Are you downhearted? Don't be! When life hands you a drought, build a water park:
A Duluth real estate company is proposing a 200,000-square-foot water park for Buford. In the middle of Georgia's historic drought....
The Buford City Commission rezoned land for an earlier version of the proposed development in November of 2006. Last month, the commission approved a modification to allow the addition of the water park, said Kim Wolfe, the city's planning director. Commission Chairman Phillip Beard did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the water park.
Any idiot can make lemonade out of lemons. What the Buford City Commission's contemplating is a real act of optimism, and therefore of patriotism.
And really, it's not as shocking as the author makes it sound. Ours is a culture that recommends borrowing one's way out of debt and eating oneself thin. It exalts forced choice as freedom, comforts the oppressed by torturing and killing them, fights abortion by promoting sexual ignorance, and sees taxpayer-funded incarceration as a better bargain than taxpayer-funded childcare. Building a redundant water park in a long-term drought isn't an aberration so much as a rather heavyhanded metaphor for business as usual.
It gets better, though:
Georgia officials are pushing a proposal to move the Tennessee border farther north to get access to the Tennessee River.
I'd heard a rumor that the South would rise again, but I never thought there was anything to it 'til now.
One thing is clear: once the first shot has been fired in the War of North Georgian Aggression, there's no telling where it'll end. Tennessee is low-hanging fruit; there's plenty of water in the Great Lakes, last time I checked, and the day may come when America's moribund auto industry is headquartered in Detroit, Georgia, beneath a Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
We'll start out this week with a timely message from my pal Chicago Dyke:
While we all tear each other apart, millions are dying, millions more are going to die, for no good reason. As an American, like it or not, you have an incredible responsibility to do what you can to make sure your power isn’t used for evil, oppressive reasons. Turn off the TV, goddammit. Stop reading the Wanker of the Day’s latest bullshit. Reach out your hand to those who are on the side of Good. Learn to say, “I’m sorry. Let’s get down to business.”
Or, not. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you do the work of the Evil for them, you have no one but yourself to blame.
Apropos of evil, a federal judge has ordered the CIA to turn over BushCo's 2002 torture memo:
The ACLU described the memo as "one of the most important torture documents still being withheld by the Bush administration."
Migra Matters alerts me to a website that records the charming behavior of the Minutemen:
Minutemen Unvarnished tracks the activities of the San Diego Minutemen as they harass and threaten day laborers, employers, and Latinos in general, at various locations throughout the region. They video the minutemen in action and present them uncensored in all their racist glory.
Not pleasant viewing by any means, but an important resource.
The Pennsylvania House has blocked a state constitutional amendment that would've banned same-sex marriage. Here's what the buffoon who proposed it has to say for himself:
"I have a healthy respect for the homosexual community," the paper quoted him as saying. "I have a healthy respect for heterosexuals. I have a deep respect for the institution of marriage. I am standing for marriage. I am not standing against any individual sector of our society."
I always find it reassuring when bigotry has to go to such absurd lengths to deny itself, especially given that this pseudotolerant boilerplate is likely to offend the very people who see gay marriage as a threat.
Voters in Virginia have elected an openly gay black man:
Lawrence Webb was elected to the Falls Church City Council, according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. Webb won one of three available seats with 1,215 votes in a close race -- coming in third, Webb beat out the fourth candidate by 39 points....
"I also hope my election opens the door for others to get involved in public service," Webb said in a statement. "It doesn't matter if you're gay or black or both. What matters is your dedication to building a better community and your willingness to work hard at it."
And Nepal has elected its first openly gay politician:
Ganesh Shah, general secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal, said that Sunil Babu Pant was chosen to lead the party to "ensure the rights of gay and other minority groups. He will be the first person to represent Nepal's gay community."
Australia is changing laws that allow discrimination against gays:
Australia will change a raft of federal laws to remove discrimination against gay couples, but will stop short of allowing same-sex marriages, the government announced Wednesday.
Under the changes, gay couples in long-term relationships would be treated the same as married couples on issues such as taxation, pensions and welfare payments, Attorney General Robert McClelland said.
Meanwhile, yet another staunch defender of family values has been caught with his pants down. And the appalling Ward Connerly is fuming over yet another defeat:
A leader of a ballot initiative that would have ended state-based affirmative action programs lashed out at opponents on Monday and vowed to revive the issue in 2010, after failing to meet a weekend deadline to turn in signatures.
"So those who are gleeful right now about being able to bully us, you better enjoy your last laugh because it won't last very long," said Ward Connerly, a California businessman who helped spearhead the initiative in Missouri and four other states this year.
"Outdoor living rooms" are popping up in Los Angeles:
Armed with grant money, hammers and some technical help, residents around the city have gone about spiffing up bus stops, among a number of other outdoor spaces, into something known as community living rooms.
The idea began several years ago in Oakland, where community organizers and residents got together to improve places where neighbors tended to congregate — the corner store, outside the barbershop — amid a decidedly downtrodden environment.
In New York, meanwhile, urban gardens are on the rise:
Growing up in rural Jamaica, the Wilkses helped their families raise crops like sugar cane, coffee and yams, and take them to market. Now, in Brooklyn, they are farmers once again, catering to their neighbors’ tastes: for scallions, for bitter melons like those from the West Indies and East Asia and for cilantro for Latin-American dinner tables.
For more information on the myriad ways in which people are addressing the problem of urban food deserts, see People's Grocery.
Typically, contaminated soil is hauled off, buried or burned. Using the mushroom method...it is put in plots, strewn with straw and left alone with mushroom spawn. The spawn release a fine, threadlike web called mycelium that secretes enzymes “like little Pac-Mans that break down molecular bonds,” Mr. Stamets said. And presto: toxins fall apart.
In related news, fungi may also be able to reduce the hazards of depleted uranium:
Although less radioactive than natural uranium, depleted uranium is just as toxic and poses a threat to people.
In the new study, the researchers found that free-living and plant symbiotic (mycorrhizal) fungi can colonize depleted-uranium surfaces and transform the metal into uranyl phosphate minerals.
And bread molds reportedly offer hope of directly targeting disease-causing genes:
A University of Missouri scientist, along with a collaborative research team, has examined a new mechanism in the reproductive cycle of a certain species of mold. This mechanism protects the organism from genetic abnormalities by "silencing" unmatched genes during meiosis (sexual reproduction). The finding could have implications for higher organisms and may lead to precise "targeting" of unwanted genes, such as those from the HIV virus.
