The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Those lines on your palm they can be read

for a hidden part of your life that only

those links can say--nobody's voice

can find so tiny a message as comes

across your hand. Forbidden to complain,

you have tried to be like somebody else,

and only this fine record you examine

sometimes like this can remember where

you were going before that long

silent evasion that your life became."

William Stafford

No Quarter For Coral...Or Anything Else

At least corporations and governments usually promise to do good things for the environment, even when they don't follow through. But the recent 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Doha, Qatar didn't even bother doing that. The nations attending just out and out refused to enact trade restrictions to protect from extinction the Atlantic bluefin tuna, six shark species and 31 types of coral (including red coral, pictured above), all of them crucial or keystone species in the waters that humans as well as other life depend on.

This group has protected thousands of species in the past. But this time..."This failure is not because negotiators weren't doing their job," says Andrew Rosenberg, an adviser to President Obama's ocean policy task force. "It's because short-term economic interests dominated this conference. Some nations just could not give up the last remaining money to be made on tuna and shark fin soup."

And the nations involved were hardly shy about it. In the forefront of blocking restrictions were the Japanese, who "hosted dinner at the Japanese embassy, and served blue tuna the night before the vote."

If any evidence were needed to support James Lovelock's just-published lament that "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle as complex a situation as climate change."

The Roles of Gubment 2: Time After Time

In terms of time, government has two roles. One is to do what other parts of society can't or won't do to protect and make better the future.

Especially these days, corporations won't look beyond the quarterly report. And while government policymakers often won't look past the next election, it falls to them (and the unsung, often stereotyped career professionals within all branches of government, as well as citizen advocates) to transcend the nearest fears and opportunities to do what is in the best interests of the country and the planet long-term.

This is embedded in nearly every speech that President Obama makes, and is explicit in his epigrammatic statement from earlier this year: "Our future shouldn't be shaped by what's best for our politics; our politics should be shaped by what's best for our future." But the principle is stated most profoundly in the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois: “In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation to come.”

Though the Great Law is hundreds of years old, perhaps a thousand years old, it is still a novel concept among us. It is this future orientation that is our only hope for getting ahead of the curve of the Climate Crisis, or even responding in a timely way to its effects.

The second role of government in terms of time is to respond to the needs of the moment that no other entity can effectively address. For me, this function is summarized in something Harry Hopkins said to FDR about the need to address the Depression with policies of immediate effect: "People don't eat in the long-term. They eat every day."

Government must often respond to the needs of both kinds of time. The health insurance reform law, the last aspects of which will be signed today, responds to a need of now, and to the specific failure of insurance companies to meet the need. The effects of the law will occur over time, with some provisions beginning this year, and others in a few years.

It is perhaps evidence of the limitation of our thinking that we see this as addressing needs long-term. On the one hand, there is the somewhat laughable attempt to cost it out over decades, as if the world was economically and socially predictable. Such estimates are informed guesses, and if we were sane about time, we would admit that we need to respond to the unforeseen or to changes over time. But in this toxic political environment, everything is a political issue, especially when the rich suspect they might not get richer fast enough--this year.

And while the precise effects of global heating--its manifestations in event and in time--can't be predicted, at least using the tools we usually apply, the outlines of the long-range physical effects are about as certain as we ever get. So chances are that in the future--perhaps 10 or 20 years, perhaps 50, almost certainly in 70--the changes in the U.S. healthcare system so painfully made, and still so controversial, will seem puny and inadequate. And if we are in the full grip of Climate Cataclysm, pretty much irrelevant.

So I see this more as a response to the needs of the present, and for perhaps a generation, than really for the future. But that's okay. Because people need health care every day.

Which Testimony Would That Be?

The Hutaree, which is not a nebula or a folk group but the apocalyptic Michigan militia group busted by the FBI for seditious conspiracy, are “preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.”

That would be the Jesus Christ who "lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." (Luke: 1:52-3.)

Or would it? Sounds like socialism, don't it, Glenn?

Lights Out Night

Back in Pittsburgh, when I had a column in the weekly paper, I was sitting in a bar near the Pitt campus talking with a few casual acquaintances. The conversation drifted to the most recent "Light-Up Night," when downtown Pittsburgh turned on all the office building lights, usually to show off to a national TV audience during a Monday Night Football game or some such occasion. A young woman in the group wondered what it would be like if instead all the lights were turned off--we might actually see what the sky over Pittsburgh looked like.

I immediately stole the idea and proposed a "Lights-Out Night" in my next column. Now the idea has become a reality: cities in 121 countries are participating tonight in Earth Hour-- organized by the World Wildlife Fund, cities go dark (sort of) for an hour (between 8:30 and 9:30 pm local time), to support efforts to address global heating.

Landmarks to go dark for Earth Hour for the first time in 2010 include South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls at the U.S.-Canada border, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, the Great Pyramids in Egypt, Table Mountain in South Africa, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan.

I don't know if Pittsburgh or our little cities hereabouts are participating, but apparently people on their own are joining in:"Cities and businesses are the ones you're always hearing about, because they have the skyscrapers and the big marquees. But Earth Hour has always been an event about families and individuals as well," Aun said.

The intent is different from Lights Out Night, but in participating cities, the opportunity I saw is being included--people are also being urged to look up and see a night sky they may not otherwise see as clearly.

