Public Policy « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Public Policy ... Science ... Society ...

Most scientists have come around to the global warming hypothesis. Yes, there are still some cynics; and of course there are still the industry prostitutes who do their best to sow seeds of confusion amidst the public, so as to buy more time for the coal, oil, auto and power industries. But for the most part, experts now agree that humankind, through its release of gasses created by industrial processes, heating and transportation activities, has changed the Earth’s climate. Mother nature has incredible powers to adjust to changes, but we’ve pushed her just a bit out of her range. So, things are changing.

But exactly how much they are going to change in the future, and exactly what the consequences are going to be, are still quite uncertain. I’ve done some surface level research lately on the different scenarios for the future that various people and groups have developed, based on what is known thus far. There are a few well-respected experts who foresee major calamity by the year 2100. Perhaps the gloomiest doomsday voice right now is that of James Lovelock, the guy who came up with the Gaia theory, i.e. the Earth as a large-scale living being in and of itself.

Lovelock, in his recent book (Gaia’s Revenge), sez that we’re gonna be soggy toast; both temperatures and sea levels are going to rise so as to make most of our planet uninhabitable. Humankind will enter the 22nd Century with about half as many people as we have now, concentrated as close to the North and South Poles as possible (hmmm, then the whole world will be “Pole-ish”; sorry, bad Polish joke). Civilization will have to go by the wayside, for the most part; life will be quite Hobbsian, i.e. nasty, brutish and short. Perhaps by the 23rd Century things will cool down a bit and humankind will experience a new renaissance and a new enlightenment. Lovelock holds out hope for that.

And next we have Al Gore. He isn’t quite as gloomy as Lovelock, but he’s still plenty gloomy: 300,000 deaths a year by 2030, a million species extinct by 2050, a sea rise of 20 feet by 2100. Then there’s Jim Hansen, a climate specialist working for NASA. He thinks that if the world doesn’t drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions in ten years, bad stuff will happen. Again, he doesn’t go quite as far as Lovelock, but in one article he says that sea levels could rise by 16 feet every century between now and 2400.

The middle-of-the-road scientists are being a bit more careful. In a well-respected study released in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-related agency, a number of different scenarios were examined with varying assumptions regarding world economic growth and actions to reduce greenhouse gasses. The “middle level” scenario estimates a rise in sea levels of about 16 inches by 2100. Admittedly, 16 inches of sea rise would still reek a lot of havoc; but it would not be the show-stopper that Hansen, Gore and Lovelock anticipate. The IPCC study also discussed changing rainfall conditions that will probably cause famine, but not necessarily on a world-wide basis.

You can also find studies showing even lower estimates of sea rises; a climate model developed at the Center for Climate System Research at the University of Tokyo in 2005 indicated a 12 to 15 inch rise by 2100. So what’s a few more retaining walls? Even Holland could probably handle that! (But not New Orleans).

And just to make it all the more confusing, there’s the study done for the Pentagon in 2004, which talks about upcoming famines caused not by heating, but by rapid atmospheric cooling (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). The authors believe that the melting of the ice caps will mess up the Gulf Stream and other ocean currents such that heat from the Tropics will no longer be conveyed to northern latitudes (where most of the world’s land and people are). So the tropical regions around the Equator and the seas south of it will get hotter, while much of the middle zone (the US, Europe, Russia, north China, etc.) will become cold and dry.

There are obviously a whole lot of uncertainties here. Some scientists think that we might get another 50 to 100 years of breathing room if the sun goes into a quieter phase of its sunspot cycle; one or two even think that a new ice age will soon be upon us. (However, a number of scientists are saying that solar radiation changes from sunspots and orbital wobble aren’t nearly strong enough to overwhelm greenhouse gas effects.)

We also don’t know just how quickly the Antarctic ice cap and the Greenland ice cap are going to melt. If the West Antarctic ice sheet breaks off and melts, we’re supposedly in for a 16 foot rise in ocean levels. But it wouldn’t happen instantly. Would it take 25 years? 100 years? 500 years? No one knows . . . . . although some very recent studies indicate that the ice over Greenland and Antarctica may be melting faster than previously thought. Not good.

