Planet on Fire

I just finished Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math by Bill McKibben in the Rolling Stone. It begins:

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the “largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.” The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.

…Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I’ve spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.

So Climate Change Deniers, in case you missed that, the chance that our hellish weather pattern is the result of chance is statistically ZERO. It’s time to stop arguing about whether or not climate change is a reality and to start working as frantically as Bruce Willis at the end of an action flick to avert our destruction. This is due to some very stark math:

• 2 degrees Celsius – the amount nations agreed to in Copenhagen as the maximum rise our biosphere could tolerate and still (maybe) maintain civilization as we know it. We’re at 0.8 C increase right now and computer models calculate that even if we stopped increasing CO2 now, the temperature would likely still rise another 0.8 degrees … and 2 degrees C might actually even be too high.
• 565 Gigatons of carbon – how much can be burned before we hit that 2 degree number – 16 years is how long it will take at the current rate.
• 2,795 Gigatons of carbon – how much is already on the books of energy companies, enough to raise temps 11 degrees Fahrenheit and create a planet straight out of science fiction. Energy companies are already treating that as extracted, borrowing money and setting value and it’sFIVE times what’s necessary to destroy our way of life.

McKibben continues with a look at what strategies have failed and what might possibly work. It’s clear that to have any chance, we must treat this issue as the single greatest threat to our society we’ve ever faced … because it is.

The photo is High Park Fire by The National Guard. See more in their 2012 Wildfire Response slideshow.

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Warren Buffett calls his own bluff … by not bluffing I guess

“I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions.”
~Warren Buffett

Late last summer, Warren Buffett broke ranks with most of the other dedicated men and women of Occupy the Top 1% and called for more taxes for top earners. Senator Mitch McConnell, a millionaire in his own right and champion of the uptrodden, said that if Buffett was feeling guilty about his tax bill, he should send in a check. Senator John Thune rushed to the rescue with the cynical Buffett Rule Act, placing an option on tax forms allowing people to donate more in taxes to help pay down the national debt. In an interesting new TIME interview with Rana Foroohar, Buffett says:

“It restores my faith in human nature to think that there are people who have been around Washington all this time and are not yet so cynical as to think that [the deficit] can’t be solved by voluntary contributions,” he says with a chuckle. So Buffett has pledged to match 1 for 1 all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. “And I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell,” he says. That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million. As Buffett put it to me, “I’m not worried.”

I wouldn’t be worried for my money if I were Buffett either.

The photo is by Aaron Friedman.

#occupywallstreet

Check out the livestream channel via Adbusters. The images look like they might have come from any of the protests that are sweeping the world. Do you think we’re heading into our own “American Spring”?

Here’s a photo from the occupywallstreet slideshow on Flickr.

The photo is by David Shankbone who has his own photographic coverage. On his blog he writes:

The cops arrested over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters today, and the people on this post are the kinds of people they are slamming around. Today Zennie Abraham said in a video posted on the San Francisco Chronicle‘s website that the Goethe girl photograph above has “signaled the start of a movement”:

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has something the Tea Party could never claim to have: hot chicks at its protests quoting Goethe. This woman, photographed by David Shankbone during the protest at Wall Street, looks like a cross between Laura Croft and Norma Jean. It’s possible to see a whole line of fashion spring forward just from this photo – the latest in protest wear.

Additionally she, whoever she is, totally alters the image of the female protestor: gone is the dirty-haired earth girl with hairy arm pits; fashion models take to the streets.

We are winning the race to the bottom

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, directed the UN Millennium Project and was Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. In short, he is one leading international economic advisors in the world.

In Stop This Race to the Bottom on Corporate Tax he writes that we surely need to reduce deficits but in a fair, efficient, and sustainable manner, by levying higher taxation on those who are enjoying a boom in living standards and a share of the national income unprecedented in modern history:

With capital globally mobile, moreover, governments are now in a race to the bottom with regard to corporate taxation and loopholes for personal taxation of high incomes. Each government aims to attract mobile capital by cutting taxes relative to others. Governments like Ireland have created tax havens that drain revenues from the rest and act as conduits to tax-free Caribbean hideaways such as the Cayman Islands. The rich are doubly benefited: by the underlying market forces of globalization and by their governments’ policy response.