And tonight offers a neat show: The moon should be gorgeous on the night of March 27, as it will be its closest to Earth for the whole month around midnight that night. But in addition to the usually visible moon, sky-watchers can look for the bright star Regulus shining above the moon, Saturn near the moon's lower left, the star Spica below Saturn, and another star Arcturus down and to the left.

And then there's, well, the rest of the universe.

The Roles of Gubment: Predator Protection

To start wrapping things up for now on the health insurance reform bill--the first of two observations on the roles of government.

In terms of what it does best for American society, government has two basic functions: it does for the country what individuals and smaller groups cannot do for themselves, and it protects individuals, groups within the society, and the society as a whole, when no other institution or entity can (or will.)

Individuals, groups and other institutions benefit from both functions, including businesses. Without government building and maintaining infrastructure--the roads, bridges, ports etc.--or performing necessary support and regulatory functions to keep vital institutions running--businesses would not prosper. Without government setting the rules that all businesses must adhere to, the competitive necessity would sooner or later drive them all into helpless destruction and self-destruction. When not playing political games, businesses know this, and they look to government to fulfill both functions.

But government also protects citizens from the harmful effects of predatory capitalism. That capitalism is predatory isn't controversial; using different words perhaps, it's capitalism's proudest boast. Dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest--it's no wonder that Darwin got his first and most enthusiastic hearing among American robber barons and other 19th century capitalists, who embraced especially the Herbert Spencer interpretation and its application to society known as Social Darwinism.

The mechanism of predatory capitalism is simple, and there's no better recent example than health insurers. Thanks in part to the 1990s debate on health insurance and the ultimate failure of the Clinton plan, new and old health insurance companies coopted the new and apparently efficient system known as HMOs--Health Maintenance Organizations. At first a thousand such flowers bloomed, but not for long. The logic of predatory capitalism is for small companies to merge until they become big enough to simple absorb smaller companies--the big fish eat the little fish, until there are only a few fish in the sea, or in the case of health insurers, just one or two fish in each lake (or state.)

At first, in order to grow and establish market share, these companies offered lots of services at affordable rates. But as they ate up the competition, they took tighter control of services, cut costs while raising prices. That's the privilege of monopoly, and monopoly is the natural goal of predatory capitalism.

Only government can protect people against the excesses of predatory capitalism. It's a dynamic and messy process most of the time. Government bureaucracies commit their own excesses, but at least government has mechanisms of accountability, like courts and elections. Health insurers are the latest monopolies to operate outside and above the law, in the ways that counted most. They are in the best business in the world--they charge money for services they refuse to render. Well, the best outside war zones: outfits like Blackwater and Halliburton that steal billions, as well as arms manufacturers who can count on repeat customers since their products are immediately destroyed.

I saw President Kennedy in 1962 speak with disgust that the U.S. was 30 years behind England and years behind most of Europe in providing health care for its citizens. But maybe even more to the point, such is the power of predatory capitalism in the U.S.--economic, political and power over the imagination--that we've actually allowed a predatory capitalist business to traffic in human life and suffering.

So maybe this law doesn't do enough to see that decent health care is provided to all Americans, absent at least a public option. But it does attempt to de-fang the predators known as insurance companies, and offer protection to citizens. And the one policy that did get bipartisan support--ending their anti-trust exemption--may turn out to be a pretty good tool as well.

Towards the Future

There are a lot of white people--like those today in Iowa--who aren't fomenting Civil War III (see post below.) The future includes more of all races like four year old "'Lil Barack," who met his presidential namesake today, also in Iowa. Click photos to enlarge.

Civil War III

The American Civil War in the 1860s was the deadliest in American history, with some 620,000 soldiers killed. Because of the nature of this war, virtually all the deaths and injuries were American, both military and civilian, and all the destruction was in the United States.

So the Civil War is singular. But major underlying issues of that war had descendants that contributed to continuing conflict and violence in the U.S., that flared into focused public conflict and violence in the Civil Rights era.

In the mid 19th century, the South depended on slavery for its agrarian economy, chiefly cotton. The North had an industrial economy, and its farms did not depend on slaves. It's difficult to call the South's support of slavery "racism," since the white leaders and citizens of the North by and large did not consider people indigenous to Africa, then called Negroes, as their equals in most ways. If not "equally" racist, the prevailing view in all of America was racist.

Whether Southerners were "more racist" is conjectural. That they supported their arguments for slavery with racist rhetoric is undeniable. Similarly, they defended their economic position (dependent on slavery) with the principle, or at least the rhetoric, of state's rights.

A century later, some of the same elements played into to the confrontations of the Civil Rights era (late 1950s through the 1960s.) By losing the Civil War, and losing slavery, the South did take a big economic hit, and arguably had not recovered a century later. While cities grew in the North, Midwest and West, the South remained far less urban.

Especially after the Civil War, the South was characterized as backward and undereducated. Southerners considered the North as elitist, overeducated and overbearing. The hostility on both sides had elements that were defined by class. The South had its own culture, defined by its own brand of Christian fundamentalism, as well as by a continuing sense of being aggrieved and oppressed. White Southerners in some ways defined themselves in contrast to Negroes, but also seemed to feel that, as in the Civil War, the North--and the federal government--threatened their economic position and way of life by changing the status of Southern Negroes.

Though of course nowhere near the violence of the Civil War, the Civil Rights struggle did involve violence and death--including innocent children, white as well as black Civil Rights workers, and a leader whose life is now celebrated with a national holiday. In the South, city and state governments resisted changing discriminatory laws and in some cases fomented violence against Civil Rights advocates. Officials and political leaders incited violence and opposition by white citizens.

