Ted Auch

Just another great map from The Economist (http://www.economist.com/world/middle-east/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15549365). Refer back to the map in a previous post regarding The Trigger Line as it is called in Iraq. Here it is essentially the line separating the Two Shades of Iraq.

How bout them apples!

I love it when 1+1 = 3

This figure comes from the truly noble work of Charles Duhigg at The Times. He has been grinding away at the data and the latest piece in this series “Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.” can be found here http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters along with the articles in the series. I wonder what the math will add up to given the recent Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. This whole mess centers on the use or deletion of the word ‘navigable’ when referring to those bodies of water that are or are not under the EPA’s purview. Anyway what we are seeing here is a full-frontal assault on all laws pertaining to common decency with respect to “natural resources”. When the rivers turn red we will have no one to blame but ourselves, because the solutions are out there and the data is sound, but the will is quiescent.

That is what California should do in putting forth their latest effort to curb their CO2 footprint (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/science/earth/13emissions.html?ref=todayspaper).

I commend California for taking an important and bold step to curb their CO2 footprint. However, it is worth noting their proposal is a duplicate of Washington Senator Maria Cantwell’s CLEAR Act (The Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s renewal). CLEAR would bill would cut national GHG emissions 20% and 83% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 2050, respectively. Seventy-five percent of refunds would be returned to the taxpayer and 25% to green energy technologies and infrastructure. The refunds would amount to $1,100 annually for a family of four according to Senator Cantwell’s calculations. We could make more money off emissions if we assumed a higher range, which Senator Cantwell’s office set at $7-21 per ton of C02 in 2012, with annual floor and ceiling increases of 5.5 an 6.5%, respectively. This seems like an idea that even those that don’t believe in climate change could support given the non-trivial contribution to their bottomline and those of us on the left will accept is an acceptable, albeit not ideal, first iteration.

Given the recent announcement by President Obama that he will be upping the ante by 30,000 troops in Afghanistan I was left to ponder for what seemed to me a logical question: Mr. President what in your portfolio of beliefs and objectives is worth losing an election for? Do you not have any ideologies that you feel so passionate about that you are willing to sacrifice all or most of your political capital to steward such beliefs across the finish line? I voted for you sir and I am not sure at this point whether you have any convictions you feel so strongly about that you would put your political neck on the line for. That is quite disheartening to me because when I saw you speak on the steps of the Ira Allen Chapel here in Burlington, Vermont in March of 2006 I was convinced that you were a man with a spine, conscience, and an intellect unsurpassed in modern day politics. I still believe that the latter is true but as for your spine and to a lesser degree your conscience I am left wondering what you stand for and what you will fight for to the very end, whether it means political suicide or not.

Show us some fight sir! Show us that the issues you campaigned on are part of your very fiber and not simply the populist rhetoric you knew would get the vote of people like myself. It is beginning to feel like you are ashamed that the left supported you and your “progressive” agenda. That is not the man I saw speak in 2006. That is not the man I promptly told my friend Dennis Ailor would win the presidency in 2008. And that is most assuredly not the man I thought was capable of thinking through some of the most complex issues ever to face an incoming president. Sure you were handed a mess but are you going to continue to compare your administration to the one that preceded you? I would caution against such comparisons given that the bar could not have been set any lower.

Sir you know that the right would gladly fall on their sword for issues like abortion, the sanctity of marriage, gun rights, and the military industrial complex. That is a given and that for better or worse is one thing I respect about the neoclassical and neoconservative movement. When they give speeches in Portland or Corpus Christi you know what you’re gonna get and they make absolutely no apologies for their beliefs. It is time you get a little neocon in you Mr. Obama and by that I mean pick an issue any issue, whether it be health care, climate change, FISA, bank reform, or torture and go to the wall for it. Own the issue sir. Take back any one of these issues from those in your party that are self-hating Democrats. Just like Iraq and Katrina will define George W Bush (and no one else!!) one of these issues will define you and it would be a shame if you let the spineless wing of your party co-opt your presidency.

