Letter to Biden regarding Ukraine

According to many knowledgeable observers like Chris Hedges, shipping weapons to Ukraine to support resistance to Russia is the worst thing we can do.  It will result in more death, perhaps far more death.

We can and should call for negotiation, and finally recognize the fundamental Russian demands as reasonable and fair:

1) Ukrainian neutrality (No NATO)

2) Recognize Russian annexation of Crimea.

3) Independence of DPR and LPR regions to be determined by poll.

We can worry about a war crimes tribunal of Putin later.  At that time, we should include Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.

The US precipitated this war in Ukraine by pushing NATO on a country that, a decade ago, had little desire for it.  We enabled a revolution that tilted the balance in favor of NATO among those still voting.  But our actions also led to a civil war and crisis, according to Realism experts like Professor John Mearsheimer, who reiterated that assertion days before the Russian attack.  Decades ago, George Kennan correctly warned about the consequences of expanding NATO into Ukraine.  It is worse than folly to continue on this path.  Even at best, maximizing sanctions on Russia will also be destructive to Europe, the world and US economies, and ordinary Russians.  At worst, shipping more arms, could lead to our worst imaginations.

We must correct our demands first, before expecting Russian withdrawal.  They feel this is existential, and we are not going to change that.  Meanwhile, guaranteeing a right to join NATO means nothing to most Americans.

2. Responsibility

I once had the company of an elderly retired professor from California, who came to my monthly discussion party several times around 2006.  He sometimes quickly described himself as "Iranian," (he didn't look like most Iranians I knew, but always perfectly dressed and his home was immaculate...like the others).  When you got to know him better, he'd explain he was Bakhtiari, one of the nomadic "Grass" people, and I once showed his movie "Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life."

The ongoing War in Iraq was universally condemned by my entirely Democratic-President-voting (though, including Libertarians and Republicans) circle of interlocutors.  We universally blamed George W. Bush for starting and continuing this terrible, illegal, and entirely unjustifiable war.  One friend says George W started the war "because my Daddy."

But the elderly professor was having none of it.  "You are responsible for the War in Iraq."  He said to me.  "The war is being waged by your country, the USA.  Therefore, You are responsible for it."

Feeling angered, I replied, "But I didn't vote for George W. Bush.  Prior to the war in Iraq, I marched in two massive Antiwar rallies.  I worked against it, how can you say I'm responsible?"

"Because it's your country," he replied.

I think there is a kernel of truth in what each of us was saying.

I tend to think of these things in terms of cause and effect, quantitatively if possible.  So in fact a lot of things "contribute" to something happening, in a greater or lesser degree.  Perhaps some things work against something happening, but it happens anyway because of other prevailing forces.

So, in my calculus, I might be innocent of the war in Iraq if I did as many things against it as I did for it, such as being a working citizen.

It's pretty clear to me, despite my argument above, that probably I did more to support the war the war in Iraq by being a citizen than I did against it by protesting (and voting against the most pro war candidates, or so I thought, though that became unclear later under Obama, who ramped up the wars and did more bombing than anyone).

I could have and should have done more against the war.  OTOH, it was probably going to happen anyway.

But what my dear Bakhtiari professor was trying to tell me, I think was something a bit different.  The government of the USA operates in my name, as a citizen of that country, I axiomatically bear responsibility for it, and not for the governments of other sovereign countries.  If my government is wrong, it is my "responsibility" to fix it, a special responsibility shared by me and other citizens.

Either way, I bear some if not more than a little responsibility for the mass violence and deaths of the War in Iraq.  Then and today I am responsible for the destruction and provocations of both US and US proxy forces and US client states as well.  This is US Imperialism, the most violent and deadly force in the history of the last 80 years.

Therefore, it is the "mote in my eye" that I must remove before I can honestly help other countries with the "specs" in their eyes, as I described in the previous essay, Ethics.

Ethics

 I am an atheist.  I do not believe or follow religious superstitions or dogmas.  However, I do occasionally find useful rhetoric, tools, ethics and rituals within religions, which I freely adopt, as is my right.