When the Civil Rights struggle moved North, the violence and opposition of some white citizens showed a commonality: they, too, felt threatened by racial equality. Apart from a racial repugnance, they believed as well that racial equality threatened their way of life and their economic status. Ending discrimination in hiring etc. meant more competition for jobs and contracts, and efforts to compensate for past discrimination made that worse.

The fears and resentments handed down, augmented and amplified from the Civil War were still most potent in the South--where federal Civil Rights legislation led to the Democrats losing the "Solid South" forever--but the underlying class-oriented component had strengthened and spread to the whole country. The archetype of "the North" became less geographically centered, and became a perceived oppression by a powerful cabal.

In the 1960s, historian Richard Hofstader defined some of these beliefs in his books, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in the United States. The perceived characteristics and membership of this cabal had changed over time, but there are two common threads: perceived class distinctions (expressed in wealth, power and education) and specific threats to what whites had, seemingly by right of white supremacy. Those who believed this most intensely tended to be the most economically and culturally vulnerable lower middle class whites, supported by politicians, religious leaders and others who made their living feeding this frenzy.

This is not to say that racism did not and does not remain within the ranks of middle class and wealthy whites. It does, and it functions to support political positions that seek to funnel even more wealth to the wealthy. This is also a protection of class position, but in this case, there's often willingness to rob from lower classes, regardless of race.

After the laws of the land changed to institute legal equality, and black Americans became more integrated into everyday life and the larger culture, overt racism died down. But writers such as Thomas Frank noted that even in the 21st century, white racism remained a potent political and cultural force, although couched in euphemisms and code words. It seems pretty clear now that the election of America's first black President in 2008--particularly in combination with the Great Recession-- brought these fears, resentments and hostilities closer to the surface, expressed in an anger and in the rhetoric of violence. If the Civil Rights era was in effect Civil War II, we now seem in the midst of Civil War III.

I'm not going to catalogue the latest manifestations--the violence and threats directed at Democratic Members of Congress ostensibly over the health insurance reform bill--especially since they continue to grow in number and seriousness. Fortunately the news is widely reporting them, and they are being discussed on TV and the Internet. Instead I want to speculate on the underlying elements.

Some of the mechanisms of Civil War III are repeated: politicians and other leaders inflaming and exploiting and directing the resentments; the rhetoric of state's rights and of oppression by powerful sinister forces. Instead of overtly naming regional, ethnic, racial or religious enemies, the rhetoric follows from the 1950s McCarthyite tactic of ascribing an ideology that moreover has deceptive and subversive intent (i.e. "socialism" and the imagery of Hitler, Stalin, etc.) But the racial component is pretty obvious, especially in the ingenious combination of racial subtext and conspiracy in the persistent charge that President Obama was not born in the U.S, or that he is secretly a Muslim ( a religion both identified racially and as foreign source of terrorism.)

A recent Harris poll confirms an earlier poll's finding that a majority of Republicans surveyed profess to believe that President Obama is a socialist and a Muslim. Such beliefs--and others, such as the "birther" contention, Obama as totalitarian and Democrats as threatening liberty --are central to the Tea Party movement, with a membership that is overwhelmingly white.

In what may be a difference, this phenomenon is financed and directed to a large extent by some corporations and their political P.R. and lobbying firms. This is perhaps only a reflection of the increased sophistication necessary for a fast-paced, media-dominated culture. But it is not at all unusual for the most powerful business interests to manipulate those much further down in the class system, in order to protect and extend their political and economic power. It's at least as old as kings convincing peasants to fight their wars by demonizing some neighboring country or tribe.

But why are such issues as health care or climate change inflaming Civil War III, if it is actually an outgrowth of the previous Civil Wars? Some of it is because these are advocated by President Obama, and anything a black President does is at least symbolically a threat. At least, that is the political calculation made and exploited by Republican professional politicians and political consultants.

But it is probably more direct than that. Despite the fact that white people are victims of the insurance companies, or that lower middle class whites are primary victims of growing income inequality, it may well be that the healthcare reforms are seen as benefiting mostly blacks, Latinos and Asian immigrants. After all, it was the federal government that gave racial minorities more economic power. This is just one more federal attempt to weaken the competitive position of lower middle class whites--especially white men, who arguably are taking the brunt of Great Recession unemployment as well as elements of economic and social change. This may be couched in the language of taxes and deficit, but the persistence of this belief in the face of facts that counter it suggest there's something more behind it.

There is also the rhetoric of state's rights, the beleagued sense of federal power and conspiratorial forces. But once again they revolve around elements of race and class.

Similarly, while some component of anti-choice ideology is sincerely based on religious conviction and a visceral support of life, some of it is fueled by class resentment (the image of choice advocates as rich white women and Hollywood stars), and some of it is probably part of a fear that poorer whites are targeted for extinction that goes back to the alarm over eugenics in the early 20th century. Almost certainly, the demographic reality of a growing non-white population--of whites as a soon-to-be minority race-- plays into all of these fears.

There's probably a class component even in climate crisis denial. As one writer put it, they are convinced "that it's a hoax cooked up by self-righteous environmentalist elites who can't stand to see common people have their mechanized fun." (ecologist J. Baird Callicott in Gaia in Turmoil.)

