I've been watching the president's group meeting with Demo and GOP congressional leaders and find it about as I expected - a bunch of politicians taking the opportunity to spout sound bites.
The seem unable to come to grips with a few self-evident - to me at least - facts.
1. The US healthcare system is expensive for a number of reasons - our attitude toward healthcare, the fact that it's controlled by insurance companies, and the lack of effective oversight.
2. To start from the point of view of what's good national health care, instead of how can we reign in insurance costs is a better way to go.
3. Just about every other solution to this problem used by other countries is both cheaper and more satisfactory as far as results go.
A logical solution would be to develop a national healthcare system which covers everybody and for which everybody who can afford it pays.
Our current total expenditure on health care is over 2.5 Trillion dollars a year or about $8162 per capita. Canada, Germany, and the UK, who have the next most expensive systems each spend about half that amount per capita, yet we decry those systems as being unsatisfactory. Unlike the US, these countries have no loud political or popular demands that their systems be changed.
In the US, private insurance expenditures seems to be rising at a rate twice that of government (medicare).
A government managed program, paying private physicians (as in UK and Canada) and paid for through a tax increase would result in a substantial decrease in over-all healthcare expense. Medicare expenses are, for example much less per capita than private insurance (Medicare does not pay at the insurance rate which is inflated as the higher the payments, the more the private insurers make. he increased taxes should be a good deal less than the private health insurance premiums - for one thing, a single payer system would have a far larger pool to in which to spread the tax/pay-outs.
The question remains, will the American citizens like such a system? The seniors certainly seem to like Medicare - which is such a system.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Happy New Decade
Happy New Decade
I find myself in the rather strange position of looking at this one not as a beginning, rather as an ending.I will be 80 in April, which rather limits my expectations about greeting 2020 - but you never know.
I've been blogging probably longer than you have - blogging certainly has changed - not always for the better - and I certainly have seen a world change - not always for the better. Unlike many of my generation, I am not particularly dissatisfied by the world that emerged from the twentieth century.
I really enjoy the opportunity to have a few friends I have never and will probably never meet. Their viewpoints and ideas are fascinating and certainly help color my own. Thanks, you guys.
A phenomena most young folks don't seem to understand is that many of us old farts don't think of ourselves as old and come up against our age-related disabilities with somewhat of a shock. Also many of us have a lot of trouble seeing the world through "new eyes" and worry that the world we grew up in and found comfortable no longer exists and isn't coming back.
I do not count myself among that group, rather I really like this Brave New World.
I would caution my younger readers that the "Age of Excess" is over. The world you grow up in will will be one where a lot more thought about expending energy, resources, and income will be necessary. I think "Living within your means" will be a lot more prevalent than the "Spend, Spend, Spend - uphold our way of living and our economy" ideas your parents grew up with.
As a child of the Great Depression, I find this changing attitude somewhat familiar and satisfying.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Happiness
Happiness is a repaired computer.
My long personal computing career has always been limited to Apples - my first was an Apple-II purchased in Feb. 1982 - I was by no means the "first on the block" but they were just becoming popular. That was followed by an Apple IIe and an Apple IIGS. I still have a software IIGS simulation program that lets you run apple-2 stuff on a Mac (not the new ones with the intel chip, however) I finally threw out boxes and boxes of 7.25" floppies a few years ago - some with the first "Basic" programs I ever wrote. I still have boxes and boxes of 400K & 800K 3.5" floppies if anyone wants them
I stuck with Apple IIs for about ten years, waiting until 1993 to get my first Mac - a color classic. A couple of years later I bought my last Desktop - A powerMac 7500 which I tinkered with and added to until I got my first laptop - a PowerBook G3 "Lombard" in 1999. It still works very well, thank you, even though the battery is shot.
Three years later I purchased a titanium PowerBook G4 which also is still running despite a broken hinge. That's the one I've been using since my latest - a MacBook Pro 17 - lost its internal HD.
This is the first catastrophic failure I've had that I couldn't fix myself - I'd actually replaced the HD in the Lombard - just took careful tinkering and tiny fingers - but fortunately there is an Apple re-seller - Guru in town who was able to remove the HD, strip out and save most of the data, and replace it with a faster, bigger one - all in less than 48 hours.
Unfortunately I had not backed up finances, photos, correspondence, etc since last June, so I was much relieved when he was able to retrieve most of the data. I'll back up more often in the future - I keep telling myself.
My long personal computing career has always been limited to Apples - my first was an Apple-II purchased in Feb. 1982 - I was by no means the "first on the block" but they were just becoming popular. That was followed by an Apple IIe and an Apple IIGS. I still have a software IIGS simulation program that lets you run apple-2 stuff on a Mac (not the new ones with the intel chip, however) I finally threw out boxes and boxes of 7.25" floppies a few years ago - some with the first "Basic" programs I ever wrote. I still have boxes and boxes of 400K & 800K 3.5" floppies if anyone wants them
I stuck with Apple IIs for about ten years, waiting until 1993 to get my first Mac - a color classic. A couple of years later I bought my last Desktop - A powerMac 7500 which I tinkered with and added to until I got my first laptop - a PowerBook G3 "Lombard" in 1999. It still works very well, thank you, even though the battery is shot.