I and many like me – and I would hasten to guess those on the right – are anxiously or should I say nervously waiting and wondering if you will ever stand up and be accounted for with respect to some of the aforementioned issues. I would suggest firing Geithner, Summers, et al as a start. The left rightly sees them as an extension of the Greenspan-Rubin virus that has infected the nation’s financial services regulations for far too long now and the right won’t support them because….well who cares they just won’t because you do and that is reason enough for them.

Apologizing for our hegemonic history and bowing to Emperor Akihito shows that you are sensitive to our fragile status as a global power and more importantly the proper way in which you interact with others when on their turf. However, tacitly apologizing for being liberal or in any way concerned with the appalling trend in wealth, health, and education distribution in this country makes those of us on the left wonder if we were sold a bill of goods and those on the right question your leadership capabilities, both from a foreign and domestic perspective.

You may be wondering at this point why we don’t have your back on some of these crucial issues? Well all is not lost and believe me if we see fight emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue we will most assuredly get in the ring with you but until then you’ll have to rely on the likes of the Blue Dog Democrats. BTW how’s that working out so far?

It seems that we may be hitting the point the Romans and many others inevitably approached and violently surpasses. It is the point at which our cumulative GDP growth has flattened out while population growth continues to grow albeit at a mild rate.

To the right you see a graph of the ratio of Cumulative Annual US GDP to Population Growth from 1930 to 2008.

This ratio did not become positive until 1940 on the eve of WW II and spiked at the war’s conclusion in 1944-45. At this point this ratio began a steady decline to a low of 4.52 in 1963. While it experienced a bump between the 60s and late 90s it has remained relatively flat between 1950 and 2008 deviating very little from it’s ~60 yr average of 5.43.

Another way of looking at this “Economic Ceiling” is from an agricultural perspective. I have plotted the Yield to Nitrogen (N) Applied ratio for Corn here in the US from 1943-2007. On the Primary Y- and X-Axis the relationship for the raw data is shown, while the Secondary Y- and X-Axis depicts the relationship on a log scale. We see two things here: 1) the shape of the relationship is dependent on how the data is presented and 2) the raw data demonstrates quite conclusively that we have reached a similar asymptote to that described above for our economy relative to population growth. This is a disturbing trend given our over reliance on corn here in the US. GMOs and fertilizer technology will only be able to do so much in fighting this apparent biological inertia. The rest of the quagmire will require a new paradigm if it is to be fixed. That should include a gradual transition to a more diverse produce and dry goods food economy in keeping the the proselytizing of Michael Pollan. However, alot of this will involve tough medicine, which should start with decreasing national obesity from it’s current rate of 33% to 15% or what it was in 1980. This may sound quixotic but really it is a necessity and weening ourselves off our addiction to High Fructose Corn Syrup would probably put a 5-7% dent in our national obesity on it’s own.

It is high time we start to seriously discuss the idea that Eugene Fama’s “Efficient Market Hypothesis”, Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”, and Milton Friedman’s “Shock Doctrine” are a thing of the past designed solely to benefit the top 0.1-0.5% of the G20, G8, or OECD. We must turn our attention to what I will call an Asymptotic Economic Hypothesis or the Steady State Economy (http://www.steadystate.org/) acknowledging the ubiquitous influence of Keynes’s “Animal Spirits” and the fact that nothing grows forever.

It would be absolutely acceptable if we didn’t shift towards an economy with strict ceiling and floor constraints BUT if we do our children will be very mad at us!

Michael Lynch makes some compelling points in his recent piece on ‘Peak Oil’ in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25lynch.html?ref=todayspaper), but he calls on one very important fallacy commonly invoked by the Big Oil:  Rate-Of-Discovery Is Not A Concern!