In any case, several people--including those who were victims of violence in the 60s--have noted that the current wave of violence and violent rhetoric and advocacy is reminiscent of the Civil Rights era. (This includes slurs not much heard since then.) I believe that's partly because the sources are the same, with the additions and alterations of history, that go back to the original Civil War. (As does some of the rhetoric. Secession anyone?) While the proportion and eventual political power of the white resenters is shrinking, they can still be still mortally dangerous. Their rhetoric of a Last Stand should be taken very seriously.

We need to be clear about taking the current threat seriously, if we are to avoid the horror of violence and assassination. Those who want to provoke more widespread racial and class violence may see this as their best opportunity. We also need to look beyond the political and ideological talk to the deep sources of these impulses. They tell us that those who are inflaming extremism and violence are sanctioning violent expression of powerful resentments and anger, and that they are responsible for any violence that ensues.

"Our presence here today is remarkable and improbable. With all the punditry, all of the lobbying, all of the game-playing that passes for governing in Washington, it’s been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing; to wonder if there are limits to what we, as a people, can still achieve. It’s easy to succumb to the sense of cynicism about what’s possible in this country.

But today, we are affirming that essential truth -– a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself –- that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations. We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust. We don't fall prey to fear. We are not a nation that does what’s easy. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we got here.

We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities. We are a nation that does what is hard. What is necessary. What is right. Here, in this country, we shape our own destiny. That is what we do. That is who we are. That is what makes us the United States of America.

And we have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care. And it is an extraordinary achievement that has happened because of all of you and all the advocates all across the country.

So, thank you. Thank you. God bless you, and may God bless the United States."

President Barack Obama
March 23, 2010

This Year

From President Obama's remarks before signing the health insurance reform bill:

"It will take four years to implement fully many of these reforms, because we need to implement them responsibly. We need to get this right. But a host of desperately needed reforms will take effect right away.

This year, we’ll start offering tax credits to about 4 million small businessmen and women to help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees.

This year, tens of thousands of uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions, the parents of children who have a preexisting condition, will finally be able to purchase the coverage they need. That happens this year.

This year, insurance companies will no longer be able to drop people’s coverage when they get sick. They won’t be able to place lifetime limits or restrictive annual limits on the amount of care they can receive.

This year, all new insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care. And this year, young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ policies until they’re 26 years old. That happens this year.

And this year, seniors who fall in the coverage gap known as the doughnut hole will start getting some help. They’ll receive $250 to help pay for prescriptions, and that will, over time, fill in the doughnut hole. And I want seniors to know, despite what some have said, these reforms will not cut your guaranteed benefits. In fact, under this law, Americans on Medicare will receive free preventive care without co-payments or deductibles. That begins this year."

The President went on to talk about the insurance exchanges, the other tax credits and provisions that will be phased in over the next four years. But there are other reforms that patients and their families will see in the medical system they encounter, some of them soon, all of them within that four year time frame. Ezra Klein in the Washington Post named several:

Merrill Goozner points out another little-noticed provision in the bill: "Drug and device companies will soon have to report payments to physicians in a national database, thanks to a little noted section of the health care reform bill called the Physician Payments Sunshine Act."

...hospitals will have to post prices. Insurance products will be presented with standardized information, consumer ratings and quality measures. The payments physicians take from drug and device companies will be in a public database. There will be independent funding for research on the relative effectiveness of different treatments. Some of these changes are small and some are big, but put together, the system is going to become a lot more visible in the coming years."

As President Obama said later at the Interior Department, the purpose of the bill is not to give the government more control or the insurance companies more control, but to give patients and the people paying the premiums more control over their health care and their health.

The Real Winners

A patient and his doctor pump fists in victory as they watch President Obama sign the healthcare reform act into law. A new poll shows that a plurality of Americans approve.

Emerson for the Day

"If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures."

Emerson ("Skepticism") (Here's to spring...click photo to enlarge)

"This Is What Change Looks Like"

President Obama watches the House vote to pass the healthcare reform bill in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, with both President Roosevelts looking on from their portraits--two of the many Presidents who tried and failed to get something like this passed. As he watched, Democrats on the House floor were chanting, "Yes We Can."

Then President Obama spoke briefly to the nation, and said: "Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics. We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. We didn’t give in to mistrust or to cynicism or to fear. Instead, we proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges. We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people."

"Most importantly, today’s vote answers the prayers of every American who has hoped deeply for something to be done about a health care system that works for insurance companies, but not for ordinary people. For most Americans, this debate has never been about abstractions, the fight between right and left, Republican and Democrat — it’s always been about something far more personal. It’s about every American who knows the shock of opening an envelope to see that their premiums just shot up again when times are already tough enough. It’s about every parent who knows the desperation of trying to cover a child with a chronic illness only to be told "no" again and again and again. It’s about every small business owner forced to choose between insuring employees and staying open for business. They are why we committed ourselves to this cause.

Tonight’s vote is not a victory for any one party — it’s a victory for them. It’s a victory for the American people. And it’s a victory for common sense."

"So this isn’t radical reform. But it is major reform. This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like."

In this case, change looked messy, contentious, with opposition dealing in blithe deceptions, and stirring up emotions that had nothing directly to do with the subject. At first change looked certain, then compromised, then defeated, before in the end, change happened--and will continue to happen in the lives of millions of Americans: who can get affordable health insurance, whose insurance will benefit from "reining in the worst excesses and abuses of the insurance industry with some of the toughest consumer protections this country has ever known — so that you are actually getting what you pay for." Who will no longer face being dropped if they get sick, or their children be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Young people who can stay on their parents' insurance longer; seniors whose Medicare is strengthened, with no more hole in their prescription drug benefits, and who will get free preventive care, with free preventive care eventually part of everyone's insurance. And more.

