President Eisenhower On Disarmament

“Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight”…

COP21 And The Distribution Of Wealth

January 1, 2016

Background
COP21 is a pragmatic face-saving agreement for politicians, nothing more. Essentially, signatory nations have agreed only to commit individually and severally to maximum annual carbon emissions. Reporting the results is mandatory, but unlike global lending institutions that routinely force helpless quasi-bankrupt governments into painful austerity programs in exchange for new credit, COP21 lacks a comparable mechanism with biting consequences to force all nations to at the very least meet their own goals. Once again, economic considerations trump the need to stop using fossil fuels altogether. It’s not lack of technology; it exists. It’s the losses that multinational fossil fuel corporations and nations behaving as such fear they’ll suffer if that happens. As Bill McKibben accurately and convincingly explained back in 2012, the world’s proven reserves of fossil fuels are almost five times larger than the amount of carbon we could safely burn without increasing the world’s temperature more than two degrees centigrade. In other words, 80% of these deposits, valued at between $10 trillion and $20 trillion, would have to be left in the ground. For all intents and purposes they would become nonperforming assets.

Let’s put this in perspective. The Great Recession of 2008 saw the Federal Reserve embark in a program of “quantitave easing” –a euphemism for creating over $4 trillion from thin air (so far) to keep the economy afloat. In contrast, the loss of fossil-fuel related wealth could well top $20 trillion, depending on the price of fuel, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Banks, insurance companies and institutional investors, among others, invest in fossil fuels. As a result, the sudden loss of so much wealth would likely send the global economy into an unstoppable dive. That’s why COP21 could not possibly require nations to stop using fossil fuels, and it didn’t. And yet, either we do precisely that or humankind will likely be swept away along with the great mass-extinction of species currently under way. We’re running out of time.

Roots
Anthropogenic climate change is a byproduct of capitalism. The latter fueled and nurtured the Industrial Revolution, a culture of consumption that requires hoarding –not sharing- of natural resources wherever they may be based on the erroneous belief that perpetual growth of throughput is possible in a finite world. Worse, it allows and encourages the unlimited accumulation of wealth by a small elite –the net worth of Marcus Licinius Crasssus is said to have been equal to the total annual budget of the Roman treasury- who use the power of money to influence the electoral process and control the government. Compare that with conditions in the U.S. today.

It is undeniable that the widening gap in the distribution of wealth is a clear and present danger to the U.S. and the world. Like magma, it seems to have the relentless, unstoppable ability to go where and when it will. While it is true that some distinguished institutions and economists have proposed concrete steps to reduce it, they seem to suggest that new laws and regulations -both reversible- will suffice. Here’s the question: if anthropogenic climate change and the yawning gap in the distribution of wealth are byproducts of capitalism, doesn’t that suggest it’s the latter that needs fundamental structural changes?

Choices
Humanity is at a crossroads. One fork –unrestrained growth of carbon emissions exacerbated by low prices and population growth- leads to certain extinction. The other is an economically feasible, self-sustaining, multi-prong, all-out effort to simultaneously halt (and eventually reverse) global warming and the widening gap in the distribution of wealth. It envisions gradually replacing fossil fuels with solar, gravity and hydrogen to generate electricity and manufacture a drought-proof new source of unpolluted water anywhere (sorely needed to irrigate the world’s great deserts, plant vegetation and sequester the carbon already in the atmosphere), compensate for melting glaciers (for example, France and the Andes), replenish dwindling aquifers, and avoid increasingly severe droughts –and the wars they’ll potentially ignite. It can be done. It should be done.

John Hylan, Mayor of New York

March 26, 1922
“The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation… It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business…These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country.”

Making COP21 Work

December 15, 2015

President Obama and Secretary Kerry have made the case that developing nations account for 65% of carbon emissions, and that consequently even if industrialized countries were to stop using fossil fuels instantly, now, that would not bring global warming under control.

Statistically they are correct, but that’s not the whole story. For example, the reason that China is now the number one polluter is because the U.S. and Europe have essentially outsourced to it much of their pollution. Were they to repatriate the factories (and the well-paying middle class jobs) to their respective countries to pre-1970 levels, their pollution would likely far surpass China. Accordingly, the argument that each country must rely on its own resources to reduce emissions significantly does not recognize our complicity and responsibility, as consumers, to help those who make the products we use stop using fossil fuels.

