The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Still Looking for the Magic Wand.

 

In this case the sorcerer's apprentice is our prime minister and the magic wand he quests for is carbon capture and sequestration. It's that wand that will make his plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions from fossil energy production feasible.

The problem behind the bold promise is that magic wand may not exist, not remotely on the scale that would be needed for Mr. Trudeau's emissions caps.

The Georgia Straight's Charlie Smith calls Mr. Trudeau's plan pure sophistry.

Let's face reality: there is no way on Earth that carbon capture and storage is going to be able to suck up 100 million tonnes of existing emissions per year, let alone future emissions.

It isn't going to happen for reasons outlined in this article. To suggest otherwise is a betrayal of young people and future generations.

“Climate action can’t wait," Trudeau said in the news release on the prime minister's website. "Since 2015, Canada has been a committed partner in the fight against climate change, and as we move to a net-zero future, we will continue to do our part to cut pollution and build a cleaner future for everyone."

In fact, Trudeau's cabinet approved two major pipeline projects in 2016, a massive liquefied-natural-gas plant in 2018, and repeatedly voiced support for the Keystone XL pipeline project in the face of intense opposition from many Democrats in the United States.

It was a lie that Canada has "been a committed partner in the fight against climate change" since 2015.

Canada has by far the worst emissions record of any G7 country since 1990.

The numbers don't lie. Canada is a laggard and will continue to be a laggard until members of the Liberal Party rise up and throw Trudeau out of the prime minister's office.

Just because he appointed a former activist as his minister of environment and climate change isn't likely to change the reality, given what we've seen in the 13 years since Trudeau was elected to Parliament.

It's always been PR with Trudeau on the climate. And if history offers any lessons, it will continue to be PR—along with a whole lot of happy talk about carbon capture and storage.

We are at a point where lofty rhetoric and vague promises aren't enough. There's no time to indulge Mr. Trudeau's empty promises, not with his track record going back to 2015.

Raising the Bar or Catch-Up Ball

 

Pandemic, check. Climate change, check. Infrastructure, check. Tax reform, check.

For most of the Liberal government's time in office they've had something of a free ride. Trump set the bar so low it wasn't hard to look good by comparison.  But Trump is no more and now the new guy has raised that  bar - a lot.  Suddenly, Canada is looking a little shopworn.

When it comes to today's universal pain in the ass, Covid-19, America has left us in the dust. U.S. vaccination rates eclipse our record. 

That's not fair. America hasn't left us. The new guy has authorized Pfizer to send us about 10 million doses per month of its top-drawer vaccine. That's a real shot in the arm for Canada. 

It's true that the Liberals have had a millstone around their neck, guys named Ford, Kenney, Moe and others. LoL - low-order leaders. You don't need a clown car for that bunch, you need a bus. Perhaps a hearse would be more appropriate. Mr. Biden, however, has it worse as Red State legislatures work tirelessly to revive Jim Crow and anything they can think of to preserve White Power.

Joe seems intent on shrinking America's carbon footprint by weaning the country off the worst fossil fuels and instead boosting alternative energy. Justin talks the same talk but builds new pipelines that neither Canada nor the world needs. Then again, the prime minister has a track record of not meeting his promises.

But Mr. Trudeau still has his ace in the hole - everyone else. He may not be much but he's way better than his only real rival, some guy named O'Toole. Faint praise, I suppose.

Living In an Anti-Vax World

 

Let's say you're a salesman in a car dealership. You walk over to a prospective customer who points to a car and asks, "what about this one?" 

You give it a second and then say, "well, it's better than nothing."

That sounds to me like the pitch we're getting for the Oxford Astrazenica vaccine. Astrazenica has been plagued with reports that it can cause clotting. Several countries have put this vaccine on hold. Others have decided it can be used except for those 65 and over.

The World Health Organization, Health Canada and other authorities have pushed back with a tepid claim that it's safe enough, better than nothing. Yes some Astrazenica patients have developed clotting but the numbers are low, statistically irrelevant. Yet no one seems willing to come out and say "it's safe." Why not?

Canada's supply of this vaccine is being produced in India. That surprised me. With a population somewhere in the range of 1.36 billion I imagined they would be using everything they could produce to vaccinate their own people. Then I read that India isn't doing too well vaccinating the Indian population. Two problems. One is the difficulty in reaching people in remote villages in the countryside. India has  a shortage of nurses and healthcare workers needed to vaccinate such a large population. The other cause is that there are a lot of Indians who don't want the vaccine. They're hesitant, unsure whether it's effective or really safe. If those who want it can't get it and those who need it don't want it, you're in trouble.  From The Telegraph:

Reluctance to take vaccines is jeopardising the world's biggest Covid jabs campaign with even health workers in India apparently wary of receiving shots.

Barely half of Indian doctors and nurses are showing up to vaccine appointments, prompting forecasts that the world's second most populous nation is dramatically behind vaccination targets.

If doctors and nurses doubt the efficacy and safety of this vaccine, we're going to have a problem with our homegrown conspiracy theorist/anti-vaxxers. They're the sort of people who will walk straight out of the showroom when you say your product is better than nothing. We need more than a wobbly, "sure, okay" from our health authorities. They have to do better.

Junk Has Got to Go. In a World Short of Resources, the Case for a Steady State Economy Returns.

