Category: Politics

Political rants and information

What’s Your Ecological Footprint?

Ecological Footprint As I stepped outside yesterday into a balmy 59 degrees (one degree shy of a 22 year old record), I couldn’t help but think about the recent barrage of news related to global warming and the ensuing debates. Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the WSJ, etc., have all had feature articles on the subject over the past two weeks.

I believe global warming is real, and have a hard time buying the argument that the recent changes to Earth’s climate are solely due to natural climate shifts that would have happened anyway. Take, for example, the concept of an ecological footprint, a larger form of what is sometimes called a carbon or energy footprint. The best definition, according to Aili McConnon of BusinessWeek is that it’s “how much land and sea we need to generate the resources we consume and to absorb the waste we create.” Using the standard seven compenents – crop land, grazing land, forest, fishing ground, nuclear waste, built-up land, and CO2 emissions – humanity’s global footprint in 1961 was about 4.5 billion global hectares (GH). Latest estimates put that at 14.1 billion GH, and the World Wildlife Fund actually claims it could be more. As you’ll see from the chart in the upper right, almost half of that comes from energy-related activities.

14.1 billion GH may seem like an arbitrary number, but it equates to roughly 2.2 GH, or about four football fields, per person. I’m having a hard time believing I’m using up that much of Earth’s space and resources, but some of the footprint calculators reveal that I may be even fatter than the international average, despite my energy efficient car and relatively small living space.

It is well known that the United States has been slow to move toward alternative fuels due to regulatory, technological, and economic pressures, and even a Democratic Congress may have a hard time accelerating the adoption. So, what can I do about it? As the largest portion of the footprint comes from our daily energy activities, many analysts have advised contributing to energy research in some fashion, whether through buying stock in alternative fuel companies, contributing dollars directly, or buying an alternative fuel vehicle. I wonder what the power of those dollars would be on the aggregate, and if increased cash flow would lead to increased alternative energy options given the other non-cash hurdles (and dis-incentives) in the industry?

Late Night Commentary

The late night comic roundup after last week’s Democratic turnaround:

With the Democratic victories in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, she becomes the speaker of the House, which makes her the most powerful woman in America. She is third in line for the presidency.

So the line of the presidency now goes: Cheney, Cheney, Pelosi. That’s how it works.

— Craig Ferguson, Late Late Show

It’s ironic, ’cause the Republicans have always said they wanted to appeal to minorities. Now they are one. That’s ironic.

— Jay Leno, The Tonight Show

This was an amazing week. Democrats won in places they were never even competitive before. Like America.

— Bill Maher, Real Time

Election Cycle

2006 Mid-Term Election Cycle Some people may have seen an e-mail (or in the case of the election cycle two years ago, I received these mailed to me on campaign literature) with the following fallacies:

** In 1645, one vote gave Oliver Cromwell control of England.
** In 1649, one vote caused Charles I of England to be executed.
** In 1776, one vote gave America the English language instead of German.
** In 1845, one vote brought Texas into the Union.
** In 1875, one vote changed France from a monarchy to a republic.
** In 1923, one vote gave Adolf Hitler leadership of the Nazi Party.
** In 1941, one vote saved Selective Service – just weeks before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

None of those events actually happened. But, not to dishearten those who want to know the value of their vote, the following one vote events are, in fact, true:

** Andrew Johnson retained his office by one vote. The final tally against him was 35 to 19, but a two-thirds majority of the votes cast was needed to oust him from office, thus a 36-to-18 result was required. [The vote was not to impeach Johnson (which had already been done); the vote was to remove him from office. Folks have come to think of these terms as interchangeable, but they’re not. President Clinton was recently impeached, but he was not removed from office either.]

** In 1839, Marcus “Landslide” Morton was indeed elected governor of Massachusetts by one vote. Of the 102,066 votes cast by the good people of that state, he received exactly 51,034. Had his count been 51,033, the election would have been thrown into the Legislature, where he probably would not have won. [“Landslide” also made the record books in 1842 when he won the same office again by one vote, this time in the Legislature. In those days, Massachusetts governors were elected for terms of one year.]

So, to those readers in the United States… Go vote on Tuesday!

The Changing of the Worrd is Inevitabre!

North Korea has been busy over the past two days, testing missiles and trying to convince the world that it is a military superpower — and led by a very crazy dictator, Kim Jong Il.

“We’re at the moment when the president has to decide whether he wants an unconstrained, nuclear North Korea to be part of his legacy,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the United States Naval War College who has spent much of his career studying North Korea and its improbable strategies for survival. “Until now, the attitude has been, ‘If the North Koreans want to stew in their own juices, let them,’ ” Mr. Pollack said. “But it’s becoming clear that Mr. Bush may leave office with the North Korean problem much worse.” (credit: The New York Times, July 6, 2006)

The dispute with North Korea has frustrated presidents as far back as Harry Truman, but has been particularly difficult to manage since the attack on the World Trade Center. Why is that? I’d wager to say that North Korea wants attention, and when it isn’t getting attention, it stages a crisis. More precisely, Kim Jong Il stages a crisis, much like his father did when he was supreme ruler in the mid-1990s.

Russia has backed down, saying that it wants less harsh penalties than what the U.S. has proposed, and the U.N. Security Council will spend five years drafting a resolution, essentially removing them from the options list. I vote for continuing the six-way talks proposed, and rejected, several times before. It seems like the most sensible course of action now. What do you think?

As for the title of this post and the image above, both are credited to the film Team America, starring none other than Kim Jong Il (in puppet form). It’s a great introspective masterpiece depicting the strife between the North Korean way of life and the… ummm, yeah.