American Contradictions; Dyeing Detroit; & Net-Zero Down Under.
American Contradictions; Dyeing Detroit; & Net-Zero Down Under.
In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh wrote about some deep contradictions at the heart of modern American governance.
WTF?
"The test of a first-rate intelligence," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." As dumb statements from America's most overrated writer go, this one is not quite on a par with "there are no second acts in American lives," but it's right up there. Indeed, it might better said that the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head and thinking you retain the ability to function is the test of a ninth-rate intelligence, and in fact explains many of the problems that currently plague this third act of American life. Here are three:
The coming collapse of the Social Security/Medicare system.
The Great American Ponzi Scheme has been in trouble since the day it was enacted, based as it was on several self-contradicting ideas. The first was providing a modest "retirement" income at government expense for people who by definition had paid nothing into the system but who were now "entitled" to it. Consider the case of Ida May Fuller, the first recipient, who on Jan. 31, 1940, received her first monthly check for $22.54, having paid into the "trust fund" for all of three years:
On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54. Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.
Off to a sound start! Today, almost everyone acknowledge the program is in deep and utterly predictable financial trouble, including the Social Security Administration itself:
As a result of changes to Social Security enacted in 1983, benefits are now expected to be payable in full on a timely basis until 2037, when the trust fund reserves are projected to become exhausted. At the point where the reserves are used up, continuing taxes are expected to be enough to pay 76 percent of scheduled benefits. Thus, the Congress will need to make changes to the scheduled benefits and revenue sources for the program in the future. The Social Security Board of Trustees project that changes equivalent to an immediate reduction in benefits of about 13 percent, or an immediate increase in the combined payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 14.4 percent, or some combination of these changes, would be sufficient to allow full payment of the scheduled benefits for the next 75 years.
Hey, why is that?
This increase in cost results from population aging, not because we are living longer, but because birth rates dropped from three to two children per woman. Importantly, this shortfall is basically stable after 2035; adjustments to taxes or benefits that offset the effects of the lower birth rate may restore solvency for the Social Security program on a sustainable basis for the foreseeable future. Finally, as Treasury debt securities (trust fund assets) are redeemed in the future, they will just be replaced with public debt. If trust fund assets are exhausted without reform, benefits will necessarily be lowered with no effect on budget deficits.
Social Security's problems aren't just its unrealistic economics, which posited starting from a hole and an ever-increasing work force paying taxes in order to support the generation ahead of it; the "trust fund" was always a polite fiction, which as you see is now being stealthily abandoned. But keeping Social Security solvent isn't just a matter of calibrating tax rates. What FDR and its founders never contemplated was that Americans would stop having children, and yet continue to expect retirement money. So the solution is obvious: ladies (and some gentlemen), if you proudly announce you will never have children, that your career is more important and you get all the love you need from your "fur babies," your SS benefits should be $0.00 until such time as you actually get some skin in the game in the form of real babies. (Adopting doesn't count.)
Richard Fernandez contributed a piece on the true scope of the environmentalist project.
Changing Everything To Keep Temps the Same
One of the peculiarities of the "Climate Change" movement, which is ostensibly about keeping global temperature the same, or at least within 1.5 °C of a U.N.-specified value, is its willingness to alter almost everything else to obtain this result. Geoengineering and gigantic construction proposals have been discussed in my previous articles but the efforts do not end there. We are told it may also be necessary to alter the nature of life on earth, human and otherwise, to meet the temperature goal. A World Economic Forum article observes: "efforts to genetically engineer plants and animals for both climate change mitigation and adaptation are gaining momentum, driven by advancements in biotechnology."
These include Jurassic Park-type projects like bringing back extinct species such as wooly mammoths, which unleashed on the tundra, "would knock down sunlight-absorbing trees, exposing ground that better reflects light and prevent(s) melting." Oceans would be seeded with genetically modified, heat tolerant coral. Crops grown in temperate climates would be tropicalized to make them more suitable for the sweltering future. New plants would be conjured into existence specially designed to draw carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in the ground. Nothing is off-limits in pursuit of the great goal.