You can also find some smart people who say that it’s all fixable and preventable. In 2004, the Princeton Environmental Institute (affilated with Princeton University) issued a study saying that we now have the technology to hold future greenhouse gas emissions steady at today’s levels, and that if we do, nothing too bad should happen. The study seems to include some very optimistic assumptions, e.g. a 50 fold increase for wind power, a doubling of nuclear power, increased ethanol production by a factor of 50 through biomass plantations using one-sixth of the world’s croplands, double fuel efficiency of cars to 60 mpg (even hybrids don’t get that yet), decrease the number of car miles traveled by HALF, replace 1400 coal electric plants with natural gas, produce hydrogen from coal at 6 times the present rate, and sequester CO2 emmissions from 800 coal electric plants (and also from the new hydrogen plants). The study doesn’t say what this would all cost or who would pay for it. I’m not sure if it were meant to be anything more than a puff piece to lull the public into thinking that global warming need not become a political issue. After all, the study was funded by $20 million in grants from BP and Ford Motor Co.

The Princeton study still has an academic cachet about it (how could anything with the Priceton brand have anything less?). If you want to see a real down-n-dirty industry approach to public awareness regarding global warming, then check out the Competitive Enterprise Institute. I’m not sure exactly who funds this group, but whomever it is, they recently inspired CEI to produce and play some 30 second commercials on TV which try to convince us that CO2 is our friend. “Some call it pollution . . . we call it life”. You can see these commercials on CEI’s web site; if you do, note the glacier commercial, where scenes of melting ice caps are run backward! Yes, CEI would like us to think that the ice caps are un-melting somehow, and that the oceans are spitting ice back up onto the land. Sorry, CEI, but you can’t make it all
go away with a cheap visual propaganda trick. Americans can be hoodwinked pretty easily by slick commercials, but you’ve gone a step too far here in assuming viewer stupidity.

So there’s a quick summary regarding the wide range of opinions about where we are and where we’re headed with global warming. Despite all the confusion, it’s pretty clear that humankind is now facing a huge challenge. If we go on burning coal and oil as we presently do, and if China and India continue to burn increasing amounts in their attempts to leave eons of poverty behind, we know that we’re headed onto unknown turf. We’re betting the farm, quite literally. The global warming situation is a real head-scratcher. At the moment, I can’t figure out just how to wrap my mind around it. So I’m gonna leave it at this for now. Hopefully I’ll be back in a few days with some more thoughts on just how humankind can reasonably approach this situation.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:01 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Thursday, February 2, 2006

◊ ONE STEP OVER THE BORDERLINE

Politics ... Public Policy ...

I live pretty darn far from the Mexican border, so I may not be qualified to say much about it. But then again, we live in interconnected times; what goes on down in Nogales can affect northern New Jersey quite easily these days. So here’s my take on the situation down there — or lack of take, really. That’s because it’s a complex, confusing situation with very few absolute rights or wrongs.

A lot of people are illegally crossing into the US from Mexico; maybe a quarter million per year, maybe more. But that’s nothing new, really. Despite all our immigration laws, plenty of Mexicans (and others from Central and South America, maybe even other places) have come into our country via the South over the past 100 years. And life has gone on. Even Alan Greenspan had to admit that all of those illegals willing to work for what we consider pittance wages (they’re pretty lucrative to them) have done our economy much good. Mexicans have gotten used to the illegal entry option, and reportedly feel that it’s their right to cross the border to make some dolares. The American labor unions are angry because they say it takes jobs away from Americans. But hey, if Americans wanted the lousy, dangerous, low-paying jobs that the illegals take, there are more than enough to go around.

So, as a person with internationalist sentiments, I’m tempted to join in with those who decry the current trend toward militarizing and sealing off the border. But on the other side of the coin . . . . these are dangerous times. An open, uncontrolled border might lend itself to the designs of terrorists, might increase the danger of a nasty communicable disease (like SARS or bird flu) reaching our country before we’re ready, and certainly does allow a lot of illegal drugs and guns to get in. So I’m also feeling some sympathy with the “get tough” people.

Believe it or not, I agree (in theory) with the Bush Administration’s approach of hardening the border while allowing more Mexicans in if they do the paperwork (under an expanded guest worker program). Supposedly a Mexican has a choice of making around fifty cents an hour at home or $5 an hour across the Rio Grande. Such a huge wage differential is now causing such people to risk their lives treking through the desert (because the Border Patrol is tightening up the easy crossings zones in California and Arizona with fences, lights, infra-red monitors, ground radar, even remote control aircraft). If the incentive to get here is that great, however, perhaps they would also be willing to do some paperwork to come in legitimately (and avoid the desert). Of course, paperwork isn’t going to help the criminal element. But we have enough criminals here in the USA as it is, don’t need any more.