Speaking of HIV, a quick test for it seems to be very helpful in preventing mother-to-child transmission:
Of the participants, about 82% had never taken an HIV test, according to the study. The tests found that 11 women were HIV-positive. These women were given antiretroviral drugs to prevent MTCT. According to the study, 10 of these infants survived and tested negative for HIV.
Several new species have been found in a rapidly shrinking area of Brazilian savanna.
The lizard — part of a separate evolutionary line from snakes — is one of 14 species believed new to science discovered on a four-week expedition to a 1.77-million-acre (716,000-hectare) protected area in the Cerrado. The team also found several threatened and rare species.
"We don't know exactly what we're losing," said expedition leader Christian Nogueira, a Conservation International biologist.
Eight rare Amur leopards have been photographed by a Russian camera trap:
"The confirmed stability of the leopard population … warm[s] our hearts and give[s] hope," Pavel Fomenko of WWF Russia said in a statement.
Furthermore, 14 tiger cubs have been spotted in an Indian national park:
Wildlife experts welcomed the news and said they also have information about sightings of tiger cubs in four other reserves.
"Ranthambore is back to its heyday of the 1980s, and the secret of success is in better management and a lot of protection, which was not there earlier," said Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI).
A paper in PLoS Biology suggests that frog conservation efforts should concentrate on Madagascar:
[O]ne of the best places to focus these efforts is Madagascar, a global hotspot of amphibian diversity that shows no signs of amphibian declines — or traces of the chytrid fungus.
Protecting this amphibian treasure trove before it’s too late, the authors argue, makes Madagascar a top priority for amphibian conservation efforts. “In Madagascar,” the authors argue, “amphibian conservation efforts have the possibility of being pro-active, rather than reactive, or simply post-mortem.”
A new study shows how the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have consistently buried environmental news:
The report found that both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times essentially buried environmental stories, as environmental news for both papers made up only 1 percent of the total front page....
Both papers had more front page stories on sports/entertainment/lifestyles than on the environment. 3.7 percent of The Wall Street Journal's front page was made up by entertainment and sports. While at The New York Times sports and entertainment appeared on the front page nearly seven times that of environmental stories with 6.9 percent. Health/medicine-related stories at The New York Times was more than seven times the environment with 7.3 percent. In both papers the environment nearly tied science/technology which was 0.8 percent at The New York Times and 1.1 percent at The Wall Street Journal.
This, of course, is merely a ploy to make it look as though they're not on Algore's climate hysteria bandwagon.
The Sietch Blog reports that "global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells increased 51 percent in 2007." Apropos of which, Berkeley, CA will soon be testing a clever way of increasing installation of solar panels:
Installing solar panels on your roof is like paying for 20 years of juice up front. There's no guarantee you'll recoup that money when you sell, and American families move every seven years on average. While it may be exhilarating to watch the utility meter spin backward, these basic facts make solar impractical for the masses. "People are willing to pay a premium to not be tied down," notes Cisco DeVries of Berkeley, California, who until recently served as the mayor's chief of staff.
But last year, DeVries hit upon a brilliantly simple idea. What if, he asked, the city financed residents' solar rooftops, then levied a 20-year tax assessment on their properties to pay for it? The debt would follow the home, not the owner, and in one fell swoop, the two greatest impediments to home solar would be history.
An inflatable solar panel provides plenty of cheap hot water:
For consumers, the SolarStore could provide a cheap source of domestic hot water; with an initial cost of under Â100 per product, trial data has shown that the system will pay for itself in only 6 months. This compares extremely favourably to conventional domestic solar hot water systems, which cost in the region of Â2000-3000 and have payback times of around 10-20 years. It is anticipated that the product will also be extremely beneficial in developing countries, where a reliable electricity supply can be a problem.
Inhabitat reports that volunteers from Engineers Without Borders "have developed a small wind turbine design that has the capacity to bring much needed electrical power to remote villages in Guatemala and provide an alternative to hazardous kerosene lighting."
George Monbiot has won my heart by making an impassioned plea for dirigibles:
Airships fly much lower than planes, typically at about 4,000 feet, which means their emissions of water vapour have very little effect on temperature. If they were powered by hydrogen fuel cells, they would be almost silent, greatly reducing the effects for people on the ground. Though they are much slower than jets, the cabin can be built much wider, which means that travelling by airship would be rather like travelling by cruise ship, but at twice the speed and using a fraction of the fuel.
I tend to be wary of biofuel stories, but Four Legs Good has sent me a link that's really pretty interesting:
A newly created microbe produces cellulose that can be turned into ethanol and other biofuels, report scientists from The University of Texas at Austin who say the microbe could provide a significant portion of the nation's transportation fuel if production can be scaled up....
Brown and Nobles say their cyanobacteria can be grown in production facilities on non-agricultural lands using salty water unsuitable for human consumption or crops....Glucose, cellulose and sucrose can be continually harvested without harming or destroying the cyanobacteria (harvesting cellulose and sugars from true algae or crops, like corn and sugarcane, requires killing the organisms and using enzymes and mechanical methods to extract the sugars). Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen can be grown without petroleum-based fertilizer input.
Arizona is the 14th state to have adopted a Clean Car rule:
Under the Clean Car Rule, each automobile manufacturer is required to demonstrate that its fleet of passenger cars and light-duty trucks delivered for sale in Arizona on or after January 1, 2011, meets an average emissions standard for greenhouse gases. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by about 32 million metric tons from 2012 to 2020 and will also reduce pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone formation, a major issue in Arizona. Implementation of the rule is expected to reduce 5,505 tons of carbon monoxide, 892 tons of hydrocarbons, and 1,436 tons of oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) in 2018.
The BLM has closed 30,000 acres of the Clear Creak Management Area to off-road vehicles:
“It’s about time that the agency steps in to protect public health,” said Chris Kassar, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA study confirms that asbestos levels and toxic dust kicked up by off-road vehicles is a much greater health hazard than previously thought, and the Bureau of Land Management is going to have to be very careful about how they manage this area in the future.”
New Jersey is backing away from its plan to close state parks:
Last month, Governor Corzine proposed to close several parks serving an estimated two million visitors each year and lay off 80 park workers in order to save the state roughly $4.5 million. Documents uncovered by PEER showed that DEP is forfeiting millions of dollars from not collecting owed rents and other payments from big corporations holding easements and concessions on park lands.
“I am glad someone finally listened to reason,” stated New Jersey PEER Director Bill Wolfe. “Collecting rent is a basic step that should have been considered before announcing that parks will be closed to the public.”
A federal judge has once again ordered the EPA to obey the law:
The Bush administration has violated legal deadlines for updating the nation's clean-air standards on carbon monoxide, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White told the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to follow a schedule that would allow a full scientific review, public comment and any proposed changes in the standard to take place by May 2011. The EPA had proposed a timetable that would extend through October 2012.