But these measures are only the beginning. The biggest proposed changes target the 'anthro' part in anthropogenic global warming. Humanity itself must be altered, argues Matthew Liao of the Center for Bioethics at New York University. "I shall argue that human engineering potentially offers an effective means of tackling climate change." He then goes on to describe various technologies, extant or under development that would:
Make people temporarily or permanently allergic to eating meat and other mammalian products. "In principle, it could be induced by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins. The immune system would then become primed to react to them, and henceforth eating “eco-unfriendly” food would induce unpleasant experiences. Even if the effects do not last a lifetime, the learning effect is likely to persist for a long time."
Making people smaller. Reducing the average American's height by 6 inches would reduce food consumption by 25 percent. This could be achieved with preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select shorter children. Similarly results can be obtained with hormone therapy. Finally there is gene therapy. "Gene imprinting, where only one parent’s copy of the genes is turned on and the other parent’s copy is turned off, has been found to affect birth size."
Pharmaceutically predispose Westerners not to have children. He suggests certain cognition-enhancing drugs like as Ritalin and Modafinil can reduce birthrates by literally making women "Woke" in the sense of keeping them awake. If some method could be found to pharmacologically induce altruism in humans that might also produce voluntary vegetarianism and an aversion to reproduction.
Liao argues there is nothing sacrosanct about humanity, as shown by the fact that the public in its millions ingests, either voluntarily or by government decree, many body-altering pharmaceuticals each day:
For example, fluoride is deliberately added to water with the aim of fortifying us against tooth decay... Similarly, people are routinely vaccinated to prevent themselves and those around them from acquiring infectious diseases, even though vaccinations sometimes have side effects, and can even lead to death... The view that “it is morally impermissible to interfere with human nature... seems too strong. Vaccination and giving women access to epidural during labor both interfere with nature, but we would not therefore conclude that their usage is morally impermissible.
In other words, human engineering is just one more pill from the drug store. It's potentially right around the corner. Genetically modified, carbon sequestering trees are already being planted in U.S. forests, according to the New York Times. Should we worry?
As if Motown hasn’t suffered enough, Brandon Weichert looked into a plan to make Detroit go Green.
Impoverishing Everyone to Save Gaia
Detroit is a city that has been wasted by the ravages of globalization. Once the hub of the world's automotive industry, by the late twentieth century, much of America's manufacturing industry had been shipped overseas. By the time of the Great Recession of 2008, Detroit was on the front lines of economic devastation of that crisis. Today, Detroit is a shadow of its past glory.
Yes, it has still recovered somewhat from the lows of a decade ago; after all, there was no way to go but up. That, however, won't stop the extreme environmentalist lobby of the Democratic Party-- the Ecochondriacs who believe we must sacrifice ourselves to save hallowed Mother Earth -- from trying to destroy whatever is left of the once great Motor City. Detroit's mayor, Mike Duggan, believes that now was the time for his ailing city to make a new name for itself by becoming one of America's major cities to transition from purportedly "dirty" fossil fuel-produced energy to "clean" green energy. In this case, solar power.
Accordingly, he's initiated a race of sorts among some of Detroit's most populated neighborhoods to see which of them will become home to massive solar power arrays. Motown is looking at nine neighborhoods, from which it will need at least six participants in this alternative energy experiment. These neighborhoods will be tasked with assembling 250 acres of unused or, more likely, underutilized land to offset the electrical demands of public buildings in Detroit. In essence, Duggan wants to take private land in poor neighborhoods of Detroit and repurpose them to support the massive power demands of Detroit's 127 municipal buildings.
The greater question is just who would decide which parcels of land are being unused or underutilized? And that's where much of the controversy is derived from. After all, the land would be redistributed from privately owned hands to the Detroit city government's hands... with the Detroit city government making those determinations. It would then be used to house massive solar arrays known as "solar fields." For Duggan's plan to work, however, the city government will have to repossess land on which stand large apartment complexes housing the poor. While the Duggan administration insists the program is voluntary, his own spokesmen have hinted that they will use eminent domain laws to forcibly acquire privately held property they deem necessary to support their ambitious Green Energy transition for the Motor City should the targeted neighborhoods prove intransigent.