I bought a wonderful Sony TV. Six years later it was scrap. I bought a terrific Kitchenaid gas range. Six years and it was gone. The TV failed. It had three main circuit boards. I called Reliable Parts in Vancouver and they were very helpful. The circuit boards weren't even particularly expensive. Open the TV, swap out the old boards and it should be as good as new. The gas range, same story. It just needed a replacement control panel. There was one other thing the TV and range had in common - those replacement parts were nowhere to be found. They were unavailable - anywhere.

Off to the recycling yard where, hopefully, at least some parts of those appliances would be scavenged, the rest probably headed for a dump.

A few years ago the German government commissioned a study on the premature obsolescence of domestic appliances. The report concluded the average lifespan was just under seven years and yet there was no reason that these products shouldn't be engineered to last twelve or fifteen years. Instead they were designed and supported to fail.

And then there's us, the consumers. When I reached the recycling yard with my defunct Sony, I saw electronics of all descriptions stacked on pallets secured by heavy plastic wrap. The fellow I spoke with mentioned that one night a few of the guys tried an experiment. They unwrapped one stack and plugged every one of the TVs. Most of them worked just fine. They were ditched  because their owners wanted something newer, something bigger, more whistles and bells.

Ninety years ago, Aldous Huxley wrote "Brave New World." In 1931 it was science fiction. In 2021 it is becoming closer to prophetic. From The Guardian.

In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley writes of a society in which recorded voices subliminally prepare babies for their future role as consumers.

“I do love flying, I do love having new clothes,” they whisper. “But old clothes are beastly. We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending. Ending is better than mending.”

Huxley depicts a dystopia. But the slogans he describes might equally apply to common products today.

“Before Apple, everything was interchangeable. Sure, every phone had its own special part, like different cars. But now, each year, Apple is changing its design on purpose to make it harder for us to fix them.”

That’s Nicholas Muradian  from the repair company Phone Spot, talking about the serialisation of components for the new iPhone 12.

Some manufacturers now build with special screws or glue parts together, specifically to prevent home maintenance. Others simply don’t provide the basic components that would give their products a longer life.

Industry gets away with this thanks to one thing - government collaboration. Our governments simply look the other way. They could, for example, legislate that those who make gas ranges maintain adequate stocks of spare parts to ensure the product can have a service life of at least 15 years. 

In an increasingly fragile world, we need more — much more — control over production. We need conscious choices which resources we use and which we don’t, instead of letting giant corporations do whatever makes them the most money.

Obviously, we are not going to end global warming just by repairing our iPhones.

Yet if we can’t even do that, what chance do we have?

We are caught in the grip of what's called "The Great Acceleration." If you're not familiar with the term, follow this link and let your eyes quickly scan the nearly 50 graphs. You don't have to read them, although you can if you like. Just look at how each graph mirrors all the others.

Our Ghastly Future

No one, as yet, has come up with a solution to the great challenge facing those who want to settle Mars - terra forming. Mars can't be settled until it has an ecology - an atmosphere, weather, precipitation, all the things that sustain life on Earth.  Some estimates claim that would take millennia, possibly hundreds of thousands of years. We haven't got that kind of time.

Before we tackle establishing a suitable environment on Mars, we should direct our efforts at restoring our endangered ecosystems right here on Earth. 

Around the world our existing ecosystem that has nurtured mankind for tens of thousands of years is on the verge of collapse. You might have thought that the most powerful among us, those we elect to high office and entrust with the reins of power, would have rallied to respond. If you believe that, you are wrong.

A call to arms was sounded in January. It took the form of a paper published in the journal, Frontiers in Conservation Science, "Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future." The warning is blunt. 

"Future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts."

Even the experts are struggling to grasp the enormity and immediacy of the threat. Yes, this is a present danger, not something that your grandkids will have to deal with.

The authors, "ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action."

The verdict is plain - our leaders don't get it. Whether that's from ignorance, neglect or willful blindness really doesn't matter. 

"We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future. The added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of ecosystem services on which society depends. The science underlying these issues is strong, but awareness is weak. Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals."

Biodiversity Loss.

On the loss of biodiversity, the report notes that the loss rate is well within extinction-level values.

The IUCN estimates that some 20% of all species are in danger of extinction over the next few decades, which greatly exceeds the background rate. That we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now scientifically undeniable (Barnosky et al., 2011; Ceballos et al., 2015, 2017).

Overpopulation and Ecological Overshoot.

The global human population has approximately doubled since 1970, reaching nearly 7.8 billion people today (prb.org). While some countries have stopped growing and even declined in size, world average fertility continues to be above replacement (2.3 children woman−1), with an average of 4.8 children woman−1 in Sub-Saharan Africa and fertilities >4 children woman−1 in many other countries.

