Harnessing the power of the word "Clean"

For the past few months my physical and mental space have been occupied almost exclusively by the global campaign to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and create a clean energy economy. So I haven't written anything, especially on a subject so dependent on science (that is too complicated and technical for me to have a worthwhile opinion on) as is climate change. However, here is my bit.

Our planet's climate is changing. Everyone over 5 years old agrees with that fact. The scandalous question is: "Why is our climate changing?"

Because of the Industrial Revolution? Natural planetary cycles? Does it really matter since the planet is only 6,000 year old and the rapture is coming?

There are only two real possible answers; one is the worst-case scenario and the other is the better but equally unfortunate scenario:

A) The first is that indeed, mankind has completely hijacked the evolutionary process of Earth and thrown it into a cataclysmic extinction level event spiral after a century and a half of unrestricted planetary poisoning through relentless heavy industrial production and warfare.

B) The second scenario absolves us of the blame, but leaves us with many of the same problems. The planet is undergoing one of its many multi-millenary cycles that shifts the status quo in favor of some species and forces mass adaptation to changing habitats- see the Ice Age. The only difference is that now, the process is slightly quickened by human activity- not much to worry about since something similar would happen anyway.

Either way, the human species will face the same challenges: Major shifts in agriculture, mostly affecting developing or undeveloped geographical areas. The poorest parts of the world do not have access to technology intensive agriculture (whatever its merits or entrapments may be, food is food); therefore these areas will be the most vulnerable to socio-political and economic unrest. This means more refugees, human rights abuses and disruption of trade- not to mention the opportunity cost of closed and/or chaotic markets. Concurrently an inevitable decrease in the quality of life of all people would be plainly visible- water is a precious commodity in many parts of the world already and is a basic common denominator example.

Throughout history, revolutions in production have been made possible by social crisis and these revolutions are the motor behind the technological progress of human society- once again, all strive toward efficiency. Fossil fuels are owed an immeasurable debt by humankind, for bringing us all the luxury and comforts of modern western civilization. Fossil fuels are owed due regard for bringing humankind to the point where such energy is anachronistic. Fossil fuels depend on combustion, wasting tremendous amounts of energy. The byproducts of these reactions are toxic- millions of Americans suffer yearly from respiratory, cardiovascular diseases and of course- cancer. Fossil fuels have made American intervention in foreign countries a matter of policy, even when such action was detrimental to all involved. That is expensive energy.

A truly advanced society, in terms of technology and social philosophy, thrives off of the natural cycles of the host planet, solar system, etc... We are gaining the ability to harness geothermal, tidal flux, wind and solar energy, battery technology has also made tremendous advances in recent years. A world power cannot afford to miss out on the energy revolution and the interest groups trying to forestall these natural evolutions in human capability are in the kindest of terms: unpatriotic.

The current economic crisis is the perfect time to look for new production methods and items, train millions of new workers, create new markets and expand the scope of international cooperation.
After all, Reagan himself pointed out that we needed a threat greater than any ideology or country to unite humankind.
So yes, it is time to end the wars and start the biggest overseas contingency operation of all- the global clean energy leap.

Last Remarks on a New Beginning

The US Election went as expected. The face of change, international cooperation and reform is the President-elect.
Americans are proud- and hopeful.
The future. . . however, is not bright. The most optimistic of Obama's supporters will likely be disenchanted, but I hope not.
Now that November Fourth has passed, Wall Street will resume it's decline.
Putin has already responded to our shift in the White House by moving missiles next door to Poland.
And there are of course our two ongoing wars. Many military analysts agree that nothing will be achieved by prolonging our occupation of Iraq; because the socio-cultural puzzle is just too complicated, because we destroyed the country's infrastructure, etc... So, yes we will leave that country while attempting to prop up the government. A likely scenario, we'll just treat the country like Nigeria, get our oil and let the locals sort the mess. Afghanistan is not a lost cause, keeping in mind that we haven't put any real effort into the fight, so as we try to control and rebuild we must keep in mind the lessons of the Soviet Union's campaign there. We have to pay close attention because of the perilous situation in Pakistan, a country not to be trifled with.
The financial meltdown has not peaked yet, credit card companies have not released the full extent of damages and invariably they will have an unaffordable bill on their hands.
The Democrats won the Executive and the Senate, it's a golden opportunity for them to implement difficult and necessary reforms- legislative and cultural. If they fail to act on their mandate, the Democrats will be scapegoated for everything that is going wrong.

Fortunately, the sheer amount of popular enthusiasm for the new President is going to empower the Executive.
Personally, I have rarely witnessed such mass euphoria for a politician. May his path be in the Light.

"Once in a Century"

THE SKY IS FALLING! On some, on others... not so much. Many have debated whether or not there is a recession- in America, abroad or both. Certainly, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG this week many agree that there is a crisis of some sort. I am particularly fond of President Bush's choice of words: painful adjustments.

The choice of words is, I feel, very apt. Certainly, the sky will continue to float above. Certainly, the economy will persevere. Most importantly, crises are a great time to make a fortune and/or enact systemic "painful adjustments". The process may, quite reasonably, sound fearful. However, there is a long tradition of crisis driven change. One may argue that this is a reactionary approach, commentators on the current situation have referred to the management system as being "defensive". Realistically, or optimistically, we should regard this "once in a century" breakdown as an opportunity to put in place much needed reforms.

Our economic system, as leftist critics have justly observed for a long time, has been based around a non-productive consumerist paradigm. We, as a nation and state, have borrowed huge amounts of capital and invested it in artificial economic constructions that would provide short term profits through the speculation of market bubbles. Bubbles are indeed meant to be speculated, but not lived in. We know this from the long series of similar 'catastrophes' throughout our economic history. Having restructured our economy toward the fabled service-sector, we ceased to produce. When international loans are given to third-world economies those countries are expected, at times naively, to invest them in infrastructure and industry- sectors that are productive. In a period where blind consumerism has reached a critical point of environmental destruction and separation from the real world problems of other nations, it is only natural that there be an adjustment.

