The National Centers for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released an international report detailing the following dismaying facts:
Greenhouse gases highest on record.
Global surface temperature highest on record.
Global lower tropospheric (the troposphere is the area just above the Earth’s surface) temperature highest on record.
Sea surface temperatures highest on record.
Global upper ocean heat content near-record high.
Global sea level highest on record.
Extremes in the water cycle and precipitation.
The arctic continued to warm, sea ice extent remained low.
Antarctic sees record low sea ice extent.
Global ice and snow cover decline.
Tropical cyclones were well above average overall.
The United States officially notified United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres of the country’s intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change as soon as it is eligible to do so.
A study from the University of Washington shows only a 5% chance that Earth will warm 2 degrees or less by the end of the century and a 90% chance that temperatures will increase by 2.0 to 4.9 degrees Celsius.
A study in The Lancelet Planetary Health journal found that weather disasters could kill as many as 152,000 Europeans a year if greenhouse gas emissions and extreme weather events are not controlled. The study covers the 28 countries of the European Union plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
According to the 2016 World Economic Forum, “the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which includes developments in previously disjointed fields requiring college degrees such as artificial intelligence and machine-learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3-D printing, and genetics and biotechnology, will cause widespread disruption not only to business models but also to labor markets over the next five years.”
Clearly these technologies are designed to increase short term profits by eliminating jobs. Therefore, absent a specific mechanism to counter their cumulative effect, workers worldwide are facing a painful transition of unprecedented magnitude as arduous, repetitive and even dangerous occupations are absorbed by the ongoing rise of the machines. Our government’s fixation on boosting military expenditures, which already exceed the next seven nations combined, its aversion to redistribute wealth, its undisguised eagerness to dismantle the last vestiges of FDR’s New Deal, and its staunch refusal to concede that climate change will force humanity, one way or another, to stop using fossil fuels, will toss future generations into a spiral of despair and hopelessness, a breeding ground for revolt.
The economy is the glue that binds modern societies into cohesive states. Accordingly, a majority of the people must have a reasonable share of income and wealth. Unfortunately a decline in disposable income, which is where we’re headed with the new technologies, will reduce the buying power of consumers, and they account for seventy percent of the U.S. economy. Therefore it behooves the government to organize, but not necessarily fund, a more egalitarian system designed to give most people the means to consume. That would be good for the government, which would collect more tax revenue and reduce safety net expenses, good for the working class, which would have the means to make ends meet, and good for the elite since the masses would have more disposable income to purchase their goods and services.
Enter Distributed Electricity
In 1880, at the height of the Victorian Era, Thomas Edison figured out how to create a pure vacuum in his bulbs, and in so doing, created the first marketable design. However, his revolutionary concoction required a permanent round-the-clock supply of electricity. In response, state-regulated, shareholder-owned power plants and distribution grid monopolies were created. Eventually the demand for electricity became so large that fossil fuels, particularly coal, had to be used. As with other for-profit enterprises, the new utilities had to compete in the capital markets. They did (and still do) that by offering competitive rates of return to shareholders based on the price of electricity. The system worked well because it had no real competition, until now.
Universal Income is a necessity, however the government ought to organize and regulate, but not pay for it. In a nutshell, solar energy, hydrogen and gravity combined can potentially end using nuclear fission and fossil fuels to generate electricity. Public utilities could be relieved of their mandate to generate electricity. Instead, for a fee, they would operate, maintain and expand as needed the distribution grid. All new and existing residential, commercial and industrial buildings would be required to generate a surplus of electricity from solar power during daylight hours and be equipped with batteries for nighttime operation. Profits from the sale of electricity, hydrogen and freshwater would be distributed to property owners rather than utility shareholders. The profits would be used to help prospective and existing homeowners amortize their mortgages, end the housing crisis, create non-temporary well-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced or exported, and improve the economy at large. The system is explained in detail here.