I have always felt a central ethical kernel to have expressed by Jesus in Matthew 7:1-5.

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

This notion was not at all original to Jesus, it was also Torah Judaism at the time, and many other cultures.  But Jesus (allegedly) gave it a uniquely memorable expression as handed down in western literature.

The Next World's Policeman?

I favor a policy of no US military or intelligence interventions anywhere--call it isolationism if you like but I'm fine with trade when properly regulated.

We should have left Ukraine alone in 2014 and before instead of proceeding with our NATO expansion and "democracy promotion."  The current Russian operations in Ukraine are blowback from that, predicted by George Kennan in 1991.  Professor John Mearsheimer said in 2015 and recently that the troubled situation in Ukraine was US fault.  I'd like to see the fastest possible direct Russian/Ukrainian settlement, not an attempt to defeat Russia over one of their most serious concerns, as they've been telling us over and over for 7 years.  Ukraine should be neutral and demilitarized...for the sake of the world...and the annexation of Crimea and autonomy of Donbass should be respected as well.

The best info I have is that Russian operations have been highly focused on military targets and objectives and have minimized loss of life, virtually the opposite of US wars (which had less justification) in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Also they have been very effective and efficient (though avoiding the messy occupation of cities).  Russian military is highly effective and runs at low cost.  I'd vote for them being the world's policeman.  We're too old and fat for the job anymore, and besides its nothing but grief.

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/02/26/the-russian-way-of-war/

"Woke" Imperialism

I just found this jewel of a paragraph, giving a nutshell version of the story of Gloria Steinem, the CIA's official "Feminist" since the 1960's.

"The CIA was heavily invested in mid-twentieth-century art and cultural production through the Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF), and was involved in the noncommunist Left more broadly, much to the chagrin of conservatives at the time.9 The CCF’s tendrils were seemingly end­less, even reaching the preeminent postcolonial writer Derek Walcott.10 The CIA was consistent in its anti-communism, but it was never conservative. The feminist Gloria Steinem went so far as to characterize the CIA as “liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”11 Steinem would know—she freely admitted to working with the CIA through a front organization called the Independent Research Service.12 The CIA’s Harry Lun encouraged her to become the face of the organization, sending her to lead a group which would disrupt pro­ceedings at the Marxist Vienna Youth Festival in 1959, and later to Helsinki in 1962.13 These affiliations were hardly a problem for Steinem on the left; she long served as an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America until such positions were abolished in 2017.14 The DSA officially condemned Steinem a year later in 2018 in its magazine—not for being a CIA agent, but rather for her insinuation that young women supported Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton because “the boys are with Bernie.”

 In this article, whose thesis I generally agree with, though I'm not 100% happy with.

I had not the courage to speak out against Steinem when I was at the DSA Convention in 2009 and the annual vote on Steinem was taken.  (It was immediately unanimously approved.)  I learned of her CIA history while reading a Nation obituary of Ellen Willis, who wrote an expose of her.  Willis adopted the designation Pro Sex Feminist to distinguish herself from the adamantly antiporn (one of those who would ban all nude magazines, as "objectifying women") feminists like Steinem.  This puts a whole different spin on Steinem's brief employment as a Playboy worker which enabled her to write a cutting denunciation of the venture.  It would be fairly obvious she joined the club specifically for that purpose, much as she had joined the Marxist Vienna Youth Festival in 1959.

I remain a fan of Hugh Hefner (and fondly remember my one visit to a Playboy Club (in Vegas, 2009)... I wish they were in every neighborhood, it was top shelf) while appreciating most Hefner's earlier days, the 1960's, when the Playboy magazine published the work of Seymour Hersch and others, exposing the monstrosity of the Vietnam War, which the magazine openly opposed.   After Steinem's attacks, the tone of Playboy media shifted over time.  In the final season of The Girls Next Door (2008) we learn that Bridget has a brother fighting in the War in Iraq, who finishes his deployment and visits the mansion before returning home.  The show is very careful never to praise or criticize the war, though Bridget herself speaks in the usual terms "fighting for our freedom" perhaps only once.   Hefner concludes the episode saying God Bless America.