Of course, given American politics, there will be pressure to limit the guest worker program; the unions will certainly try to choke it off. And even though most Republicans don’t rely on union support, they might treat such a program as window dressing; something that lets but a handful of Mexicans seeking work opportunities in, so as to justify increased spending on a militarized border. (That’s where Republicans make their money, giving big orders to defense contractors for high-tech stuff.)

Unfortunately, though, I don’t think that we can go back to the good old days when an open border wasn’t that big a deal. The US is going to have to get control of those 1950 miles of badlands. The liberals will have to keep lobbying the powers in Washington to make good on the guest worker part of the deal.

All this would certainly tick the Mexican government off. However, maybe we can give them a cut of the action. Before we station troops out in the New Mexican desert, the US might offer an incentive system; if Mexico will take affirmative acts to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and cooperates with a legitimate guest worker program, we will provide aid for economic development projects that stimulate the Mexican economy and create better ways to make a living down there. We could do a whole lot more to provide grants and low-interest loans aimed at putting in roads, expanding schools, establishing water systems for agriculture, and — sorry if the conservatives don’t like this — encouraging population control. We could set it up as an incentive system. If they make the effort, we fork over the dough. If not, we send the troops in (not into Mexico, but up to the line anyway).

But I realize that there is no instant solution to this messy problem. If our government starts today and puts up some serious money and effort, then maybe in ten years things would get better. But if we do nothing (or do the wrong thing, more fences and no countervailing positive actions as Senator Sennsenbrenner would have us do), then it will just get worse. Worse for everyone, even us gringos way up in el norte.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:21 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Saturday, April 2, 2005

◊ SCHIAVO POST SCRIPT

Current Affairs ... Medicine ... Public Policy ...

I had a chance the other day to download and read the original court decision that started the whole Terri Schiavo fracas (In Re Guardianship of Theresa Marie Schiavo, Incapacitated, Feb. 11, 2000, Cir. Ct. for Pinellas County, Fla.). To be honest, Judge Greer’s description of the decision process gives me jitters about how the legal system responds to artificial life-support situations. I don’t want to second guess Judge Greer, or all of the appeals courts that upheld him. I firmly believe that he carried out the law in a responsible manner. But I wonder if the law is truly ready for cases like this. Remember, the laws and procedures that apply to situations like this derive from English Common Law, which basically goes back to the Magna Carta. However, the technology that makes a Terri Schiavo situation possible only goes back maybe 25 years.

The first thing that you should ask about a legal case is, who is the moving party – who is starting the whole thing (in this case, initiating a request to terminate extraordinary medical efforts that were being used to keep a human body alive). Well, that’s not so hard; the moving party was Michael Schiavo, the husband of the late Ms. Schiavo. OK, next question: does the moving party have legal authority to request what he is requesting? In this case, yes, Michael Schiavo had such legal authority, given that as husband, he was the recognized legal guardian. So what about the parents? Were they just chopped liver? No, not quite. They were allowed to be heard in court. And they were. They hired an attorney who made legal and factual arguments, presented witnesses, and cross examined the witnesses presented by Mr. Schiavo. Even though a spouse trumps a parent with regard to legal authority over an incapacitated person, the parents still got their day in court.

In the decision allowing “discontinuance of artificial life support for Theresa Marie Schiavo”, Judge Greer made it clear that he carefully considered everything that both sides presented. He weighed up the veracity and relevance of all evidence, and found that it tipped, however slightly, towards the conclusion that Terri Schiavo would want the feeding tube removed if she could had envisioned the present situation while she was still conscious. That was the axis and the focal point of the law and the decision. That was what everything revolved around. And that’s where I’m having trouble.

NOT that I think that there was a murder here. I believe that for all practical purposes, Terri Schiavo was dead – dead UNTO HERSELF, that is, and dead for mind-conscious people like myself. But most people are more body-conscious (yes, there I go again, using a mind-body Cartesian dualism, the scourge of hip philosophers over the past 50 years or so; but maybe this case shows why that dualism was invented and retains its power). So, for many people, most notably Mr. and Mrs. Schindler, Terri was NOT dead, despite not having any brain or mind. Quick footnote: my brother said that he liked the pictures of Terri Schiavo as an attractive young woman, as she possessed a certain look – the svelte look of the 80’s, the “big hair” look. He said that he misses the “body consciousness” of that period. Not surprisingly, then, he feels that removing the tube was wrong. (Ironically, excessive body consciousness might have contributed to Ms. Schiavo’s heart attack.)