Large population size and continued growth are implicated in many societal problems. The impact of population growth, combined with an imperfect distribution of resources, leads to massive food insecurity. By some estimates, 700–800 million people are starving and 1–2 billion are micronutrient-malnourished and unable to function fully, with prospects of many more food problems in the near future (Ehrlich and Harte, 2015a,b). Large populations and their continued growth are also drivers of soil degradation and biodiversity loss (Pimm et al., 2014). More people means that more synthetic compounds and dangerous throw-away plastics (Vethaak and Leslie, 2016) are manufactured, many of which add to the growing toxification of the Earth (Cribb, 2014). It also increases chances of pandemics (Daily and Ehrlich, 1996b) that fuel ever-more desperate hunts for scarce resources (Klare, 2012). Population growth is also a factor in many social ills, from crowding and joblessness, to deteriorating infrastructure and bad governance (Harte, 2007). There is mounting evidence that when populations are large and growing fast, they can be the sparks for both internal and international conflicts that lead to war (Klare, 2001; Toon et al., 2007). The multiple, interacting causes of civil war in particular are varied, including poverty, inequality, weak institutions, political grievance, ethnic divisions, and environmental stressors such as drought, deforestation, and land degradation (Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1999; Collier and Hoeer, 1998; Hauge and llingsen, 1998; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Brückner, 2010; Acemoglu et al., 2017). Population growth itself can even increase the probability of military involvement in conflicts (Tir and Diehl, 1998). Countries with higher population growth rates experienced more social conflict since the Second World War (Acemoglu et al., 2017). In that study, an approximate doubling of a country's population caused about four additional years of full-blown civil war or low-intensity conflict in the 1980s relative to the 1940–1950s, even after controlling for a country's income-level, independence, and age structure.

Voracious Overconsumption - Sacking Nature's Pantry.

Simultaneous with population growth, humanity's consumption as a fraction of Earth's regenerative capacity has grown from ~ 73% in 1960 to 170% in 2016 (Lin et al., 2018), with substantially greater per-person consumption in countries with highest income. With COVID-19, this overshoot dropped to 56% above Earth's regenerative capacity, which means that between January and August 2020, humanity consumed as much as Earth can renew in the entire year (overshootday.org). While inequality among people and countries remains staggering, the global middle class has grown rapidly and exceeded half the human population by 2018 (Kharas and Hamel, 2018).

This massive ecological overshoot is largely enabled by the increasing use of fossil fuels. These convenient fuels have allowed us to decouple human demand from biological regeneration: 85% of commercial energy, 65% of fibers, and most plastics are now produced from fossil fuels. Also, food production depends on fossil-fuel input, with every unit of food energy produced requiring a multiple in fossil-fuel energy (e.g., 3 × for high-consuming countries like Canada, Australia, USA, and China; overshootday.org). This, coupled with increasing consumption of carbon-intensive meat (Ripple et al., 2014) congruent with the rising middle class, has exploded the global carbon footprint of agriculture. 

Government Indifference and Neglect.

The apparent paradox of high and rising average standard of living despite a mounting environmental toll has come at a great cost to the stability of humanity's medium- and long-term life-support system. In other words, humanity is running an ecological Ponzi scheme in which society robs nature and future generations to pay for boosting incomes in the short term (Ehrlich et al., 2012). Even the World Economic Forum, which is captive of dangerous greenwashing propaganda (Bakan, 2020), now recognizes biodiversity loss as one of the top threats to the global economy (World Economic Forum, 2020).

The dangerous effects of climate change are much more evident to people than those of biodiversity loss (Legagneux et al., 2018), but society is still finding it difficult to deal with them effectively. Civilization has already exceeded a global warming of ~ 1.0°C above pre-industrial conditions, and is on track to cause at least a 1.5°C warming between 2030 and 2052 (IPCC, 2018). In fact, today's greenhouse-gas concentration is >500 ppm CO2-e (Butler and Montzka, 2020), while according to the IPCC, 450 ppm CO2-e would give Earth a mere 66% chance of not exceeding a 2°C warming (IPCC, 2014). Greenhouse-gas concentration will continue to increase (via positive feedbacks such as melting permafrost and the release of stored methane) (Burke et al., 2018), resulting in further delay of temperature-reducing responses even if humanity stops using fossil fuels entirely well before 2030 (Steffen et al., 2018).

If most of the world's population truly understood and appreciated the magnitude of the crises we summarize here, and the inevitability of worsening conditions, one could logically expect positive changes in politics and policies to match the gravity of the existential threats. But the opposite is unfolding. The rise of right-wing populist leaders is associated with anti-environment agendas as seen recently for example in Brazil (Nature, 2018), the USA (Hejny, 2018), and Australia (Burck et al., 2019). Large differences in income, wealth, and consumption among people and even among countries render it difficult to make any policy global in its execution or effect.

The severity of the commitments required for any country to achieve meaningful reductions in consumption and emissions will inevitably lead to public backlash and further ideological entrenchments, mainly because the threat of potential short-term sacrifices is seen as politically inopportune. Even though climate change alone will incur a vast economic burden (Burke et al., 2015; Carleton and Hsiang, 2016; Auffhammer, 2018) possibly leading to war (nuclear, or otherwise) at a global scale (Klare, 2020), most of the world's economies are predicated on the political idea that meaningful counteraction now is too costly to be politically palatable. Combined with financed disinformation campaigns in a bid to protect short-term profits (Oreskes and Conway, 2010; Mayer, 2016; Bakan, 2020), it is doubtful that any needed shift in economic investments of sufficient scale will be made in time.

What Needs to Change? Us, We Need to Change.

The gravity of the situation requires fundamental changes to global capitalism, education, and equality, which include inter alia the abolition of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing externalities, a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use, strict regulation of markets and property acquisition, reigning in corporate lobbying, and the empowerment of women. These choices will necessarily entail difficult conversations about population growth and the necessity of dwindling but more equitable standards of living.