Anyway, after merely ranting against Hefner, Steinem had a meteoric rise to the top as the leading voice of American Feminism.  THE one the CIA/Media always quotes.  This also suggests that nearly every "leading" American cultural personality, including the lefter personalities, is really a CIA asset.  They were the ones of their kind who could most well steer clear of effective criticism of American Empire, along with whatever schtick they do, to be continually promoted in the CIA/Media.  Such personalities often have a suspicious and dramatic fall at the end, like Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison, possibly at the time they are beginning to feel independent of the machine.  

And that's just the beginning.

Rooting for a Quick Russian Victory

Not only were Afghanistan and Yugoslavia NATO operations, so was Libya!  NATO basically bombed a country back to the stone age for no good reason.  And that's what also happened in parts of Iraq like Faluja.

Lots of respectable people, even lots of leftists, are calling for sending arms to Ukraine.  That's a fundamentally wrongheaded idea, of course, like pouring gasoline on fire.

Not only that, but I plan to go way out on a limb and say that, while I would not have my country interfere in this conflict in any way (of course they are...they've convinced Zelensky not to negotiate and promising more "support"...the worst possible thing to do), I'm actually rooting for Russia (and especially, of course, a quick Russian "victory"--that is to say a negotiated settlement permanently satisfying Russia--as compared with quagmire...which looks to me the only alternative).  A satisfactory settlement could include recognizing DPR and LPR and Russian annexation of Crimea, implementing Minsk, and/or making Ukraine neutral by treaty. 

This is not because I especially identify with Russians, but because I think it's better for everyone in the long run to settle this and move on.

If there is an ending that Russia can set the terms on, and I don't like the way that is done, I might change my mind.  I didn't like the idea of this kind of attack in the first place, and that could well be a Russian mistake, and maybe I'm also not properly imagining the way they would freely settle it.  Or perhaps less freely, but then there would be other blame to go around.

But I'm rooting for Russia because, in short, nationalism isn't a thing that deserves any respect.  The US used nationalism to screw up Ukraine to make a proxy battleground (pure evil).  The Ukrainians who signed up for that project are collaborators with Washington DC, the most evil government on earth.  I want US imperialism to end, as it's the most destructive force on earth, not to mention wasting my money and hope for life on earth. So in collaborating with Washington DC, those Ukrainian collaborators were doing me--and the rest of the world--harm.  (Though not uniquely...you could say I contribute to the Imperial project too...but I don't do it by choice.)

Nevertheless, I hope Ukrainians live rather than die for their mistakes.  But some may have to make those decisions.  If they're going to kill and destroy for Nation, Freedom, and Democracy, basically all those things are fake in the Imperial context anyway.  There is no "freedom and democracy" if you are client state of the USA.  You may even become an endless battleground like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.

I don't think Nazis and Jihadis elsewhere should be encouraged to collaborate with US to achieve their goals either.

If Russia is perceived as more of a counterbalance to the USA, that might be a good thing too.  (In fact, while 99% of the people in the west are rooting for Ukraine, it is certainly different in Russia, China, and Iran, if not other places that have been screwed by USA.)

In fact, if Russians want to take over the "policeman job" the US does, I'd be very happy with that too, in principle.  The US has been doing it horribly, and it's nothing but a dead weight loss to everyone but weapons makers.  Of course the best solution is true multilateralism, with all international "policing" done by globally representative international organizations.  But certainly as long as the USA is the "sole superpower" that isn't going to happen in any sort of truly multilateral way.

Meanwhile, some Americans are fulminating so much they hope to throw Russians out of the Security Council.

Americans need to study themselves carefully in the mirror.

The best way to struggle for freedom and democracy is Non-Violence.

Any violent struggle raises issues, and those issues are pushed to the extreme by Support by the Global Hegemon.