Estonians are using Google maps and GPS to locate trash as part of a national clean-up program:
"It has to be done, it can't stay here," said Mats Eek, 17, cleaning up a site in the middle of a forest near the central town of Turi, 100 km (62 miles) from capital city Tallinn.
He and the rest of his team worked to remove old metal, plastic, glass, bottles, and remains of farm medicals and household garbage hundred of meters from deep in a forest.
Iraq's National Museum has recovered 700 stolen artifacts:
Syrian authorities seized the items from traffickers over the years and handed custody last week to an Iraqi delegation in Damascus.
Mohammad Abbas al-Oreibi, Iraq's acting state minister of tourism and archaeology who led the negotiations with Syria, said he plans to visit Jordan soon to persuade its authorities to turn over more than 150 items.
A Brazilian judge has suspended construction of a massive dam on the Xingu River:
At 11,181 megawatts, the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River would be the world's third largest dam in terms of generating capacity. But the project has faced opposition from a coalition of indigenous groups, scientists, and environmentalists who say the dam will cause environmental harm by flooding large tracts of rainforest and blocking key migration routes for fish. To voice their concern over Belo Monte and other hydroelectric projects in the Amazon, more than 1,000 indigenous representatives are expected to gather in the city of Altamira from May 19-23.
And Unilever has selflessly called for a moratorium on destroying rainforests for palm oil:
Unilever's announcement comes shortly after a report from Greenpeace showed that the company's suppliers were destroying orangutan habitat and carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia for oil palm plantations.
The USGS will make 36 years of Landsat imagery available on the Intertubes for free. Which is nice, but not nearly as interesting as the effort to reconstruct shredded Stasi documents:
Stasi employees started to destroy their secret files as the Berlin Wall fell. Initially they shredded them. But as the machines broke down under the strain, they were forced to tear documents by hand.
The waste was to be pulped or burnt, but "citizen committees" stormed Stasi offices across East Germany, seizing millions of files, along with 15,500 bags of torn-up documents.
"One of the main reasons why the citizen committees occupied Stasi offices was to prevent the destruction of these archives," said Andreas Petter, a chief archivist at the office now responsible for their preservation.
Since 1995, experts working near Nuremberg in Bavaria have been sifting through the bags, extracting the torn shreds, strata by strata, and taping them back together to reconstruct the documents.
Before visiting these sites, I suggest that you download and build your very own pinhole camera so you can take pictures of the screen. Better yet, you can use it to take photographs of the photographs of photographic negatives at Luminous Lint.
Also: Otherworldly photos of Chile's Chaiten volcano at BLDGBLOG, and this-worldly photos of NYC subway art by Grrlscientist.
While I don't necessarily recommend reading Rapture Ready, which is a sort of Gambling Times for the pro-apocalypse set, it can sometimes be very informative. This week, it address the "Oil in Israel Myth," which apparently stems from the assumption that if oil is a blessing from the Lord — which it must be, 'cause it makes people rich — then the blessed state of Israel must have lots of it, somewhere or other.
There are some who suggest that God didn't leave the Israelis out of the oil bonanza. The oil prize is there, waiting for someone to discover it.
Some Christians have said that prophecy suggests that oil wealth will come to the Jews. They point to a desire to steal Israel's oil wealth as what will trigger the Gog invasion. The prophecies in Ezekiel make no reference to oil being the reason for the attack.
In the past decade, several oil companies have been founded with the goal of finding biblical oil in Israel. None of them has had any success.
The author finds all of this silly for two reasons, and they're both very good ones.
First, "ancient Israel would have no need for oil." You can't really argue with this...unless you're the sort of pedant who'd point out that neither the Persian Empire, nor Texas circa 500 BC, had any obvious need for oil either. Or the sort of heretic who suspects that RR is basically accusing God of an inability to plan ahead.
Second, "if Israel were to suddenly hit the mother lode in oil, the material wealth would largely void the supernatural work that God has accomplished in this nation." The supernatural work, that is, of blessing Israel with material wealth. In other words, if the Jews became wealthy because God blessed them with oil, it would prevent us from understanding that "Israel's affluence can only be explained by God's grace." That's clear enough, isn't it?
It's a little unsettling how neatly this belief in the supernatural nature of Jewish wealth complements the bone-deep anti-Semitism of the Darbyist apocalypse. But in a spirit of charity, we'll put these speculations aside. RR goes on to describe how Christians have sometimes been inspired to finance the search for "Biblical oil" in order to fulfill a prophecy that was never made, but clearly should've been, given oil's great significance to man, and therefore to God:
Ness Energy International is one example. In the late 1990s, a Texas oilman by the name "Hayseed" Stevens was promoting the idea that a vast reservoir of oil was under that Dead Sea region.
Mr. Stevens based his conclusions on ideas that would make any respected geologist pull his hair out. He told people at a series of prophecy meetings that the earth contains a layer of hydrocarbons and that the southern part of the Dead Sea is the fountainhead of this oil reservoir. Stevens also said there is a plumbing system that would eventually drain the Arabian oil fields. Yes, all this time the Arabs have been stealing Israel's oil.
The undoing of Stevens’ eccentric theories came when he began drilling. After punching through a salt plug that was said to be capping the oil, nothing was found. I remember him sending out one update to reassure investors, saying that the drillers had found oil; but it wasn't the right kind oil they were looking for.
All of this is news to me, but both the theory and Rapture Ready's rebuttal strike me as the perfect illustration of American fundamentalism's bedrock economism. (You can read more on Stevens here; it's a fascinating story.)
As we've seen, God's conscientious withholding of oil from teh Jews reveals Israel's wealth as something that "can only be explained by God's grace." If that's true, at least one mechanism of His grace is not entirely a secret. Christian tourism is an important source of Israel's income; hundreds of thousands of Christians visit each year in order to walk along some arbitrary Via Dolorosa, and to visit monuments known to have been built near the probable site of temples that tradition says are very near to a place where buildings Jesus may have visited are reputed to have stood.
Many of these sites were made holy in order to meet the popular demand for holy sites (the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime). It's charming that Stanley Spencer depicted Jesus carrying the cross down Cookham High Street, but as Mr. Gradgrind observed, "You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them." The official Via Dolorosa may not be strictly accurate, but at least it's in Jerusalem.
And just imagine if you arrived in, say, Bethlehem, and no X marked the spot where Jesus was born. It'd be like drilling for the Lord's light sweet crude precisely where it ought to be, and coming up dry. God must be spared this embarrassment, if at all possible.
