Foolish Capitalism

Investment in tar sands (the XL Pipeline) is "foolish," says James Hanson of NASA. He says we're already at about 395 ppm CO2, above the target of 350 ppm that would limit global warming to 2 degrees C. The Earth has warmed less than a degree, so far, and already we have super-storms like Sandy, record-breaking droughts, heat spells and flooding.

Hanson makes sense, but government bureaucrats and officials are wary of him, because his opinions affect things like energy policy. Not what a scientist should be saying, or writing, they imply.

Is it so questionable to say that blowing up mountaintops, piping sludge and blowing apart underground shale formations is also "foolish?" Obama's "all of the above," Hanson points out, is bad strategy: it increases carbon from all the above sources, even if it also promotes wind and solar. Further, "cap and trade" is ineffective. Yet, policy-makers around the world hear mostly from fossil fuel interests, not their constituents, so even marginal policy reforms like the above will likely be rejected.

But humans are "foolish;" the Dutch, by way of example, live at sea-level, and although increased CO2 is already causing seas to rise, threatening their very existence, they continue to burn coal, the most greenhouse gas-intensive fuel.

The world is overrun with foolishness, but one of the most foolish is to subsidize fossil fuels, instead of demanding that fossil fuel producers pick up the tab for external costs: not only for lung disease and heart attacks from air pollution, but for global warming, itself. Sandy alone cost the taxpayers over $100 billion. Hanson proposes a carbon tax to cover external costs, the proceeds to be distributed to all taxpayers.

For the Capitalist, nothing's foolish if you can make money on it, but huge investments in fossil fuels is foolish: they're betting against a stable climate in the long run, for profits in the short-run.

Capitalists are foolish in other ways. They're eager to sell/produce in China, even though the US now documents that China's stealing them blind, of technology and innovation, as well as through corruption. They're stealing American (and European) competitive advantage. They fulfill Stalin's adage: "When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."

Capitalism, ultimately, is foolish: it's driven by a blind thirst for profits in the short term, regardless of consequences, and growth at any cost. Its proponents demand minimal or no regulation or taxes, and avoid all external costs for as long as possible. Stock newsletters tout oil producers, and even tar sands. Fox News, the Koch's etc. promote misinformation and blindness. Capitalism is not the market: it demands a market with its eyes put out.

Unless we can overcome blind capitalism, we're doomed: the Roman Empire did the tiniest fraction of the damage the American Empire--as capitalism unchained--has done and will do, unless somehow many someones can put a harness on it.

The Stalemated State

Lobbies, and the corporations behind them, block almost all change in the US.

Back in the 1830's, de Tocqueville rhapsodized about how the new United States had groups organized wherever he went. He saw it as the blossoming of democracy.

Now, however, organization itself is big business. Lobbyists in the thousands insure that the powers-that-be maintain their monopoly-oligopoly, their stifling of innovation that might threaten a lock on their markets--as well as a government that caters to their interests and therefore discriminates against smaller, more nimble competitors.

The IMF recently held that subsidies for traditional energy companies (oil, coal, gas) were holding back the move to non-traditional sources (wind, solar, bio-fuels). Still, even the elite-led demand for reducing government expenditures hardly touches on those subsidies: billions a year to companies making billions in profits. In addition, thanks to people like VP Cheney, drilling companies are largely free of regulation. We still don't know what poisons frackers inject into the earth in order to force out oil or gas, because that's a "proprietary secret." Pennsylvania even gives frackers powers of eminent domain!

Chemical companies (mostly petroleum based) are also protected. Smaller competitors attempting to replace toxic materials like styrene with bio-based non-toxic materials are stymied: the EPA is not allowed to declare styrene's known carcinogenicity, let alone ban it, and similar hands off treatment is SOP for a whole raft of other chemicals. In addition, Monsanto succeeded in inserting language in the new food law that virtually exempts GMO's from regulation. Meanwhile, the FDA can't require them to be labeled as GMO's, either.

Big Pharma protects its monopoly patents world-wide, but especially in the US, and Medicare/Medicaid is required to buy drugs at inflated prices (often 10 times a possible generic); no negotiated prices are permitted.

So, it's not surprising that Congress, after much effort on the part of gun victims families, gun control advocates, governors and even the President, may or may not pass the most minimal of gun control measures: universal background checks, despite 90% support for it in most polls. Gun manufacturers have organized the NRA and now the even more militantly "pro-gun" Gun Buyers of America, to lobby all their captive Congressmen against any regulation except for militarizing the schools with subsidized armed guards (creating another subsidized market).

The ultimate subsidized market is Defense. Corporate contractors still get cost-plus contracts, still get reimbursed even for hotel taxes in Maryland--and then, Lockheed has the chutzpah to demand that Maryland reimburse it, too! And that's in addition to the huge subsidy derived from US insistence on maintaining hegemony worldwide.

The US is truly a corporate state wedded to outdated technologies, corporate behemoths and the greedy class, our Roman Senators, who own them. Stalemate will doom it, unless it and the corporations are able to transfer their dominance worldwide. That's why the Indian decision against Novartis is so important: the sclerotic American Empire is losing control.

Roman Ephesus, Keystone XL and Arctic Oil

Right-wing financial newsletters push investments in oil, and bitumen resources, like Canadian tar sands and even Venezuela's unconventional hydrocarbons, as well as fracking for natural gas. To them, it's a golden opportunity to make pots of money--and nothing else.

They act as if there never was any discussion of global warming, except by impractical people, who just don't want to make money. We've had the warmest years on record and Arctic ice is melting rapidly. There is the violent weather, forecast as a consequence of global warming. There are clear signs of climate change all around us, plus sufficient data, accepted globally except in the US, that it's caused largely by human activity--but these guys can't wait to get their money into the oil deposits newly accessible in the arctic seas!

In the first century, BC, Ephesus was the Asian capital and port for the Roman Empire. There's a page about it on this website. It was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world, with a population of 250,000. But it's port slowly silted up, because the surrounding hills were deforested for fuel, to fire the baths, and to build the cement forms needed for Rome's monumental buildings. There is graffiti from that period, memorializing public anxiety by the city's officials that their prime harbor would soon be unusable. Ephesus is now miles from the sea; it was largely abandoned when ships couldn't use the harbor. Afterwards, continued erosion covered the city with enough silt to preserve it; preserved for present day tourists (in Turkey, near Selcuk).

Now, consider: while the counselors cautioned against cutting down all the trees, there must have been businessmen who scoffed and said, we need fuel; people want the baths; you're being impractical. Besides, I can make thousands on this. (Numbers were smaller in those days).

Our "officials" appear much more timid than the Ephesians, because they're faced by the demands of rapacious capital, and the people who play with it to get rich regardless.

Obama's (temporary) blockage of the Keystone XL pipeline is a step in the right direction. A more significant (and painful) step is the movement by developing nations like Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria to nationalize their oil reserves, and limit production, which raises the price for oil. I don't like $4 gas, either. But we'll never get off fossil fuels, to slow global warming, unless higher oil costs drive us to solar, wind and bio-fuels.

It is the institutional power of fossil fuel industries worldwide, which drives our suicidal environmental policy, plus the logic of capitalism, which disregards environmental costs. There is also the military that makes all this possible. Now it's time to throw off their power, and with it, any need for empire.

Alternative energy might enable us not to have to abandon large swathes of this planet as uninhabitable--if we can learn from the Ephesians.