NOTHING supported by the Global Hegemon can be considered a true struggle for freedom and democracy at all.  The Global Hegemon supports one thing and one thing only: Global Empire.  So being supported by the Global Hegemon means you are willingly becoming part of the Global Imperial Project, the antithesis of freedom and democracy, and deserve no respect.

Regional support is fundamentally less malign.

NOW if we go back to the Maidan Revolution, we can see it wasn't even remotely about freedom and democracy anyway.  It was opposed to the actual democratic and constitutional processes of Ukraine.  It was a project to make a Ukraine militarily aligned with the Global Hegemon instead of a regional power.  This murderous imperial project immediately began de-recognizing domestic language and speech.  Breaking away from this project as DPR, LPR, and Crimea did was fully justified, even if aided by a regional power.

In the end, if there is going to be peace and survival on earth, there must be no grand imperial projects.  The Global Hegemonic Forces must be rendered into ploughshares, along with their ancilliaries.  Signing up with the Global Hegemon is a ticket to hell for oneself and possibly humanity itself.

Meanwhile, Russia is not merely fighting for Russians inside Ukraine, Russia is opposing the Global Hegemon itself.  This is a noble struggle, and we can hope it leads to freedom from Global Hegemony--the worst form of tyranny.

Marx and the Labor theory of Value

Marx did not originate the "Labor Theory of Value."  Adam Smith, long before Marx, was a pioneer of the Labor Theory of Value, in sharp contrast to physiocrats and others.  Then Ricardo added more, and then Marx.  All 3 of these men along with John Stuart Mill and others are considered "Classical" economists.

But after Marx, it was primarily Marxists who held on to the Labor Theory of Value.  Capitalist economics moved on to marginalism, utility maximization, "equilibrium," and prices. 

I'm not really sure what the point of Labor Theory of Value is, unless you want to emphasize the importance of workers, without whom nothing productive happens, and they deserve a better piece of the action and control over which direction it goes.  But you could just say that, and forget the Labor Theory of Value.

Clearly, intuitively, and otherwise, all value does not come from Labor.  Much value, in land and natural resources, comes from processes having nothing to do with human efforts and in fact are degraded by them.

Thinking just in terms of profit, Capitalists can make profit from either Capital or Labor and usually both.

But for orthodox Marxists (I am more of a Marxian) the Labor Theory of Value is special because it is supposed to prove that the rate of profit MUST fall over time as industry becomes more capital intensive, thereby leading to the implosion of capitalism itself.

History has not followed this path at all, and now it seems that it is not inevitable at all that profit rates inevitably fall and therefore that Capitalism will be replaced by Socialism.  It will require human struggle and ingenuity to make this happen.

Master debunker of mainstream Economics, Steve Keen, wrote his thesis about the fundamental error in the Labor Theory of Value, and how Marx himself briefly saw past it using Hegelian reasoning, but then abandoned that (still useful) discovery in order to maintain the "inevitable socialist revolution" theory.

Keen also explains Marx's seemingly obscurantist distinction between Labor and Labor Power.  "Labor" is the Exchange Value and "Labor Power" is the Use Value.  It is the distinction between Exchange Value and Use Value (a Hegelian unity) that makes profit possible, and this distinction is not limited to Labor. 

It was a shove

Professor Mearsheimer had another speech, though just before the invasion, that also said, as he did in 2015, that the crisis was our fault.

Some claim we did not provoke the war.  In fact, there were 30, 80, or 105 years of provocations, depending on how counted, reaching a creshendo apparently with a huge increase in the artillery attacks on Donbass (it's hard to believe false-flag attacks so widespread, though westerners were primed to think such a thing), AND with Zelensky's threat to tear up the Budapest Agreement (many think he was prompted to say that).

It was a shove.  The neonazis in Ukraine were eager to end the stalemate.  And the leash was off, because with the Americans gone, this was the appointed opportunity.  Russia would then commit a war crime, sanctions rolled out, and the job done.  But contrary to years of assurances otherwise, and many "Realist" thinkers aptly arguing it was not in Russia's interest to do anything big, Putin made the big move.  I could only hope it quickly settled the situation, with all soon forgetting.  In this case, idealism is also the pursuit of endless war.