A site called Bible Walks exemplifies this selfless concern for God's good name with its page on Tell Hadar, which is thought to be the site of the miracle of loaves and fishes:
The topography of the site and the proximity to the major Roman road makes this tradition sound reasonable....A heavy rock has been placed in the parking lot to mark the site of the miracle.
A heavy rock, mind you; nothing less could assure us that this world is not our home.
(Illustration: Satellite image of the parting of the Red Sea, via BLDGBLOG.)
Carol Iannone takes a break from fretting over America's declining academic standards, and complains that biology's standards are too high:
Ben Stein's Expelled is entertaining and informative. Among the bracing clarifications the film provides is that Darwinian evolution is not even necessary for the study of modern biology and medicine; that Darwin and religion are at odds, as Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson has written; that the Nazis did indeed take Darwinian science as inspiration; and that science is even more fanciful about the origins of life than religion could ever be (one anti-Darwinian hypothesizes that organic life may have begun on the backs of crystals).
Iannone once spent some time debating NR's Anthony Dick on evolution. The paragraph above gives you some sense of how little she learned from it.
The claim that evolution (we'll ignore the cunning adjective "Darwinian") "is not even necessary for the study of modern biology and medicine" is remarkable not because it's such a brazen lie, but because Iannone is so careful to designate this imaginary biology-without-evolution as "modern." This is as exquisite a critical distinction as I've seen, and I'm sure it'll help to advance Iannone's reputation as a brave thinker of thoughts about things.
Hitler did indeed take certain useful elements of his era's "Darwinian science" as inspiration, when he wasn't being equally inspired by Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Fichte, Hans Horbiger, Henry Ford, Karl May, Napoleon, occultism, Christianity, mythology, and anything else that appealed to his magpie mind. In Mein Kampf, he sets forth his method quite clearly:
A man who possesses the art of correct reading will, in studying any book, magazine, or pamphlet, instinctively and immediately perceive everything which in his opinion is worth permanently remembering, either because it is suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing....
What's "generally worth knowing," from the standpoint of a power-hungry ideologue, is precisely that which serves the purpose of gaining and maintaining power. It's immaterial whether Jesus died on the cross or not, so long as you can score political points by blaming the Jews for it.
If he were alive today, Hitler might well embrace Intelligent Design; it's by no means incompatible with pseudoscientific racism, it's vague enough to leave room for Odin as well as YHWH, and it's prone to a type of wishful thinking and paranoia that could easily have resonated with his own (if we weren't intended by some supernatural intelligence to discriminate against the Jews, how come they were designed to look Jewish?).
Current scientific thinking on race wouldn't be any more suited to Hitler's purpose than it is to, say, Charles Murray's; as manufactured anti-elitist causes go, ID would probably have been at least as useful as Horbiger's Welteislehre was in its day. This idle speculation aside, it's clear enough that Hitler had little interest in any scientific theory (or historical account, or philosophy, or religious dogma, or art) that he couldn't use to prop up opinions he'd already formed.
Iannone's final point, about science being more "fanciful" than any religion, is both gratuitous and, ironically enough, irreligious. This is much more significant than any of her "attacks" on evolution, the basic facts of which hardly need defending.
Iannone would like you to think that she worships an omnipotent god. At the same time, she wants to treat certain (potentially divine) origins and mechanisms of life as too "fanciful" to have any chance of being correct. But unless she's a Biblical literalist of a type that's really pretty rare in her circles, she's free to view any and every fanciful thing as revelation, from hummingbird beaks to animated hypercubes to crystal-mediated abiogenesis. The Lord works in mysterious ways, or so I've heard.
Her crowd generally avoids this more humble and affirmative approach, though, lest they be reduced to cheering science from the sidelines for the insights it provides into the Great Chain of Being, instead of challenging or usurping whatever authority its relatively objective successes have earned.
In other words, what's being defended here is not God's omnipotence or wisdom, or some other spiritual doctrine, but the drab materialism of political domination, which requires the basso profundo of divine thundering to ground and dignify the mandrake shrieks of authoritarian dimwits like Iannone.
To assume that this is actually a clash between belief and unbelief, or reason and faith, is basically to concede the argument to the Right before it begins (which is, unfortunately, a tactic at which the Left has excelled for as long as I've been paying attention). It's not about religion or science; it's about the need to capture or marginalize opposing sources of authority. The typical left/atheist outrage is already factored into this game, and is in fact one of the main justifications for playing it.
John W. Schoen, a senior producer at MSNBC, has forfeited a few moments of his valuable time in order to help a confused reader understand the workings of the Free Market:
If the feds can help with cutting interest rates why can't they do something that really affects everything? Like high prices of gas. How can a billion-dollar industry still be allowed to make so much and affect so many people? — Lori H., Dodge City, Kan.
There are measures the government could take to ease the pain at the pump, but it’s hard to see how the U.S. government could directly control the price of a global commodity like gasoline — any more than it could limit what you can charge for that big-screen TV you’re trying to unload on eBay. Gasoline prices — like all market prices — are set by a willing buyer and a willing seller. (You may not be a “happy” buyer right now, but your purchases are still voluntary.)
Absolutely correct. No one's holding a gun to Lori's head. If she doesn't want to buy gas at the current price, she has every right to sit at home in her counting-room, cackling over her doubloons and pieces of eight by the light of a tenpenny candle.
Sure, it's possible that she lives in one of those sprawling suburbs that were designed and sited on the assumption that gas would always be cheap, and that mass transit is a socialistic encroachment on the Liberty for which John Birch bled and died, and that only prostitutes and pedophiles would dream of walking anywhere. But if so, she can comfort herself with the fact that this, too, is the result of a voluntary buying decision on her part. She could just as easily live somewhere else, after all (the expense of moving to the Outer Hebrides is negligible when one considers the easy availability of peat).
So let's leave Lori to her malingering, and move on to bigger and better things. While in an unusually frolicsome mood the other day, I wrote a brief post on food deserts. Apropos of which, it's increasingly hard to find supermarkets in the NYC metro area:
The supermarket closings — not confined to poor neighborhoods — result from rising rents and slim profit margins, among other causes. They have forced residents to take buses or cabs to the closest supermarkets in some areas. Those with cars can drive, but the price of gasoline is making some think twice about that option. In many places, residents said the lack of competition has led to rising prices in the remaining stores.
These shoppers may not be happy right now, but whatever purchases they're able to make are, of course, voluntary. And lest we forget, many neighborhoods that lack supermarkets do have very affordable fast-food restaurants.