Yes, the situation is dire. We need to abandon the mad pursuit of perpetual economic growth. We have to stop Canada's production of high-carbon, low value fossil fuels, the worst such as thermal coal and bitumen. Capitalism must either be abandoned or, through regulation, reformed to harness it into service to the public. This is the fundamental responsibility of those we elect to represent us and to whom we entrust the levers of power.

At the moment our political caste is not acting in our interest, is not answering the call to action. That's the Liberals as well as the Conservatives. That's the NDP as well. If I knew what the Greens stand for anymore I'd probably also lump them in with the others.

"A Ghastly Future" indeed. We're well down the road to making that a reality for our children and theirs. We are complicit in this with our support for the political parties that are failing us, those for whom action is "politically inopportune."

The message is powerful but it is not novel. This statement is a culmination of research that has been done over the course of more than thirty or forty years. Knowledge obtained by observation and testing. Fact, not belief. This report argues it is past time to face the unvarnished truth. 

We're all faced with a choice. We must choose whether we'll be complicit in this dereliction. Will we support political parties that pursue dangerous, even deadly policies that temporarily enrich the few at the ultimate cost of the many? Yes, yes, I know - this bunch isn't as bad as that bunch. Frankly, the bar has been set so low that, where it really matters, questions of life and death, the prospect of a Ghastly Future, they're almost indistinguishable.

An Inauspicious Day, March 11

One year ago today the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 had become an epidemic.

Today also marks the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Much of the former area remains depopulated. The Japanese government, meanwhile, keeps toying with the idea of discharging radioactive water from the site into the Pacific Ocean.

Here's a blast from the past. On March 11th, 1918, the first (American?) case of the "Spanish Flu" that would claim 50 million lives worldwide was reported at Fort Riley, Kansas.

On March 11, 1513, Giovanni de'Medici, of the fun loving Medici clan, became Pope Leo X.

On this day in 537 the Goths laid siege to Rome - again. 

Anything else to celebrate today? 

A Trip Down Memory Lane

 

Theresa May was a mediocre prime minister of the United Kingdom. She was broken on the wheel of Brexit by Boris Johnson. 

Some pitied her. Not I. 

For me, Theresa May was a greedy opportunist. This was manifest when, just a week or two after the inauguration of Donald Trump, she invited the Beast to a state visit. Many Brits were aghast. One of them penned this explanation of why Trump was so reviled.

"A few things spring to mind.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.

For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.

I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.

Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.

He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.

That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.

After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.

In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:

'My God… what… have… I… created?

If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set."

McConnell Tells Trump to "Back Off"

 

Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has told Donald Trump not to cut a Covid stimulus deal with House majority leader, Nancy Pelosi.

Trump is desperate for votes and he's all out of mojo with the election just two weeks away. The American economy isn't working for blue or white collar wage earners. There's no wall, not that anyone even cares about that any more. His Covid policies keep putting Americans in the ground as death rates increase. Working class misery is about to get much worse as landlords are now free to evict. A lot of those most affected are Trump's base.

Ms. Pelosi had said earlier on Tuesday that she was “optimistic” a deal could be reached with the Trump administration in the coming days. But Republicans are growing increasingly anxious that Mr. Trump and his team are too eager to reach a multitrillion-dollar agreement and are conceding far too much to the Democrats. Republicans fear that scenario would force their colleagues up for re-election into a difficult choice of defying the president or alienating their fiscally conservative base by embracing the big-spending bill he has demanded.

Republicans in the Senate were also concerned that any vote on such a package could interfere with the Senate’s hasty timetable for confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by early next week.

This must be driving the Mango Mussolini nuts. One thing he hasn't had from the Republican controlled Senate is disobedience. He expects to get his way. Congressional Republicans seem to have figured out that there's less to gain from appeasing Trump and little risk in defying the guy who may be on his way out anyway in another two weeks. 

  

A Sea of Bodies

Think of them as collateral damage from the nearly four-year term of the Trump administration. They're the men and women who were either fired or resigned from Team Trump and, trust me, there's a whack of them.

 A few of them left with their honour and integrity intact. Most were just shown the door.

The first tier includes the generals - James Mattis, H.R. McMaster and John Kelly. You can add ex-national security advisor, Dan Coats, and probably Rex Tillerson to that abbreviated list. Read Bob Woodward's latest book, "Rage," and you'll understand.

The second tier has to include the colourful and controversial departures. John Bolton, Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, KellyAnne Conway, Michael Flynn, Ryan Zinke, Jeff Sessions, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Alexander Acosta, Sebastian Gorka, Nikki Haley, Reince Priebus, Mick Mulvaney, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Madeleine Westerhut.

The third tier is almost endless. These are the people most of us have never heard of and they are legion.

Here's the thing. Collectively this group knows where the bodies, if there are any, are buried. These are the people Trump depended upon to wash his dirty laundry. Some of these people, probably a good many of them, will take Donald Trump's secrets with them to the grave. Others, however, may eagerly await an interview summons to the post-Trump Department of Justice. Some may be anxious to make deals lest someone else gets there first.

Wishful Thinking?

 

When it comes to hoping that the menacing cloud of Covid-19 will be lifted by next summer by a silver bullet vaccine, I'm as delusional as anyone. This virus is a complete pain in the ass. Self-isolation is miserable, like solitary confinement only self-inflicted. The handwashing - ugh, but probably the least annoying. Face masks - don't go out without 'em. That's getting old and that's just the personal stuff.