The most effective way to reduce emissions to zero is to usher in the age of hydrogen, the only energy carrier that produces water as a byproduct. However, not all countries have the necessary natural attributes to produce a surplus, and countries with larger populations, particularly India and China, need as much hydrogen as they can get from potential natural exporters, at least for the foreseeable future. Conversely, the U.S., Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean islands, South America, all the Mediterranean countries, New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, Iceland and Hawaii, to name a few, are potential natural exporters of hydrogen as outlined in Plan A. It’s not a question of lack of technology or investment capital (there are trillions of dollars searching for worthwhile investment opportunities). The real problem is fear that the switch would kill the petrodollar, with all its consequences, and that mountains of wealth that would be redistributed. But it can be done in an orderly fashion. And there’s no choice.

Paris FCCC 2015 Final Agreement

December 12, 2015

The Paris conference is over, and member nations have unanimously adopted a resolution to keep global mean temperature within 1.5°C of that which existed before the industrial era and to help needy nations cope with the effects of global warming.

Pundits are already criticizing it due to its vague clauses and lack of legally binding mechanisms forcing nations to perform in a specific manner. The criticism is a serious analytical mistake. They should keep in mind that it is primarily a political framework among sovereign nations to cooperate against a deadly common enemy. As such, each nation must contend with internal political forces that may or may not seek to derail the agreement, with potentially catastrophic ramifications. Foremost among them is the United States, the world’s 2nd. biggest polluter, where some Republican candidates and members of Congress refuse to even accept that anthropogenic global warming is indeed real. In fact the current Congress would likely not ratify a treaty, and it still may well become become a political football in the upcoming elections. Under the circumstances, given the (still) enormous American footprint in the world’s political stage, this agreement is pragmatic, defensible and achievable.

In economic terms, which will define each nation’s speed and methods to cope with its share of the burden, the treaty is actually an even bigger victory. As the only effective way to limit carbon emissions is to quit using fossil fuels, the treaty’s purposeful vagueness will encourage competition among the more enlightened to find a way to export renewable energy to the biggest consumers, China, the U.S. (and eventually) India. Enter hydrogen, the only energy carrier with a matchless ability to produce pure water as a byproduct. In addition to enormous energy needs, all three markets urgently need a new, permanent source of water. All it will take is any one nation to start producing as per Plan A; as the profits mount, and everyone else will want a piece of the pie.

Making Paris 2015 Successful

December 11, 2015

As at Copenhagen, the sticking point in Paris is money –who is going to pay how much so the entire world won’t look like Beijing during a red-alert smog storm. The real issue is not money per se but that the world’s powers are reluctant to simply walk away from oil and coal and the fabulous wealth and power they represent. If they truly are as committed as they say they are to do what it takes to save us humans from becoming extinct, all the U.S. and China have to do is switch to hydrogen as outlined in Plan A; at first for generating electricity and later for mobile applications. This is not complicated. Hydrogen is clean, renewable (and thus inexhaustible), and its precious byproduct, water, can transform the driest desert into a dense forest. No fuel can do that (hydrogen is an energy carrier, nature’s battery, not a fuel).

Everyone knows there is an intractable, stubborn Republican opposition to treaties or agreements that would threaten the wealth of their constituents, and that some among them are more than eager to ensure the President fails to achieve anything, particularly a legacy-defining project. But nothing prevents the government from partnering with other nations as a form of foreign aid, for example, to outsource the production of hydrogen. Competition is a basic, powerful element of free enterprise. Used correctly it should encourage others to do the same.

Source of the U.S. dollar

The U.S. has had a debt-based banking system since 1864. As a result, it is currently impossible to extinguish government debt without simultaneously extinguishing our money supply. The Federal Reserve, established in 1913, is a for-profit corporation owned by private member banks. It has no reserves to back up the Federal Reserve notes that constitute our common currency.

Here are the thoughts on the subject of some of history’s most illustrious minds .

President Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte
“The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain.”

President James Madison
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”

President Abraham Lincoln
“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government’s greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles … the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.”

Prince Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, Chancellor of Germany
“The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world.

The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots… I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America, and use it systematically to corrupt modern civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance.”