Granted, fast food is linked in some studies with poor health, but as Jot Contie of the California Restaurant Association says, "in the end, individuals control what, where and when they eat." People who'd rather have fresh vegetables than catsup packets, for instance, are perfectly free to hop in the the car and drive to the nearest supermarket. (If gas is too expensive, they can always eat invasive weeds...it's a nice way of giving back to one's community.)
There's also the fact that when a supermarket closes, it often creates entrepreneurial opportunities for local residents.
The larger point is that if consumer dissatisfaction were really widespread, multinational agribusiness would hardly be enjoying record profits:
Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.
Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.
That's a lot of willing buyers, you'll agree. And given the fact that all this commerce is entirely voluntary, it's easy to see how fixing ADM's prices would be just as unfair as limiting the price you can charge on eBay for the belongings you need to sell in order to afford gas or grain.
You may not be happy right now, but at least you're free.
(Photo: "Food Protest in Mexico," via Treehugger).
We all know that environmentalists want to force us back into the Stone Age. The fact has been pointed out so many times, with such vehemence, that it’s almost lost its power to shock us.
That’s why we need gifted and inexhaustible writers like Donald J. Boudreaux to inspire us, like Poe’s Raven, to Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance.
When debunking environmentalism, one must always start by provisionally granting a theoretical validity to whatever facts can't be denied outright:
It might well be that humans' "footprint" on the Earth is larger than ever; it might even be true that this larger footprint creates some health risks for us modern humans that our pre-industrial ancestors never encountered.
Who can say? I suppose you could look at the change in world population between 1400 and today, and consider the health risks posed by modern technologies like oil refining, air travel, and synthetic pesticides…but that way lies madness. There are some things humanity was never meant to know.
In their lust to return to the days of cave-dwelling and trepanation, environmentalists have failed to recognize that modern life has certain advantages:
Our bodies are cleaner and more free of disease. Our homes are sanitary. We have indoor plumbing and anti-bacterial soap; our ancestors had outhouses. Our clothes are cleaner and, despite recent hysteria, our food supply is safer.
Cheers for anti-bacterial soap (despite its role in antibiotic resistance), and jeers for hysteria about multiple episodes of mass poisoning!
So far, this is garden-variety sophistry. But Boudreaux has far more deadly arrows in his quiver:
[T]oo many environmentalists condemn people who don't share their creed. For example, I don't recycle my trash because my time is too precious for me to spend it sorting such items into different containers.
If Boudreaux spent half an hour recycling conservatarian gibberish for this column, he spent roughly 27 more minutes than I spend sorting my recyclables in the average month. But who am I to judge how he spends his time?
In environmentalists' eyes, those who unquestioningly disregard the value of one resource (time) in order to spend it on the conservation of other resources (wood, plastic and glass) are righteous while those of us who value and conserve time are sinners.
Personally, I don’t think Boudreaux is a sinner so much as an insufferable asshole. But to the extent that the word “sinner” applies, it applies because conserving Boudreaux’s time benefits Boudreaux, while conserving wood, plastic, and glass benefits the society in which he lives and presumably thrives.
And as Adam Smith wisely observed, “when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.”
(Illustration: "Vanitas Still Life: Sins of the Flesh" by Chris Peters, 2004.)
Inhabitat announces that for a measly $25, you can donate a Lifestraw to a needy household in Mumbai:
Project H will deliver 100 systems this summer as the first step in a bigger examination of local water sanitation issues. With more than a billion people lacking access to safe drinking water and five million people dying of water-related disease every year, here’s an opportunity to make a small but very real difference.
When you're done with that, you can help prevent malaria by supplying poor families with mosquito nets, either by donating at the previous link or by playing this online game. (Or both.)
Speaking of malaria, there seems to be some hope of an improved malaria vaccine for children:
Florida State University biologists have discovered an autoimmune-like response in blood drawn from malaria-infected African children that helps to explain why existing DNA-based anti-malaria vaccines have repeatedly failed to protect them.
The groundbreaking study is expected to speed and better inform the development of new treatments and vaccines that effectively target the unique medical needs of malaria’s smallest, most vulnerable victims.
Russia has shut down a weapons-grade nuclear reactor:
Russia said on Monday it had closed a weapons-grade plutonium reactor as part of a deal with the United States to reduce the risk of proliferation from Cold War-era nuclear bomb plants.
The reactor, at a secret Siberian plant founded by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, was turned off on Sunday, 45 years after it was started up to create plutonium for the Soviet weapons programme.
A Chinese ship full of weapons that was headed for Zimbabwe has turned back:
China’s decision to turn the ship around was welcomed by the dock workers, trade unionists, religious leaders, Western diplomats and human rights workers who have been campaigning since last week to block delivery of the weapons to Zimbabwe.
They had said the weaponry could be used to carry out an even more violent crackdown on Zimbabwe’s political opposition, which is allied with the country’s unionized workers.
“This is a great victory for the trade union movement in particular and civil society in general in putting its foot down and saying we will not allow weapons that could be used to kill and maim our fellow workers and Zimbabweans to be transported across South Africa,” said Patrick Craven, spokesman for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which represents 1.9 million South African workers.
(Hat tip: Karin.)
Brussels Airlines hopes to reduce its fuel costs by flying a little more slowly:
The airline said slowing its planes by about 10km/h would cut its annual fuel bill by 1m euros ($1.6m; £800,000) and add a minute or two to flight times.
The measures will also reduce the airline's emissions of global warming greenhouse gases, a spokesman said.
Clearly, they've been taken over by radicals who won't be satisfied until we're all painting ourselves with woad and gnawing at roots and twigs.
A study finds that transgenic soy crops have a lower yield than coventional crops.
The Independent points to a recent University of Kansas study showing that Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans (designed to withstand copious lashings of Monsanto's own weed killer, Roundup) deliver yields 10 percent lower than conventional beans. The U. of Kansas verdict comes on the heels of a similar one from researchers at the University of Nebraska.
Which means that any day now, we can expect to hear CS Prakash and Roy Innis accuse Monsanto of willfully perpetuating Third World poverty and hunger.
New research suggests that massive die-offs in the Gulf of Mexico could be alleviated by changing agricultural practices:
The assessment team found that the most significant opportunities for nitrogen and phosphorus reduction in the Mississippi Basin are promotion of the production of environmentally sustainable biofuel and other perennial crops, improved infield management of nutrients, construction and restoration of wetlands, tighter nitrogen and phosphorus limits on municipal and industrial sources and improved targeting of riparian buffers.
The House has passed legislation that would help to keep invasive species out of the Great Lakes:
Perhaps most importantly to the Great Lakes states, the legislation will force ocean-going vessels coming into the Great Lakes to flush their hulls of ballast water 200 miles outside of the U.S. And beginning in 2012, vessels will be required to have treatment systems to purify ballast water from invasive species.