Then there's the economic chaos. Lockdowns. Restaurants restricted, some gone for good. Businesses laying off staff. A shambles.

Telephonic medical care. Now you call it in - if you detect something and think you know what it means. They're doing some great things with technology these days. There's a device called Kardia 6L that performs six lead EKGs. Cardiologists seem to think it's great. And, of course, it comes with a smart phone app. It transmits test results by bluetooth to the phone that can then email the data to your healthcare provider.  The Kardia system also integrates blood pressure/pulse readings from Omron home devices. My GP says this blood pressure cuff is every bit as accurate as what they have in their offices. So you can send all that data along with your EKG tests in pdf format via email.

Then there's the oximeter, the little device that clips onto your fingertip and discerns your blood oxygen levels and heartrate. And maybe you've got one of these new watches such as the Fitbit Versa 2 that also monitors heart rate. I think the new Apple watch runs EKGs. If you're diabetic there are wearable blood glucose monitors.

Hypochondria is, I expect, worsened by isolation. That may be the hidden benefit of these various devices when they tell you "Shut up, moron. You're fine. Quit whining."

Maybe this will all be a fading memory by next summer when the vaccine arrives. It'll be like the end of WWII. We'll all be partying in the street. Maybe, maybe not.

There's an article in The Guardian/Observer exploring how pandemics end. It's written by a lecturer from City University of London who also wrote the cheerful book, "The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris."

Here's the problem. Few among us have much experience of epidemic/pandemics. We're in uncharted waters. Our natural tendency is to say, "oh, they'll think of something." I hope so but the track record from the plague, cholera and similar contagions doesn't give much cause for optimism. We've had just one victory, the eradication of smallpox in 1980. The plague, it's still with us. Polio breaks out here and there from time to time. Some of these diseases are suppressed by vaccinations and emergent herd immunity but they're still able to return.

A Covid-19 vaccine would be great but there's no sign that a corona virus  creates herd immunity. Getting Covid-19 under effective control will require more than a vaccine.

The other way the pandemic could be brought to a close is with a truly world-beating test-and-trace system. Once we can suppress the reproductive rate to below 1 and be confident of keeping it there, the case for social distancing dissolves. Sure, some local measures might be necessary from time to time, but there would no longer be a need for blanket restrictions in order to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. Essentially, Covid-19 would become an endemic infection, like flu or the common cold, and fade into the background.

Speaking of test-and-trace protocols, there's a report in the Washington Post about August's Sturgis motorcycle rally and the surge of Covid infections in South Dakota and neighbouring states.  

Within weeks of the gathering, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita. The surge was especially pronounced in North and South Dakota, where cases and hospitalization rates continued their juggernaut rise into October. Experts say they will never be able to determine how many of those cases originated at the 10-day rally, given the failure of state and local health officials to identify and monitor attendees returning home, or to trace chains of transmission after people got sick. Some, however, believe the nearly 500,000-person gathering played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.

No test-and-trace means state officials, such as the governor of South Dakota, a Trump acolyte.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, a Republican, was one of the few state leaders who never restricted mass gatherings, managing the pandemic by emphasizing personal responsibility over government mandates.

No test-and-trace allowed Noem plausible deniability to dismiss the subsequent Covid surge as - wait for it - the result of too much testing. The evidence linking the mass rally and the spread of Covid-19 would never be found.

   

What Now?

When I spotted the BBC headline, "The grim fate that could be worse than extinction," I instinctively recoiled and thought, "fuck, what now?" I don't know about you but with this pandemic, the kaleidoscope of climate breakdown impacts, and the seeming "end days" of democracy, I'm up to my ass in alligators.

Cut to the chase. I'll bite, what could be worse than extinction?  Oh, I don't know. Ask George. George who? George Orwell, you pillock.

When we think of existential risks, events like nuclear war or asteroid impacts often come to mind. Yet there’s one future threat that is less well known – and while it doesn’t involve the extinction of our species, it could be just as bad.

It’s called the “world in chains” scenario, where ...a global totalitarian government uses a novel technology to lock a majority of the world into perpetual suffering. If it sounds grim, you’d be right. But is it likely? Researchers and philosophers are beginning to ponder how it might come about – and, more importantly, what we can do to avoid it.

Toby Ord, a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University, believes that the odds of an existential catastrophe happening this century from natural causes are less than one in 2,000, because humans have survived for 2,000 centuries without one. However, when he adds the probability of human-made disasters, Ord believes the chances increase to a startling one in six. He refers to this century as “the precipice” because the risk of losing our future has never been so high.

Researchers at the Center on Long-Term Risk, a non-profit research institute in London, have expanded upon x-risks with the even-more-chilling prospect of suffering risks. These “s-risks” are defined as “suffering on an astronomical scale, vastly exceeding all suffering that has existed on Earth so far.” In these scenarios, life continues for billions of people, but the quality is so low and the outlook so bleak that dying out would be preferable. In short: a future with negative value is worse than one with no value at all.

This is where the “world in chains” scenario comes in. If a malevolent group or government suddenly gained world-dominating power through technology, and there was nothing to stand in its way, it could lead to an extended period of abject suffering and subjugation. A 2017 report on existential risks from the Global Priorities Project, in conjunction with FHI and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, warned that “a long future under a particularly brutal global totalitarian state could arguably be worse than complete extinction”.