In Europe such adjustments have been part of the blueprinting process through the 90's. Cheap energy, recycling, so called "alternative lifestyles" are not eccentric attitudes but at least pursued goals and public policy if not concrete fact. European countries have had to deal with financial market restructuring due to the integration project. In America we act on the motto "don't fix what ain't broke" (if it's squeaky, buy a new one). Such as in the face of technological advancement, we waited for our Pearl Harbor in order to enact the Patriot Act to update our security systems (the appropriateness of this legislation is debatable regarding certain portions).

The trend has been to centralize authority, to increase regulatory authority and to heighten the Executive's role during the Bush Administration. The Financial Regulatory Reform project, begun in March of 2007, previewed one year later and enacted during the next administration is modeled partly on the UK's reforms and follows the above trend. Establishing a tripartite bureaucracy that would hold the reigns of American finances under control, in a manner most likely similar to our national defense organisms, it would have been unpalatable before this week. After a number of billions of dollars are lost, reform sounds rather tasty. So the Democrats revamp their cry for reform and regulation and the Republicans stumble between constituency key-words.

Palin's war-cry is "let's shake things up", a phrase patently stomach churning to anyone with a vested interest in order and prosperity during transitional eras. The populist message does not imply anything concrete, while McCain's own stance on market reform is confusing, thusly irrelevant. To our comfort, the bureaucracy has been working for at least a year on Financial Regulatory Reform and things will be settled. For now, heads are falling. This is progressive, because others are picking up the pieces, merging- and growing bigger. The US government has essentially nationalized a number of the country's largest financial institutions. While this sounds bad from the classical liberal standpoint, it isn't... necessarily.

We are once more in a period of Cold War. This time, the parties involved may be divided in between Authoritarian Capitalism and Corporate Democracies. Authoritarian Capitalism is exemplified by Putin's Russia and post-Nixon China (especially as experienced today). On a side-note, I might add that this term resembles the economic structure of Fascism, centrally coordinated/privately operated. The Corporate Democracy is a modern, capitalist reinvention of the Greek city-state. Based on functional efficiency, ruled by the landed-citizenry, representative of its component parts. Efficiency is profit, the parts are the stock-holders, the elite are the members of the board. This body is transnational with expansionist tendencies. These may seem like built-in self-destruct mechanisms, but at the dawn of the Green era there is the opportunity to reform the fundamental "greed" paradigms that have defined these organisms. A corporation that makes its profit from the existence of a river cannot, as an organism interested in its own survival, destroy the said river. We therefore are gaining the concept of "corporate responsibility". The business model will serve as a form of new self-governing entities, as cells of larger bodies (e.g. EU, NAFTA, ASEAN). I have no doubt that we will see 'corporate cities' within a few decades, similar in some ways to parts of Silicon Valley.

The death of the dinosaurs will allow for the birth of new reptiles. I am eager to observe the amount of foreign direct investment that will arrive at Wall Street's gates, in a fashion similar to that of Barclay's late and strategic acquisition of North American departments of Lehman Brothers. The nationalized elements (AIG, Sterns, McFannie) of the economy will, as has already been announced, be sold on the market. Will sovereign funds bite? The US dollar is low, assets are cheap. Who will become, even more, vested in the welfare of the American economy?

The game is afoot, my dear Watson.

Emergence of the Lost Word

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

From the primordial energy extant before the Big Bang, we can imagine an emergent system, within which Deity is the primal unit that is giving impulse through the Word or Bang. The interactions of energy, which is neither created nor destroyed, but may be communicated, form extropic patterns. The tendency of a system is to create order from, apparent, chaos.

The dynamics within a system impose on its constitutive elements a process of rising efficiency in the communication of information. Thus solutions appear, ironically, in an entropic fashion. Of course, we may easily get lost in an epistemological discussion regarding our capacity to understand extremely complex systems, implicitly rendering the concepts of order and disorder unusable. It appears, prima facie, that unstable systems tend toward stabilization and stable systems tend toward destabilization. In this light we can observe solar systems and empires as being analogous with the human body and fundamental chemical bonds.

Human activity is characterized by continual striving toward streamlining the transmission of information. From oral tradition to the written word and the lightning fast access of online journal databases. To the improvement in electric transmission, from copper to silicon. Of resource management, from the hunter/gatherer social groups to capitalism's emphasis on profit margin which is essentially a base measure of transaction efficiency.The underlying goal is to transmit energy, or information, in loss less format through the fastest channel. That would be materialized order, if you will- a type of teleportation. However, even with teleportation, while we may 'print' the photon's data into another space, the original photon is lost- destabilized and transformed.

So, can we ever reach a perfect point of communication?
Can a parent teach the child to avoid all the errors of our ancestors?
Much like how a child is not an androgynous clone of its parents, but instead is a complex system with inherited genetic elements as well as proper unique emergent incongruities and mutations, communication is ipso facto incomplete. The very imperfection in the transmission of the Word, absorbed and altered by the matter through which it passes, allows for adaptation. Entropy and extropy are mutually dependent dynamics, as symbiotic as any other contrast.

Thus, while we must strive for the betterment of our world, we must not lose sight of the fact that progress is made possible by the obstacles opposed to it. We should embrace these as givers of strength. The dialectic processes observed on the micro and macro levels are the fundamental impulses that allow innovation. The entropy of the sub-system gives birth to order in the whole...

Map: Segregation in NYC

Anti-Discrimination Center
New York Times article

NYT:Subprime loan graph