The plan proposes to populate 2.5 million acres with a billion trees, which—as stated on the program's website—will become a carbon sink for ten million tons of carbon. The program is focusing on specific areas of the degraded forest, especially ten watersheds.
A federal court has blocked a plan to kill sea lions in order to protect salmon, on the grounds that the harm it would cause is as irreparable as the harm it's intended to prevent:
"The stunning wildlife of the Pacific Northwest deserves protection, but choosing between salmon and sea lions is not the answer," [The Humane Society of the United States] says on its Web site. "A thriving river needs a greater variety of creatures sharing its waters, not less."
Cameroon has established a unique sanctuary for the critically endangered Cross River Gorilla:
The Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary — created by Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni's decree — covers 19.5 sq km in a mountainous region of Cameroon. WCS estimates the area is home to 20 of the world's remaining 300 Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli).
The Bronx Zoo-based group says that the gorillas of Kagwene have been protected from the poaching that otherwise affects apes in the region by the local belief that gorillas are people. The consumption of gorilla meat is therefore taboo.
EU countries would be allowed to charge heavy road users for the costs they incur on society, including congestion, air pollution and noise — something prohibited by EU law up till now — according to an early draft of a Commission proposal to revise its 'Eurovignette Directive'.
A Dutch study finds that children raised by lesbian couples are just as well adjusted as children raised by heterosexual couples. As for the parents, they seemed to be happier than their straight counterparts:
The results showed that lesbian biological mothers were more satisfied with their partners as a co-parent than heterosexual mothers were. It was also shown that lesbian mothers were more committed to the task of parenting than straight fathers.
"I know this will end my career in Christian television, but I must now live my life openly and honestly with everyone," [Azariah] Southworth said in the article...."We all know there are so many other gay people in the Christian industry; they're all just scared," he said. "I was scared, but now I'm no longer afraid."
Iowa Governor Chet Culver has signed a bill that forces insurance companies to cover the cost of HPV vaccine:
Des Moines obstetrician-gynecologist, Linda Railsback, says the new law will make it easier for women to fight off H-P-V. Railsback says "In the future, the burden of the H-P-V disease, which includes genital warts and cervical cancer, and some cancers of the vagina and vulva, will be decreased -- markedly decreased-- by 70 to 80-percent, and in some women, absent.
The Senate has passed legislation that forbids discrimination on the basis of genetic data:
It would allow only patients and their doctors to access data obtained through genetic testing.
Employers, unions and health insurance companies would be forbidden from discrimination via genetic information.
The Ohio legislature has passed a fairly impressive renewable energy bill:
the Ohio Legislature passed a renewable energy standard requiring utilities to provide 12.5 percent of Ohio's electricity from clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar by 2025. This bill has a solar-specific requirement that will result in about 594 MW of solar in the Buckeye State. Not too shabby! Kudos to Environment Ohio and the thousands of other activists that worked hard to make it happen.
An interesting survey claims that Canadians are increasingly likely to blame their own consumerism for environmental problems:
A new survey of environmental attitudes, one of the most extensive undertaken in the country, has revealed a profound shift in public opinion on the causes of environmental problems: People now suggest harm to the planet is being driven by their own demand for consumer goods and wasteful activities, rather than by causes such as company-produced pollution.
Here's hoping this attitude is contagious.
According to Miles Grant, "a study found that while young people could identify a thousand corporate logos, they couldn't identify even a handful of plants and animals in their backyards. Will future generations care about protecting the planet if they can't even pick a starling out of a lineup?" No Child Left Inside aims to do something about the problem:
The Coalition’s focus is passage of the federal No Child Left Inside Act. This legislation would authorize major new funding for states to provide high-quality, environmental instruction. Funds would support outdoor learning activities both at school and in non-formal environmental education centers, teacher training and the creation of state environmental literacy plans.
Against all odds, PZ Myers has reason to be pleased with Texas:
[T]he Institute for Creation Research's application to offer an online master's degree program in creationist bullshit has been rejected. Bravo!
Also via PZ, Yoko Ono is suing the makers of Expelled for using "Imagine" without permission. That's two commandments they've broken so far, by my count.
Not only that: Unfinished hotels along the Sinai Peninsula at BLDGBLOG, and Will Eisner's artwork for The Preventative Maintenance Monthly at BibliOdyssey.
On a personal note, I'll be moving for the third time in 18 months this weekend, which'll be the final stage of a process I started almost two years ago, and never really expected to live through. Virtually every post I've written in the last six months was slapped together under extreme duress, and I have to apologize again for being even more scattered and abstruse than usual. I'm grateful to everyone who's stuck with me, and I'd like to think that things will improve from here on out. If nothing else, being reunited with my books after 18 long months is bound to put me in a better mood!
Having gotten that bit of administrative trivia out of the way, I'll leave you with the lilting strains of the Howson Phono-Fiddle.
(Illustration at top: "Dreaming Story at Warlugulong" by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, 1976.)
Today, Phi Beta Cons demonstrates the dazzling range and flexibility of conservatarian thought. First, Fred Schwarz indulges in a bit of harebrained Manichaeism (the kind men like):
When conservatives look at the American flag, they see hope and inspiration; when liberals look at it, they see "an edifice of cynicism."
So conservatives feel and liberals think? I'd always heard it was the other way around.
If Schwarz claims that the pleasure conservatives feel when they see the flag comes from inspiration and hope, rather than a thrill of anger at the hippie fags who refuse to bow down before it, who am I to doubt him?
This begs the question of what they hope for, though, and I think it's fair to say that if idolatry is the best thing they can be accused of, cynicism is not quite the worst. It sounds as though Schwarz would like us to drop everything and start drooling the moment a flag is waved; you don't have to be Ward Churchill to suspect that this Pavlovian patriotism benefits Schwarz and his co-religionists much more than it does the good ol' US of A.
Next, Candace de Russy (the fearless, the undaunted) displays a taste for microphilosophical nuance that puts that arch-quibbler John Kerry to shame:
Journalist Thomas Friedman, hardly a champion of free-market capitalism, got a pie in his face this week while speaking at Brown University.
No one can accuse de Russy of having lax standards for what constitutes championing free-market capitalism. Here's one of Friedman's typically ambivalent remarks on the subject, which Tim Russert managed to beat out of him with a length of galvanized rebar:
I was speaking out in Minnesota -- my hometown, in fact -- and guy stood up in the audience, said, 'Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you'd oppose?' I said, 'No, absolutely not.' I said, 'You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn't even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.