President Andrew Jackson
“It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners… Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?… Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence… would be more formidable and dangerous than a military power of the enemy. If government would confine itself to equal protection, and as Heaven does its rains, shower its favor alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.”

President James Garfield
“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

Thomas A. Edison
“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, where as the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.”

President William McKinley

Debt-free currency issued by the Government, not a private bank
“…There is another duty resting upon the national government – “to coin money and regulate the value thereof.” This duty requires that our government shall regulate the value of its money by the highest standards of commercial honesty and national honor. The money of the United States is and must forever be unquestioned and unassailable. If doubts remain, they must be removed. If weak places are discovered, they must be strengthened…”

President Theodore Roosevelt
“These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.”

John Hylan, Mayor of New York, March 26, 1922
“The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation… It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection… To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business…These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country.”

President Woodrow Wilson
“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled governments in the civilized world –no longer a government by… a vote of the majority, but a government of the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

President Dwight Eisenhower

…we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad…

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight”…

President John F. Kennedy
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment…”

The South China Sea & Climate Change

11/24/2015

Background
So what does the South China Sea have to do with climate change, the yawning gap in the distribution of wealth and income and the approaching water crisis? In a word, everything.

In “Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea And The End Of A Stable Pacific,” Robert D. Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor and former member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, masterfully examined some of the reasons why the South China Sea is so crucial. But other powerful esoteric forces are at play –fear of economic collapse and loss of oil supplies being two of them- and they are steering the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies and the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses, toward a terminal collision course.

The American Perspective
The United States emerged from World War II with nearly half the world’s GDP. With victorious Britain nearly bankrupt and Europe, Japan and the Soviet Union in ruins, American industry had no competition. But that situation changed. Overspending in the Korean and Vietnam wars, a defense budget larger than the next 10 nations combined, the space program, and growing domestic entitlements led to a massive devaluation of the dollar. The day of reckoning came in 1971 when President Richard Nixon cancelled the dollar’s direct convertibility to gold. However, in an effort to prop up the value of the dollar, Nixon negotiated a quasi-mercenary deal that in exchange for arms and protection Saudi Arabia would denominate all future oil sales in U.S. dollars. Subsequently the other OPEC countries agreed to similar deals thus ensuring a global demand for U.S. dollars and allowing the U.S. to export some of its inflation. Since these dollars did not circulate within the country and were therefore not part of the domestic money supply, economists felt another term was necessary to describe the dollars received by petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) in exchange for oil. Accordingly, Georgetown University economics professor Ibrahim Oweiss came up with the term “petrodollar,” and it stuck. The rest of the world soon followed, and today all currencies are “fiat.” The difference is that they’re all compelled to earn dollars to pay for the oil they buy. Only the United States Federal Reserve, a privately owned non-governmental entity, is authorized to create dollars at will. This enormous power creates an illusion of safety that investors worldwide have historically flocked to and (still) allows the government to perpetually borrow however much it wants at bargain rates. Its only “restraint” is the debt ceiling, set by Congress, which is routinely raised as needed to accommodate the perennial budget deficits.

Overspending, like gambling, is an addiction, and it has consequences that can be postponed but not avoided. Nixon’s shock happened at a time when America’s industrial base was still relatively intact. Over the last 45 years the manufacturing sector was essentially outsourced to nations with lower labor costs and the American middle class collapsed.

To illustrate, 50 years ago America’s largest private sector employer was General Motors. Its full-time employees made an average $50/hour in today’s dollars, including benefits. Now GM manufactures and sells far more cars in China than in the U.S. Today’s largest private sector employer is Walmart, with 1.3 million employees. Beginning in February 2016 its employees will earn roughly between $9.90 and $24.70 an hour, many without benefits. Think about it. Today’s highest-paid employees make half what the average employee made 50 years ago, and most of the outsourced manufacturing jobs were traditionally filled by men. This devastated non-rich American families, roughly 90% of the population.

The collapse of employment in American manufacturing coincided with the rise of the financial sector.

The new game in town became figuring out new ways make money from money -as fast as possible. The trouble of course was that only those with money could play it.

As a result, median income remained flat or declined while corporate profits skyrocketed. This disparity allowed the latter to influence the electoral process, the government and even the courts to pass laws, adopt policies and legal decisions such as Citizen’s United that favored them at the expense of the mass of the population. Today a symbiotic relationship exists between the government and a tiny number of plutocrats who collectively account for roughly 50% of political contributions that has all but eviscerated what remained of our democracy. Their priority is to protect the all-important financial sector, controlled by a minuscule minority, by attempting to perpetuate the military status quo.