Big Brother is already here. 

In the past, surveillance required hundreds of thousands of people – one in every 100 citizens in East Germany was an informant – but now it can be done by technology. In the United States, the National Security Agency (NSA) collected hundreds of millions of American call and text records before they stopped domestic surveillance in 2019, and there are an estimated four to six million CCTV cameras across the United Kingdom. Eighteen of the 20 most surveilled cities in the world are in China, but London is the third. The difference between them lies less in the tech that the countries employ and more in how they use it.

What if the definition of what is illegal in the US and the UK expanded to include criticising the government or practising certain religions? The infrastructure is already in place to enforce it, and AI – which the NSA has already begun experimenting with – would enable agencies to search through our data faster than ever before.

In addition to enhancing surveillance, AI also underpins the growth of online misinformation, which is another tool of the authoritarian. AI-powered deep fakes, which can spread fabricated political messages, and algorithmic micro-targeting on social media are making propaganda more persuasive. This undermines our epistemic security – the ability to determine what is true and act on it – that democracies depend on.

“Over the last few years, we've seen the rise of filter bubbles and people getting shunted by various algorithms into believing various conspiracy theories, or even if they’re not conspiracy theories, into believing only parts of the truth,” says Haydn Belfield, academic project manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. “You can imagine things getting much worse, especially with deep fakes and things like that, until it's increasingly harder for us to, as a society, decide these are the facts of the matter, this is what we have to do about it, and then take collective action.”

Tucker Davey, a writer at the Future of Life Institute in Massachusetts agrees. “We need to decide now what are acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI,” he says. “And we need to be careful about letting it control so much of our infrastructure. If we're arming police with facial recognition and the federal government is collecting all of our data, that's a bad start.”

Yesterday an acquaintance in the States emailed me with a provocative defence of Donald Trump she had found online. She likes Trump and is trying to find some justification for voting for him - again. I mentioned how Trump had tuned up his base until they've become insensate. "All you're left with is the sound of one hand clapping. There are people who imagine they can hear that. Trump counts on that."

Warpaint. Never, Ever Thought I'd See This

HMCS Regina is getting spruced up for the annual RimPac naval exercises. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, Regina will be sporting "dazzle" pattern camouflage paint of the wartime era.

Damn but she looks pretty nice.

Heart of Oak    Steady, boys, Steady

This Is a Story About a Real Dick. Dick is a Lawyer.

CBC has a "sign of the times" story about a Thai restaurant in Windsor, Ontario that refused service to a customer who would not wear a face mask.

After refusing food to a customer who wouldn't wear a mask at a walk-up takeout window, a local Thai restaurant was given an ultimatum: pay $20,000 or be taken to a human rights tribunal. 

Thai Palace received a hand-delivered letter Friday from Antoine d'Ailly Law Office, which states a claim of discrimination will be filed against the restaurant for violating the Ontario Human Rights Code. The letter demands that the owner hand over any and all video footage of the incident, which it says occurred on Oct. 7.

It also says the restaurant can settle the issue and avoid "the necessity of a formal process" by paying $20,000.

The restaurant's server Nhu Dang was working at the takeout window when the incident took place. 

"He came to pick up his takeout order and I politely asked him to put on a mask and he said he couldn't and I tried to explain the reasons why we have our policy and any alternatives that he can do to be able to get his takeout but clearly he didn't want to," Dang told CBC News. 

She said she also offered to give the man a disposable mask. 

At this point the manager and co-owner, Renu Anderson got involved.

"I said 'Sir what's happening? what's wrong? Because like why you don't want to wear the mask?' and he just started yelling at me and said I have human rights ... you can't ask me for doctor's notes. I said, 'You know, I run this place, I'm small business, I need to make sure my staff are safe and my customers are safe,'" Renu said. 

She added that she told the man, who identified himself as a lawyer, that he could leave if he wasn't going to wear a mask.  

Ah, yes, the old "I'm a lawyer. Don't mess with me."  

Posted outside the restaurant are signs that say customers must be wearing a face mask. If someone is unable to wear one, the restaurant said they have a delivery service. 

I'm not sure how the Law Society of Upper Canada, or "L-Suck" as they're known to lawyers in other provinces, will view this affair but, to me, it sounds like a shakedown. Then again, L-Suck sometimes has unusual ideas.

CBC has made four tries at contacting Antoine d'Ailly but no luck. Could it be they're laying low?
   

Meanwhile in Germany

The Berlin tourist authority has launched an ad campaign targeting people who don't wear masks.

 I guess you don't have to sprechen Deutsch to get the point.

"Rage" The Shortest and Best Chapter

Rage, Bob Woodward's latest book on Donald Trump and his administration is a pretty good read. The least interesting bits are his conversations with the hopefully outgoing president. There's a lot to be gleaned, however, in Woodward's conversations with ex-defense secretary, James Mattis; ex-secretary of state, Rex Tillerson; ex-national security advisor, Dan Coats; and other denizens of the Trump White House.

The best chapter, Chapter 29, is the briefest and perhaps the best. It concerns the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Lindsey Graham, speaking candidly of how the process for confirming judicial appointments got so screwed up.  Graham faults Obama and Harry Reid for scrapping the filibuster process.

"I didn't know we had so many fucking judges," Graham said. "I think every town's got a judge. Some are a little wacky. Most of them are really good. But a few outliers. The problem is when you only need a simple majority, you don't need to go outside your own party."