You'd think that'd be enthusiastic enough for anyone. But de Russy apparently feels that Friedman's chipmunk-on-meth cheerleading amounts to damning the Invisible Hand with faint praise (despite her own discomfort with "the apparently boundless public appetite for debased and scabrous material," the market's response to which is "of course thoroughly designed for profit").
I fear that the rest of us have little hope of winning her favor, which is particularly sad for me as I'd hoped she'd accompany me to this year's China Sex Culture Festival, where "modeling is very rich and refined, and for the first time pushed the ancient palace bed, pillow, ancient Hohuan chairs precious exhibits way reflects scientific Old to the evolution of modern sexuality and how the past serve the present."
A paper in The International Journal of Health Geographics discusses the use of GIS to track the evolution of urban "food deserts":
The findings indicate that residents of inner-city neighbourhoods of low socioeconomic status have the poorest access to supermarkets. Furthermore, spatial inequalities in access to supermarkets have increased over time, particularly in the inner-city neighbourhoods of Central and East London, where distinct urban food deserts now exist.
The problem of spatial inequalities isn't confined to southern Ontario, needless to say. Cervantes goes so far as to suggest that the current food shortage deserves some of the attention that's currently being given to lapel pins and bowling scores:
This is not a temporary problem. It's a long-term, secular (as the economists say) trend. The planet is running out of stuff -- water, land, topsoil, petroleum, atmosphere.
In America, at least, higher food prices may have some connection with the crackdown on immigrant workers, as well as hard-right hysteria over the AgJOBS Act. Still, this is the sort of situation that can trigger mass migration and civil unrest, making border security -- regional, national and local -- more important than ever.
The $20 million prototype for the virtual fence near Tucson may've been scrapped -- along with the law it was supposed to protect and represent -- but the outlook for solid walls and barriers is very promising indeed, especially when it comes to protecting microborders. Whether you're planning "a gated community or an insurgent holding pen," or some convenient amalgam of the two, blast walls are de rigeur in the modern City of Refuge (which will ideally protect us not only from being punished for unintentional killing, but also from being accused of it).
Unfortunately, simply building walls isn't enough to protect yourself from the tired, and the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. You also have to make sure that no one gets around, under, or over them. In that regard, knowledge is power, especially when it confirms what you already believe.
The Drug Enforcement Agency wants to find a small business with a Top Secret security clearance that can snoop on Spanish language conversations transmitted over foreign communications systems and "instantaneously" translate those conversations from Spanish into English....
The translation company would be expected to create online records of "complex foreign voice radio transmissions containing technical terminology, advanced grammar and syntax, and colloquial conversational forms"....
The problem is, when people know they're being overheard, they can use codes, or intentionally spread misinformation, or simply agree to meet up in person. That's why DARPA's Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (HI-MEMS) is so exciting:
These half-bug, half-chip creations — DARPA calls them "insect cyborgs" — would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website.
Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during "the caterpillar and the pupae stages," which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon's bidding.
The article ends with a joke that has considerably more than a grain of truth to it:
Presumably, enemy arsenals will soon be well-stocked with Raid.
It's easy to imagine pesticides being the first line of defense against these cyber insects, regardless of any collateral damage to "useful" species; one thing DARPA will probably want to do is create hybrids that are immune to common pesticides (particularly in Latin America, where a much wider range of chemicals is used).
At that point, I suppose evildoers would have to clear their confidential meeting places with flamethrowers, or perhaps jamming signals. There's also the possibility that natural predators -- for lack of a better term -- will eat some of these semi-mechanical bugs; they should probably be equipped to deliver an electric shock, or a squirt of some noxious liquid, that'll discourage hungry birds and bats.
Surely none of these problems is insurmountable, given what's at stake in a world that's low on resources (or finds it impractical to distribute them equitably, which amounts to the pretty much the same thing).
In completely unrelated news, Bruce Schneier asks a serious question, and provides a serious answer:
[G]iven a security patch, can you automatically reverse-engineer the security vulnerability that is being patched and create exploit code to exploit it?
A while back, Victor Davis Hanson wrote a column in the voice of an imaginary 1940s newspaper editorialist who took FDR to task for botching World War II. This proved through some form of sympathetic magic that Bush hasn't been treated fairly by the Free Press. While the column was somewhat marred by Hanson's decision to date it several months after FDR's death, it was undoubtedly illustrative of something, and there was every reason to expect that his method would be taken up by other, and better, historicological discoverists.
Today, Paul Greenberg has improved on Hanson by rewriting the presidential candidates' questioning of General Petraeus so that it's all about fighting teh Nazis. The results will be illuminating to anyone with a brain the size of a pea:
General Eisenhower (Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force): "There has been significant but uneven security progress in the Ardennes. As of the end of December 1944, our casualties have been reduced substantially....The situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory, and innumerable challenges remain. Moreover, as events in the past two weeks have reminded us, and as I have repeatedly cautioned, the progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible."
Senator John McCain, (R-Ariz.): "We're no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success...I do not want to keep our troops in France a minute longer than necessary to secure our interests there. Our goal, my goal, is a France that no longer needs American troops. And I believe we can achieve that goal, perhaps sooner than many imagine."
For those of you who are keeping score, France was invaded and occupied by Germany, while Iraq was invaded and occupied by the United States. And France, once liberated, was not occupied by the Allies. But other than that, and a few other little details, spot on!
Next, let's see how Senator Hitlery KKKlintoon (C-Sodom) does at beating off the Nazis:
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY): "For the past four years, we have continually heard from the administration that things are getting better, that we're about to turn a corner, that there is finally a resolution in sight. Yet each time, our allies fail to deliver. I think it's time to begin an orderly process of withdrawing our troops, start rebuilding our military, and focusing on the challenges posed in the Pacific."
By December of 1944, Soviet troops had wiped out the German army at Stalingrad, and seized Romania and Slovakia. Canadian and British troops, meanwhile, had participated in D-Day, among other many other hard-won battles. The expense and loss of life involved in these victories was staggering; it's unclear, to say the least, which country Greenburg sees as making a remotely analogous sacrifice in Iraq, even if we pretend for the sake of argument that this is a war rather than a kleptocratic occupation.
Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.): "Nobody's asking for a precipitous withdrawal, but I do think that it has to be a measured but increased pressure, and a diplomatic surge that includes Germany. Because if France can tolerate as normal neighbor-to-neighbor relations with Germany, then we should be talking to them as well. I do not believe we're going to be able to stabilize the situation without them."