The story continues but the drama is just about over for now. "Tonight, we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge — we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility — we embraced it. We did not fear our future — we shaped it."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."

Abraham Lincoln

(with hat tip to blackwaterdog at Kos)

President Obama brought game to his appearance before House Dems today, beginning with a text from Abraham Lincoln--"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have"--but pointed out how popular this reform may turn out to be once people see how it works, and he lists some of the reforms that begin this year, so that the health care system begins to work for the people and not just for the insurance companies. He did this while wondering why Republican leaders are warning Democrats not to vote for this unpopular plan--are they really worried that Dems will lose their elections? Or could it be that they know that once reform goes into effect, people will see how it works, and that Republicans have lied about it all along.

Even if you haven't followed the debate very closely, the three videos of this speech are worth the combined half hour of your time. If you can spare only ten minutes or so, go to the last one. This part however is Barack Obama at his most incisive, most insistent, and really at the top of his game.

In this section of President Obama's remarks to the House Dem caucus today, he briskly, deftly and emphatically summarizes the healthcare bill, and suggests why the House should vote for it. "Do it for the folks who are scared right now" because they can't afford to get sick, they can't even afford the insurance premiums that won't pay enough, or pay at all, if they do just...simply...get sick. This is where we are in the United States of America.

President Obama concludes his final talk on health insurance reform to the Dem caucus of the House today. It's one of the historic moments of our time--and a speech that will be central to that history. All I can think of is the day I stayed home from school, sick in bed, and read Profiles in Courage. We're at one of those moments now.

We're Back!

We're back on line--let's hope it lasts (for both of us.) I got my computer back--it was the power supply, though there were some anxious moments when it was diagnosed as the motherboard--but it doesn't seem quite right yet, so we'll see. I'm not giving it up again, though, until my new laptop arrives.

As for Barack, his speech at George Mason U. (above) continued the campaign enthusiasm--and response. Yeah, and wasn't it like just last week that his presidency was over, and everybody had their analysis for why he was failing? Now with votes accumulating in the House--even Dennis the K.--it seems like he's peaking at the right time. Marc Ambinder at length:

"As Democrats move ever closer to the magic number of 216, it's unsurprising that the language used to describe the debate has lifted itself out of the depths of mere politics and vaulted into the realm of virtue. Courage is the most essential value. Who is the Antigone -- who built the "dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear," as Martin Luther King put it. For whom has this fight been easy? For whom has it been hard?

Whatever you believe about health care reform, it's hard to escape the conclusion that for one party, opposing reform was expedient, and for another, supporting it required the summoning of an uncommon degree of bravery and a resistance to every base political instinct. (There are plenty of Democrats who held out because they wanted something else and knew they could get it. They're not very courageous. It's easy to spot the difference.)

Why has Barack Obama risked his presidency for this crusade? Why has he spent more time on this domestic issue than any other president has spent on any other issue in recent memory? Why has he done so despite the manifest public unpopular of the case? The answer opponents will give is some variant of Obama's conviction that he must impose his solution on America no matter the cost, even to him; that his actions are part of a larger crusade; that he cannot legitimize government as an active force for good without government taking over the health care system. (Chicago politics, socialism, Saul Alinsky.) But this argument doesn't track with an argument that opponents have been desperate to make: that health care is not popular now and won't be popular in time to reward Democrats.

And it fortifies, indirectly, the argument that Obama is uniquely courageous: his stubborness in the face of public opinion, in the face of advisers who begged him to move on, in the face of a revolt from his base, is based upon his own conviction that what he's doing is the right thing to do, primarily, and upon electoral politics secondarily."

Sure, it's still a long way from "Health is not for sale." And it's of course insane that these baby steps should be so outrageously resisted. But it's not nothing. In fact, it's another miracle, like November 2008 and January 20, 2009. Yes, we can. And with any luck, by Monday it'll be yes, we did.

Aliens have invaded my computer, my car and front tooth--what's next? See post below.

The Daily Babble

It's been awhile since I've done one of these. Not to distract you from the really important news, like the attempts to exploit the addled rantings of an ex-congressman, or the Chief Justice's hissy fit. But I'm afraid I'm drawing attention to myself, something that of course the Internet doesn't usually permit.

I just wanted to warn you--both of you--that I might be "off the air" for awhile. My laptop more or less died a few months ago, and I've been slow to replace it. Now this computer, my main almost brand new desktop, has developed a problem, I think. I had trouble getting it to turn on yesterday (no 60s jokes, please, not here in Humboldt), and today it refused. I tried everything I could think of--plugging into a different power strip, disconnecting and reconnecting the power cord, and usually different rhythms in pressing the power button--one long holding it down, a bunch of short jabs, etc. but nothing happened.

I called the computer doctors who said it sounded like the power whatcacallit, only $50 bucks to replace plus the $80 an hour to replace it. And maybe 3 or 4 working days at best before I got it back. They said I might be able to recover some files while I'm there, so I can go on making a living.

Only trouble was I couldn't get it there right away, because my car won't start. Not an unknown problem for the last six months, but the mechanics can't tell what's wrong, and I'm contemplating a different approach (different mechanic, mainly.) So the old Volvo sits out there motionless.