...A filibuster effectively allowed one senator to block the appointment of a judge. Senate rules required 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, meaning in effect each nominee needed the support of at least 60 senators.

But in 2013, under Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, infuriated by Republicans' use of the filibuster, pushed the elimination through.

"I don't think I've ever seen John McCain more upset," Grahan recalled. "Because that's the beginning of the end."

The result was making the judiciary more ideological, Graham realized. The rule change had removed the need to strive for compromise. "If you've got to reach across the aisle and pick up 10 votes, you're going to have a different judge than if you don't."

...Now with Trump's appointments "there's some wacky ones, but there's some that didn't make it. I said no. No, we're not going there.

"But we have weeded out some really wackos. It's only going to get worse over time, though. The judiciary is going to get far more ideological. It changes the Senate. It's just a matter of time until the Senate becomes the House" - more ideological, more partisan and focused on the short term rather than able to take a long view.

The filibuster on legislation would be next to go Graham worried. "If Trump wins re-election and we take back the House and we've got a small majority in the Senate, they'll be so much pressure on all of us to change the rules."

...In the meantime, he said, "the judiciary's going to fundamentally change in our lifetime." The nominees will have to be approved by outspoken ideologues in the party "because you don't need any support from the other side."

Graham spoke to Chief Justice John Roberts frequently. "John Roberts is very much worried about this drift. He's an institutionalist at heart. He's joined several 5 to 4 decisions because he doesn't want the Court, I think, labeled as a political party."

The Lindsey Graham Woodward interviewed bears scant resemblance to the Lindsey Graham who has become Trump's snarling lapdog today. Maybe he still has two personas, private and public. 

"The Arctic is Dying"

 

This photograph is the wall of Batagaika Crater in Siberia. It's the biggest permafrost crater in the world and it's still growing. All the once safely sequestered carbon is being released as the permafrost wall thaws.

"The Arctic is Dying." I first encountered that headline in an Agence France Presse  report on the return of the massive icebreaker/research ship Polarstern to its home base in Bremerhaven, Germany, concluding a 389 day mission, much of it spent drifting, trapped in Arctic sea ice. I wasn't sure if it was hyperbole. Then I read a similar account in Deutsche Welle and, again, in The Guardian.

The team of several hundred scientists from 20 countries have seen for themselves the dramatic effects of global warming on ice in the region, considered "the epicentre of climate change", according to mission leader Markus Rex.

"We witnessed how the Arctic ocean is dying," Rex told AFP. "We saw this process right outside our windows, or when we walked on the brittle ice."

Underlining how much of the sea ice has melted away, Rex said the mission was able to sail through large patches of open water, "sometimes stretching as far as the horizon".

"At the North Pole itself, we found badly eroded, melted, thin and brittle ice."

The 140-million-euro ($165 million) expedition is also bringing back 150 terabytes of data and more than 1,000 ice samples.

"The expedition will, of course, produce results on many different levels," Rex said.

The team measured more than 100 parameters almost continuously throughout the year and are hoping the information will provide a "breakthrough in understanding the Arctic and climate system", he said.

Analysing the data will take up to two years, with the aim of developing models to help predict what heatwaves, heavy rains or storms could look like in 20, 50 or 100 years' time.

One thing is clear and inescapable. The Arctic, as it has existed for thousands of years, is over. We're only beginning to grasp the repercussions of that but, as climate change has shown repeatedly, it will be felt in various ways just about everywhere. The Guardian has a photo essay of what is already happening to the people of this remote region.

 

America Stages a Comeback - to Pre-WWII America

An insightful article in Foreign Policy predicts that America is en route to a time before the era of liberal democracy.

Trump’s “America first” approach to foreign policy has deep roots in U.S. history. Before 1945, the United States defined its interests narrowly, mostly in terms of money and physical security, and pursued them aggressively, with little regard for the effects on the rest of the world. It espoused liberal values such as freedom and liberty but applied them selectively, both at home and abroad. It formed no alliances besides the one it signed with France during the Revolutionary War. Its tariffs ranked among the highest in the world. It shunned international institutions. The United States was not isolationist; in fact, its rampant territorial expansion inspired the envy of Adolf Hitler. But it was often aloof.

The United States could afford to pursue its goals alone because it, unlike other powerful countries, was self-sufficient. By the 1880s, the United States was the world’s richest country, largest consumer market, and leading manufacturer and energy producer, with vast natural resources and no major threats. With so much going for it at home, the United States had little interest in forging alliances abroad.

That changed during the Cold War, when the Soviet military occupied large swaths of Eurasia and communism attracted hundreds of millions of followers worldwide. By the early 1950s, Moscow had twice the military might of continental Western Europe, and communists ruled over 35 percent of the world’s industrial resources. The United States needed strong partners to contain these threats, so it bankrolled an alliance, providing dozens of countries with security guarantees and easy access to American markets.

...It would be comforting to blame the country’s current nationalist posture on Trump alone, but Americans’ support for the postwar liberal order has been shaky for decades. Surveys now show that more than 60 percent of Americans want the United States simply to look after itself. When pollsters ask Americans what ought to be the priorities of U.S. foreign policy, few cite promoting democracy, trade, and human rights—the core activities of liberal international leadership. Instead, they point to preventing terrorist attacks, protecting U.S. jobs, and reducing illegal immigration. Roughly half of those surveyed say they oppose sending U.S. troops to defend allies under attack, and nearly 80 percent favor the use of tariffs to prevent job losses from trade. Trump’s approach is no aberration; it taps into a current that has always run through American political culture.