Ukraine is situated not unlike Texas in the USA.  It's as if Texas had been part of US (as Ukraine was to USSR and before) then became a separate state (as some have wanted for awhile).  Now imagine this separate country of Texas joins an alliance with Russia, and Russia and all it's partners start sending equipment and troops.

Now imagine it didn't just join this alliance with Russia with it's own mixed politics, it was neutral until Russia came and instigated a coup of white supremacist types from the south who engaged in street warfare in Austin, who set up a new government representing them and the outside power, causing opposite leaning regions to declare independence, with protection from the US, and a civil war ensued inside Texas with these regions who refuse to accept the coup being surrounded.

Now imagine this hypothetical Russia was not the 3rd rate power or whatever Russia is, but the world's only superpower for the last 80 years, with 80+ bases around the world, the richest country in the history of the world, with the richest and deepest alliances.

Now imagine this Texas with global enemy alliances representing the majority of wealth on earth decides to start making it's own nukes.

We're all losers now

Your hope is my hope.  Fast surgical demilitarization then exit.  And I also fear now that may not be in the cards, similar to how I was wrong last time.

My prediction was for fast surgical decapitation of forces shelling Donbass.  That did not happen, probably because it was not possible, probably because those forces were backed elsewhere.  I also know now that DPR and LPR control was pretty much limited to the cities.  60-150k Ukranian regular and Neonazi troops were in the surrounding "administrative" area.  Surgical strikes on missile launchers could not eliminate those.

Endless US predictions of "Invasion" were only part of the provocation.  Another part was the vastly increasing shelling of Donbass.  Final straw may have been Zelensky's threat of going nuclear.

We have not seen proof, as Biden claimed, that Putin planned this categorically or that there was any such intelligence.  All the US had to do was withdraw and leave the neonazis to initiate the war.  Perhaps Americans should be chained to Kyiv to prevent these things.

This will likely be lost on most Americans, as we plunge into another 80 years of cold and hot war.

An outcome which has led at least one blogger I've seen to conjecture Putin as CIA troll. 

I'm peeling off the word "Saint" on my Putin shrine.

Many pro-Russians are speaking in hubristic millenial terms...the end of NATO, US global dominance, etc.  That is, of course, worrisome, though I was and still am calling for an end to NATO.

Those more objective see China as the big winner, US, NATO, Europe and Russia all as losers, and Ukraine of course as the biggest loser of all.

Parallels in US invasion of Iraq ("weapons of mass destruction") and arming Mujahadeen in Afghanistan (giving the Vietnam experience to Soviet Russia).

My calculation is still that the US is deeply enmeshed in the lowest level of hell, Treachery.  Russia is still in Limbo, but the angel has disappeared.

Ninth Circle: Treachery
The final circle is a frozen wasteland occupied by history’s greatest traitors. So … Washington, DC in February?

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/articles/a-visitors-guide-to-dantes-nine-circles-of-hell/

Liberal imperialists are going wild about Trump.  See what a traitor, they say.

The Deep State only allows the insane to have more sanity about war.

And when those insane better represent the preferred domestic tendencies of the Deep State, they'll even get promoted.

Keynes vs Hard Money Marxism

Marx saw the fundamental problem with capitalist economies, which he posited would ultimately lead to their collapse, as the endless drive for capitalist accumulation through profit (which he called Excess Value).  He saw the solution coming in two phases, first Socialism then Communism.  In the Socialist phase, worker power, managed through worker's unions, would first tame and then displace capitalist structures with direct control by workers.  The ultimate Communist phase could only arise after that, after minds steeped in socialist practice can fully abandon all exploitative forms, class, property, and even government itself, a pure utopia of human fulfillment.  Marx didn't waste many words on the Communist phase.  It has more seemed to me an ideal that can only be approximated.  But me, accusing Marx of being Idealist?  Following Marx, Marxists denounce Idealism in the harshest terms (while still harboring it?)  I claim the world is more than we can comprehend, and Ideals are things too, somehow.  And once admitting Ideals, the usual convention would be that I could not be Materialist (though I'm fine with a Materialist analysis, just not a blindness to Idealism).  So if in fact Marxists are hypocritical regarding their Idealism, it's only in the direction of my more comprehensive view, that Idealism is a real thing too, and that much of the appeal of Marxism and Communism is and can be in its Ideals.

