ExxonMobil and the White House finally get it about global warming . . . NOT!

This Huffpo article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. shows the extent to which ExxonMobil is not our wise old friend belatedly coming to our rescue on the issue of global warming:

Last week the release of the IPCC Report by the world’s 2500 top climatologists closed the scientific debate on global warming once and for all with a grave warning about its apocalyptical consequences to human civilization.

After years of denial the oil giant finally acknowledged the role of fossil fuel emissions in global warming, pledged to stop funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the country’s most visible global warming denier, and boasted of its own efforts to deal with the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

But behind the scenes, Exxon was engaged in the same old mischief. The American Enterprise Institute, a corporate front group financed by ExxonMobil and staffed by Bush administration dead enders, sent letters to top scientists and economists in the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere, offering them $10,000 each plus expenses for articles explaining shortcomings in the report.

To read the horrifying conclusions of the IPCC, here is the summary written for policy makers:  Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis”  You would think that President Bush would take this report seriously, but he’s not.  Here’s the garbage being generated by the White House as of February 8, 2007

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Real campaign finance reform: dilute the bad money with lots of good money

In his recent article at Salon.com, “How to fix campaign financing forever for $50,” Farhad Manjoo explores what should be a national priority: campaign finance reform. 

Why should it be a priority?  Because private money corrupts all political dialogue.  It makes us think that politicians are taking The People seriously, when they aren’t.  Our current system of private political donations give birth to the ubiquitous Orwellian political sound bites (e.g., the Clear Sky Law).

Presidential candidates must now start raising at least $2 million a week, or $286,000 every day, including weekends, until the election.  And the sales pitch for the contribution is not anything like this:

Please give me LOTS of money.  In return, I won’t invite you to special gatherings of political and corporate elites.  I won’t answer your phone calls any more than I answer the calls of people who don’t contribute anything.   I won’t have my staff flock to hear your legislative proposals.  All I’ll do is continue representing the interests of all the people.

What doesn’t work to fix the campaign contribution system?  Contribution limits. Manjoo argues that getting around the limits “has become a huge Washington business.” Here’s another thing that doesn’t work: Making politicians disclose who gave what to whom. Manjoo suggests that “sunlight just isn’t so great a disinfectant.”  Information is freely available, but there’s too much of it for the public to digest, or maybe we’re just apathetic.  As if we don’t know that huge energy and …

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Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection

A few weeks ago I ate dinner with friends.  One of the friends mentioned that, a few weeks earlier, he had attended a party in an upscale neighborhood.  At that party, one of the guests announced that she had brought her own bottle of wine because the host’s expensive wine wasn’t good enough. From my end of the table, I blurted out that it is not necessary to have expensive wine to have a meaningful gathering with friends or family.  In fact, I added, “wine is not necessary at all.”  I was about to elaborate when I noticed that the other adults at the table were staring at me like I had three eyes.  “That’s not correct,” they told me, almost in unison. I know that “look” well. I have received that same “look” from various people on other occasions. On one occasion I got “the look” from someone who was trying to justify that an ordinary car wasn’t sufficient, so he needed to buy a BMW.  Another person who gave me “the look” was trying to convince me that her $75,000 kitchen remodeling was “necessary,” even though all of the appliances in her existing kitchen functioned perfectly.  The problem with her current kitchen was that it was “old.” I have also received that same look from fundamentalists when I explain that the earth is billions of years old.  The “look” is a “we-will-pretend-you-didn’t-say-that” look.  It shouldn’t surprise me to draw the same “look” from both consumers and Believers, given that wasteful and pretentious spending is the de facto national religion of the United States.  We’ve moralized extravagant spending to such an extent that “living the good life” means buying lots of things we don’t really need.

Continue ReadingShopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection