Last night was the Earth night here in Chicago when they turned out the lights for an hour. I found it slightly ironic that the next day we had a big blizzard here in Chicago, and we have been sorely lacking in any of the promised rise in temperature with another brutal winter. Here is the link to the video.
Environment
Environmentalism and Reality
I am writing this post as a response (agreement) to Shannon’s post rather than just putting it in the comments…
From time to time if I am stuck conversing with a die-hard environmentalist, I will ask them what they think the WORST thing that has happened with regards to the environment is, in their opinion. I usually don’t listen to their reply to closely and then tell them what they OUGHT to be saying
The Fall of Communism and End of Socialism
Under Communism prior to Deng Xiaoping, mainland China was a starving wasteland with few consumer goods, frequent famines, and millions living in caves (no joke). After Deng unleashed his reforms in the countryside, which migrated to the cities, the Chinese government removed the boot of this failed dogma and unleashed a nation of hard charging entrepreneurs and traders. For years the overseas Chinese were some of the most successful business people in Asia – now they were free to raise the standards of living of their own people.
Power plants were built – millions of homes didn’t even have heat – and the country roared to life. New cities were built, highways, ports and railways crossed the country, and now China is the manufacturer for a huge variety of what you have in your house today.
And what did the Chinese consumer want? They wanted what YOU have – a car (bicycles went by the wayside as soon as they had the money), a nice flat, overseas travel, air conditioning and heat in the winter, electricity to power their myriad consumer devices and appliances, and food of all types (especially meat products). An explosion of manufacturing and consumption erupted throughout the country which hasn’t abated (may be slowing a bit now due to the recession).
Environmentalism and the Death of the West
A comment on a New York Times story on the new Indian car, the Nano [h/t Instapundit]:
Somehow, we need to get the “developing” countries to quit copying our disasters in the first world. Showing real respect for the quiet life in villages would be a help. How about a Discovery Channel series on “The Truly Sustainable” – showing village life wherever it can be found, and not focused on “gosh, no plumbing”, but on – “this clan has lived here for 1,000 years…’ – and showing community dynamics.
Obviously, the writer has never had cholera. The scary thing about this comment is that it showcases a school of thought more common than not on the far Left (25% most left).
Here we see the culmination of the Left’s evolution from technophiles to technophobes. Only a politically driven collective delusion could cause an educated person to believe that 1,000 years of cultural stagnation is more important than preventing the enormous suffering and death caused by sewage-borne illnesses.
Costa Rica Economy
Recently I had an opportunity to travel to Costa Rica. Being a rather boring blogger / analyst type, I thought a lot about the Costa Rica economy.
The Costa Rican dollar is known as the “colon“. Being the finance type, I went out to exchange money into local currency prior to entering the country. Most big local banks like JP Morgan didn’t have colones on hand – although they said that they could order the money and I’d have it in a few days – so they sent me to a specialized currency exchange. At this currency exchange there was a pretty wide “bid / ask” spread, or the difference at which they would purchase currency back from you against what they’d sell it to you for, indicating a rather thinly traded currency. I gave them 300 USD and received a big wad of Costa Rican currency – the common denomination I used was the 2,000 note which was a bit over 4 USD. This is a rate of about 500 colones to the dollar, or each one is worth about 2/10 of a cent.
I spoke to a settler from the US who was a Quaker who opened a cheese factory in Monteverde in the 1950s – he said that the colon was worth about 5 to 6 to the dollar in the 1950s. Thus even while the US dollar has depreciated against other major currencies, such as the Yen, the colon has plummeted from 20 cents on the dollar to .2 cents on the dollar, or to 1% of its “relative” value from the 1950s.
Why Don’t We Just Cut China a Check?
The really stupid thing about Obama’s carbon cap-and-trade system [h/t Instapundit] is that it will simply relocate more manufacturing to countries that don’t give a damn about global warming.
The growing economies of China, India, and other parts of the world still have people living the lives of preindustrial subsistence farmers. Right now, today, they have people in dire need of food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, transportation and every other facet of modern life we take for granted. They don’t give a crap about hypothetical dangers that will hypothetically manifest a century from now.
Such areas will use dense, rich, reliable sources of energy like coal and nuclear to power their factories while we try to smelt iron with windmills. We will be poor and eventually powerless in the face of such competition. Worse, if global warming is a problem, it will happen anyway. Our sacrifices will simply mean we have fewer resources to deal with the problems posed by global warming.
Obama plans to shut down our carbon-emitting power sources today, decades before we bring their hypothetical replacements online. If the technology doesn’t work as predicted, where will we be then?
Obama’s plan will be a massive wealth transfer from America to China and India. We will simply be handing them our current and future economic productivity on a platter.