In the years ahead, Americans’ support for the liberal order may decline further still thanks to demographic and technological changes that will increase the United States’ economic and military lead and make the country less dependent on others. First, most countries’ populations are growing older, many at extremely fast rates. By 2070, the median age of the world’s population will have doubled compared with 100 years earlier, from 20 years old to 40 years old, and the share of people aged 65 and older in the global population will have nearly quadrupled, from five percent to 19 percent. For millennia, young people have vastly outnumbered the elderly. But in 2018, for the first time ever, there were more people over the age of 64 than under six. 

The United States will soon be the only country with a large, growing market. Among the world’s 20 largest economies, only Australia, Canada, and the United States will have growing populations of adults aged 20 to 49 throughout the next 50 years. The other large economies will suffer, on average, a 16 percent decline in that critical age group, with most of the demographic decline concentrated among the world’s most powerful economic players. China, for example, will lose 225 million young workers and consumers aged 20 to 49, a whopping 36 percent of its current total. Japan’s population of 20- to 49-year-olds will shrink by 42 percent, Russia’s by 23 percent, and Germany’s by 17 percent. India’s will grow until 2040 and then decline rapidly. Meanwhile, the United States’ will expand by ten percent. The American market is already as large as that of the next five countries combined, and the United States depends less on foreign trade and investment than almost any other country. As other major economies shrivel, the United States will become even more central to global growth and even less reliant on international commerce.

...By 2050, Russia’s spending on pensions and medical care for the elderly will increase by nearly 50 percent as a share of its GDP, and China’s will nearly triple, whereas in the United States, such spending will increase by only 35 percent. Russia and China will soon face severe choices between buying guns for their militaries and buying canes for their ballooning elderly populations, and history suggests they will prioritize the latter to prevent domestic unrest. Even if Russia and China do not cut their military spending, they will struggle to modernize their militaries because of the rapid aging of their troops. Personnel costs already consume 46 percent of Russia’s military budget (compared with 25 percent of the U.S. military budget) and likely will exceed 50 percent this decade as a wave of older troops retire and draw pensions. China’s personnel costs are officially listed at 31 percent of its military budget, but independent estimates suggest they consume nearly half of China’s defense spending and will rise in the years ahead.

Democratic liberalism's days are numbered.

In liberal democracies across the world, public support for that order has long rested on rising incomes for the working class, which in turn were largely the result of growing populations and job-creating technologies. The postwar baby boom produced scores of young workers and consumers, and the assembly line provided them with stable jobs. But today, populations across the democratic world are aging and shrinking, and machines are eliminating jobs. The basic bargain—work hard, support the liberal system, and trust that a rising economic tide will lift all boats—has broken down. Nationalism and xenophobia are filling the void.

A New World Order - Region versus Region

Washington might retain only two sets of regular partners. The first would include Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. These countries are strategically arrayed across the globe, and their militaries and intelligence agencies are already integrated with Washington’s. All but Japan boast growing working-age populations, unlike most other U.S. allies, and thus have the potential tax bases to contribute to U.S. missions. The second group would consist of places such as the Baltic states, the Gulf Arab monarchies, and Taiwan, which share borders with or sit in close proximity to U.S. adversaries. The United States would continue to arm these partners but would no longer plan to defend them. Instead, Washington would essentially use them as buffers to check Chinese, Iranian, and Russian expansion without direct U.S. intervention. 

The analysis reflects its authorship. Written by a political scientist it exists in a world defined by political science which introduces constraints and omits a great deal of modern reality. For example, he assumes that sophisticated, industrial nations will be relatively unscathed by climate breakdown than poorer and more backward nations. I suspect that affluent countries will be in some ways less resilient to climate impacts and disruptions than some second or third-tier economies. The author, a poly-sci prof from Tufts, also has apparently not heard of a world ordered on unsustainable consumption and rapidly dwindling resources.

On a more upbeat note, a South China Morning Post columnist, Alex Lo, writes that the world envisioned in the Foreign Policy article might not be that bad. For China, second place might be more comfortable - and peaceful.

Like many other countries, China faces a dire demographic outlook. When the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences first published the “Green Book of Population and Labour” in January last year, it made a news splash because of the dire warning it contained about population decline and a shrinking labour force.

While many major economies experience declining birth rates and increasing life expectancies, China’s former “one child” policy had worsened those trends. Its birth rate fell in each of the last three years, despite allowing families to have two children from 2016. A population contraction may start by 2027. By the middle of the century, there will not be enough workers to support a vast and ageing population.

...Actually, there are worse scenarios for China than falling into the “middle-income trap”. For one thing, it may escape the so-called Thucydides’ trap – or a third world war – as Beijing realises it’s unrealistic and counterproductive to compete with the US for world dominance. Since the late 1970s, China has been able to pay for both guns and butter because of its phenomenal economic expansion. At some point in the coming decades, it may have to choose butter over guns and scale back its global ambitions. God forbid if it chooses guns over butter – just to challenge the US!

But as US baseball legend Yogi Berra used to say, “Prediction is very hard, particularly when it’s about the future.”