Three years later I purchased a titanium PowerBook G4 which also is still running despite a broken hinge. That's the one I've been using since my latest - a MacBook Pro 17 - lost its internal HD.
This is the first catastrophic failure I've had that I couldn't fix myself - I'd actually replaced the HD in the Lombard - just took careful tinkering and tiny fingers - but fortunately there is an Apple re-seller - Guru in town who was able to remove the HD, strip out and save most of the data, and replace it with a faster, bigger one - all in less than 48 hours.
Unfortunately I had not backed up finances, photos, correspondence, etc since last June, so I was much relieved when he was able to retrieve most of the data. I'll back up more often in the future - I keep telling myself.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Afghanistan - A political discussion
Afghanistan is a nation with an interesting history – which can be summed up as attempted domination by the rulers of adjoining nations for the past several hundred years.
This state is made up of more than a dozen rather disparate tribal/cultural/linguistic groups with only one over-riding similarity. They are almost all Muslims, but even here they are divided among major (Sunni & Shia) and minor denominations within Islam. The tribes do have a web of common Islamic beliefs and culture.
There are two major languages spoken – Dari Persian, and Pashtun – and several minor languages, but many Afghans are bilingual. The government has always (well, almost always) been a traditional rather weak central monarchy with local and area tribal rule. Since Afghanistan has long been a buffer state between unfriendly neighbors (most recently Great Britain and the USSR), the development of a strong central government along with natural resources and industry has lagged well behind its neighbors: Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.
Our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven there and seems to have been successful. The Taliban and Al Qaeda seem to have disassociated themselves and less than 100 Al Qaeda fighters remain in Afghan territory – at least according to the CIA.
Currently our policy seems to be to control, disarm and dismember the Taliban so as to prevent its return to power and thus once again provide Al Qaeda with a safe haven. To do this we have attempted to strengthen and encourage the growth of a fairly liberal national government – one which continues the guarantees of personal freedom and civil rights.
There are (at least) two major problems with this policy:
For most of its existence, Afghanistan has not had a strong central government – and when it did have one, that government was seen as repressive; and second, Afghan tribal society tends to be quite conservative and traditional – with traditional Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for moral authority – which runs counter to the civil rights inclusions in the National Constitution, especially women’s rights.
To achieve our current stated policy goals we will probably have to deal directly with the local and regional tribal governments – as we ultimately have done in Western Iraq. The real authority in Afghanistan lies with these local authorities but we have not yet resolved how we can breach the considerable moral and cultural beliefs which separate us.
Will the US be willing to back a strong group of regional governing bodies against the Taliban even if these rulers are essentially undemocratic and authoritarian, or must we remain as the central authority enforcing the power of the weak and corrupt central government?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Vacation Time
Since 1970, much of our vacation time has been spent in our cottage on a lake in Downeast Maine. It became a cottage when we finally got electricity in 1982. for the first twelve years we used Aladdin lamps and cooked with gas - which we hauled in - We hand-pumped water up from the lake, which was also our bathing pool. One sabbatical year we stayed until late October - our bathing was pretty brief that month!
We have lately upgraded the cottage by adding a wing with two more bedrooms, very little of the cabin remains as we bought it. Nowadays our yearly taxes cost more than half of our original purchase price - but of course then there was no road within a quarter mile and then it was just a logging trail. Times of changed, we actually have street signs and a street address - of course the road is still little better than a jeep trail but FedX and UPS do have to deliver - not that they are especially thrilled when they do. Our mailbox is at the head of the private road - about two miles away.
Our vacation spot is spectacularly beautiful -a very large lake ( two+ miles wide and six+ miles long) with high hills and a mountain at one end. It is a deep lake carved out by the mile-high glacier that covered the area twelve millennia ago.
We stay here from about July first until mid-October. By then all the foliage has Fall colors and New England is at its most beautiful. As we drive down to Florida, we sort of follow the Fall south.
Life is good.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A New Year, A New Experience
I really do not use this blogsite very much but would like to make some fairly obvious remarks about the future.
The U.S. is very probably going to undergo drastic political, financial, and social changes in the next couple of years - and not necessarily those they would have preferred.
Barak Obama was elected to lead the country in a new direction but events have overtaken him and the best he will be able to do is hurry to get in front of the parade and perhaps try to influence it's course. Fortunately he seems to be a thoughtful type with some idea of where he wants to go. I wish him well.
Directions we should take:
1. Correct the oversight abuses and shortcomings that have contributed to the economic downturn. It is unlikely that much can be done to reverse the economy, but at least the government can act to keep it from getting worse.