I was about to head over to campus to find Margaret and see when she could give me and my computer a ride. I turned off the light, and as I passed it, I hit the computer power button one more time. It went on. So ever since, I've been backing up, doing the work I need to do for the rest of the week and into next, and sending it out. I had to cancel an appointment, and miss my discount day at the groc. But as long as the thing is on, so must I be.

My slowness in dealing with the car, as well as a few other things I should be taking care of, is partly due to a visit to the dentist. Where he told me that the work on one solitary tooth will cost me more than a new (quite used) car and laptop computer combined. It will cost more than I made writing my theatre column for the local weekly--for all last year. The work of 24 columns will disappear in two hours.

I got a second opinion--or rather, the same opinion from a second dentist, yesterday. So it will have to be done, and for the next year, I'll be working for the dentist. That's the one job. The other is the part-time "communications specialist" work for two university departments, both of which are currently on the list for "program elimination," as HSU has to cut another million plus from it's incredible shrinking budget. So money in is becoming a non-renewable resource. Can't say the same for money out.

Compared to the future I've been dealing with for planet Earth and human civilization, it's all pretty trivial. But it's my trivial. My little so-called life. And here on my little so-called blog, I can rant about it--at least until the computer goes off.

Well, be seeing you. Sometime.

Two views of Denali National Park in Alaska, one of the things we've done right, noted in the post below.

Some Things We've Done Right

When it comes to the human impact on the future, we have done some things right. I am often astonished that libraries still exist, for example, and that all you have to do to find the best and the latest thoughts, facts and dreams is follow the signs into the stacks to the right shelf, and there they are, waiting for you.

Something else came freshly to my attention over the weekend when I happened on a rebroadcast of the Ken Burns' series, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. (Maybe it was rebroadcast because this is the birth month of the first National Park. )

It's America's best idea all right, and also by now, one of humanity's, as the protection of wilderness, natural wonders and wildlife habitats is a worldwide phenomenon. I saw much of the last episode, which was replete with stories of lives transformed by family visits to national parks when children were at impressionable ages. I was getting wistful about not having had such an experience, when they showed the March on Washington in 1963--I was there for that, but hadn't ever really thought about the fact that it was held in a national park--that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke with Park Rangers at his side.

But it was the more familiar kinds of parks that were most interesting, and you have to admire people who devote their lives to them--four generations in one family. This segment dealt with the 50s and 60s, the controversial improvements and expansions by our socialist President Eisenhower and JFK Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. And then the biggest additions to the parks system in the 70s, in Alaska. How controversial that was--how the first bill to create parks there sailed through the House but was blocked in the Senate by filibuster. How President Jimmy Carter then used executive authority to declare National Monuments to protect as much as he could. How Alaskans were outraged--burned Carter in effigy--threatened to shoot National Park Service rangers--threatened to secede from the union they'd just joined.

both photos: Denali National Park in Alaska

But five years after the town of Seward was in revolt, it was raking in quiet tourist dollars and happy about it, so eventually it would request that the park area be expanded. Eventually National Parks--as well as wilderness areas and wildlife refuges--were created. Some, of course, still controversial.

The Parks often had to deal with political opposition, and many were compromised--that still happens, as in the current corporate eating away at the Everglades. At the same time, environmentalists and Indian tribes sometimes opposed roads and "improvements." Yet somehow, in the general ravaging of the landscape, more of it remains than otherwise would, and millions of people visit. Some are changed by it. And many don't have to go--they just have to know these places exist.

We do have good ideas, we do dream up better futures daily. Sometimes we even act on them. I realize that recent posts outline a significantly challenging future. But there are ideas, like a couple previewed in Thomas Friedman's latest column, that might still improve the long-term chances significantly. Even in the Crisis and Cataclysm periods, there are ways people can make a positive difference. For those readers not yet scared away, I'll be writing about that, too, in future posts.

The First Stage of Grief

The first stage of grief is denial, and at the moment when the mortal threat to our beautiful planet is so painfully but definitely manifesting, the denial is most assured and quietly hysterical. That the same people who are so fixated on evolution are now involved in this denial, isn't surprising perhaps, but it's all immensely sad.

As is the latest study from the UK Met Office, which examined climate findings since the 2007 UN report, and says the evidence is now even stronger that human-caused climate change is upon us.

The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.

"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.

And another study suggests that methane is venting from part of the Arctic shelf. A significant release from the vast store of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from under the melting permafrost could set off abrupt global heating and runaway climate change (Climate Collapse.) This would likely happen if methane set off a feedback effect, which so far hasn't been detected. But the danger is clear, because it is past and current global heating that is releasing methane from the Arctic. So while grief--especially conscious grief--is appropriate, so is conscious determination and action toprevent the worst, and prepare for the worse.

Update: a RealClimate post urges caution on the methane research, and the whole question of methane's impact on climate change.

...And a Time to Vote

President Obama on Wednesday called for Congress to vote on health care reform within the next few weeks, with doctors and nurses who support his bill; (bottom photo) one of many demonstrations--this one in New York--saying the same. More about this and its importance to the future in the post below.

What Kind of Country

Almost exactly one year after launching his effort to effectively reform health insurance and health care in America, today President Obama called for a vote on the bill based on the legislation that both houses of Congress passed.

Not only is health insurance reform crucial to the lives of millions of Americans, and to the American economy, and to the federal budget, but it is a crucial step to a better future-- and a crucial test of whether this country can move towards that future. And by better, I mean better than what it will be if this isn't done, as well as with better health care for millions of Americans.

