A Melange of Today's Politics!
I'm playing catchup on a few valuable columns from end of last week:
George Will puts global warming in perspective in "Fuzzy Climate Math".
Liz Cheney puts San Fran Nans trip to Syria in perspective in "The Truth about Syria".
Jason Whitlock puts Imus and the attacking hoards into perspective in "Imus isn't the real bad guy" - the firat sentence of which summarizes his feelings: "Thank you, Don Imus. You've given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem."
Thank God they avoid political correctness!
Correction (4/21/2007): it was pointed out to me that Liz Cheney is in fact the daughter of the Vice President and the WaPo chose not to point that out. Sorry for the confusion as I had earlier stated she was not related to the Vice President.
George Will puts global warming in perspective in "Fuzzy Climate Math".
Liz Cheney puts San Fran Nans trip to Syria in perspective in "The Truth about Syria".
Jason Whitlock puts Imus and the attacking hoards into perspective in "Imus isn't the real bad guy" - the firat sentence of which summarizes his feelings: "Thank you, Don Imus. You've given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem."
Thank God they avoid political correctness!
Correction (4/21/2007): it was pointed out to me that Liz Cheney is in fact the daughter of the Vice President and the WaPo chose not to point that out. Sorry for the confusion as I had earlier stated she was not related to the Vice President.
Labels: Global Warning, Iraq, Melange, Society
posted by Jim | 8:48 AM
4 Comments:
Good links!
1. Will certainly points out some fuzzy thinking. If one believes that the global warming is man-made, and that it will cause future devastation, then the question of what to do about it is vexing (I realize that it's debatable). But as Will says, most responses to date are not really well-thought out.
2. Liz Cheney is indeed the daughter of our VP. A number of people took issue with the fact that the Washington Post did not point this out when they published this piece.
3. I am pretty much in agreement with Whitlock. Imus said a stupid thing (as do many media personalities), but in the grand scheme of things it was merely stupid and vulgar, and there are certainly worse problems to get upset about.
Thanks for the correction on Liz Cheney!
Re Fuzzy Thinking: is it not better to do nothing when you don't know for sure? In our personal lives this is how we act, or we get into real trouble. Should it not be the same for societies?
Well, certainly 'do nothing' is one approach, and it has its merits.
But one can also come at the issue like other potential risks... we generally try to get insurance in place, to ward off the possibility of disaster, even if the odds of it happening are actually quite small. If you take this point of view, then the question is what insurance should we consider putting in place?
"Insurance" is a loaded word!
To me, being a free marketeer, insurance requires very precise knowledge of the risks. We already agree we do not know these risks, therefore you cannot know the "cost" of any insurance and if you do not know the "cost" it is something you cannot rationally do.
To some, insurance is like "single payer government health insurance", which is not insurance at all, but simply a transfer of wealth - (we need a new word for this type of insurance)!
Kyoto to free marketeers was simply a transfer of wealth to the third world in the hope that the first and second worlds would reduce global warming and achieve some good - though it could not be defined - and the third world would develop to a point where they could also limit their contributions to global warming - the good of which is unknown.
Very high cost for unknown results!
At this point I believe the important thing for governments and individuals to do is minimize their potential contributions to global warming - governments by minimizing their contributions and keeping people informed of reasonable methods of controlling their contributions, and individuals by following these methods where reasonable. For instance, we have a hybrid car that consumes 40 barrels of oil per year less than our previous car; we set the heat a bit lower; we turn out lights more often; we don't burn anything to dispose of it; etc. This is an much "insurance" as I can rationally pay for today!
Then when facts become know - note the word facts, not inuendo - we approach it more aggressively with "insurance" costs.
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