2. Move toward a universal single-payer healthcare system. This will be very difficult but our children will thank us.
3. Renew the physical and intellectual infrastructure - from the power grid and roads to the educational system
4. Completely revise our foreign policy so as to correct as many of the blunders of the past decade as possible.
5. And most difficult of all: Try to calm the unreasoning suspicion and fear in the American people that has been so carefully encouraged so as to keep us compliant and docile.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Earth's Future and Gaia Theory
The Earth's Future and Gaia Theory
This review of Lovelock's book and the reviewer's comments were posted at a restricted blog-site; but I thought they were interesting and relevant to the discussion of our possible future. As I'm not sure the author would appreciate identification, I have deliberately withheld attribution info.
This is not particularly easy or happy reading - but it does introduce a chilling but possible future.
----------------
The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity. By James Lovelock. Penguin Books. 222 pages. $15.95.
In the past thirty years, scientist James Lovelock, Fellow of the Royal Society in England and originator of the Gaia Theory, has published several books on Gaia. It was around 1970 that Lovelock first came up with the name "Gaia" for the Earth (he usually puts a capital E on Earth). In his latest outing, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity, he assures us several times that he uses the name as a metaphor. But it turns out that for him a metaphor is not just a rhetorical device: He finds Gaia a "useful metaphor" because the present ecological crisis "requires us to know the true nature of the Earth and imagine it as the largest living thing in the solar system." Here the metaphor Gaia turns out to be the way to know the true nature of the planet. Then Lovelock invites us to a change of "heart and mind" so that we may "instinctively sense" Gaia as a living planet. How can we instinctively sense a metaphor? Evidently, Gaia is for him far more than a trope. While he admits that the name offends the "scientifically correct," he declares that he is "unrepentant" about using it because this metaphor is a "path to the primitive feelings of the unconscious part of our minds." That's the part he thinks we can use to contact Gaia.
Lovelock speaks of our planet's evolution as the story of a female who has grown "old and has not very long to live." In the last century, she was "enlightened" in her "seniority" when human beings let her see herself from outer space "while she was still beautiful." The implication here is that our planet is alive and self-aware, and that she sees herself through our eyes. Lovelock remarks that when New Agers first took up his concept of Gaia and applied it to the "mythic goddess" he was surprised, but now he thinks they were "more prescient than the scientists" who objected to the name. For Gaia behaves just like those goddesses "Khali and Nemesis" in that she can be both "nurturing" and "ruthlessly cruel towards transgressors, even when they are her progeny." Evidently, we are those transgressors, since Lovelock tells us that Gaia has turned into our "greatest enemy" and requires a "sacrifice" from us far greater than sustainable development and renewable energy -- "as if these feeble offerings would be accepted by Gaia as an appropriate and affordable sacrifice." Rather, she now requires a huge drop in our population. This comes as no surprise, for whereas in antiquity the God of Israel accepted animal sacrifices, the so-called goddess Earth required human sacrifice, often on a large scale.
Lovelock admits he is Gaia's disciple: "There is a deep need in all of us for trust in something larger than ourselves, and I put my trust in Gaia." A metaphor, a verbal construct, is not something "larger" than us. Nor do we place "our trust" in a mere metaphor. Lovelock is disingenuous when he repeats that Gaia is a metaphor, for he treats her as his ultimate reality.
In the same way that a "metaphor" turns out to be the "true nature" of the planet, so Lovelock's "possibility" of ecological disaster turns out to be a horrifying "certainty." Here and there he repeats that as "a scientist," he thinks "in terms of probabilities, not certainties, " and cautiously hedges his statements. To wit: Even if "a tolerable future is probable, it is still unwise to ignore the possibility of disaster." He even concedes that the current scientific understanding of the "Earth system" is on a par with a "nineteenth- century physician's understanding of a patient." That's pretty low. He also warns that scientific forecasts of future calamities are only "provisional, " since there could be "sudden and wholly unpredicted discontinuities. " As a scientist he advises us not to over-interpret "unexpected warmth and cold as evidence for or against global heating." So far, this is reasonable. But then Lovelock turns into Gaia's prophet, and he pushes the panic button. He declares that we have found out "too late" that "the Earth system was fast approaching the critical state that puts all life on it in danger." Now there is "almost no time left" to opt for visionary solutions like renewable energy and sustainable development, because evidence is coming in from around the world that the imminent climate shift can only be "described as Hell: so hot, so deadly that only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive." As Gaia's prophet, Lovelock sees us as passengers on a boat above Niagara Falls who don't have a clue that the "engines are about to fail," and as prisoners on a "cosmic death row" awaiting execution. The few who may survive will endure another Stone Age in which warlords battle endlessly in a torrid world. An ecological catastrophe is certain and irreversible in human time, for he tells us that 55 million years ago Gaia had a "fever" like this one, and it took her 200,000 years to recover.