China
China’s spectacular growth over the last 30 years relied on its (then) low-cost labor pool to out-compete foreign manufacturers of consumer goods and entice them to build factories in China, not on attempting to control the world’s oil resources and financial system. This resulted in the world’s largest reserves of hard currency and a vast trade surplus with the United States. But its success, though on an exponentially larger scale than Japan and South Korea, cannot compensate for two strategic weaknesses.

Currently China is not self-sufficient in oil and, despite its peerless South-North Project, its water resources are insufficient to irrigate its arid western half, a necessity to provide living room for its dense eastern half and potentially at least double its economy. Like its industrialized Asian peers, this oil shortage currently compels it to rely on the good will of the U.S., which currently controls the oil routes between the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca and on to Japan, and Russia. As a result, China is vulnerable to currently not imminent -but neither unforeseen- events that might conceivably result in either partial or complete disappearance of one or both of these vital oil sources. Given the magnitude of the risk, it is not difficult to understand why China insists on claiming almost all the South China Sea. If not there, then where, and if not now, when?

Ominous Fears
What we have then, is a clash of vital interests. The U.S. cannot afford to lose the only real collateral supporting the value of the dollar –its perceived ability to control and protect the western shore of the Persian Gulf and keep the oil lanes open. Similarly, China cannot afford to pass by a real opportunity to achieve oil independence. For both then, oil is the bedrock of their economies. Not only that, in the U.S. at least, most of the oil stocks are controlled or owned –directly or by proxy- by the same small percentage of the population that controls the financial sector.

The nature of the approaching collision between their vital needs is such that it is difficult to see how they might reconcile them. Indeed, President Obama’s “pivot” to the area and China’s effort’s in the military arena clearly indicate that neither is particularly optimistic about reaching a compromise. Accordingly, there is no evidence they support an all-out push to introduce a low-tech scheme to replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission with hydrogen to generate electricity, at least not in the near term. This despite the fact that hydrogen is the only energy carrier with zero emissions which is what’s truly needed to halt or even reduce them. Our fate is literally in their hands.

Financing Climate Change

October 30, 2015

Background
At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Convention an impasse emerged. Nonetheless, wealthy nations finally committed to provide poor nations with $100 billion by 2020. So far, little or no cash has actually been disbursed, and as it now stands the world’s temperature is on track to increase by 4 degrees Celsius, not 2. Last week, at preparatory talks in Germany for the upcoming all-important Paris meeting in December 2015, it became painfully apparent that money threatens to collapse the Paris talks even before they begin. This time inaction is not an option.

Paying For Climate Change
The issue of who should pay how much for the cost of containing Climate Change and its consequences should be linked to the principle of proportional responsibility that all nations –producers and users- bear for not having factored into the price of manufactured goods the damage to the environment since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, the cost of mitigating and adapting –insofar as is humanly possible- to the consequences of Climate Change should be viewed as a tax with penalties and interest levied by mother Earth on humans for disrespecting the environment, and even if we all pay our share the damage already done is so egregious our survival is not guaranteed. Furthermore, no one is blameless. Manufacturers profited financially, it’s true, but users greatly benefited from and enjoyed the many products and gadgets that improved productivity, created jobs, provided unprecedented comfort, safety and speed, and relieved billions from tedious, backbreaking labor. Thus, the tax should be allocated based on historic and current emissions. For example, there is no comparison between Malawi’s per capita carbon emissions, 18 Kg/year, and the United States, 17.5 metric tons/year.

The Political Landscape
It should be noted that the $100 billion agreed to in Copenhagen is public money, not private. That means all taxpayers within the contributing nations are being called upon, once again, to subsidize the shareholders and executives of the industries that profited the most from the Industrial Revolution. Even so, no one is presently floating the idea of levying a retroactive tax on accumulated capital to redress that slight. Public funds in today’s United States are almost always the product of bitter tugs of war between two parties that have not balanced a budget since 2001 and who routinely add to a perpetual debt –now exceeding $18 trillion- despite President Jefferson’s warning. As a result, unheralded items like Climate Change must compete with armies of lobbyists and well-funded political donors who believe themselves immune to its ravages. That explains why, despite its undisputed lethality, Congress has not seen fit to appropriate however much is realistically necessary to combat it.