Keynes saw the primary problem with capitalist economies to be repeated depressions in which many people could be unemployed and thereby lose their livelihoods for years or more.   (And though it is said Keynes didn't "focus" on inequality, less unemployment would be commensurate with greater equality, as things work in theory and practice.)  Depressions are when capitalist economies are least supportive of actual human needs.  Masses are starving and homeless.  Keynes's moderately deep analysis of money showed that depressions arise from Excess Saving, which he explained, and pointed to solving them through Government Spending which could uniquely resolve it in many cases.  His hopeful vision was of a future of "managed" capitalism with increasing wealth and leisure for all.  (We might have continued on that path for more than 20 years after his death had we not blown the social surplus on endless war, something Keynes personally detested and denounced during his too-short life, but didn't fully disparage in his theory, any or all spending was useful in maintaining full employment, just not necessarily optimal social development.  Money spent on war and excess concentrations of wealth mean less for the human needs of most people, so the latter is incapable of improving much over time.  Once the huge tax cuts and resumed global militancy of Reaganism were baked in, quality of life has stagnated for most people, despite enormous technological gains, which are offset by baked in strangulation, as in health care, education, and housing.

I see both similarities and differences between these two views.  This is not to say that Keynes was a Marxist, in fact he was strongly anti-Marxist and denounced Marxism in the harshest terms.  But arguably Keynes was, even in later life, a kind of non-Marxian socialist.  In his youth, in fact, Keynes was a Fabian Socialist.  No doubt Marx would consider him a Utopian Socialist.  But I think it's more fair to say that both Marx and Keynes were utopians, and similar in curious ways while also being different.  (An argument is made that Keynes' economics came from an obscure predecessor, who had explicitly tried to cook up a capitalism-friendly economics including Marxian insights.)  I think both Marx and Keynes provided interesting and useful ideas, and not in either case sufficient.  However Marx's view was ultimately the deeper one, and so I might consider myself a Post Keynesian Marxist rather than a Marxist Post Keynesian.

Hard Money Marxists, however, may see these things differently than I do.  (Personally, I find Hard Money Marxism a kind of contradiction in terms.  Accumulation is pure evil, but saving money divine?)  But still worth reading, and I fully understand that until wasteful military spending and insufficient taxation of the wealthy are fixed, there is little hope for making a world better oriented to meeting human needs instead of increasing them.  In short, we can't merely "spend" all the way to Utopia.  We need to end war, and tax wealth too.  Even MMT'ers, at the liberal spending edge of Post Keynesians, will concede those things.  Some capitalist strictures will just have to get tossed overboard.  And doing that will require a proletarian revolution, because the capitalist powers that be will never consent.

I've long admired and followed Doug Henwood despite his Hard Money Marxism.  He usually presents a very illuminating take on things.

I've just discovered another Hard Money Marxist, Michael Roberts, a retired City of London economist who apparently many people take seriously.  I'm adding him to my Important Blogs sidebar, though my first discovery of him (a critique of Keynes and MMT) is seeming a lot more like heat than light to me.

Two's Day

Many have noted that today is "all two's": 2/2/22.

However, this is only true if you use a 2 digit date.  With a 4 digit date, you get a zero also, 2022.

The date which is really "all two's" is 2/2/2222.

Anyway, if you considered today a nearly all two's" year, you may also notice that similar days come up every 100 years.  So there is an all two's day similar to today on 2/2/2122 and so on, with the full all two's day being in 2/2/2222.

But that full on all two's day is going to be on a Friday.

Today's nearly all two's day happens to be...a Tuesday.

Which makes it a Two's Day.

Will Carbon Capture ever be Useful?

I think, in the very long run, carbon capture will be complementary to getting off fossil fuels.