As the "party goes on," Love lock laments, "how much longer before reality enters our minds?" Yes, reality, not a scientific probability. Throughout his work, Lovelock keeps switching between the calm, dispassionate tones of a scientist and the frenzied shrieks of a seer. But why does he need to act as Gaia's prophet? Because he has embraced Deep Ecology.
Deep Ecology is a world-view that rejects the Christian belief that man, made in the image of God and redeemed by Him, is the center of value in this world. Founded by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972, Deep Ecology claims to be a major paradigm shift in civilization, for it makes the ecosystem the new center of all value. Henceforth, morality is to be determined by what is good for the ecosystem, and man is to aim at "noninterference" with the Earth, even if we have to change our entire way of being -- economics, politics, education, morality, religion -- from top to bottom. In the platform Naess devised for Deep Ecology, we find this controversial statement in the fifth place -- a call for the "substantial decrease of the human population" because the "flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease." Yes, requires. Like the eugenics juggernaut of a century ago, there is now a deep ecological juggernaut facing us with the same evil program: population control.
One might be tempted to think that Deep Ecology is a relatively small movement, a fringe group. Think again. J.E. DeSteiguer, in The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought, observes that "since the 1970s, a number of national green political parties have been formed in the developed world with Arne Naess' Deep Ecology as their foundation." Such a party was formed first in Great Britain in 1973, and then in Belgium, Australia, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the former West Germany. (Note that the legalization of abortion and the drop in Western population growth coincided with the spread of this mentality.) Even Greenpeace has adopted the philosophy of Arne Naess. This is a pretty large fringe.
Not surprisingly, then, Love lock urges us to turn to Deep Ecology for guidance on the environmental crisis: "If it should be that we have already passed the threshold of irreversible heating, then perhaps we should listen to the deep ecologists and let them be our guide." He reveres them as wise beyond all others: "This small band of deep ecologists," with their total "allegiance" to the ecosystem, fully grasps the "magnitude of the change of mind needed to bring us back to peace within Gaia, the living Earth." And he sees them as Gaia's saints: "Like the holy men and women who make their whole lives a testament to their faith, the deep ecologists try to live as a Gaian example for us all to follow." Lovelock fantasizes how these "brave deep ecologists with trust in Gaia" will someday keep civilization alive in the Stone Age to come. But wait -- what civilization? Surely not the one we know, since Deep Ecology repudiates Christianity for putting too much value on the individual person and for regarding us as stewards of creation. In a sentence that deep ecologists will applaud wildly, Lovelock declares, "We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners." What a low regard for human nature! Fortunately for us, God demonstrated a higher esteem for man with His Incarnation, and by opening for us the door of eternal life.
Lovelock notes that he learned from deep ecologist Edward Goldsmith that we should always "think of Gaia first," not of man, and that this will not make us "inhuman" since the "survival of our species" depends on our accepting Gaia's "discipline. " Not inhuman? Inhumanity in fact consists precisely in sacrificing individuals to a compelling ideology. It lies precisely in this kind of justifying the means by the end. In essays published in Deep Ecology and World Religions, Michael Zimmerman and Cecile Jackson point out that Americans generally ignore the Nazi connection with the radical green movement, yet Hitler was a vegetarian for whom animals had intrinsic value, so much so that he wanted to send to concentration camps anyone who mistreated them. Other leading Nazis, too, were committed to protecting the wilderness and embraced a neo-paganism much like that of Deep Ecology and Gaia Theory.
Echoing a long line of neo-Malthusians, Lovelock states that population growth is the "root of our problem." Just as Nietzsche once called man a "disease" on the Earth's "skin," so likewise Lovelock speaks of us as "Earth's disease, the fever brought on by a plague of people." We are not very "special," he says, as "individual animals," but are more like a "planetary disease." He yearns for the world of 1800 "when we were only one billion," and announces that our present numbers are "unsustainable" and require a "retreat" or drastic reduction. This is also the mindset of Deep Ecology, since Arne Naess saw the environmental crisis as chiefly one of overpopulation. At the heart of Naess's program, observed Jonathan Maskit in an essay published in Beneath the Surface, is the requirement for coercive collective action in the form of "policies that act as an externalized will" in bringing about the reduction of population. Note well that the Culture of Death offers us, on the one hand, unlimited recreational sex (since it does not recognize the capacity for moral restraint), and on the other, plans coercive measures to prevent children arising from sexual intercourse.
Lovelock assures us that he does not agree with the "totalitarian greens, sometimes called eco fascists, " who want to see most of the human race "eliminated" by genocide so as to leave a "perfect Earth for them alone." That's a relief. But wait -- he then tells us that if we survive the current crisis, our next goal must be to forcibly reduce our numbers: "If we are to continue as a civilization that successfully avoids natural catastrophes, we have to make our own constraints on growth and make them strong and make them now." As it is, we are unintentionally at war with Gaia and must agree to "wartime" rationing and temporary "loss of freedom." Strong constraints? Loss of freedom? What's the difference between this and ecofascism? And how far down will our population have to plummet to satisfy Gaia? Actually, Lovelock states that something like nine-tenths of our population must vanish: "Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of about half to one billion." To accomplish this goal, both the birth rate and death rate would have to be "regulated" as "part of population control." So we are to be bred, managed, and put down just like a herd of animals on a farm. If this isn't totalitarianism, what is?
Another feature of Deep Ecology found in Lovelock's Gaia Theory is hostility toward farming and the domestication of plants and animals. Deep ecologists, who love all things wild, trace our problems back to the beginning of agriculture 12,000 years ago. Like them, Lovelock wants us to stop seeing the Earth as the commons we "own and share," and to start realizing that farming "abrades the living tissue" of Gaia's "skin" and hampers her "ability to regulate the Earth's climate." It is our "duty" to "put Gaia first" and act "with the health of the Earth, not the health of people, in mind." He's not complaining here only about agribusiness, but also about organic farming, which he says has low productivity and represents a near "obsession with personal human problems." Our "primary obligation is to the living Earth. Humankind comes second."
So how are we to "stop using the land surface" without starving to death? Lovelock proposes two things: the increased use of nuclear energy and the synthesizing of food "by the chemical and biochemical industries from carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen." By eating such man-made food, we could release farmland "back to Gaia," uncouple ourselves from the "metabolism of the planet," and give Earth "a rest." Land would now be used once again for "its proper purpose, the regulation of the climate and chemistry of the Earth." Note that the proper purpose of land has nothing to do with us. Besides eating artificial food, we would be confined to "dense cities" to free the land. Lovelock concedes that the "rich" would still follow the "fashion" of "eating real food: vegetables grown in soil and cooked with meat and fish," but they too would be limited by biocentric laws: "Vigilance would be needed to constrain the growth of luxuries that threaten Gaia."
In suggesting that man should be fed on a large scale with synthesized food, Lovelock goes way beyond the radical philosopher Peter Singer, who merely wants to make vegetarianism "obligatory" on moral grounds and ban the use of animals for agriculture, science, and commerce. Such vegetarianism seems passé now, as Lovelock jests about how we once thought that plant life had been created "solely for us to eat."
In Deep Ecology a person is supposed to merge so completely with the Earth as his greater "Self" that the identification turns into a spontaneous self-defense whenever the environment is in danger. Lovelock sees a "need" for such "instinctive environmentalism. " He asks how one might acquire such an "instinct" and answers that we can "make Gaia an instinctive belief by exposing our children to the natural world, telling them how and why it is Gaia in action, and showing that they belong to it." This shows how ideology distorts one's sense of human nature. An "instinct" is by definition an inherited and unalterable natural impulse, yet Lovelock wants one to be inculcated into children by indoctrination -- not to mention that such children would be trained thereby to serve as Gaia's janissaries against the human race. One cannot help but recall De Steiguer's observation that Arne Naess thought "the best fit for 'green' was 'red,' that is, either communism or socialism." In other words, he realized the green movement needed a regime like that of Orwell's Animal Farm.
How could such a misanthropic ecofascism have spread so far, so fast? Very likely the decline of Christianity in the West has led to the rise of this neo-pagan abjection before the material world. Lovelock believes that all the traditional religions of the world are out of date, for they were all founded when we were few in number and when we "lived in a way that was no burden to the Earth." Past teachings on morality no longer apply now that we have become "six billion hungry and greedy individuals. " He reserves a special animus for Christianity, where man is seen as the steward of creation: "The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever." What Christians need, he sneers, is "a new Sermon on the Mount" to tell us how to live "decently with the Earth." He finds fault with "secular humanists," too, for he thinks they need to turn to Gaia and "recognize that human rights and needs are not enough."
Gaia Theory and Deep Ecology are two handmaids of the Culture of Death. Their precursor was the eugenics movement of a century ago that imposed birth control and forced sterilization on the supposedly "unfit." Today an artificially created panic about ecological catastrophe, derived from Gaia Theory and Deep Ecology, lies behind a seemingly unstoppable movement for sterile sex by way of birth control, sterilization, chemical and surgical abortions, homosexuality, and the infanticide of newborns (called "infant euthanasia") . Deep ecologists and Gaia theorists try to terrify us with environmental degradation in order to pursue their main program -- population control. For even when their prophecies of doom prove to be false or exaggerated, these zealots immediately point to another imminent disaster and call for man to reduce his numbers.
We should understand that when the leaders of the Culture of Death look at us, they don't see so many individuals with immortal souls and eternal destinies, each one having an incalculable value in the eyes of God, since the divine Word saved us with His own blood. Rather they see a plague of alien creatures infesting an imagined divinity. History shows that none are more fanatical than those on the march to Utopia. The Gaia theorists and the Deep Ecology zealots are certainly marching lockstep right now toward their imagined paradise. The mirage they have in view is one with so few people left on the planet that their great goal will finally be achieved -- the total "noninterference" of man with the wilderness of the Earth. What a dismal, misanthropic idea of paradise!
------------------
Any comments? Agreements? Disagreements? Why?
This review of Lovelock's book and the reviewer's comments were posted at a restricted blog-site; but I thought they were interesting and relevant to the discussion of our possible future. As I'm not sure the author would appreciate identification, I have deliberately withheld attribution info.
This is not particularly easy or happy reading - but it does introduce a chilling but possible future.
----------------
The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity. By James Lovelock. Penguin Books. 222 pages. $15.95.
In the past thirty years, scientist James Lovelock, Fellow of the Royal Society in England and originator of the Gaia Theory, has published several books on Gaia. It was around 1970 that Lovelock first came up with the name "Gaia" for the Earth (he usually puts a capital E on Earth). In his latest outing, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity, he assures us several times that he uses the name as a metaphor. But it turns out that for him a metaphor is not just a rhetorical device: He finds Gaia a "useful metaphor" because the present ecological crisis "requires us to know the true nature of the Earth and imagine it as the largest living thing in the solar system." Here the metaphor Gaia turns out to be the way to know the true nature of the planet. Then Lovelock invites us to a change of "heart and mind" so that we may "instinctively sense" Gaia as a living planet. How can we instinctively sense a metaphor? Evidently, Gaia is for him far more than a trope. While he admits that the name offends the "scientifically correct," he declares that he is "unrepentant" about using it because this metaphor is a "path to the primitive feelings of the unconscious part of our minds." That's the part he thinks we can use to contact Gaia.
Lovelock speaks of our planet's evolution as the story of a female who has grown "old and has not very long to live." In the last century, she was "enlightened" in her "seniority" when human beings let her see herself from outer space "while she was still beautiful." The implication here is that our planet is alive and self-aware, and that she sees herself through our eyes. Lovelock remarks that when New Agers first took up his concept of Gaia and applied it to the "mythic goddess" he was surprised, but now he thinks they were "more prescient than the scientists" who objected to the name. For Gaia behaves just like those goddesses "Khali and Nemesis" in that she can be both "nurturing" and "ruthlessly cruel towards transgressors, even when they are her progeny." Evidently, we are those transgressors, since Lovelock tells us that Gaia has turned into our "greatest enemy" and requires a "sacrifice" from us far greater than sustainable development and renewable energy -- "as if these feeble offerings would be accepted by Gaia as an appropriate and affordable sacrifice." Rather, she now requires a huge drop in our population. This comes as no surprise, for whereas in antiquity the God of Israel accepted animal sacrifices, the so-called goddess Earth required human sacrifice, often on a large scale.
Lovelock admits he is Gaia's disciple: "There is a deep need in all of us for trust in something larger than ourselves, and I put my trust in Gaia." A metaphor, a verbal construct, is not something "larger" than us. Nor do we place "our trust" in a mere metaphor. Lovelock is disingenuous when he repeats that Gaia is a metaphor, for he treats her as his ultimate reality.
In the same way that a "metaphor" turns out to be the "true nature" of the planet, so Lovelock's "possibility" of ecological disaster turns out to be a horrifying "certainty." Here and there he repeats that as "a scientist," he thinks "in terms of probabilities, not certainties, " and cautiously hedges his statements. To wit: Even if "a tolerable future is probable, it is still unwise to ignore the possibility of disaster." He even concedes that the current scientific understanding of the "Earth system" is on a par with a "nineteenth- century physician's understanding of a patient." That's pretty low. He also warns that scientific forecasts of future calamities are only "provisional, " since there could be "sudden and wholly unpredicted discontinuities. " As a scientist he advises us not to over-interpret "unexpected warmth and cold as evidence for or against global heating." So far, this is reasonable. But then Lovelock turns into Gaia's prophet, and he pushes the panic button. He declares that we have found out "too late" that "the Earth system was fast approaching the critical state that puts all life on it in danger." Now there is "almost no time left" to opt for visionary solutions like renewable energy and sustainable development, because evidence is coming in from around the world that the imminent climate shift can only be "described as Hell: so hot, so deadly that only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive." As Gaia's prophet, Lovelock sees us as passengers on a boat above Niagara Falls who don't have a clue that the "engines are about to fail," and as prisoners on a "cosmic death row" awaiting execution. The few who may survive will endure another Stone Age in which warlords battle endlessly in a torrid world. An ecological catastrophe is certain and irreversible in human time, for he tells us that 55 million years ago Gaia had a "fever" like this one, and it took her 200,000 years to recover.
As the "party goes on," Love lock laments, "how much longer before reality enters our minds?" Yes, reality, not a scientific probability. Throughout his work, Lovelock keeps switching between the calm, dispassionate tones of a scientist and the frenzied shrieks of a seer. But why does he need to act as Gaia's prophet? Because he has embraced Deep Ecology.
Deep Ecology is a world-view that rejects the Christian belief that man, made in the image of God and redeemed by Him, is the center of value in this world. Founded by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972, Deep Ecology claims to be a major paradigm shift in civilization, for it makes the ecosystem the new center of all value. Henceforth, morality is to be determined by what is good for the ecosystem, and man is to aim at "noninterference" with the Earth, even if we have to change our entire way of being -- economics, politics, education, morality, religion -- from top to bottom. In the platform Naess devised for Deep Ecology, we find this controversial statement in the fifth place -- a call for the "substantial decrease of the human population" because the "flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease." Yes, requires. Like the eugenics juggernaut of a century ago, there is now a deep ecological juggernaut facing us with the same evil program: population control.
One might be tempted to think that Deep Ecology is a relatively small movement, a fringe group. Think again. J.E. DeSteiguer, in The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought, observes that "since the 1970s, a number of national green political parties have been formed in the developed world with Arne Naess' Deep Ecology as their foundation." Such a party was formed first in Great Britain in 1973, and then in Belgium, Australia, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the former West Germany. (Note that the legalization of abortion and the drop in Western population growth coincided with the spread of this mentality.) Even Greenpeace has adopted the philosophy of Arne Naess. This is a pretty large fringe.
Not surprisingly, then, Love lock urges us to turn to Deep Ecology for guidance on the environmental crisis: "If it should be that we have already passed the threshold of irreversible heating, then perhaps we should listen to the deep ecologists and let them be our guide." He reveres them as wise beyond all others: "This small band of deep ecologists," with their total "allegiance" to the ecosystem, fully grasps the "magnitude of the change of mind needed to bring us back to peace within Gaia, the living Earth." And he sees them as Gaia's saints: "Like the holy men and women who make their whole lives a testament to their faith, the deep ecologists try to live as a Gaian example for us all to follow." Lovelock fantasizes how these "brave deep ecologists with trust in Gaia" will someday keep civilization alive in the Stone Age to come. But wait -- what civilization? Surely not the one we know, since Deep Ecology repudiates Christianity for putting too much value on the individual person and for regarding us as stewards of creation. In a sentence that deep ecologists will applaud wildly, Lovelock declares, "We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners." What a low regard for human nature! Fortunately for us, God demonstrated a higher esteem for man with His Incarnation, and by opening for us the door of eternal life.
Lovelock notes that he learned from deep ecologist Edward Goldsmith that we should always "think of Gaia first," not of man, and that this will not make us "inhuman" since the "survival of our species" depends on our accepting Gaia's "discipline. " Not inhuman? Inhumanity in fact consists precisely in sacrificing individuals to a compelling ideology. It lies precisely in this kind of justifying the means by the end. In essays published in Deep Ecology and World Religions, Michael Zimmerman and Cecile Jackson point out that Americans generally ignore the Nazi connection with the radical green movement, yet Hitler was a vegetarian for whom animals had intrinsic value, so much so that he wanted to send to concentration camps anyone who mistreated them. Other leading Nazis, too, were committed to protecting the wilderness and embraced a neo-paganism much like that of Deep Ecology and Gaia Theory.
Echoing a long line of neo-Malthusians, Lovelock states that population growth is the "root of our problem." Just as Nietzsche once called man a "disease" on the Earth's "skin," so likewise Lovelock speaks of us as "Earth's disease, the fever brought on by a plague of people." We are not very "special," he says, as "individual animals," but are more like a "planetary disease." He yearns for the world of 1800 "when we were only one billion," and announces that our present numbers are "unsustainable" and require a "retreat" or drastic reduction. This is also the mindset of Deep Ecology, since Arne Naess saw the environmental crisis as chiefly one of overpopulation. At the heart of Naess's program, observed Jonathan Maskit in an essay published in Beneath the Surface, is the requirement for coercive collective action in the form of "policies that act as an externalized will" in bringing about the reduction of population. Note well that the Culture of Death offers us, on the one hand, unlimited recreational sex (since it does not recognize the capacity for moral restraint), and on the other, plans coercive measures to prevent children arising from sexual intercourse.
Lovelock assures us that he does not agree with the "totalitarian greens, sometimes called eco fascists, " who want to see most of the human race "eliminated" by genocide so as to leave a "perfect Earth for them alone." That's a relief. But wait -- he then tells us that if we survive the current crisis, our next goal must be to forcibly reduce our numbers: "If we are to continue as a civilization that successfully avoids natural catastrophes, we have to make our own constraints on growth and make them strong and make them now." As it is, we are unintentionally at war with Gaia and must agree to "wartime" rationing and temporary "loss of freedom." Strong constraints? Loss of freedom? What's the difference between this and ecofascism? And how far down will our population have to plummet to satisfy Gaia? Actually, Lovelock states that something like nine-tenths of our population must vanish: "Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilized population of about half to one billion." To accomplish this goal, both the birth rate and death rate would have to be "regulated" as "part of population control." So we are to be bred, managed, and put down just like a herd of animals on a farm. If this isn't totalitarianism, what is?
Another feature of Deep Ecology found in Lovelock's Gaia Theory is hostility toward farming and the domestication of plants and animals. Deep ecologists, who love all things wild, trace our problems back to the beginning of agriculture 12,000 years ago. Like them, Lovelock wants us to stop seeing the Earth as the commons we "own and share," and to start realizing that farming "abrades the living tissue" of Gaia's "skin" and hampers her "ability to regulate the Earth's climate." It is our "duty" to "put Gaia first" and act "with the health of the Earth, not the health of people, in mind." He's not complaining here only about agribusiness, but also about organic farming, which he says has low productivity and represents a near "obsession with personal human problems." Our "primary obligation is to the living Earth. Humankind comes second."
So how are we to "stop using the land surface" without starving to death? Lovelock proposes two things: the increased use of nuclear energy and the synthesizing of food "by the chemical and biochemical industries from carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen." By eating such man-made food, we could release farmland "back to Gaia," uncouple ourselves from the "metabolism of the planet," and give Earth "a rest." Land would now be used once again for "its proper purpose, the regulation of the climate and chemistry of the Earth." Note that the proper purpose of land has nothing to do with us. Besides eating artificial food, we would be confined to "dense cities" to free the land. Lovelock concedes that the "rich" would still follow the "fashion" of "eating real food: vegetables grown in soil and cooked with meat and fish," but they too would be limited by biocentric laws: "Vigilance would be needed to constrain the growth of luxuries that threaten Gaia."
In suggesting that man should be fed on a large scale with synthesized food, Lovelock goes way beyond the radical philosopher Peter Singer, who merely wants to make vegetarianism "obligatory" on moral grounds and ban the use of animals for agriculture, science, and commerce. Such vegetarianism seems passé now, as Lovelock jests about how we once thought that plant life had been created "solely for us to eat."
In Deep Ecology a person is supposed to merge so completely with the Earth as his greater "Self" that the identification turns into a spontaneous self-defense whenever the environment is in danger. Lovelock sees a "need" for such "instinctive environmentalism. " He asks how one might acquire such an "instinct" and answers that we can "make Gaia an instinctive belief by exposing our children to the natural world, telling them how and why it is Gaia in action, and showing that they belong to it." This shows how ideology distorts one's sense of human nature. An "instinct" is by definition an inherited and unalterable natural impulse, yet Lovelock wants one to be inculcated into children by indoctrination -- not to mention that such children would be trained thereby to serve as Gaia's janissaries against the human race. One cannot help but recall De Steiguer's observation that Arne Naess thought "the best fit for 'green' was 'red,' that is, either communism or socialism." In other words, he realized the green movement needed a regime like that of Orwell's Animal Farm.
How could such a misanthropic ecofascism have spread so far, so fast? Very likely the decline of Christianity in the West has led to the rise of this neo-pagan abjection before the material world. Lovelock believes that all the traditional religions of the world are out of date, for they were all founded when we were few in number and when we "lived in a way that was no burden to the Earth." Past teachings on morality no longer apply now that we have become "six billion hungry and greedy individuals. " He reserves a special animus for Christianity, where man is seen as the steward of creation: "The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever." What Christians need, he sneers, is "a new Sermon on the Mount" to tell us how to live "decently with the Earth." He finds fault with "secular humanists," too, for he thinks they need to turn to Gaia and "recognize that human rights and needs are not enough."
Gaia Theory and Deep Ecology are two handmaids of the Culture of Death. Their precursor was the eugenics movement of a century ago that imposed birth control and forced sterilization on the supposedly "unfit." Today an artificially created panic about ecological catastrophe, derived from Gaia Theory and Deep Ecology, lies behind a seemingly unstoppable movement for sterile sex by way of birth control, sterilization, chemical and surgical abortions, homosexuality, and the infanticide of newborns (called "infant euthanasia") . Deep ecologists and Gaia theorists try to terrify us with environmental degradation in order to pursue their main program -- population control. For even when their prophecies of doom prove to be false or exaggerated, these zealots immediately point to another imminent disaster and call for man to reduce his numbers.
We should understand that when the leaders of the Culture of Death look at us, they don't see so many individuals with immortal souls and eternal destinies, each one having an incalculable value in the eyes of God, since the divine Word saved us with His own blood. Rather they see a plague of alien creatures infesting an imagined divinity. History shows that none are more fanatical than those on the march to Utopia. The Gaia theorists and the Deep Ecology zealots are certainly marching lockstep right now toward their imagined paradise. The mirage they have in view is one with so few people left on the planet that their great goal will finally be achieved -- the total "noninterference" of man with the wilderness of the Earth. What a dismal, misanthropic idea of paradise!
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