McCain
Why is this guy still in the race? It's statistically impossible for him to win. Not that I'm complaining, of course. The division in the GOP is fun to watch, but it sure doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Viguerie and that crowd, along with the establishment and right-wing noise machine hate Huckabee only slightly less than they do McCain.