See how desperate matters are? We are now in December of 1944, just a few short months from the official end of the war, and Barack Hussein Obama wants to make diplomatic overtures to Germany, instead of withdrawing precipitously from...where, exactly?
Beats me, but it's clear enough that a vote for Obama is a vote for the Thousand-Year Reich. Facts don't lie.
Note that this ethereal silliness is the prime export of the people who take the war seriously...as opposed to the dirty fucking hippies who are still wondering what the definition of "victory in Iraq" might be, because they don't understand that minor details like these will be taken care of in due time by Our Steely Resolve.
It does take resolve to prevail in an epic clash of civilizations, granted, but it also takes resolve to nail your dick to a tree. Telling yourself that you're nailing it to the Tree of Liberty with the Hammer of Freedom is a logical way to proceed, but that may not be enough, in itself, to protect you from the equally logical consequences.
That said, I truly do admire Greenburg's method, so I'll leave you with this excerpt from the recent Democratic debate, retooled for clarity and ease of use:
GIBSON: And, Comrade Obama, I want to do one more question, which goes to the basic issue of your commitment to the practical revolutionary-creative struggle for world communism. And it is a question raised by a noble worker in the village of Verbka in the Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine, a woman by the name of Svetlana Petrenko. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
S. PETRENKO, WORKER: Comrade Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the Communist cause. I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our tractor drivers, harvesters and textile workers wear a Stalin pin. I want to know why you don't.
[I]f society proceeds down the true path of eco-purity, we may well save the planet; but will simultaneously discover that life is too dull to be worth living on it any more. Women in particular, I fear, will find themselves returned to the Dark Ages.
How can it be otherwise? No skiing, no cars, no travel, no exotic foods, no extravagance, no Hollywood, no wasteful labour-saving devices, no clothes made of anything but recycled plastics and hemp. No more Luxx magazine filled with beautifully engineered, sleek, accessory porn.
There's the summum bonum for you in a nutshell: consumption, and plenty of it. Love, parenthood, friendship, knowledge, the comforts and terrors of art and religion and nature...none of it means anything at all, unless your mailbox is filled to bursting with catalogues advertising high-end lingerie, heated towel racks and electric nose-hair trimmers. Here we have endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful, none of which could ever grow stale or flat.
And what does "eco-purity" offer in return for the loss of this bounty? Chafed labia and cheap grace!
What is becoming so fascinating about the new puritanism is not just that we are all being brainwashed to accept the inevitability of hair shirts, but also their unquestioned moral worth. That somehow or other, this life of sackcloth and bicycles is going to benefit our souls and make us all better people.
Certain painful acts of renunciation deserve our respect, like saving oneself for marriage, or going without healthcare, or spending Sunday mornings at church instead of a truck-stop glory hole. But saving energy is just so...so...tawdry. And meanspirited, too; it's like saying we don't deserve endless growth and boundless consumption. Where's the pleasure in that?
Now, I happen to think that the "green design revolution" is occasionally too optimistic, or at least too wedded to the basic assumptions of hyperconsumerist chatterboxes like Melanie Reid. The last thing we need is a "green" version of this culture, with 100% recycled junk mail, and 100% sustainable sprawl, and solar nose-hair trimmers made by the tens of thousands in the Marianas. Design is responsibility, or it is nothing at all.
But the debate ultimately hinges on whether climate change is as serious as most scientists say. If it is, then with all due respect to Ms. Reid, the comfort of her nethers would be feather-light on the scale of things.
Which is probably why she dives immediately into denialism, via praise for David Bellamy, who has bravely challenged the prevailing orthodoxy by pointing out that it snowed a lot this winter.
David Bellamy...declared recently that the extended spring ski season in Scotland - deep, extensive snow cover, the best in a decade - could be proof that global warming does not exist quite as painted. He pointed out that the global high-temperature record has not been broken for a decade, and temperatures are now flat or falling.
Indeed, the impartial observer might see the harder weather - together with the recent bitterly cold winter in China and the Arctic - as a joyful thing: a sign that maybe things aren't that bad after all.
But oh no. This kind of heresy must be crushed.
I'll say. For helpful hints on crushing this kind of heresy, we could do worse than consult the burlap-clad neopuritan worrywarts at the The World Meteorological Congress:
The long-term upward trend of global warming, mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, is continuing. Global temperatures in 2008 are expected to be above the long-term average. The decade from 1998 to 2007 has been the warmest on record, and the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C since the beginning of the 20th Century.
The current La Niña event, characterized by a cooling of the sea surface in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific, is a “climate anomaly” part of natural climate variability.
The opinion of the WMO probably means little to Reid, who objects to being lectured on climatology by "climate-change academics," particularly when "they announce, in as menacing a tone as Abu Izzadeen, that we ignore what is happening 'at our peril.'"
You can see her point. Who wants to be dragged down by all this talk of "peril," when there's vitally important shopping to be done, and the cool caress of silken underthings to enjoy? Besides, climatologists only say these things because it pays their bills, just as aspirin manufacturers only make aspirin because people get headaches. It's all so obvious when you think about it.
It's not the lies that bother Reid, though. It's not even the absurdity of trying to meaure the "hypothetical waste" emitted by cars ("how is it possible?" she asks, her eyes wide as saucers). It's that goddamn hemp lingerie:
My real problem with the eco-alarmists is the pleasure they take in austerity; their evident desire to strip away pleasure....They dislike colour, excess and fun. They really do want to see us imprisoned in a narrow, grey, scratchy world of recycled car tyres and hemp lingerie (and no, I didn't make that up).
At last we've reached the center of this labyrinth. Climate denialism is a feminist issue, and here's why:
Who will be the victims of the eco-smug; of this pious gospel of make-do-and-mend? Why, women - who will have to forgo their washing machines and their dish washers, carry supermarket shopping on the bus, and return to the horror of reuseable nappies.
In other words, women will suffer because they'll have to continue doing "women's work," which apparently becomes unjust and onerous only when it involves reuseable diapers. You can't get much more radical than that, even if thy name be Dworkin.
I suppose you could argue that men ought to be helping out with these chores, where applicable, whether we're headed for a grey eco-socialist dystopia or not. But I suspect that'd only provide further evidence that the "climate hoax" is part of a massive social-engineering experiment that'll simultaneously force women back into traditional roles (that they haven't actually left), and emasculate men by forcing them to change diapers instead of working in steel mills and fighting the Hun.
I'd love to discuss this at greater length, but right now I have to put on my hemp underwear and lick the dishes clean.
Familiar steps on the twilight stairs, the sight of Bornella anguilla, An open window at which sweet hope stayed behind -- All this is inexpressible, O God, we fall to our knees, shaken.