But let me go back to the first question for a moment. Judge Greer had no problem with Michael Schiavo’s authority as husband and guardian over Terri Schiavo. And again, I have no reason to think that the Judge was messing up. But I do have trouble with the law that he was applying (which, again, is based partially on unwritten Common Law principals and partially defined by written constitutions and statutory laws passed by our State and Federal legislatures). In a case like this, where the definition of life is fuzzy and a whole lot is at stake, I would like the law to require the judge to ask more questions. Such as, has the spouse in question been loyal and devoted entirely to the incapacitated spouse, just as we would expect in any other marriage? The answer in this case might be no.

Hey, not that I think that Michael Schiavo was evil or bad in finding another girlfriend and getting on with his life. It’s just that when the stakes are so high, maybe you can’t have it both ways – if you’re not the perfect husband, then maybe you shouldn’t have the biggest say when the question comes down to what is life and what is death. (I think that the law should still allow a not-quite-perfect husband like Mr. Schiavo to have SOME say, maybe a BIG say, but not THE say, as the law required here).

Now, back to the question of determining intent in a situation like this, where there are no written instructions. (If there IS a living will and it’s very clear that you don’t want your body kept going if you’re brain dead, no matter who thinks what about it, then the law must respect that – just my $0.02). Judge Greer based his decision on some casual comments that Terri Schiavo had made at some point to her husband and to his brother and sister-in-law. These comments indicated that she didn’t think that artificial life support in hopeless cases was such a good idea. I.e., Mr. Schiavo and his brother and sister-in-law testified in court as to what they remember Terri saying, and were subject to cross-examination by the parents’ lawyer.

In the decision, Judge Greer seemed to acknowledge that this wasn’t much to stand on. However, the cross-examination by the parents’ lawyer didn’t seem to fluster anyone, so the testimony was accepted as factual. The parents didn’t offer anything indicating otherwise (other than some comments that Terri made about the Karen Ann Quinlan case when she was around 12 years old, which the Judge discounted because of Terri’s age). So, using standard legal mechanics, a judgment was rendered: Terri would want to pull the plug here.

What bothers me about the legal process (again, not about Judge Greer, who was doing his job) is that it tried to come up with a simulation of Terri Schiavo’s mind, i.e. what she would have wanted if faced with this terribly complex and wrenching situation. More troubling, it based that simulation upon just a few passing comments. To me, it would have been more intellectually honest for the law to have admitted that a few comments were not enough to build a reliable model of how Terri Schiavo’s mind would work in an extremely important and complex situation. So, maybe we have to allow the Judge to step in and build a more general “decision model”, one that considers what we do know about Terri Schavio’s statements and expressed beliefs, but that also allows consideration of what is currently at stake. In such a process, I think it would be legitimate to ask, just how would pulling the plug affect other people. In this situation, it obviously affected the parents quite negatively. (It also hurt George W. Bush and Tom DeLay and all the Roman Catholic toadies, but their cynical interests disqualify them from ANY consideration whatsoever.)

The Schindlers were obviously locked into a typical parental body philosophy. Every human being presents both a body and a mind to others. Some people are more affected by our bodies and some people latch on more to our minds (I personally am more of a mind person, or try to be). Ms. Schiavo’s parents appeared to tip more towards the body side (which parents naturally tend towards, given that they helped to create the body of their child). So, maybe the court should have been allowed to ask, is Terri still “alive” to the parents? (I would disqualify consideration of anyone outside of immediate family, especially Tom DeLay and all the wacko priests and pro-life nuts who cynically professed their eternal body-love for Ms. Schiavo). Perhaps Terri Schiavo would have wanted to have been kept alive if she could have known how her parents responded . . . . at least so long as they were alive and conscious.

Well, as far as I am concerned, Terri Schiavo died a long time ago. But I appreciate the fact that other people have other viewpoints on that, and I especially sympathize with the parents’ viewpoint. (Not that I condemn Michael Schiavo either; I believe that he honestly represented the Terri Schiavo that he knew – but in marriage, you never really know the dynamics of the relationship that your spouse has with her or his parents — believe me, I know that from bitter experience!). I’m troubled that the law did not allow this to be considered. Then again, I’m also troubled by the notion of spending gobs of taxpayer money keeping brain-dead people alive for their elderly parents, while leaving younger parents who don’t have health insurance unable to provide basic care for their children. Well, there’s no easy answer here. All I can say right now (in a spiritual fashion) is rest in peace, Ms. Schiavo, and may the scars heal amidst those who were close to you. And thanks for making us all think, however inadvertently, about many things in our nation that need thinking about.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 1:14 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

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