It will be necessary to reverse sea level rise, among other things, which will otherwise continue for millenia at high rates (or until the permanent ice is gone, whichever is first).

I find it hard to believe that matters will start reverting to something like pre-industrial at net zero.  The CO2 level will still be higher than it's been for 3 million years (and counting...) and highly degraded biosphere, including toxically acid ocean.

But CC is meaningless or worse BEFORE you get off fossil fuels.  A lot of fossil energy would need to be invested in building and powering such things, or resources that could be devoted to getting off fossil fuels into this not-yet-useful scheme, or promises about it will lead to slower abandonment of fossil fuels, etc.

We must stop digging before starting to fill the hole, as I said.  We must have SURPLUS renewable energy before we can invest some of it in Carbon Capture.

Climate Activism vs Doomism and Leftism ? (updated)

Update: I think I like Michael Mann's book, though it's not defending the science, it's all about the politics, which is fine that needs to be covered, and it's Ok despite how he unfairly stereotypes "the left."  Thoughtful leftists believe in principle a carbon tax would be better than nothing, more of a real solution than Obamacare, for example.   (Cap and Trade would be more on the same level as Obamacare.)  And a carbon tax could be made fair.  BTW the best solution, from a leftist-communist POV is nationalization of the energy and transportation sector, eco Communism, or at least a free national grid and storage system and electric rail.  I think the popularity of eco Communism will have to grow over another decade or two, especially if nothing else is done we'll be in terrible shape, so I'd favor a "fair" carbon tax now if one could be squeezed out of Congress and passed by whoever happens to be President in the meantime.

Anyway, the NewClimateWar is packed with interesting stuff on every page, and many of my friends are hard to convince to even my POV on the carbon tax.  I see Jacobin has 4/5 articles against the Carbon Tax.

But I think the politics of Carbon Tax are so terrible, with virtually everyone in USA except centrist intellectual elite opposing it, it seems unlikely, and effort should be put into other things, as "ineffective" as they might seem.

A recent highly touted website allows you to calculate the effects of changes to improve the trajectory of global warming.  If you play with it, you will quickly discover that ONLY a carbon tax does a large amount of good, most other changes do very little.  A careful examination of what's going on will reveal this has to do with the calibration of the sliders, and how much change is applied, and in in what form.  Some of these calibrations can be adjusted, but only within strict limits of +/- 15% of projected values.  Meanwhile, the carbon tax slider goes from zero to more than Norway's, which has had carbon tax for 30 years, and has wealth an renewable energy in abundance and a highly equal and rich society...you're going to need eco Communism to get that level of carbon tax anywhere else.

I am a believer in radical birthing limits and population reduction to 1800's levels over 100 or so years.  No model is going to show that, and no neoliberal model is going to show eco Communism.

Anyway it looks like an interesting book.

I too am critical of Michael Moore's environmental movie based on synopsis, and I refuse to buy it to add to my large collection of Michael Moore movies which I've begun to disparage as sensationalistic (though I especially enjoyed Where To Invade Next).

End Update

I've long respected Michael Mann (a leading and distinguished professor of climatology) as a fighter against climate change denialism.  For that reason, have been following him on Twitter.  IIRC, he was the one who came up with the "hockey stick" graph showing temperature increase.  On Twitter he's hitting back at denialism every day.

He's now written a book about climate change, denialism, and what we must do now.   (I decided to buy it, despite what I'm about to say.)

He lays it heavy on the fossil fuel companies whose own scientists were verifying climate change even as their PR flacks were denying it.  And many other denialists like that.

BUT, he also is said to lay it heavy on "doomers" and what he considers "leftists."

I just had a little interchange with him today on Twitter.  He was having an argument with "doomers" who say we're already over the hill.

He said that there is no "climate lag," and that as soon as we can achieve net zero, the climate will begin...improving!

