Pandemic and Storms: Two bad news stories suggest our escape window just got smaller

“It’ll be alright.” Somehow, we still cannot admit the the enormity of what we have brought upon ourselves. That clever scientists will still find a way to save us from the mass pandemics and climate change caused by our endless greed for stuff-cheap food, bright shiny junk, empty experiences-that most people persist with, like drunks dancing blindfold on the edge of a precipice. Well here are two stories which indicate that salvation may already be too late.

Winds wreck renewable energy plant. Two things we have always known. That renewable energies offer the only practicable salvation from runaway climate change. And that extreme weather events, caused by all the global warming we’ve already had, are growing worse. So where’s the way out, if those self-same hurricanes and things start tearing down the solar farms which might save us? Proof that this is already happening comes from this article by Richard Marsden of the Daily Mail. Apparently the Porth Wen solar Farm at Llanbadrig in Wales has been ripped apart by the recent Storm Darragh. Wind turbines were torn down too. It’s one plant in one location-so far. But to us it feels like being in a car where the act of going faster weakens the brakes. How scary is that?

Next Pandemic waiting in the wings. The desire for cheap greasy chicken has led to the mass incarceration of birds in crowded unhealthy conditions which make ideal breeding grounds for new viruses. We’ve warned before about the dangers of the H₅N₁virus on these pages (LSS 25 11 24. 25 4 24) Now a new study, reported by Kai Kupfer in Science suggests the virus is frighteningly close to jumping the barrier into our species Get this:

If the world finds itself amid a flu pandemic in a few months, it won’t be a big surprise. Birds have been spreading a new clade of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, 2.3.4.4b, around the world since 2021. That virus spilled over to cattle in Texas about a year ago and spread to hundreds of farms across the United States since. There have been dozens of human infections in North America. And in some of those cases the virus has shown exactly the kinds of mutations known to make it better suited to infect human cells and replicate in them.

There’s more, much more. It’s a fantastic article, we’d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn a bit of basic virology. But the writing is not just in the articles. It’s now very clearly on the wall.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14175033/Storm-Darragh-UKs-Biggest-solar-farm-pieces.html

[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-hasn-t-bird-flu-pandemic-started?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=8caf16c576-nature-briefing-daily-20241209&utm_mediu link via Nature Briefings

#pandemic #virology #global warming #extreme weather events #renewables

Tariffs: Like it or not, Trump has captured the spirit of our times

President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300037) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

“Tear down your wall!” This was the gauntlet which US President Ronald Reagan threw down to the Communist bloc in the 1980s. It was a harbinger of times to come. Reagan was the leader of the Neoliberal programme, by which he meant that trade: the free flow of goods, services, capital and people would bring undreamed-of levels of prosperity and confine the memory of the restricted economies of Socialism to the dusty bookshelves of the History Faculty. Remember the 1990s and all those endless negotiations on GATT and the World Trade Organisation, as the good times rolled? The world was to follow the principle of Comparative Advantage, as advocated by David Ricardo, with each nation specialising in what it did best.

Yet the Neoliberal model contained the seeds of its own downfall, as we have noted before on these pages. The profound existential crisis it endured after 2008 has never ended. And now everyone, both ruled and rulers, has learned to turn away from its nostrums and the many problems which unrestricted movement has brought

Chief among these of course is immigration, which has incited a visceral fear of identity crisis among the native populations of countries where it runs high. Immigration was never a socialist thing, but a capitalist one. Donald Trump has recognised this, by using trade tariffs explicitly to control immigration(and the supply of stupefying drugs, (which similarly obeys the rules of a free market) As this Guardian article notes, he is simply the most powerful exponent of the spirit of our times. Free markets are out. Red Tape is in. What could be more Red Tape than immigration control? [1]

Of course everyone will follow suit. The first will be nations and trading blocs, retaliating against their American tormentor. Perhaps everyone will be poorer, but they may well live in more stable societies. However, once you throw over the market principle and prize stability above prosperity, you open the door to other innovations. Like higher taxes, which are also advocated to promote social good.. To restrictions on the buying and selling of second homes, lest they damage the fabric of local communities. To ever tighter restrictions on the use of cars, cigarettes and alcohol. Access to the internet and other sources of information. Trump and his supporters may not yest realise it fully, but they have already sold the pass.

[1]://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/26/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trump-tariffs-protectionism-is-no-longer-taboo-in-politics

#WTO #socialism #donald trump #immigration #ricardo #regulations #autarky

Avian Flu: A pandemic to make COVID look innocuous, may be about to happen

Imagine the COVID pandemic all over again. Hospitals full of dying people. Their overworked staff burnt out to the point of exhaustion. The masked survivors walking though haunted empry streets. The economies of the world in freefall. Only try to imagine that the pathogen is ten times more lethal than the COVID-19 virus. And you begin to get some idea of what the H₅N₁ virus will do.

So far the virus has been confined to birds Large scale factory farming of poultry is a sur- fire incubator of pandemic organisms. But, if you think you and your family are safe, read this from Nature Briefings Teenage Bird Flu rings alarm Bells

A teenager in Canada is in critical condition after being infected with a version of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has researchers on high alert. Viral genome sequences suggest that this is a mutated form of H5N1 — which is related to the one infecting US dairy cattle but might be better at infecting the human airway. If true, it could mean that the virus can rapidly evolve to make the jump from birds to humans. “There is reason to be concerned,” says immunologist Scott Hensley. “But not reason to totally freak out.”Nature | 6 min read [1]

Obviously scientists and doctors will try to calm us down, it’s part of their job. But one chilling, ineluctable fact screams out from between the lines of these reports. The virus has jumped the barrier between species, Now only one last stage remains: to find a way to perfect human to human transmission. Every disease-ebola fever, smallpox, Bubonic plague, whatever- must pass these two tests. If it does so, it can kill at leisure-in enormous numbers. Remember the Spanish influenza panic of 1918? That was a similar virus(H₁N₁) and it carried off at least 50 million people from a world population of 1.8 billion. If we scale up to today’s population, the deaths will easily top 227 million. And that’s before we take into account the much faster communication and transport systems we now have, which will spread the virus so much more quickly.

So, while you are busy wondering the on line shopping malls, wondering whether Blagdon United will beat Nowhere City or trying to find a group of different people to hate, your nemesis may already be waiting in the wings. Question: does it serve you right?

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03805-4?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=f0d788c2d2-nature-briefing-daily-20241122&utm_medium=emai

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

#avian flu #pandemic #disease #health #medicine

Fake news and misinformation: two hopeful suggestions

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Hayek once observed that, as the amount of information in the world grows exponentially, each one of us becomes proportionally more ignorant. And into this vast hollow of ignorance flows a torrent of malevolencies, lies, falsehoods, facts, opinions, theories, half-truths and wholly well meaning attempts. How to sort out the good from the bad,? The wheat from the chaff? The (that’s enough bucolic metaphors-ed) It’s a question of vital importance, especially on a day when a democracy as mighty as the United States of America goes to the polls. Well, we have two possible ways forward for you today, both of which we think lie on the well-meaning attempts part of the spectrum

First up is Professor Clodagh Harrington of the Conversation. [1]She expands upon on the work of a film maker called Friedrich Moser. In a film called How to Build a Truth Engine, he discourses broadly on an eclectic range of psychology, neurology, journalism and history, asking and re-asking the question “how do we know what we know?” We haven’t seen the film, we confess, but the article is erudite, honest and provocative. Above all, we valued this killer quote, which just about sums up the deadly danger we are all in

……truth is often diluted, polluted or drowned out completely in our daily communication torrents. This, combined with the nefarious agendas of bad actors means that individuals, communities and our way of life are under significant threat.

Nature Briefings treats the whole thing as a medical problem. No surprise there. In a piece called Can we Inoculate against Fake News?, they report:

Psychologist Sander van der Linden believes that there’s a dangerous infection spreading globally — misinformation. He also has a way to combat it: ‘inoculating’ people against misinformation to stop them from believing and spreading it, in an approach analogous to vaccinating against viral infections. The concept of ‘prebunking’ involves first warning people that they might be intentionally misled, then showing them a mild form of misinformation. There is evidence that the approach can lessen the persuasiveness of falsities, but critics argue that the method places the onus on the individual and absolves social media companies that might profit from spreading lies.Science | 10 min read

Well-how do we know what we know? It’s a question at least as old as Descartes. His generation had the luxury of knowing they wouldn’t blow up the world if they couldn’t answer this question. We are not so fortunate. Right now the lies seem to have an enormous cabal of dictators, tycoons and hucksters behind them. A few lonely academics and one hit journalists are pitifully small in comparison. But unless we keep trying, as these brave people do, this time we are surely lost.

[1]https://theconversation.com/how-to-build-a-truth-engine-documentary-makes-for-sober-but-crucial-viewing-in-our-age-of-disinformation-242554?utm_medi

#fake news #misinformation #internet #algorithm #lies #descartes #democracy

If Keir Starmer wants to grow the UK economy, he needs to play the Research

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party came to power on a pledge to clear up Britain’s economic mess and, above all other things, create growth. But how to do it? It is a question that has bedevilled British Governments since the country first began to fall behind in the late Victorian era. And no amount of reforming government has ever halted the inexorable decline, which feels supporting like a football team slowly slipping down the leagues. Remember Manchester United?

Yet how did Britain first rise to inordinate wealth and power in the Georgian period.?(let’s leave the constitution for another day) The answer is that, by luck or design, Britain took full advantage of the scientific and intellectual advances of the Enlightenment, more so than any other country. [1]The result was the Industrial Revolution, which provided an absolute step change in human productive capacity. Sadly for Britain, other countries quickly learned the lesson, better and more thoroughly than the British pioneers. And here we are today.

Yet there may be a way out of this trap. We have long tried to sing the praises of research and development as the real drivers of economic growth. But candidly admit-we’ve struggled. Now a most erudite yet readable article from the Guardian by Andre Gein and Nancy Rothwell makes the case with levels of data back up we could never match [2] Get this for a killer quote:

It is recognised as having a much higher rate of return than average for capital investment across government spending lines (every £1 of Higher Education Innovation Fund investment at research intensive universities delivers £12 to the economy).

Starmer and Reeves should ignore the groans of the terminally old and selfish. Real patriotism would embrace tax rises, if these are then invested in the long term future of our universities, And the network of schools that feed them of course. It’s time to play a big card, and this is a gambit that will work.

[1]Enlightenment Roy Porter Allen Lane 2000

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/26/scientific-research-needs-robust-government-backing-not-treasury-penny-pinching

#universities #research and development #economics #industrial revolution #britain #enlightenment

UK Riots: is Capitalism eating itself by the tail?

The jury’s been out on the UK summer riots. But now it’s back. And the verdict is grim. The causes are clear, and demonstrable. Most of the rioters were not outside agitators. They were locals. And the places local to them are rotten with deprivation, bad health and unemployment. The findings are laid out for all to see in this pooled report from Guardian writers. [1] Their findings make grim reading for everyone, of whatever political persuasion. But sackcloth and ashes most of all are reserved for those who believe the antique slogans about untrammelled free markets, economic liberalisation, risk takers and free movement of goods and people being best for society.

Because what they forgot to tell us was that there are far more losers than winners in such a set-up. That whole communities would whither away into stagnation and despair. In such circumstances people do not make rational, considered judgements. They just get angry and resentful. Is it so surprising some of them riot? A free market purist would argue that nothing is more capitalist than immigration. Who takes more risks than an immigrant, by tearing up their roots and starting again in a new country? But clearly the natives don’t take such an objective view. Their riots are a sign of something much deeper.

Across the world, a massive reaction to the free movement of people has begun. Naturally, it extends to goods and services, as trade tariffs rise again, and local sourcing is everywhere preferred. Powerful demographic forces are making sure that free movement, markets and migration are coming to an end. The very forces unleashed by liberalism have ensured their own demise.

We at LSS do not believe that communism or faith-based economics are the answer. This is a Whig website, not a socialist one. We think the answer lies in a different model of Capitalism, In the next blog or two we will make suggestions as to what these may look like. These suggestions will be tentative, and humble. But unless we learn to think in different ways, and soon, even the educated will end up joining the others in final despair.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/sep/25/local-left-behind-prey-to-populist-politics-data-2024-uk-rioters

#economics #politics #racism #milton friedman #jm keynes #uk riots #populism

Syphilis is Back. We need new tools

Syphilis, that terror of the early modern age, is back. Almost eliminated in the 1990s, by 2022 here were 200 000 cases in the US alone. And, if you are not worried start now. Because this is waht it does according to this short extract from Jessica Glenza of the Guardian [1]

“More advanced stages of the disease can bring feared complications, such as neurosyphilis, with dementia-like effects, or ocular syphilis that can cause blindness. Congenital syphilis, when the disease is passed from mother to child, is a special horror: the disease can cause death and neurological devastation in infants.“

How have we let it get out of control, and rather more pertinently, what can be done about it? The first is easy to answer: neglect of medical services to pay for tax cuts, and the general concentration on the narcissistic rewards of a consumer society. The latter is rather more interesting. And it sits across many of the concerns we raise on these pages, such as antibiotics, testing, new DNA based technologies and all the other things we admit we bang on about too often(no wonder we never get invited to parties) And frankly, Jessica’s article is a tour de force from which you will learn much about these many subjects, gentle readers.

While not wishing to spoil her article, which you must read, we’ll leave you with this particular thought. There is an antibiotic available: Bicillin L-A. But waht happens if it runs out, or significant resistance to it develop?. We suggest that you keep monitoring these pages.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/10/syphilis-sti-testing

#syhilis #std #antibiotic resistance #testing #health #medicine #dna

ZeroAvia keeps on rising

Commercial aviation is one of the greatest facilitators of human progress . It moves people and goods across oceans, mountains and jungles, breaking down barriers and holding the distant promise of a single united world free of war. But it’s no good at all if it pollutes the atmosphere and melts the last remaining strongholds of ice, drowning most of the world’s cities and farmlands in the process.

ZeroAvia seem to have the dilemma neatly in hand. We’ve already covered their new power plants and commercial plans before here (LSS Passim) Set against the general gloom, they’re a story of hope unfolding. So today we bring you a selected pieces of their latest news (there are many). And the reason we chose it is because it shows that, while their hopes are soaring in the clouds, their practices are firmly grounded in the solid world of developing partnerships, agreements and working in general with the vast ecosystem of unglamorous, hardworking people who actually get things done.

Working in partnership with Airbus, they’ve started a thoughtful programme in collaboration with Canada’s three largest airports. . To carefully consider the feasibility and impact of hydrogen and net zero aviation in the medium turn. None of the showy” we-can -do- it- all -now” promises of populist politicians. To quote the company:

this is the first time that a feasibility study of this magnitude has taken place in Canada to pioneer hydrogen for aviation, with the three airports. It reflects the partners’ shared ambition to use their respective expertise to support the decarbonisation of the aviation industry (ICAO, ATAG and IATA) and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Before you ask, we have no commercial or equity relationship with ZeroAvia whatsoever. Nor Airbus. And none at all with Canadian airports (we’d struggle to locate these ones on a map) But we would like to keep flying. We would like to bring you stories of hope. So we’ll continue to cover ZeroAvia in the fervent belief that someone, somewhere, is really really doing something.

#ZeroAvia #Airbus #Canada #netzero #decarbonisation#aviation #hydrogen

Are Co operatives making a come back?

History: it’s a funny, cantankerous old thing. Any action seems to produce its opposite. It may be happening again. Starting in the South east London Borough of Lewisham.

As every schoolchild knows, the Industrial Revolution produced an atomised, nihilistic society where the overwhelming majority lived in slums, and worked every hour for pitiful wages. The new metropolises like Manchester drew waves of strangers into disease ridden slums. The results were far indeed from the hopes of the philosophers of the Enlightenment whose heady thoughts on free markets had kick-started the whole sorry mess. Yet somehow, in those desperate places, people began to come together. New community organisations began to thrive. Methodist Churches were one example. Trade Unions another. There were things like Working Mens clubs and libraries. Building Societies. And of course the Co operative movement, where poor people could club together to make their purchases at their own shops.(overseas readers might like to know it still exists today, but is barely differentiable from any other hight street grocer) Each in turn contributed to the foundation of the Labour Party. Fast forward one hundred years, what with the collective experience of wars and depressions and most people assumed that collective actions were the optimal solutions to most of our problems.

Following the world crisis of 1973-74,everything changed. Free marketeers saw their chance to exalt the individual above all else. Writers like Hayek and Friedman paved the way for politicians like Thatcher and Reagan. Even popular books like The Selfish Gene could be read in such a way as to exalt the cult of the sovereign individual . Down with the state! Taxes were an imposition on human liberty! Although the adherents of such doctrines could never explain how the National Health Service was Communist, but the Army was not, the individualistic tendency bit deep into our lives and culture. With the results we see today. Once again, atomised communities. Poverty. Capital in the hands of a very few, who invest with a grudging reluctance that would make Mr Gradgrind envious indeed. Pollution, rack rented slums, and growing poverty, especially among children.

Once again there seems to be a reaction setting in. Starting at the bottom, people are beginning to come together in groups to save what is important to them, from the all -dissolving solution of unrestricted free markets. As Kemi Alemoru explains in this article for The Standard [1], it seems to begin around the need to preserve collective things like music venues and pubs. Her piece treats the Southeast London area of Lewisham as a sort of living field experiment. But the thought strikes us. If it works for things like those, why not for bigger ones? Like housing. Controlling air pollution. Making roads safe. Even, whisper it, schools and collective education.

To borrow from another area of learning “every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. Maybe this is the start of one.

[1]https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/the-battle-for-lewisham-how-coops-are-reinvigorating-communities-b1157728.html

#free markets #collectives #cooperatives #hayek #keynes #methodist #coperative society #friendly society #trade union

Five Problems in the in-Box of a World Government

It’s election time in some of the world’s biggest democracies. This year India, the USA and UK all go the polls, and the EU has just done so (we don’t count the recent sham in Russia) All of these places face immense problems. And we don’t think they can solve them, because the root causes are global, making frontiers out of date. Imagine then, if a Global President were elected this year and took office on 1st January 2025. What would be the top five problems in their in-box?

1 Intractable conflicts. People draw imaginary lines and then fight bloody wars across them. The current conflicts between Russia-and -Ukraine and Israel- and- Palestine are current examples, with no obvious resolution, if the nation state remains the highest form of political organisation. Older readers will recall how the conflicts between Mercia and Wessex dwindled once they were combined into England. It was the same after France and Germany joined the EU. A World Presidency would imply that all these ancient hatreds are in fact futile.

2 Climate Change/Global Warming What happens in the Antarctic, the Amazon Basin and the Great Barrier Reef affects us all equally. The existence of endlessly competing polities, each jockeying for its own advantage may fatally slow efforts to deal with this existential threat. A World Government would rapidly co-ordinate mitigation efforts and resource allocation, and it is likely that this one would indeed soon be a memory.

3 Migration and identity crisis People move from poor areas to richer ones according to the same irrevocable laws that govern the movement of ions in an electric field. Yet the deep crisis of identity this provokes has produced toxic political and intellectual consequences in the richer countries, which make it impossible to transfer resources to the poorer ones. By ordering this done, a World Government would have essentially removed the motivation to migrate at all, thus ending the crisis forever.

4 Pandemics Recent experience has shown that economy-shattering pandemics can spread with lightning speed. And, believe us, Covid-19 was mild compared to some viruses which are waiting in the wings. For some reason, those pesky viruses don’t respect frontiers any more than molecules of carbon dioxide do, suggesting that the whole idea of national solutions may be somewhat out of date.

5 Grasping the Opportunity If humanity is to survive, it would be judicious to give ourselves extra chances. Colonising the Moon or Mars would provide ample second homes, even if our local tribesmen blow this one up with their nuclear weapons. Such a colonisation would be faster, more efficient and more just if all were invited to participate and share in the consequences. A World Government would mean that the undertaking would not only be successful, but that existing squabbles were not exported among the planets.

We know this will be saying the unsayable, especially among certain classes of society. Yet there comes a point when a society is bulging in crises, bursting against the limits which constrain it. It’s our contention that these limits are artificial and self imposed. There can never be a return to the good times of the past. But with thought and effort, they may come again in the future.

#world government #nation state #pandemic #global warming #migration #inequality