Countries that consume a lot of energy tend to have large populations, advanced economies, or both. However, high country-level energy consumption may be coupled with low per capita consumption, because some countries are populous but still developing and largely rural, as is the case with India and Brazil.
Per Part II of this series, atmospheric CO2 keeps rising at a steady pace. Lack of progress in the atmosphere most likely reflects lack of progress on the ground (allowing for some lag time and other complications). But some parts of the planet are doing better than others. Take a look…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is Earth’s most important greenhouse gas, responsible for about two-thirds of the total heating influence of all human-produced greenhouse gases (Lindsey/NOAA Climate.gov, 2022). The last time atmospheric CO2 amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago during the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period when global surface temperature was 2.5–4°C (4.5–7.2°F) warmer than during the pre-industrial era and sea levels were at least 16 feet higher than they are today.
So are we making much progress in reining in atmospheric CO2?…
Total CO2 emissions are driven by four fundamental factors: 1) population; 2) average emissions per person; 3) energy intensity; and, 4) carbon intensity.
Then again, false equivalence is much more than a matter of flawed reasoning or cognitive bias. Comparisons reflect an understanding of how the world works, what leads to what and over what time frame. A problematic comparison may stem from empirical error, logical error, or both. But people rarely hold themselves to some scientific standard of accuracy. Sometimes a comparison is made to serve a larger point and it’s not really advancing the conversation by nitpicking minor errors.
“If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have 4 million open jobs” - Stephanie Ferguson/US Chamber of Commerce, October 31, 2022
The clearance rate for violent and property crimes has been stagnant in the US for the past 50 years, hovering around 46% and 17%, respectively, during 1971–2019. As follows: …
Ok, so fear of getting caught deters crime more than fear of the legal consequences after getting caught. That makes sense, given that the former is a more immediate concern than the latter. But then, if getting caught were never followed by serious consequences, it would cease being a threat. Consequences still matter.
As a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the following excerpt from The Economist piqued my curiosity: “…the actual Democratic Socialists of America, an influential pressure group whose rose logo can be spotted in hipster-ish corners of Brooklyn and Washington DC, aspire for a future of “popular control of resources and production, economic planning [and] equitable distribution”. It is not a message tailored to win in Miami.” …Whoa – that’s a lot more hardcore than the DSA I used to know! So, what else does the DSA want?
The surprise here (at least for me) is the number of respondents who considered "obeying their rulers” as essential to democracy. I didn’t think democracies had rulers, which per Dictionary.com are sovereigns who exercise “supreme” authority, such as monarchs and emperors. Then again, meaning is much bigger than a dictionary definition. The discordant survey responses may have simply reflected different ideas about what a ruler is and does. Perhaps some respondents saw rulers as “those who make laws” and concluded that a citizenry that obeys laws is indeed essential for a functioning democracy. Which is not unreasonable.
I would have thought there’d be a closer relationship between type of government (e.g., democratic versus autocratic) and perceived freedom of choice and control. True, a greater percentage of US and Canadian respondents reported high levels of freedom, but more than 40% of respondents in China, Iran, and Myanmar reported high levels of freedom as well. And not even a quarter of the Japanese respondents felt substantially free. Obviously, perceived freedom of choice and control has other feeder streams than form of government.
The pattern is quite clear: at the country level, higher support for emancipative values is associated with greater trust of people of other nationalities. And the lack of trust of other nationalities is associated with lower support for emancipative values. I’m not claiming a causal relation, though the pattern does make sense: if you distrust most of humanity, you probably don’t care much about human rights in general.
The World Value Survey (WVS) has recently completed its seventh wave of data collection, covering 58 countries over the period of 2017-2022. This series of posts will highlight some of the findings. I’ll use the same subset of countries in each post. In this post, I’ll focus on what the WVS calls “emancipative” values, as in emancipation from authority. Emancipative values emphasize freedom of choice and "involve priorities for lifestyle liberty, gender equality, personal autonomy and the voice of the people." (World Values Survey, 2022).
And then there’s the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 as “a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected”. Per the Declaration’s own preamble: “… the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people…[and] it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”.
Considerations
Public and bipartisan buy-in
Funded primarily through transfers from budgets of redundant government programs
Minimal tax increase on employers and affluent households
Employers and households paying higher taxes would also benefit from the ASBI - making the tax increase much more palatable
The problem with broad statements about rent control is that rent control laws vary greatly and so their effects are likely to vary greatly. Details matter.
Whataboutism (as in "what about…?") is the practice of responding to an assertion by raising a point or question that expresses a counter-example, which appears to delegitimize the initial assertion. Some examples…
In this post, I’m using Wikipedia’s definition of robot: “a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically”. In this sense, a self-driving truck may be considered a robot, as may smaller machines within the truck, including those that look vaguely humanoid.
Of course, with additional tinkering Optimus may eventually be able to handle office plants, assuming their watering needs are predictable and programmable. But why must a plant-watering robot look humanoid? Ideally, form follows function and it’s hard to see what function is served by making a robot cute. Except to get people to fork out $20,000 because they just must have one.
Small scale subsistence farming is a lose-lose proposition. It perpetuates poverty and degrades the environment. Smallholders cannot afford to be stewards of their environments. Between the vagaries of growing conditions and food prices, they can’t count on a stable income year to year, so they have little incentive to forego additional income or food now for better returns later. Larger farms are in a better position to ride out price fluctuations and to maintain the long-term vitality of their land.