The process has been ugly and the legislation is imperfect. But it does address needs, and it can be the basis for more reforms. President Obama outlined what the legislation does:

Essentially, my proposal would change three things about the current health care system. First, it would end the worst practices of insurance companies. No longer would they be able to deny your coverage because of a preexisting condition. No longer would they be able to drop your coverage because you got sick. No longer would they be able to force you to pay unlimited amounts of money out of your own pocket. No longer would they be able to arbitrarily and massively raise premiums like Anthem Blue Cross recently tried to do in California -- up to 39 percent increases in one year in the individual market. Those practices would end.

Second, my proposal would give uninsured individuals and small business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves -- because if it’s good enough for members of Congress, it’s good enough for the people who pay their salaries..."

Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions -- families, businesses, and the federal government.

The bottom line is our proposal is paid for. And all the new money generated in this plan goes back to small businesses and middle-class families who can't afford health insurance. It would also lower prescription drug prices for seniors. And it would help train new doctors and nurses and physician assistants to provide care for American families."

To walk away from this now is to give in to the extreme and cynical demagoguery that has been inflicted on these minimal yet important reforms, stopping unconscionable abuses and restoring fairness and humanity. If that kind of opposition succeeds now, it will be used again and again to kill the future.

President Obama ended his remarks with what's at stake:

" In the end, that's what this debate is about. It's about what kind of country we want to be. It's about the millions of lives that would be touched and, in some cases, saved by making private health insurance more secure and more affordable.

So at stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem. The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future. They are waiting for us to act. They are waiting for us to lead. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it's right. "

A Teachable Moment

The news has given us examples of politicians making despicably distorted use of the snowstorms in the eastern U.S. to stupidly mock the onrushing reality of global heating. But it occurred to me that for younger and more inquiring minds, these snows presented a great opportunity for science teachers. Kids love to unlock apparent paradoxes, to see how things are not always what they seem. So I hope that legions of science teachers are demonstrating to perhaps temporarily attentive students just how a warming planet can produce more snow, how their cities can grind to a halt--even Washington DC!--in what is likely to be the warmest February on record.

These students should be receptive, for even a Republican Senator recognizes that the young are attuned to the message of the Climate Crisis. "I've been to enough college campuses to know," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, "if you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It's a value."

Update: Maybe I should say clearly what I implied by this suggestion: the physics and chemistry involved in explaining these snows in a warming world is so basic that children can understand it.

The Climate Future

Following up on some recent posts about climate and the future, as well as the reading that prompted these posts, I've formed a kind of working future history--a kind of outline, that provides a time-framework for thinking about things to come.

This is based on informed speculation but it is also a first attempt, and subject to revision, perhaps early and often. But at the moment it seems realistic to me. Basically it divides the future into three phases:

1. Now to circa 2035: Climate Crisis
During this period, the evidence for human-caused climate disruption increases, as does the evidence for ongoing effects of past greenhouse gas pollution. Awareness and acceptance also grows, but for the rest of the current decade at least, much of the public will (for one reason or another) fail to connect the dots, and Climate Crisis denial will reach a fevered pitch.

However, a minority that recognizes at least part of the crisis will be very active, though in different pursuits. Some will recognize that immediate and long-lasting change is necessary to keep the Climate Crisis from becoming the ultimate catastrophe in the next century. Some will recognize the imminent danger of effects now inevitable in the near future due to past greenhouse gas pollution. A smaller number will realize both. But everyone will choose specific areas in which to concentrate their own efforts.

Some will concentrate on alternative energy, and on developing technologies to deal with effects. Some will try to figure out how to deal with the effects when they become dominant, and the entire society has no choice but to change. Some will work on political change, or try to increase public awareness and acceptance. But due in part to the violence of the denialists, I suspect many will work as quietly as possible to be ready for future changes.

Those changes will probably at first be unrelated responses to specific catastrophes, threats and emergencies. Eventually, the role of climate in these accumulating problems will be accepted. Perhaps that will lead to conscious strategies, and the work of those who were preparing may then see the light of day.

So the tasks of the Climate Crisis period will be: develop and institute the changes necessary to drastically cut greenhouse gases so runaway climate collapse doesn't happen in the far future, while preparing to deal with the effects of inevitable climate cataclysm already beginning, and becoming dominant in...

2035 to 2090: Climate Cataclysm.
Scientists estimate that it takes about thirty years for greenhouse gas pollution sent into the atmosphere to have direct effect on the planet. So the gases now being produced will have impact on climate in 2040. By the same token, the changes in climate today are largely the result of the lesser amounts of pollution that entered the atmosphere in 1980, as well as the cumulative effects of some greenhouse gas pollution prior to that.

And that's what's apparently got scientists and other careful observers really worried. According to their pretty reliable models, the polar ice melts observed in real time now, shouldn't be happening for many years. Which suggests that things are worse than they thought, and are likely to keep getting worse than that for the forseeable future.

Even within the relatively conservative estimates of the most recent UN climate report, the near future is going to have serious problems. A Brooking Institutions report published in 2008 looked at possible consequences of the three climate scenarios (which might be classified as bad, worse and worse yet)--the volume is titled Climatic Cataclysm.