He states that “easy oil” is gone is “vague and irrelevant”. If you replaced the word oil with coal a majority of geologists would agree with the contention that “easy coal” is indeed gone. If it isn’t than why are we resorting to horrific, both from a health and ecological perspective, techniques such as mountain-top-removal and strip mining of thousand of Appalachian and Northern Plains hectares? The answer is that the industry is desperate and the same curse will strike Exxon, Conoco, etc. Recent advocacy for hydraulic fracturing of the Marcellus Shale is a prime indicator of such desperation and presents similar concerns for human health and our fisheries here in the Northeast.

The fuzzy logic Mr. Lynch refers to is actually his estimate that their are 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil. According to who? BP and the EIA estimated 1.26 and 1.32 trillion barrels, respectively. This amounts to anywhere from 30 to 43 years of oil depending on whether we do what we did in 2008 curbing consumption by 1.1 billion barrels or we reach the commonly held projection of 43.1 billion barrels by 2030. I think it is time for another Malaise Speech. Obama….Obama….!

In reading the latest global census data one thing popped in my head: Is it possible that per capita global CO2 footprints may decline in the coming year(s)?

The answer is essentially yes and we have countries like Japan and Russia to thank. For example, Russia’s population of 140.7 million is projected to decline by 0.49% annually and when considering The Reds 10.5 tons of CO2 per capita per year it turns out Russian per capita emissions could potentially decline by 7.28 Million Metric Tons in the next year.

Additionally, Japan is expected to lose 0.10% of it’s 127.3 million people (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/business/economy/18charts.html?ref=todayspaper), which when combined with their per capita footprint of 9.8 tons of CO2 per year we see a potential net decline of 1.25 MMT annually. Furthermore, the eastern european/former Soviet Union states will experience an average net population decline of 0.68% annually resulting in a decline of 790 thousand tons of CO2 from this region in the next year. Russia’s near-abroad neighbor will lessen it’s footprint by 2.57 MMT in the next year given it’s annual population decline of 0.80%

Is this fact? Of course not but it is quite probable, because Russians and Japanese, two significant contributors to atmospheric CO2, are getting older fast and in the case of the latter incapable of staying away from their beloved national spirit. Conversely, our footprint here in the US will increase by 55.83 MMT, Canada and Mexico 5.31 each,  Argentina 1.60, Brazil, 4.24, Venezuela 2.60,  France and the UK 1.65-1.90. Interestingly BBC (Big Bad China) will increase by 32.12 MMT. However, the overwhelming good news is that our global per capita Co2 emissions will increase marginally (+0.023%) in the next year, a trend indeed deserving of attention but not plaudits. The estimates above for China may actually be conservative given that they have gone from producing 1 coal fired power plant a day to 1 per week, which itself is a 14.3% change in energy strategy. Couple this with the fact that China had originally planned to have only 5,000 megawatts (MW) of wind online by the end of next year, but now project 30,000 MW, which essentially replaces the need for forty-eight 625 MW coal plants. This 30,000 figure is 118% of the current US wind power generating fleet (25,400 MW) (reliability_factsheet1).

The cumulative affects of the aforementioned population declines will be a decrease of 12.25 MMT in Russia, Japan, and the Eastern European block. This is equivalent to 48.3% and 21.2% of Canadian and Australian emissions, respectively, or put another way would cancel the annual emissions from the state of Vermont and our nation’s capital combined. Not bad but again just a start. Now get out there and buy some vodka to wash down your nightly serving of sushi! The planet thanks you and your children will thank you as well!

I am reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success” and couldn’t help but recall that the U.S. itself is an outlier. Below I have wrapped up where it is we sit on the outlier gradient across a variety of not so complimentary indices relative to other G8 or G20 nations.

1. 20 sq. ft. of retail space per person Vs 13 for Canadians, 6.5 for Australia, 3 in Sweden (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14FOB-Consumed-t.html?ref=todayspaper).

2. 9 of 10 people own a cell phone Vs 4 of 10 in China

3. 19.4 tons of CO2 per person Vs 11.8 in Russia, 8.6 in EU, 5.1 in China, and 1.8 in India

4. 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners not to mention along with 3% of the world’s resources while consuming 25% of the world’s  $69.70 trillion in GDP.

5. US debt will be 78% of GDP by the end of 2009 Vs 67% in France, 63% in Germany and Canada, 52% in Norway, 38% in Spain, 20% in Mexico, 16% in China, 7% in Russia (http://natereport.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/country_debt1.png)

6. $6,102 spent on Health Care per person in 2004 Vs $3,165 in Canada, 3,150 in France, 3,043 in Germany, and 2,508 in Russia.

7. #29 for infant mortality Vs #3 for Japan, 4 for Sweden, #7 Spain, #9 France, #11 Germany and Italy, # 27 Cuba. Furthermore, we have fallen from #12 in 1960.

So there you have it. We are the global outlier on many fronts and will only be allowed to regain the head of the table a/o be taken seriously by the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) when we accept our faults, heavily modify them, and emerge stronger and more cooperative.

Well I just finished reading a couple of disturbing articles on the drug industry in this country (ie The illegal portion!) (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14kristof.html?scp=2&sq=Kristof%20marijuana&st=cse; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/us/12pot.html?scp=1&sq=marijuana%20prison&st=cse). It got me thinking about the age old question (at least here in Burlington and on Phish tour!!) about whether to legalize marijuana and I thought it would be good to do some quick back of the envelopes as to what else could be done with the money used to enforce the War on Marijuana!

It turns out of the 2.31 million in prison here in the US - a number 4-6 times the world average depending on state - 485,306 are in for various drug related crimes. Of those approximately 47.4% (230,036) could be estimated as Marijuana related. Before I go further it is worth noting, according the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) (2006nov_factsheet_incarceration), the “US has less than 5% of the world’s population but over 23% of the world’s incarcerated people.” Why is this notable? Well this 5:1 ratio is the same one attributed to our use of the world’s 83.4 million barrels of oil daily and it also happens to be our consumption:production of goods ratio. What is it with 5:1 and the US? According to the NCCD if the rest of the world followed our lead the global prison population would jump from 9.2 to 47.6 million people. According to Mauer (2003; inc_comparative_intl) the 3-fold increase in our prison population from 1980-1996 was largely (88%) a function of changes in sentencing policy , with changes in crime explaining on 12%. This is scary because like regressive taxation the minorities and women are paying a disproportionate toll. Blumstein and Beck (1999; http://www.jstor.org/pss/1147683) demonstrated that incarceration rose 364% for women between 1980 and 1996, 184 and 235 for African Americans and Hispanics, respectively, while male incarceration rose 195% and that of whites grew 164%. Overlay the increasing privatization of our prison system (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/26/us/1227_DETAIN.html) and all the negatives associated with that and you have a trend that needs immediate reversal. Otherwise we will have Wall Street’s “best and brightest” sticking their noses where they don’t belong, unless of course we were to prosecute them for the myriad offenses they have perpetrated in the past 20 years.

Anyway getting back my point if we assume it costs about $23,876 per year to house these dangerous criminals than we are spending $5.49 trillion annually to keep these vermin locked up. Now what if instead of locking up petty marijuana users and distributors we put that money towards something worthwhile…something like Oh I don’t know healthcare? Well the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) currently accounts for 15.2% of GDP or $2.10 trillion and is projected to rise to 20.9% by 2020 an astounding $3.35 trillion right? Well actually wrong if we used this “marijuana war” money we would still conservatively have a surplus of 3.39 currently or 2.14 in 2020 to do other stuff. Like what? Well this surplus as it were would pay for about 4% of all college student transportation or book and supply costs presumably lowering student loan amounts by a similar amount. Oh yeah or we could say sayonara to China and their $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange AND their 25% ownership of our national debt. Sounds like a plan to me.

