Saturday, February 23, 2019:   Mankind's Legacy: The Collapse of Civilizations and the Extinction of the Natural World
Malthus's believed that unchecked population growth would be unsustainable because mankind would not be able to produce enough food to feed an ever growing population. He believed that natural forces would correct the imbalance between food supply and population growth in the form of natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes and man-made actions such as wars and famines. What he could not foresee is the environmental impact man would have. If replace his theory of a shortage of food with the destruction of the environment, the same outcome applies. The real culprit being our refusal to collectively recognize humankind's impact on the environment.

Our environment is fragile. It takes very little change in the temperature of the planet to have a lethal impact on living organisms. A two degree Celsius warming of the planet will be catastrophic. The biggest cities in the Middle East and South Asia will become lethally hot in summer. There will be ice-free summers in the Arctic and the unstoppable disintegration of the West Antarctic's ice sheet, threatening the world's coastal cities with inundation. Coral reefs will mostly disappear. There will be tens of millions of climate refugees fleeing droughts, flooding and extreme heat, and the possibility of multiple climate-driven natural disasters striking simultaneously will increase. Wars will be fought over potable water and arable land.

We are on a carbon emissions path that will alter life on earth for generations. We have pissed off Mother Nature and she will take her revenge.

Mankind is by far the worst thing that has happened to the planet. Our belief that we are superior beings will be our downfall. In fact we are the dumbest living creatures to inhabit the earth. Unlike other species, be they great or small, our avarice will result in a planet that is uninhabitable – except maybe for cockroaches and rats and I am not referring to Republicans.

The final product of a capitalistic system controlled by a small group of fascists (the 0.1%) will be global annihilation.


Saturday, February 16, 2019:   How many clowns can you pack into the Trump administration?
Much of the focus on the Trump presidency has been on the number of openings in his administration and the amount of turn over. I would argue that we should be more concerned about the morons and outright criminals he appoints. To be qualified to be on the Trump team, all you have to be is an off the chart, far right nut case with the loyalty to the confederation that is canine in its uncritical affection.

Which brings me to my point. How does Trump get his candidates? For that, he has the Heritage Foundation. For those not familiar with Heritage, it is the political arm of the 0.1% whose sole purpose is to fuck the 99%. Underwritten by the likes of Rebekah Mercer, they have an $80 million annual budget at their disposal with the sole purpose of tipping the political scale in the favor of their rich donors.

Like the Federalist Society and the Federal Judiciary, they have used the chaos of the Trump presidency to their strategic advantage. They have been able to fill hundreds of government jobs in the Trump administration with their conservative minions. Further, dozens of Heritage employees and alumni have filled key positions in the Trump administration. They include the likes of Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry and Jeff Sessions. Heritage has all but achieved the critical ultra-conservative mass it has been working towards for almost a half-century. The fascists are in control of America.

Two years plus into the Trump presidency, the Heritage fascists are well into executing their agenda which includes among other goals opening drilling on Federal lands; opposing mandatory labeling of GMO foods; reducing regulations on for-profit schools; revoking green energy mandates for federal agencies; phasing out federal housing subsidies; rolling back environment regulations; de-funding the Affordable Care Act; and opposing marriage equality and nondiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Essentially, destroying everything in pursuit of absolute power and obscene wealth.

The fallacy in their pursuit is that history will repeat itself. One only needs to look at what has happened in the past when the oppressed and downtrodden have risen up. For the life of me I can't understand why the rich haven't figured out that that the people they are screwing, as dumb as they are, will some day wake up and they have assault rifles and large capacity magazines.


Friday, February 8, 2019:   Social Democrats: For The Good Of The Many
Paul Krugman recently wrote an good article on socialism - Trump Versus the Socialist Menace. Here is an excerpt from that story.

"What Americans who support "socialism" actually want is what the rest of the world calls social democracy: A market economy, but with extreme hardship limited by a strong social safety net and extreme inequality limited by progressive taxation. They want us to look like Denmark or Norway, not Venezuela.

And in case you haven't been there, the Nordic countries are not, in fact, hellholes. They have somewhat lower G.D.P. per capita than we do, but that's largely because they take more vacations. Compared with America, they have higher life expectancy, much less poverty and significantly higher overall life satisfaction. Oh, and they have high levels of entrepreneurship — because people are more willing to take the risk of starting a business when they know that they won't lose their health care or plunge into abject poverty if they fail.

Trump's economists clearly had a hard time fitting the reality of Nordic societies into their anti-socialist manifesto. In some places they say that the Nordics aren't really socialist; in others they try desperately to show that despite appearances, Danes and Swedes are suffering — for example, it's expensive for them to operate a pickup truck. I am not making this up."

Yes, the Trump apologists would have you believe that the beer drinking, gun toting, loyal supports wouldn't be able to afford their pickups. I mean for God's sake, that pickup is far more important than health care and quality public education.

Oh, and speaking of toting guns, compared with the US, Norway has about one-third of the number of guns per 100 civilians — and about one-tenth of the rate of gun deaths per 100,000 people.

Sociologists who study the Nordic model have found that social cohesion between citizens and the government goes a long way toward ensuring a (mostly) peaceful society.

For example, an analysis in 2015 found that the number of fatal shootings by police in Norway in the past nine years was less than the number of fatal shootings by US police officers in one day.

Somebody needs to explain to me why this is bad.


Wednesday, February 6, 2019:   On The Road To Self-Extinction
If ever there was a single embodiment of the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, it is the buffoon occupying the Oval office. I'll come back to that, but for a moment though, let's take our focus off him and reflect on what mankind has done and continues to do to this fragile planet we live on.

Evolution be damned, mankind is the worst thing that happened to this earth. We live on a very small planet in a universe that we humans cannot begin to comprehend. We can however, be introspective. Modern technology has given us the ability to observe the world we live in like never before. Maybe it is too much to ask and maybe it is too painful, but it seems to me that everyone should take time to get their heads out of their collective asses and start looking at what is happening to our very fragile biosphere.

It is abundantly clear that we are hell bent on making mother earth uninhabitable with the inevitable result of self-extinction.

The current worldwide loss of biodiversity is popularly known as the Sixth Extinction: the sixth time in the history of the world that a large number of species have disappeared in unusually rapid succession. But this time it isn't the result of an asteroid or an ice age, it is human folly. But species going extinct is only part of the tragedy. We are losing life in sheer quantity. Ninety-seven percent of the bluefin tuna that once lived in the ocean are gone. There were once as many as 100 blue whales in the Southern Ocean as there are now. Coral reefs are dying and with them all of the living organisms that rely on reefs for their existence. Lauding the survival of a few ignores the value of a natural world that thrives on abundance, richness, complexity and interaction. According to a paper in Nature, the loss of even 30% of a species abundance can result in dependent species going numerically extinct.

So that brings me to bugs and bees. We know about the empty hives, but scientists now fear that there has been a significant loss of insects. They call it the "windshield phenomenon." Basically, a summertime drive in the county these days just don't result in a car windshield covered with bugs. What happens when the bug population drops. Fish don't eat. Plants aren't pollinated. Birds die. Waste does not decompose and decomposition is key to keeping nutrients cycling, soil healthy, plants growing, and ecosystem running. Nature is resilient, but pushed to extremes, this complex system will collapse and humans along with it.

That brings me back to the seven deadly sins. Why is it we can't or aren't willing to address the potential of our own extinction. Seems to me that answer can be found in man's penchant for pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

When the last human dies off, I am betting he/she will have forgotten to turn out the lights.