But data since that UN report, particularly the sea ice melts, suggest to some (such as David Orr in Down to the Wire) that the effects are going to be a lot worse: sea level rises wiping out coastal cities, storms, heat and drought, diseases, possibly resource wars, large-scale human migrations, and all the attendant problems of multiple disasters. Futurist and s/f writer Bruce Sterling has been warning for years that the effects will be so extensive that virtually everyone's lives in this future will be completely dominated by climate change.

The dates I selected are a matter of splitting the difference between estimates various scientists have made informally (as for example, here) on when climate cataclysm effects will become undeniable. Some say ten years, some say thirty, and of course, no one knows.

But we are already getting hints as to what the near future may be like. Just in the past month or so, the world has experienced destructive earthquakes in Haiti, Japan and Chile, with significant quakes elsewhere. At the same time as emergencies in Haiti and Chile are ongoing, there have been several record snowstorms disabling the big cities of the North American East Coast and U.S. Middle Atlantic, and killer storms in Europe. Some of these events are climate-related, others perhaps not, but the point is: these are large and complex crises, affecting millions of people, requiring lots of resources and attention, while disrupting normal economic and other activities. As the number and extent of such crises increase, their effects accumulate.

This is partly why Orr and others have adopted Jim Kunstler 's term, the Long Emergency. A lot of small emergencies become one. And also because, once the climate heats up and feedback effects set in, feedback will extend to the social and political effects. It won't be a matter of meeting an emergency and going back to normal. There won't be a normal, or not for long. It's likely to be one Long Emergency, always changing.

It is possible that changes will be made in the interim to make coping with this period not as traumatic: more flexibility from decentralized renewable clean energy, a quicker and more general awakening to what's really happening that motivates societies and maybe even the world to act quickly and consciously. It's possible. Some seeds are being planted in our Climate Crisis era.

On the other hand, we don't really know what will happen when the dominoes start to fall. Already our biodiversity is dwindling fast, and we don't know at what point the web of life that supports us will shatter.

The tasks of the Climate Cataclysm period will be to cope with the effects in real time, as well as resisting the temptation to abandon efforts to end greenhouse gas emissions, even though the climate has clearly changed. Because, if those efforts aren't successful...

2090-12090: Climate Collapse

There's no avoiding the Climate Cataclysm years. We've made that bed. But it may still be possible to avoid the ultimate apocalypse of Climate Collapse--otherwise known as runaway climate change. This would result in a planet so hot that human civilization and perhaps human life will be unlikely, except maybe for a small fraction of today's population. It would be a planet so hot that most animal and plant species on the planet today will be extinguished. This would happen over a century, maybe two, maybe even three. But it will last for hundreds of thousands of years. I made it just one hundred thousand, because I'm so lame at math.

But I repeat: the difference isn't between the climate we have now and Climate Collapse. The climate we have now will very likely be history in the Climate Cataclysm period, and it will not return to this state for at least thousands of years.

So all the efforts to reduce carbon emissions, create a global cap-and-trade market, etc., all the meetings and treaties like Kyoto and Copenhagen and upcoming in Mexico City--they are all bascially about preventing Climate Collapse. Not everybody knows that, or thinks so, but that's the probability, as far as I can tell.

And we don't really know how much time we have to get this done, except that it's probably not very much time, and it may in fact be too late, because we don't really know what effects are going to show up in the next 30 years: basically, how things will interact or create feedback loops, so the effects of global heating accelerate more heating. Scientists like James Hansen have developed what they think is the upper limit, and while we haven't yet reached it, if we keep going as we are now, we soon will.

When I started considering all this, especially as I was reading the Orr book and seeing related conclusions popping up, I was of course pretty shocked. I thought I'd accepted that there were going to be inevitable effects in the near future. I just didn't realize they would be so severe, and especially would last so long. We're changing this planet to something we wouldn't recognize, probably forever! That's incredibly awful, and hard to face with anything but numb despair.

Maybe it's that psychological predisposition to concentrate on the practical aspects and even on the positive elements, once you've accepted that catastrophe is inevitable. But I've found there is plenty to consider and think about, and especially plenty to do, both to prepare for the Climate Cataclysm near future, and to continue trying to forestall the Climate Collapse of the far future. And that's what I'll be writing about, in the very near future.

Today in Schizoid History

On March 1, 1872, the U.S. established Yellowstone National Park, one of the first examples on Earth of protecting a vast natural area as a park. On March 1, 1954 the U.S. detonated a hydrogen bomb off Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, causing one of the worst and most notorious radiation releases in history, leading to, among other things, Godzilla.

Push-Back on Climate Crisis Denial Follies

Some notable push-back on the Climate Crisis denying that is endangering the future by providing excuses for not dealing with either the causes or effects of climate change.

What's getting the most attention is Al Gore's oped piece today in the New York Times. Sympathizing with the impulse of denial, Gore is brutal about the consequences. If only the Climate Crisis weren't real---

"But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands."

"I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer. "

After disposing of the UN panel controversy and the DC snows red herring, Gore notes the record of recent failures:

"Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing — much less reduce them. And in spite of President Obama’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to “take note” of an intention to act."

The lesser noted but even more direct push-back came from U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia, who went after the Senate for failing to even consider the Climate Crisis legislation that the House passed:

" I’m sick of starting with what can we get through the Senate; let’s start with what solves the damn problem. Until the Senate gets its head out of its rear end and starts to see the crisis we’re in, our country is literally at risk."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases, it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

--John Keats, Endymion. Photo: broken Arctic sea ice, National Geographic. Click photo to greatly enlarge.