Integrated Man

Got Reality? Climate Change, Energy and Public Policy

And so it begins, the unraveling of 'concerted ignorance' by random pulses of reality.

Two interesting articles appeared in the online edition of The Economist last week. The first, Why Don't Americans Believe in Global Warming? sought to understand why the U.S. is persistent in failing to come to grips with the reality of Climate Change. 

The second, Are Economists Erring on Climate Change?  ,explored the discomfort of economists in coming to grips with an issue that defies the logic and comfort of their statistical foxholes.

SOTU: The speech I wish Obama had given

President Obama's State of the Union Speech had many promising elements, but ultimately failed when it desperately needed to succeed. It's primary failure was in obsessing on a future too vague. Its corollary failure was in presenting energy investment as a virtue rather than an existential necessity. He could have done better, because no doubt he knows better.  And in the context of SOTU, Carol Browner's departure seems hardly a surprise.

What follows is the speech I wish he had given:

Got Energy? The State of the Union

Today's Politico carries a piece by Darren Samuelsohn and Darren Goode entitled "President Obama Pressured to keep energy focus in State of the Union Address". I applaud the basic thrust of the recommendation, except that the premises for its propagation grossly understate the urgency of the issue. At the risk of repeating themes of previous blogs, it is worth yet again belaboring a few points.

Specifically, it's not just about creating jobs through a 'clean energy' economy. And it's not just about assuring our energy security against the whims of OPEC. It's about the fact that the very basis of our economy runs on energy resources which, from whatever sources, are depleting faster than our capacity to replace them. Unless we come together on that fundamental understanding, we will all hit the wall together in an energy crisis worse than the one we now face in the collapse of Capitalism's economic calculus.

Got Energy?

This has been an interesting week on the energy front.

The price of energy has jumped due to a confluence of temporary events including:

- unusually cold weather including the week's major storm across the US which left only one state untouched by snow;

- record flooding in Australia which has crimped its coal production and jeopardized its major customer, China;

- a leak and temporary shut-down of the Alaska Pipeline;

- an unseasonal persistent increase in the price of gasoline, and the impact of energy costs in general on the consumer price index.

These were the 'tactical' issues on the energy front.  Some of the subtler ones are more strategic, and of greater long term concern.

Capitalist Papers 10: The future of Capitalism

Greater minds than mine have addressed the issue of Capitalism, its flaws and future, with greater insight and sophistication than I presume to bring to the subject in these 10 posts. But at the end of the day, or millenium, or whatever, the fate of Capitalism will be determined, not by elegant postulations, but by the simple conclusion of whether it has done more good for society than damage.  It don't make no nevermind how much chrome is on the car if the engine don't run.  At this time, I submit that there is no reason to believe that Capitalism is immune to the fate of Communism. 

But that is not destiny. If Capitalism is to survive in anything approaching its current form, it must evolve to a higher form of consciousness.

 

Cool Hand Barach

When your friends are your enemies, and your enemies are no worse than your friends, you're in a pretty secure place:  things can only get better.  So it seems to be with the Big O.  Both sides have painted him as a patsy. To a degree, he seems to encourage the portrayal. But I wonder if he's rope-a-doping the oppositions; the Republicans more than the liberal Democrats.

 

Capitalist Papers 7: CPR for the US Economy

"Business hates uncertainty", so observed Wilbur Ross on CNBC, 2010/08/31.  A true statement. One rendered specifically in explaining why so many capitalists are sitting on piles of cash while the U.S. economy is prostrate and employment stagnant. 

The irony of the statement is in its juxtaposition against the oft stated assertion by many US executives that their excessive salaries just compensation for their 'risk-taking', even though those risks are rarely taken with their personal capital.

This brings us to the conundrum of the US economy and the way forward. To be Japan or not to be Japan; that is one of the many questions being raised. Do we wait for the capitalist system that so magnificently got us to where we are today to lift us to the promised prosperity that we can no longer take for granted?  Or do we look to a demonized government that failed so miserably to protect the public's interest to jump-start the economic beast at the public's long term expense?

Climate, Energy, Economics and Policy Entropy

Copenhagen is concluded.

Hamlet's question has been answered with respect to Global Climate Change policy: not to be.

If Kyoto can justly be ridiculed as commitment without accomplishment, Copenhagen must be considered a step back from that.

I do not blame President Obama for this, as many are more than willing to do.  The failure is so large that no one leader or nation can fairly bear it alone.   The question is: where to from here?

Ridin' to the City on Acela

If I were poetically or musically gifted, this blog would glide to the cadence of Arlo Guthrie's 'Ridin On The City of New Orleans'. But I'm not so gifted, so you're stuck with my stilted prose. 

Nonetheless my recent ride to New York City from New Haven on Amtrak's Acela summoned the same wistful, mournful tones of Guthrie's ballad, with perhaps a touch of irony borrowed from Peggy Lee's 'Is That All There Is?'.

Swiftboating Climate Change

The assassins are about.  They're gunning for the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and their weapon of choice is a 60 megabyte down-loadable file, courtesy of Murdock's Wall Street Journal, of hacked correspondence from the server of the University of East Anglia. Correspondence goes back thirteen years. 

I have not read any of the items, nor do I intend to.  The news stories reveal little of surprise or interest. It's not news that universities have in their midst high-strung personalities whose egos too often overwhelm their intelligence and professionalism, not unlike business and government. Nor is it surprising that researcher's might be tempted to cleanse the data of those pesky little anomalies that introduce niggling little doubts about their pet hypothesis, not unlike business and government.  Nor is it surprising that Climate Change True Believers would want to exclude Deniers from the debate, much as Deniers have wanted squelch advocates.  None of this is news, and none of it required an electronic breaking and entering to reveal known and knowable flaws in the debate. But one senses the fit and feel of another Swift-boat assault on the truth by the forces of ignorance and deceit, with the Birthers, the Tea-Partiers and the Palinista's bringing up the rear.  The timing of this so close to the beginning of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen is more than suspect.