Posts Tagged ‘wall street’

Copenhagen’s “I have a nightmare”

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Ok, so are we exaggerating global warming?

No one would have followed Martin Luther King if he had said “I have a nightmare”, as mentioned by energy secretary Ed Miliband.

We have to be careful that we don’t scare off would be joiners with too much hyperbole.  Admittedly, I am an extreme advocate of climate change.  We need to unite in being good to this earth.  It has been so good to all of us.  I am  hopeful that the decision makers representing the world in Copenhagen are uniting in the dream — and not denying the nightmare.

Side note and a bit of irony –> more than 1200 limos are being called in from all over Europe to meet the delegates, officials and presidential demands of the Copenhagen climate summit.  Too cold to ride bikes I guess.  The “economic growth” advocates ie: Republicans for continued pollution, will be represented by US Senator, Jim Inhofe

We all know the nightmare –> So many pictures of people riding bikes in China through polluted air with face masks.  Stories of asthmatic children in the Bronx breathing diesel fumes.  Photos of decapitated mountains in West Virginia and the subsequent coal muck escaping in to small towns.  Growth was so big and so fast that sewage spilled in to drinking water in Florida.  Many fists pound many tables when you suggest that things need to change.

Polluters love muddling the facts, and making fun of the nightmarish scenarios.  Some scientists  actually feed the machine that is profiting currently.  The collaborative machine of industry, shipping, air flights, hospitals, manufacturers, and on and on are horrified by the idea of changing energy production and usage. We have evolved to need stuff, rather than just water, food, shelter and coffee.

Many of them don’t think of themselves as polluters but as providers of jobs.  Many of them simply don’t care as long as stock holder profits are improving.  No such thing as a sustainable status quo in the stock market.   We just need to make change less horrifying and point out the advantages to health and stocks.

So lets describe the dream… Andrew Gilligan wrote an article for the telegraph.co.uk…” Copenhagen is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilized pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism”.

Costa Rica produces 99% of its energy from renewable sources, reversed deforestation and is aiming to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021 by combining its ministries of energy and environment, and abolishing its army.  Ok abolishing armies will probably never happen world wide, there will always be bad guys to fight.  We can dream though.  Other small island nations such as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica are also fairing well in levels of health and a very low footprint.

A Gristy guide to the COP15 climate talks
I agree with Mr Miliband that we need to stop delivering “the sky is falling” message.   Stop being so full of ourselves because we are hanging our clothes on the line and carrying our water in a glass jar.  We need to help young smart people get in to colleges that promote environmental engineering and require environmental awareness in their curriculum.  Industry and manufacturing can make products sustainably.  It can be done and is being done. Lets study how they’re doing it.  Lets study the countries that are successfully achieving sustainability.
I think there is a little island country — the maldives?  They are trying to figure out how to keep their sea turtles and their tourists happy.
bora-bora-22bora-bora-21


There are many nightmares to learn from.  Bhopal is a nightmare to remember.  Do you remember?  A cloud of poison gas leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in the middle of the night and drifted over the Bhopal slums killing thousands.

The coal industry is doing the same thing Union Carbide did when they convinced India that the big new plant they were going to build in Bhopal was going to make their lives better and they’d be happier.  I’m not saying we should forget the nightmares, lest they happen again.  Just, maybe, focus more on the dream, lest we lose our focus.


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Posted in environment, politics, science | 0 Comments

My smart friend Fred

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

explain the economy
http://imgfave.com/view/80764

I never really understood economics and whenever I try to I go to my smart friend Fred.  He has a way of putting things in terms I understand.   So I was asking him about some claims on the internet.  They claim that if you really want to be wealthy you subscribe to their read and they will show you how President Obama and Washington are undermining our ability to have wealth.

http://www.moneynews.com/streettalk/laffer_depression/2009/09/24/264142.html?s=al&promo_code=8A63-1

I forwarded it to my smart friend Fred and this was his response.

Money has no intrinsic value. It is a medium of exchange and a temporary store of value. Emphasize “temporary”.
If you hold money you lose value as it inflates, which it almost always does because government can’t resist using inflation to pay for its excesses of spending over its ability to tax. Remember the Bush tax cuts when waging an expensive war.

Too bad the government ran a deficit when the economy was booming. Now we need a bigger deficit to stimulate a bad economy. This is inflationary and we will see our money buying less in the future.

Don’t hold money. Hold items with intrinsic value like real estate, stocks, and even gold, though this does not earn a return.

Don’t pay attention to this crap. It’s just scare tactics to get you to buy a useless book.

Fred

So the federal government does with our money like what we did with our equity of our homes?  Imaginary income that we used to buy new carpet, or a pool.  They use imaginary income, be it inflation or equity, and buy stuff — like wars or healthcare.

I suppose “imaginary income” is one way of putting it, and yes, there is a similarity.  However inflation is a little different than the bubble of inflating home prices.  With a bubble the price of one thing (a durable item) goes up faster than the price of everything else; usually because people believe it will keep going up.  Eventually the bubble bursts, the price falls, and the people holding the item lose wealth.

Inflation is where the money price of everything rises because money is worth less. People holding money lose, which is virtually all of us. It isn’t so bad unless inflation gets so high people run from money.  In some countries, Germany
 in early 20th century,  people were paid wages twice a day and given time off in mid day so they could go spend it before it lost too much value. Are you kidding me?

I shouldn’t date myself this way, but when I was a kid the price for a loaf of bread, a pack of cigarettes and a gallon of gas were all 25 cents. A big wad of bubble gum was a penny.  Prices are now about ten times for these things except for cigarettes which the government has taxed much higher than the other items. The one-tenth value of the dollar has been so gradual that we didn’t notice it much, except in the late 60’s and 70’s when the government took steps to control inflation.

As a kid I recall people (my father often), saying ‘I remember when a dollar was worth a dollar.’ So now I say, I remember when a dollar was worth 50 cents.  Today that makes it worth about 5 cents.

I don’t mind if you use the exchange on your blog.  I’ll try to keep it clean.

Fred
happy Fred

So OK I understand that economics is about the value of money.  My GOP friends don’t want reforms from Washington because they are afraid it will tap in to their own personal wealth.   Personal wealth is the money you hold and the stuff (items with  intrinsic value) you own.  What should be done differently?  Maybe we need to change our value system.

Another explanation that I could understand regarding economics today in this country was from Bill Maher.
How about this for a New Rule:  Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures.

Some things we just didn’t do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn’t used to define us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html

I also received a response from Stacey Derbinshire at

and am including her link as it was helpful to me

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Posted in Uncategorized, economics, money, politics, why do you let things bother you | 0 Comments

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