Another reason for the lavish attention to tax cuts at the top is of course the tawdry role of big money in political campaigns. No country tops the US in shamelessness. US national campaigns cost several billion dollars every two years, and fundraising is relentless. The main difference between the two parties is that Big Oil tends to finance the Republicans while Wall Street tends to finance the Democrats. Otherwise, both parties are in the hand of big-money interests that exacerbate the dangerous inequalities opened by globalization.

The end result is that both the US and UK are battling deficits of about 10 per cent of gross domestic product. The situation in the US is far graver. Total government (federal, state, and local) revenues as a share of GDP in the US are now 32 per cent, roughly 9 percentage points below the UK and 15-20 percentage points below countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, which all have much lower budget deficits (or a surplus in the case of Norway) and highly effective public services.

Read the rest and really: can anyone tell me what the hell our elected officials are thinking as they dismantle our public services and hand billions and billions MORE of our children’s future income for massive personal and corporate tax cuts to those who already have so much more than they need?

Our priorities, it seems to me, are for shit.

The photo is Sudane Famine from cliff1066™. It was taken by Kevin Carter of The New York Times and won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. I don’t think it needs any explanation.

dealing with the collapse

Scott begins:

just returned from visiting family in south Florida. They are experiencing a collapse in real estate that, in some measures, is more severe than Detroit. What is troubling for the sunshine destinations is their economy seems to be premised mostly on people moving in. They don’t really make anything in south Florida and this time the troubles in the rust belt are so severe we are not providing the grist for their economy – people with U- Hauls.

Click to read his solution to get both economies humming again.

I find myself thinking more and more about this sad sorry mess that all of us are in and wonder how a paltry $30 billion settlement is going to ever make up for the destruction of our economy. It’s like Wall Street just blew a hole in the Federal Reserve and calmly walked away with our money and the public discussion is whether or not they should have to pay for repairs to the vault.

Cabbages, Cows & Carbon Free Current

I keep hearing an argument against wind farms is that they are ugly. I can’t understand that. To me, ugly is more like this.

What is it going to take for us to invest in wind and other alternative energies the way we do in fossil fuels. How much is that, you ask? According to The Ecologist:

Subsidies for oil, coal and gas sectors were six times higher than those for renewable energy in 2009, the latest International Energy Agency (IEA) assessment has revealed

Ending government subsidies for fossil-fuels is the best way of cutting demand and stopping rising carbon emissions from the energy sector, says the Paris-based IEA, which urged the money to be switched to supporting the renewable sector.

Total subsidies paid to support fossil fuels amounted to more than $312 billion in 2009 in comparison to $57 billion in support for renewables. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India and China accounted for more than half of all the coal, gas and oil subsidies.

The photo was taken by southgeist, and is awesome. See the whole photo right here.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as “intelligent risk”

My sister has been scanning in family slides and I have been crazy busy, working on our Taste the Passion and Traverse City Wine & Art Festival Winter Wine Wonderland events closing our office in Leland (where we’d been piling up stuff for 12 years) and opening an office at the Village at Grand Traverse Commons aka Building 50. Here’s my porch.

I believe that my dad is explaining to me the finer points of being a stock broker.

Ch-ch-ch-chia & Challenge

It’s been a while since my last post of any great substance, and why stop now. In addition to this rather bizarre Photoshop manifestation, here, in list form and as fast as possible, are my thoughts on the President in Chia Chief:

1. Yes we can … grow herbs and sprouts from our President’s HEAD! It’s ChiaObama – $19.99 worth of crunchy and nutritious fun!
2. Someone told me yesterday that it was nice to be a nation under adult supervision again, and I think it’s interesting that the Republican Party chose to respond to Obama’s speech with the almost cartoonish response of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal telling us that Katrina says that government can’t help you. Maybe the real message is that a directionless and antiquated government from the 1930s can’t help you. I was shouting at the TV that Gov. Jindal just needed a button-down sweater to get the role of Mr. Rogers. Jon Stewart saw some similarity as well, which you can see in this Daily Show excerpt (warning: graphic baconnaise)
3. That Daily Show excerpt and the Word Cloud of Obama’s speech to Congress both come courtesy Jason Morrison, who generated a great Obama v Jondal Word Cloud face-off. He made the cloud at wordle.net and has written about the utility of tag clouds. It’s interesting to look at these small to see the major themes: “Plan now, health economy every time new America” and “Republican need government Washington anything strengthen Congress” jump out at me from 10,000 feet.
4. I have been full of hope that the massive waves of crisis that are buffeting the world will allow the Obama Administration and people at all levels of society and government to make the really profound changes that are necessary for our growth and survival. I think that’s what Maureen Dowd was getting at in her latest column.
5. Obama’s radio address seems to show that he is indeed ready for a fight along those lines: The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people. I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November.
6. I found the images for this post on a Flickr search for “obama” licensed under the Creative Commons for commercial work. I thought it was interesting that the first five results had the theme or subtheme of buying something Obama-related. The person who posted the framed picture of Obama also has a food blog featuring all kinds of Pacific food including Hawaiian, something I’ve never tried. Can we expect to see chains of Hawaiian eateries springing up?
7. I also thought it cool that one of the “Nerds for Obama” was wearing the cool astronaut boombox shirt that one of the girls at the Merc was wearing yesterday. Viviene (pictured above)  has started a company called Polka Dot Robot. While PDR doesn’t sell Obama gear, it does offer these Monster Hoodies.
8. I made this post into a cloud.
9. In conclusion, I’d like to ask what you will grow in your ChiaObama. I think mine will be basil … or hope & change.

Lift up your heart, all will come right

Lift up your heart, all will come right
Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice
will be born again the glory of mankind

Obama has nothing on Churchill (or watch the video)

Few video makers have anything on Michael Gregory aka YouTube user schmoyoho. This video is called Winston Churchill backed by band from the future and he has so many more.

A tall order

Bob Herbert says Stop Being Stupid:

….(Bernie) Madoff summed up his activities with devastating simplicity. He is said to have told the F.B.I. that he “paid investors with money that wasn’t there.”

Somehow, over the past few decades, that has become the American way: to pay for things — from wars to Wall Street bonuses to flat-screen TVs to video games — with money that wasn’t there.

Something for nothing became the order of the day. You want to invade Iraq? Convince yourself that oil revenues out of Baghdad will pay for it. (Meanwhile, carve out another deficit channel in the federal budget.) You want to pump up profits in the financial sector? End the oversight and let the lunatics in the asylum run wild.

For those who wanted a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood, there were mortgages with absurdly easy terms. Credit-card offers came in the mail like confetti, and we used them like there was no tomorrow. For students stunned by the skyrocketing cost of tuition, there were college loans that could last a lifetime.

Money that wasn’t there.

The other day upon the stair, I spent some money that wasn’t there … then I woke up to find it really wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. Now all of us – even the ones who managed their money well – have to spend even more money that isn’t there. Herbert says we have tremendous choices as to how we use that debt and thinks:

We should use it to invest in the U.S. — in a world-class infrastructure (in its broadest sense) to serve as the platform for a world-class, 21st-century economy, and in a system of education that actually prepares American youngsters to deal successfully with the real world they will be encountering.

I think he’s right.

The photo is Leonard and Ova years later by anyjazz65, whose immensely entertaining account begins:

Leonard had emptied that case of Michelob he’d carefully hidden in the lawnmower shack at the corner of the back garden. Now while lying in his driveway counting stars and got fascinated by the light bulb at the top of the flag pole in his front yard. He became convinced it was an alien space ship and that he was about to be abducted and experimented on in ways he mostly wouldn’t like.

Leonard jumped up (always a mistake) and ran for his life. In just three strides he ran full face into the steel garage door which he’d left rolled half open. (Or half closed, depending on your point of view.) Leonard’s face stopped running while the rest of Leonard continued on toward the Studebaker.

When Leonard came around again, he stood up catching the top of his head on the garage door, which understandably was still there. He reeled and tumbled again this time striking the back of his head on the Studebaker’s back bumper.

I think you need your head examined if you don’t read the the rest, check out other pics & stories in the Talking Pictures set (slideshow) and (most important) over at Lost Gallery.