(This completely contradicts the "junk" scientists I had been reading previously, which described a 30-40 year lag, and many potential tipping points that will lock in even more CO2 and climate change if we get past them.)  So I fired a comment:

"What about global ice continuing to melt, permafrost continuing to release methane, forests continuing to burn, and other "tipping points" already "nearly" tipping?  My SOP says 1000's of years for "stabilization."  For sure sea level will keep rising."

He responded:

"Much of that is wrong. All this stuff is discussed in The #NewClimateWar. But see this thread:"

"There is no evidence for projected warming <3-4C of any "tipping points" that significantly change the warming trajectory (e.g. methane feedbacks). The most plausible tipping points (e.g. AMOC slowdown, ice sheet destabilization) don't significantly impact global mean temps."

https://twitter.com/charlesp210/status/1495457706479702022?s=20&t=gWw6_Ua2WbKYWxvWrZtQpw

OK, so he says why this is wrong in his book, but not hear really.  "There is no evidence."  I'm not sure I find that convincing. 

Here's what one reviewer said about the book 

"I am giving this 3 stars because I believe in the importance of the science Mr. Mann studies and the necessity to ignore the climate doomers and inactivists.

However, I did have a major issue with the book. When talking about the left side of the political spectrum he mentions how infighting is a problem and how we need to stop tearing each other down to make some real progress. Which is all well and good, except he doesn’t even follow that rule in his own book. His criticisms of those on the left is almost entirely about progressives. He brings up:

-the ways the progressives go about advocacy wrong

-how they often fall for climate doomism

-about how they were fooled by an inaccurate Michael Moore documentary

-how their criticism of capitalism isn’t helping

-several times it is mentioned that Hillary lost the election because progressives were tricked into not liking her by Russian bots.

Good luck finding many criticisms of liberals who talk a big game on climate rather than act on it, in fact he’s often found defending them because at least they are better than the republicans on this issue (talk about a low bar).

There are certainly valid criticisms to be made about how progressives go about climate advocacy. But the same can be said for moderate Democrats, and yet their flaws were barely brought up. This book did not give me the “unity” vibes the author was claiming climate activists needed."

END QUOTE

So, you can see I'm buying the book not entirely because I agree with it, but because I want to hear this alternative "anti-doomism" and "anti-leftism" POV.

I do agree with Mann that Carbon Capture is not feasible in the near future and we must get completely off fossil fuels instead.  It worries me that some who seem more pessimistic than Mann, like the one I posted here last week, seem to be pushing these non-solutions like Carbon Capture in part BECAUSE they don't share Mann's optimism about fast return to baseline.  Or maybe they're just using that pessimism to push these impossible "Solutions."

Hunter S. Thompson nailed it

 I've been struggling to say this for two decades at least.  But Hunter S. Thompson nailed it long ago:

"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world -- bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully.  We are whores for power and oil with hate and fear in our hearts."

Nothing embodies this more than the current crushing US sanctions and expropriation on Afghanistan, following 20 years of brutal military seizure and occupation which were not only wasteful and useless but unjustified and illegal.

And before this phase of crushing sanctions and theft, there was the war itself, as well as military operations and "support" still ongoing in other countries today.

Nothing enables this more than the mass blindness of US citizens to the operations and effects of the military empire they support.  And that blindness mostly, or at least sufficiently, persists despite the legendary (actually only since Brandenburg v Ohio in 1969) freedom of speech and press in the USA.

Americans by and large, and amazingly, consider themselves part of a relatively moral and reformist tendency on earth, bringing Freedom and Democracy and a Rules Based Order to the world.  Officials repeat these lines endlessly and without much criticism in the most pervasive media sources.

A brief examination of the recent historical evidence makes a mockery of these claims.  The death, destruction, and dislocation these countries have caused is tiny compared with that caused by the USA.

Although it might not be the perfect ideal in all cases, a world in which the US never intervened in the internal affairs of other countries would be so entirely preferable to the current one as to not be worth quibbling.

Though I agree with Oliver Stone and others that the US-aided defeat of Nazi Germany was the one exceptional case where US military power abroad was proper, to have merely replaced, succeeded, and far surpassed Nazi Germany in global domination was a moral and ethical collapse of the highest order.