The World Economic Forum (2016) warned that “the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which includes developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence and machine-learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3-D printing, and genetics and biotechnology, will cause widespread disruption not only to business models but also to labor markets over the next five years, with enormous change predicted in the skill sets needed to thrive in the new landscape”.
Many aquifers are being rapidly depleted throughout the world, and this does not factor in climate change. Case in point, the southern portion of the Ogallala Aquifer, a prime agricultural region in the U.S., is estimated to have no more that 20 years left. Simultaneously, according to the United Nations, the world’s population is expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. All of these additional mouths will need to be fed, yet food production will necessarily decline for lack of water with which to irrigate the fields.
It is the responsibility of those in power everywhere to address this impending catastrophe; not doing so, by extension, borders on willful negligence to protect their people from preventable genocide. This begs the question, how many governments, large or small, have it in their agenda to address this issue, solely or collectively? How many are considering, even if only as a pipe dream, the possibility of diverting funds from the merchants of death to the peasants and farmers that feed us all?
The comings and goings of the Trumps and Clintons are but skillful distractions from the grave issues afflicting our country and the world: climate change, the global water crisis, the flat-out refusal of the world’s nuclear powers to eliminate humanity’s sword of Damocles, the lack of commitment to a concrete timetable to stop using nuclear fission and fossil fuels to generate electricity, the demise of Aristotelian democracy –and above all- the abysmal inequality of wealth and income.
None of them are ever on the agenda of any administration –regardless of party affiliation. Instead, they purport to tackle consequences, not causes. Take for instance, health care. One reason why it’s necessary to tax the rich to subsidize the poor is because the latter can’t afford the stratospheric premiums and deductibles, a function of inequality. The same applies, of course, to all other services for the poor, a phenomenon formerly the exclusive domain of minorities.
Another example is the housing crisis. The government’s exposure –through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and VA, among others- to the $10 trillion real estate market is roughly $9 trillion. That means the government’s interest in it is congruent to the banks, investors and homeowners. They all want and need ever-higher prices.
That’s absurd. In California for instance, there are no cities of comparable size between Greater Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Furthermore, surprisingly, Eureka (estimated 2017 population: 26,727) is the largest town between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. Prices are high not because there’s no vacant land to build on but because the supply of housing is kept artificially low to keep prices high. In other words, the economic system itself is cannibalizing our children and grandchildren. Despite nonexistent job security and low wages, they’re expected to simultaneously take out enormous non-dischargeable student loans and pay outrageous housing prices or rents. No wonder household formation is as low as it is and muffled, compressed dissatisfaction permeates the country. For the first time in our history over 50% of women live alone, and with only 5% of the world’s population, the United States consumes 80% of the world’s opioids.
Then there’s the South China Sea. An enormous percentage of the world’s trade passes through it, no argument there. What kind of trade? Surely it’s not that we’re protecting our exports –we hardly make anything anymore. It’s our dual-use, strategic imports that matter. We are now dependent on factories that American industrialists moved from the U.S. to Asia, a self-inflicted wound. Now we are in the position of having to contain and subdue China, a country 10,000 miles away with four times our population, incomparably lower college costs, and a GPA growing at 6% per year. To say the least, a daunting task.
There’s a silver lining. The G-19 countries that purportedly support the Paris Agreement have a golden opportunity to persuade the U.S. to hop back on board; not with ineffective rhetoric but with deeds. All they have to do is commit to a specific timetable to use hydrogen from the ocean instead of fission and fossil fuels to make water and electricity. As described in Plan A, that should do the trick.
Yes indeed. This 1912 (the age of coal-fired Dreadnought class battleships, railroads and factories, few horseless carriages and no airplanes) Popular Mechanics article accurately described anthropomorphic climate change and warned us of its consequences. No one listened, no one cared, and here we are, rushing to the precipice of extinction.
Will today’s elite be willing to pay the price of walking away from nuclear fission and fossil fuels or will they choose to doom humanity -including their progeny- to extinction?