Speaking of failing U.S. cities, Jack Dunphy looked into some recent goings on in the City by the Bay.
A Fleeting Glimmer of Hope for San Francisco?
In 1984, Los Angeles was host to the Summer Olympics. Track and field events, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies, were held at the Los Angeles Coliseum, and the nearby campus of the University of Southern California served as one of the Olympic villages housing athletes. Then as now, the neighborhoods surrounding these venues were some of the most violent in the city. I was working as patrol officer in South Los Angeles at the time and, like my colleagues, I welcomed the respite Olympics duties offered from the gang shootings and other mayhem that routinely plagued the area.
Beginning about six weeks before the opening ceremonies, police resources were shifted to the area surrounding the Coliseum and the USC campus, and for the duration of the Olympics the crime that had been ubiquitous in the area all but disappeared. There were 757 homicides recorded in L.A. in 1984, after five straight years in which the yearly total was no less than 817. That reduction was largely due to the increased police presence not just near the Olympic venues but throughout the city, as LAPD officers were paid overtime to supplement ordinary staffing levels.
No sooner had the Olympic torch at the Coliseum torch been extinguished on August 12 that year did things begin to revert to form. “Shame on us,” a lieutenant and mentor said to me when it became apparent that the ground we had won from the street gangs in South L.A. was being ceded back to them. “They know how to make this area peaceful,” he said, “but they just don’t want to spend the money to do it.”
His words proved tragically prophetic. There was a modest crime increase in 1985, when the LAPD investigated 777 homicides, but the number rose steadily each year until 1992, when the figure reached 1,092, many of these occurring in the neighborhoods that had enjoyed a temporary calm during the Olympics.
San Franciscans have just learned a similar lesson. In advance of last week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, large sections of downtown San Francisco were cleaned up, with their homeless drug addicts driven elsewhere and the outward signs of their presence steam-cleaned and pressure-washed away. Gone were the tent-dwelling urchins, gone were the drug dealers who profit from their vices, gone were the bodily excretions they deposit with such casual alacrity whenever and wherever nature’s call comes over them. For the duration of the APEC summit, the uninformed guest might have found San Francisco a pleasant place to visit.
How tantalizing was the illusion.
Peter Smith wrote about of Australia’s poorly considered net-zero fixation.
Want 'Net-Zero'? Try the Curate's Egg
Put aside skepticism, realism and commonsense and take “net-zero” seriously. Okay, if that’s a step too far, take seriously the proposition that all of the electricity required to run a nation can be generated without using fossil fuels. Such a thing is impossible in Australia; though no-one has managed yet to convince Chris Bowen, the obsessive minster for energy and climate change. He’s aiming to have 82 percent of the nation's electricity generated by renewable energy by as early as 2030; and upwards from there. Only reality stands in his way.
Distances and oceans preclude Australia buying electric power from other countries when running short. And it is, by law, a "nuclear-free" zone. In other words, we are up the creek without a nuclear paddle. Soaring prices, power rationing and yet more deindustrialization lie ahead. In contrast, jurisdictions in Europe and North America have the keys to energy security in a “fossil-free nirvana.” They can buy power from energy-rich neighbors and have the nuclear option at their disposal. Of course, buying electric power doesn’t make power. So, in the end result, nuclear power is the primary enabler.
According to Our World in Data, nuclear power accounted for 9.2 percent of global electricity generation in 2022. Since a high point in 1996 (17.4 percent), the contribution of nuclear has steadily declined. This decline will shortly reverse. Incidentally, for the benefit of those anticipating the imminent demise of coal and gas, taken together these two sources of energy contributed more in 2022 (57.8 percent) than in 1996 (53.5 percent). All that huffing, puffing and dollars trillions to little avail. How deliciously galling for climate cultists. Back to nuclear.
The nuclear-age promise of the 1950s to 1970s, undone by accidents, is being revived. Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al., have been put in a level-headed perspective, except maybe in still-panicked Germany. Of course, another accident could put a spoke in the wheel.
And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy, struggles to identify as Vegan.
Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Eructating
That’s all for this week, but keep a look out for our upcoming pieces at The Pipeline!