Okay so your not into protectionism, nationalism, recidivism, any other -ism, or education? That is totally cool. How about the electricity you use to turn on your lights, watch your flatscreen, or make a milkshake? Ah I see I got your attention now.

Was it the flatscreen or the milkshake?

Makes no difference if we take the surplus “marijuana war” cash and invest it in alternative energy, lets use for example wind as it is one of my favorites (I hear the cows love it as well!) we could buy outright or subsidize the purchase of 790,310 2 Mega Watt (MW) turbines, which translates to, now hold onto your hat……….. 1,580,621 MW! Alright so what does this mean in terms of capacity? Well the DOE estimates there are 330,000 MW along the Mid-Atlantic Bight, the region of coastline stretching from Massachusetts to North Carolina. Now if that doesn’t get your mouth watering more than the thought of that milkshake how bout the fact that the DOE estimates there are 900,000 MW of wind capacity nationwide, which roughly translates to $2.34 trillion in revenue annually. So, we would have about 680,621 MW worth of spare turbines to dump into the global market.

Is that such a bad thing? I think not and it would all flow from the decriminalization of a weed that gives people the munchies and causes them to have a prediliction for really long songs!

I was recently reading through some postings on Dr. Tiller’s assassination (How do you discern between assassination and murder?) and found the below diatribe from the mouth of George Carlin. As usual Mr. Carlin pretty much nailed it on all fronts.

“Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t want to fk in the first place, huh? Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own.

Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re preborn, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re fd.” (carlin-diatribe)

Say what you will about 3rd term abortions but the fact remains that there is a sector in this country that is very angry and getting angrier. The Tiller murder reminds me of when I started to see this whole thing begin to come to the surface nationally….It all started with John McCain’s pit bull Sarah Palin and her pandering to “real America”. I remember being very disturbed by her use of the 15minute platform handed her by the Arizona senator. I was even more disturbed that he did not condemn her comments.

I contend now given Mr. Tiller’s untimely death, the mowing down of three police officers in Pittsburgh and related hate crimes blood is on the hands of of Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain, along with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They knew the consequence(s) of their words, knew the vulnerability of their audience, and also knew that the latent sense of racism that pervaded their rallies and that such comments would only stoke the dark side of there constituents.This type of mentality doesn’t belong in politics but seems more suited to The Jerry Springer Show. These types of fissures are coin of the realm in right-wing thinktanks and what amazes me is how flippantly people like Mr. Limbaugh and Karl Rove throw around words like socialism and patriotism. We are still in W’s “with us or against us” mentality in this country and nuance seems to have been kicked to the curb oh so subtly.

The individual responsible for killings in Pittsburgh “…feared that the Obama Administration would take away his guns.“(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6069944.ece; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/us/06pittsburgh.html?ref=global-home; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/07pittsburgh.html?ref=us)

It seems Mr. Strother Martin’s Cool Hand Luke character Captain was prescient when he said

“What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it… well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.”

We need some north/south cross-pollination with dialogue centered on understanding the exact mechanisms used by the the Political (PIC) and Media Industrial Complex(MIC) on the right and left to divide and conquer us! They are using our own fears and more importantly our growing apathy and naivete against us. They are doing it quite well and even in this tough economic time President Obama and DC writ large are telling us to get out there and consume. Isn’t this a similar message to that forwarded by Bush immediately following 9/11? The answer is yes and the idea that our savings rate may creep over 6% is very scary to the PIC and MIC as they rely on our insatiable appetite for stuff to power our economy to the tune of 72% of GDP.

As long as we remain divided we will remain perpetually subservient. This doesn’t mean we need to take up arms but rather we must pursue dialogue without ad hominem attacks understanding that religous, social, and economic diversity the engine that drives productivity doesn’t need to be scrapped but rather is in desperate need of refueling.