Plans
That Climate Change is a clear and present danger, not just to the Unite States but to the entire planet, is not in dispute. What is not known is how severe the consequences are going to be, partly because a lot still depends on what we do, or perhaps more accurately, on what we fail to do. In 2013 and 2015 President Obama announced concrete actions to combat Climate Change. In March this year, Secretary Kerry stated, among other things, that the solution to the problem is “energy policy.” Regrettably, that will not resolve the chronic shortage of surface water in the Great Plains, the Colorado River basin and California and the apparently irreversible depletion of our largest aquifers. Unless this budding calamity is promptly addressed, inevitably it is going to lead to a massive decline in food production, forced mass migration from the southwest to the east, and a host of demographic, social and economic consequences. Barring unforeseen events such as a permanent El Niño that might transform southern California, Nevada and Arizona into a tropical rain forest, Climate Change is going to aggravate these water shortages, and no one anywhere has announced specific plans to address that. Therefore, if we really are serious about these issues, we’ll have to make some profound, unprecedented changes commensurate in scope and magnitude with the problem at hand. Firstly we’ll need adopt and implement a specific, feasible plan to replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission with hydrogen, even if it hastens the end of the petrodollar –which is in any event inevitable- regardless of the consequences. Secondly, we’ll have to muster the political willpower –which implies broad financial support- to fund that transition. Thirdly, we’ll need to create a new economic order based on the estimated $17 trillion budding renewable energy market, not oil, to combat the gaping abyss in the distribution of wealth and income that President Obama so eloquently described.

Financing Climate Change
Proportional responsibility requires a formula that calculates historical and current emissions by each country. The biggest polluters would be responsible for their portion of the accumulated CO2 but they would be relieved of the obligation to assist poor low polluters. Instead, private capital would be recruited and encouraged to invest there to help them transition to solar to produce and export hydrogen from electrolysis of seawater. That way wealthy countries with weak or intermittent direct sunlight or inadequate shorelines would have a stake in the $17 trillion renewable energy market, and low emitters would have a new infrastructure to help lift them out of poverty.

President Obama on Inequality

October 23, 2015

Excerpt of President Obama’s full remarks on mobility and inequality on December 4, 2013.

…I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American. It’s why I ran for President. It was at the center of last year’s campaign. It drives everything I do in this office.

The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income — it now takes half. Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today’s CEO now makes 273 times more. And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country.

But this increasing inequality is most pronounced in our country, and it challenges the very essence of who we are as a people. Understand we’ve never begrudged success in America. We aspire to it.

The problem is that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished levels of upward mobility in recent years. A child born in the top 20 percent has about a 2-in-3 chance of staying at or near the top. A child born into the bottom 20 percent has a less than 1-in-20 shot at making it to the top. He’s 10 times likelier to stay where he is. In fact, statistics show not only that our levels of income inequality rank near countries like Jamaica and Argentina, but that it is harder today for a child born here in America to improve her station in life than it is for children in most of our wealthy allies — countries like Canada or Germany or France. They have greater mobility than we do, not less.

The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough. But the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care, or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us and it should compel us to action. We are a better country than this.

So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility.

For one thing, these trends are bad for our economy. One study finds that growth is more fragile and recessions are more frequent in countries with greater inequality. And that makes sense. When families have less to spend, that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative bubbles.

And rising inequality and declining mobility are also bad for our families and social cohesion — not just because we tend to trust our institutions less, but studies show we actually tend to trust each other less when there’s greater inequality. And greater inequality is associated with less mobility between generations. That means it’s not just temporary; the effects last. It creates a vicious cycle. For example, by the time she turns three years old, a child born into a low-income home hears 30 million fewer words than a child from a well-off family, which means by the time she starts school she’s already behind, and that deficit can compound itself over time.

And finally, rising inequality and declining mobility are bad for our democracy. Ordinary folks can’t write massive campaign checks or hire high-priced lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor at everyone else’s expense. And so people get the bad taste that the system is rigged, and that increases cynicism and polarization, and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self-government.

So this is an issue that we have to tackle head on.

WikiSolver

Economic & Political Solutions

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