Carbon taxes

(Based on an email to my dad about the climate change debate)

Quoting Jeff Turcios

'We all want to live in safe and clean homes, in safe and clean neighborhoods and even in safe and clean cities. But the minute the conversation gets expanded to a global scope we suddenly don’t care. Maybe it’s because we don’t care. Maybe it’s because the minute it’s not our problem it’s not a problem. Maybe having a comfortable life at the expense of others and other things is okay by us. I hope for our sake we don’t find ourselves on the other end of that transaction.'

I agree that from an individual's, a town's or a city's perspective, 'environmentalism' is inefficient and annoying. But from the larger perspectives of those who make national and international policy - waste and it's effects can't be placed where it not in someone's backyard. They either try to address it or ignore it. The first environmental book ('Silent Spring') started a movement around the idea that there are unintended consequences of some of our actions that effect living beings on our planet other than ourselves (ourselves could be 'us' individually, or 'us' as a human species). So on one hand, I think environmentalism comes naturally out of empathy, out of the golden rule. If you can conceive that the planet's living beings are a family, things like DDT, ozone, acid rain, the london smog, leaded gasoline etc. and maybe even global warming has and/or will hurt or killed innocent living beings, then it might be 'right' to adjust some of our activities so that these exposures are prevented.

But on the other hand, this empathy can be ridiculous if taken to far. So, as an individual I like the idea of keeping as many animals around that live 'in the wild' as possible. Let's save the whales and all endangered species I say. Yet, I still go around killing roaches around my sink though they are surely living 'in their wild.' I think this obvious contradiction of mine is similar to the one you point out about global warming. That is, if it is true, which will not be proven until it happens I agree, global warming would be only a consequence of the way we live vis a vis the way we are. This is parallel to the fact that killing roaches is a necessity to have a home I can live in (even with my Buddhist tendencies.)

Anyway, I am skeptical about global warming being accurately predicted, and about its effects. It feels right to me that we should have some reverence for our world and its living things. But at the same time, I must keep my apartment clean of roaches, and I do not expect the lion to lay with the lamb. We will be who and what we are. But there are some things that make sense where almost everyone wins - i.e. using more solar power, wind power, water power (white water rafters don't like this one though) instead of burning fuel or avoiding leaving your car running, leaving your lights on, throwing away perfectly good food. Maybe even some disincentives to using carbon fuels to shift to 'renewable' resources so that oil rich countries do not have a monopoly .. I'd support carbon tax to help shift peoples' choices toward more sustainable practices, I don't think there needs to be global warming to think that.

I think what makes us humans different in the family of beings on earth, is we can recognize the effects we have on things and we can adjust ourselves slightly. I.E. an international carbon tax in the case of burning fuel, and for me a move to a new apartment without roaches.

The Maldives or Niger

I'm sure all of you have heard of the Maldives but may not know exactly where they are. They're a group of tropical islands south of India. Check the green blur on the globe. Most people heard of these islands after the 2004 Tsunami that put the whole country underwater. The rest of us heard about it during recent international political debate when this country was predicted to be the first country needing abandonment because of Climate Change and creeping sea levels.

Well, the Maldives came up during a Climate Change conversation at my recent last dinner in Dublin. A new friend (one whom does not hail from the oldest city in the world) and I were discussing how the citizens of the Maldives would one day have to leave their paradisical islands. We talked about how kind the world would be to take them in because of their unfortunate elevation. She then asked me how the sea rising is different from the difficulties people in developing countries throughout the world are having right now. I listened to her, considering the many living in places with starvation, disease burdens with poor health care, unemployment, and unfertile land.

The world would accept the refugees of the Maldives, would they not? Sure, maybe we can stop this whole Climate Change thing and there will be no Maldivean refugees. Maybe we can even reverse and give the Maldives a little more elevation, but I digress. Well, I think the world would open their borders for these theoretic Climate Change refugees. But then I ask, why then aren't we saving the slowly sinking ships of today. The only way to save these ships I think is to give them harbor. Are there some places where less people should live in? Are there some places where more people could?

Advice from Aleppo

While on my recent trip to Dublin I met a new friend. He is originally from the oldest inhabited city in the world, Aleppo, Syria. And he has a lot to say, both in person or via technology. His many words taught me a few things. Consider this profundity -

You must accept your donkey.

'Disease' in the best sense of the word

Life is a fatal sexually transmitted congenital disease.

- paraphrase of Professor Sam McConkey, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland

You know, it's true. Yet, it still seems to be a gift.

Circular Insurance

The Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) is broke after doing its job - covering our bankrupt American banks for up to $250,000 per depositor. The FDIC needs a loan and guess where it's thinking of getting the money?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/business/22bailout.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fdic%20broke&st=cse

Yep, it's going to take a loan from healthy American banks. It seems odd to me that the FDIC is going to take a loan from the same pool of money that it insures.
Consider:
Would I borrow money (paying interest) from the millionaires living in the hills east of LA in order to be able to provide them home hazard insurance at an affordable (i.e. discounted) price? Would I do this even when each summer the Santa Anna winds of those hills blow by the 'Fire Risk' signs with the dial pointing to red? And what if I actually had just recently loaned the millionaires some of the money that they are loaning back to me so they can meet their cost of living in those homes. And what if the money I loaned the millionaires so that they could loan it back to me so that I could insure their fire imperiled homes was money I borrowed from an unborn generation.

Sorry, maybe that's a bad analogy ..

but to continue, Maybe there is something more important than trying circuitous paths that attempt at our previous direction, one of complex financial tools and transfers used to make it impossible to know who is left holding the bill. Maybe we should make more of an effort to live according to our means. And maybe we shouldn't have homes in fire infested hills.

Owners of strollers

On a recent morning while walking I passed a neighborhood cafe. Sitting outside on the sidewalk adjacent to the entrance was a stroller in which sat a young child. She was probably a girl or a particularly cute boy who must have been less than two. There was a woman walking from the direction of the stroller who I naturally thought was mom or guardian, that is until she decided to cross the street without looking back. Thankfully the wheels of the stroller were perpendicular to the slope of the sidewalk, though as I passed I couldn't see some sort of leash that would secure the stroller. She looked up at me as I passed. I couldn't help but think 'I hope her owner comes back soon.'

I'm only going to say this once ..