The most important thing to know when you have a problem is to know that someone can do something about it. It’s called hope. As the Coalition of the Greedy and the Ignorant smash up the planet, it’s not just a question of stopping them. it’s also a question of offering practical, targeted solutions.
Once such is the Foundation for Climate Restoration*, whose admirable initiatives are well covered by Santi Carneri in El Pais today.* Their essential aim is to restore the atmosphere to preindustrial levels of CO2 by 2050. That’s about 300 ppm, give or take the odd ppm. Nice aim, guys-but how are you going to make that one stick? Well, their aim is to bring in all stakeholders-business, governments, ONGs, religious groups and ordinary citizens, to make the elimination of CO2 commercially viable. That’s the key bit for us: give enough people a selfish motive and the common good will result. The ghost Adam Smith will be cheering from the sidelines. The organisation’s website and Santi’s piece will give you some good reading; once again, we want to get out of the way. What impresses us is the array of stakeholders that they are bringing in. We particularly like the Canadian firm Carbon Engineering, whose link is posted below.
Children of the nineteen-sixties will recall the famous Waddington’s board Game Risk. It was simple enough. The world was divided into 42 territories via five continents. There were six players. The aim of each player was to launch aggressive warfare and acquire sufficient armies to crush all other players and achieve world domination. (On the up side, we learned the names of faraway places like Irkutsk and Kamchatka).
Well our world of the twenties is not so different, except that now the weapons can be financial as well as military. The two principal players are the USA and China. The question that worries US policymakers is: what sort of financial cards is China holding?
As every schoolchild knows, China has been buying up US debt big time. There current holdings are estimated at $1trillion-about 5% of US debt. What would happen if they suddenly liquidated.if things got nasty over Taiwan, for example? In a fascinating article for The National Interest, Scott B MacDonald discusses the effects on markets, countries and economies. That means every person reading this.
Ask anyone about the Australian Dream, and most people will come up with the same sort of picture: a world of modern suburbs with huge gardens and herds of SUVs. Where everyone is hardworking and prosperous, enjoying endless summers of barbecues and sport. Where the beer and chardonnay are ever-flowing and the only problem is the odd huntsman on the wall.
There’s a lot to like about it: democratic, unpretentious -with ordinary people at last coming into their own. But, unless Australians are very careful, it may be impossible to sustain. Emily Cadman in Bloomberg Green* describes how uncontrolled development in the age of global warming, may be making the great city of Sydney uninhabitable. Already temperatures in the west of the city are reaching 50 degrees, and you can find yourself hit with eighty on the tarmac in a car park. Roads melt, violence soars-and some people die from the heat. That’s before the bush fires.
We at LSS have always admired a lot about Australia. The essential egalitarianism, the blokeish no nonsense spirit, toughness of their sports teams. It is a dream worth preserving- but sometimes even dreams must be adapted.
“Is there Life on Mars?” sang David Bowie in the nineteen seventies. Try fitting the word “Venus” into that song at all necessary points. Because astronomers have now announced that the discovery of the gas phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus may be evidence of life on that planet. We include two articles from El Pais for your links. You may want to use a translator. But for once we can translate the entire content of both articles for you in a single word. CAUTION.
We have seen so many false dawns in the search for extra-terrestrial life. In the late nineteenth century Percival Lowell, then using the best telescope in the world, thought he had discovered a whole civilisation on Mars. There were the Viking results of 1976, which after initial excitement faded into “not proven”. Remember the Martian fossils twenty years later?
We at LSS once had the privilege of working alongside some of the best forensic scientists of their day. (we emphasise alongside, not as!) And the problem they faced was the same as these space scientists. You get a data point. It is real. Obviously it has implications; and once you think about these you are speculating by definition; you have moved out ahead of the data. How far can you go safely? The answer that the forensic scientists gave was very simple; don’t go very far; always apply the rules of logic; if possible, do more tests.
We at LSS have a sneaking hope that the results do prove the existence of life on Venus. But until more is understood about the chemistry of phosphine, particularly on hot, high pressure worlds like Venus, we think it is best to reserve judgement.
photos courtesy of pexel, the superb free image service
It isn’t often wen get a ray of sunshine in times as gloomy as these, but we couldn’t stop ourselves from congratulating Google on reducing their corporate emissions to zero. (tell them to look at the link below-Ed.) Funny how that company has so crept up in our lives and language! “What was the total exports of industrial resin molds from New Brunswick 1997-2011? Oh, I’ll Google it!” “How many times did Royal Engineers defeat Woolwich Arsenal in the Cup Final? Google it!” It’s a verb now meaning to search on the internet, and deservedly so. Even its competitors are just pale imitations, like Prosecco compared to Moet et Chandon. And if you remember Ask Jeeves, then you must be an Oasis fan.
According to the article from the BBC*, Apple and Microsoft are now hurrying to following suit. Haters of capitalism might not like it, but really big companies can show the way. Unlike certain governments, they are not in hock to various special interests. How long now before other organisations and corporations of high ethical standards follow suit? How about Saudi Aramco? The Southern Baptist Convention? News Corp? We await with pleasure. Meantime, we are off to google some tea bags and milk, as we fancy a cup of tea.
Europe in 1945 was devastated. A cataclysmic economic crash was followed ten years later by a destructive war. Millions had had been killed in action or in ethnic cleansings. Cities were ruined. Pattern of trade and credit were shattered. The Soviet Union, led by sociopathic dictator Josef Stalin, was gobbling up the countries of Eastern Europe. There seemed little to stop them spreading the rule of totalitarian communism to the west.
Into the chaos stepped US Secretary of State George C Marshall. Ably assisted by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (you won’t have heard of him: being Labour and a Trades Unionist, he has been written out of history) a Plan of colossal size, imagination and, let’s say it, generosity was instituted in 1948. It cost $15 billion; that’s an eye watering $3 249 billion in todays money. But it saved Europe, and as Keynes might have said, it saved the world. Cities were rebuilt, trade restarted and prosperity began to rise. The ambitions of Russian Dictators were thwarted-well, for a couple of generations anyway.
There are strong parallels between 1945 and now. Following the crash 0f 2007-08 the economies of the world are in a febrile state. Poverty and inequality are rising. Healthy international trade is failing. Economies are only kept alive by ad hoc, panicky government interventions. Yet the tasks we could achieve are both immense and possible. If accomplished they could lead to a world as broad and sunny as the postwar decades, when everyone (at least in western countries) was enjoying some of the fruits of prosperity and freedom.
It is in this light that we take very seriously the call for a new Green Marshall Plan. We quote from Larry Elliott of the Guardian. But you should find this covered in most world media today Here are the key extracts:
The …. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will next week publish a report….. on behalf of an advisory panel including the chief economist of the Bank of England, Andy Haldane; Robert Skidelsky, the biographer of Keynes; and Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at University College London…….
The report will call for policymaking to be based around four objectives: environmental sustainability; rising wellbeing (rather than simply higher incomes); lower levels of inequality; and more resilient economies.
The [aim} is to harness the best of the market – its ability to adapt and innovate – with the power of the state in order to bring about economic transformation
Some of our more elderly, nervous readers are becoming anxious about the activities of the more, ah, how to put this?-enthusiastic– members of the green movement. All we can say is that the adoption of the OECD plan would cut the ground from under any number of muddy, well-intentioned feet.
The collapse of reason and the trend to people just shouting at each other, either in the street or on the internet, is a trend we have returned to several times at LSS. (Apocalypse-now And Discommunication LSS 13 9 2020). Why do rational arguments not prevail? Why do facts bounce off people like shells off a well- armoured tank?
Now Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire may have stumbled on an important piece of the jigsaw. Reading though a journal called The Hill, via the excellent Apple News, he came across an article by one Neil Baron. Ostensibly about Mr Trump, as you would expect from a journal whose remit is to cover the comings and goings in the Congress of the United States. Riffing yet again on the deep entrenched positions of Mr Trump’s supporters and opponents, the authors suddenly strikes gold. Psychological gold. Read this:
Other Americans and people throughout the world ask, why do these people stick with Trump? Behavioral science suggests some answers.Social psychologists note that the longer and more fiercely we need to defend our decisions, the more difficult it is to admit we’re wrong.
and:
According to the cognitive dissonance theory, a conflict between what we do and what we believe creates anxiety we need to alleviate. The conflict between the rampant criticism of Trump and his supporters’ tenacious defense of him has created that anxiety. So they alleviate it by shunning information inconsistent with their support and embracing consistent but false rhetoric such as the “deep state,” “fake news,” the pandemic “hoax” and the QAnon conspiracy.
Neuroscientistsusing brain imaging found that the reasoning areas of the brain shut down when confronted with information inconsistent with one’s beliefs and that the brain’s emotion circuits light up when supporting information is introduced.
Here at last may be the deep explanation of discommunication, where both reason and facts fail. It’s wired inside us, like the hardware in a badly designed computer. And sinister people know how to trade on it. The task before the intelligent, rational, above all empirical readers of LSS is to find ways to fix the problem. We welcome suggestions.
For anyone who still tries to deny the reality of man-made climate change, and its devastating consequences, the terrible fires sweeping the West Coast of the United States should be the final proof they need to abandon their beliefs.
Today El Pais (Signs of Apocalypse)* lists half a million people evacuated, 15 dead and dozens of missing. The temperature in Death Valley last year reached an all time world record high of 54.4 degrees C. Meanwhile previously stable climate cycles have started to fluctuate wildly and dangerously.
It’s not as if El Pais is a woolly green polenta-and sandals journal of way-out environmental activists. It’s a sober reflective essentially centrist outfit whose overwhelming mission is to lower the temperature, at least in politics. Shame they can’t do it in Oregon. Tonight Sir David Attenborough considers the wider aspects of the problem on BBC*
Which is another case in point. That most anodyne of institutions is now the subject of vituperative outpourings of hate and bile, with its defenders beginning to occupy equally entrenched positions. Same for Black Lives Matter. Extinction Rebellion. Brexit. Why the collapse of reasoned discourse, and the advance of discommunication, where people just yell at each other, learning nothing, teaching nothing? We believe that our most empirical communicant, Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire and a magazine called The Hill may have stumbled on the beginnings of an answer.
As we write these lines, the covid-19 infection rate is starting to shoot up fast in the UK again, very fast indeed gentle reader. We are not epidemiologists, or microbiologists or virologists, or rappers, so we’ll stop the lyrics there. But only a fool would deny that that the return to close associations of people in pubs, shops, railway stations and a myriad of other locations has been behind this. But we have studied a little history, and there’s one system, still on the edge of living memory, that might help a lot.
In January 1940 the then Conservative Government introduced rationing in the UK, starting with bacon, butter and sugar. Subsequent governments went on to extend it to other foods, and many other goods, during the conflict. In fact it was so successful that the last goods did not come “off ration” until 1953! The key lesson for our time is how they made it work. When you got your ration card (and everyone did, from the King down all the way down to the workers) you were allocated one shop, with whom you registered. That was where you went for your ration. And the Government made sure that the shop had enough in stock to supply your needs.
Imagine how much easier Track and Trace would be now if everyone only went to one shop. These days it would be much easier as large supermarkets now supply nearly everything under one roof. Rationing need only apply to second order but essential things like food and clothes. Really vital national supplies like beer, wine and gin (to name but a few) could stay “off coupon”. Eventually, as a vaccine(or vaccines) arrive, the system could be slowly lifted, as it was after the Second World War.
We feel that a scheme could prove exceptionally popular among our friends who voted for Brexit, as they often cite the glories of the war years as proof of their cause. The advances in health and equality which were brought about by wartime rationing are indisputable. If there are to be shortages of some goods after Brexit (and we think the jury’s still out on this one), then what better way to see the nation safely through? From every point of view, it has to be worth a try.
In these days of massive climate change, species extinction and pollution, we should all be recycling more, throwing less away, and making more of what we have. We at LSS are no strangers to this spirit. Our aim tonight is to show you how to make use of leftovers that nobody wants to make some delicious cocktails. Get some vitamin C. And save the planet
Orange
Look at the half used carton of orange juice lying forlorn in your fridge. Going to chuck it? Or how about making a delicious Harvey Wallbanger? 6 ice cubes. 1 measure vodka. 0.5 measures galliano. 3 measures of orange juice. Yes we know you should normally use the juice of real oranges- but this is an emergency!
Lime juice
Got an old bottle of lime juice you were using in the hot weather, but is now burning space on a the shelf? Burn it up with Lime Gin Fizz . 5 ice cubes 2 measures white gin 1 measure lime cordial sparkling mineral water to top up. Watch the ice melt and think of the glaciers in the alps, where you won’t be going skiing any longer.
Prosecco
Remember when you bought a mini prosecco in Sainsbury’s, because it seemed a good idea in 2017? Since when it has lain unused among the onions and old courgettes at the bottom of the fridge? Send it to heaven with a Blue Prosecco. Just pop the wine into a flute glass, add half a measure of blue curacao and a cherry to decorate!
There, you’ve done your bit. Now kick off your shoes, sit back and relax, it’s Friday night.
The ideas for this week are based on The Ultimate Cocktail Book, Hamlyn, 2002
