A Modest Proposal: How Trump and Musk Can Save the World from Global Warming

A Modest Proposal: How Trump and Musk Can Save the World

The only truly effective way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is for all of us to quit producing so much of it: buying less, traveling less. This is my personal solution. But never in all of human history have a large group of people ever cut back on consumption and waste, except recently in the European Union, and then only mildly.

Big-thinking engineers have offered high-tech, expensive, and risky solutions generally called geoengineering, that is, engineering the entire Earth. Two examples are huge carbon-absorption towers and spewing reflective particles into the stratosphere.

The huge towers would collectively breathe in the entire atmosphere, sponge the excess carbon dioxide out of it (leaving only what plants need for photosynthesis), and then exhale the neutralized atmosphere. Such towers, even if there could possibly be enough energy to run them, would have to be huge and incredibly numerous. Proponents of this type of geoengineering are not too clear about what to do with the waste products of these towers. The cost of this kind of project would start in the hundreds of billions of dollars and could reach a trillion.

The other solution would be to inject hundreds of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it would produce a suspended white haze that would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface. The particles could be released from a fleet of special aircraft. The everlasting gloom might be a small price to pay for release from global warming. This solution would actually not remove carbon from the atmosphere. No one is sure if the toxic particles might settle and pollute the entire planet. Once again, the cost would start at hundreds of billions of dollars and could reach a trillion.

The Trump II administration would clearly be unwilling to spend this kind of money to solve a problem they refuse to admit exists—global warming.

Unless.

If these geoengineering schemes could be proposed by companies owned by Elon Musk, then Trump would be willing to demand a trillion dollars for them, and Congress would not dare to say no. No amount of money is too much for the federal government to give to Musk. He already owns Space-X. All he would need to do is to produce another hundred thousand aircraft to release the sulfur.

Right now, Musk’s companies are losing money, largely because of the overwhelmingly negative image of Musk Himself. There may not be anything wrong with Teslas, as cars, but when half the world starts calling them Swasticars then the company will start to fail. But Musk’s rockets keep exploding also. So it is possible that Musk’s companies would be unable to competently carry out these geoengineering projects.

But that doesn’t matter. Musk does not need to build cars or rockets that actually work. His market is Donald Trump. Donald Trump can get Musk a trillion dollars of federal money, no problem. The cars and rockets themselves do not matter.

And if one of Musk’s aircrafts explodes, it is no matter, since this too would add reflective particles to the stratosphere. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Conservative Christians already worship Donald Trump. Any arguments, in this blog or anywhere else, that addresses any other aspect of Christianity other than the Donald are a waste of time. These geoengineering projects would, moreover, demonstrate that the efforts of conservative Christians to worship Trump would prove to have been correct, for, in this way, Musk and Trump could literally save the world.

Gulf of America: Why Stop There?

It is usually scientists who have the right and responsibility to decide the scientific names of organisms, and in some cases the common names as well. For example, the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Now International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants) gets to decide the rules for plant names and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature for animal names. However, this is scientific convention, not law.

The new Trump Administration singlehandedly decided to rename the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America.” Trump has no legal authority to require this, although he can personally call it anything he wants. However, he has already excluded the Associated Press from press meetings because they continued to use “Gulf of Mexico”. He can, and presumably will, cancel funding for any recipient of federal funds or any government agency that uses the name Gulf of Mexico.

My upcoming book, Forgotten Landscapes, makes one unnecessary reference to the Gulf of Mexico. I am proofreading the final pages, and I will change this to simply “the gulf” since the meaning is clear: it is where the Mississippi pours its water. I will stand and fight some other time when it is more important.

But such a time might come sooner than later.

Consider the example of the giant sequoia tree. It is the species with the largest trees in the world, and they are trees of incomparable beauty. I have written, and continue to write, a lot about them, including in Forgotten Landscapes. After these trees were discovered in the nineteenth century, the British originally insisted the scientific name be Wellingtonia; Americans countered with Washingtonia. Finally the name that was used was Sequoiadendron giganteum, named after the Cherokee scholar Sequoyah who single-handedly invented the indigenous Cherokee writing system, which allowed the Cherokee tribe to, within decades, achieve the highest literacy rate in the world, in their own language. The common name is giant sequoia, and thus it has been known for over a century.

The Trump Administration, I do not doubt, considers Native Americans to be savages. Or, at least, to have been so in previous centuries. Would Donald Trump and Elon Musk tolerate a savage name for the biggest trees in the world? I can foresee that Trump might want the name changed to Trumpia muskii, or maybe Megalotrumpia muskii. Or maybe Musk, unabashed admirer of the old South African apartheid system, might want Apartheidia muskii. They might just let the common name be “giant redwoods” and let it go at that, because “Trump trees” sounds too silly even for them. I think.

Trump would have no authority to enforce a name change for the giant sequoia tree. But he might have at least provisional authority to require all government agencies to change the name to Megalotrumpia, and to cancel funding for any government project that refuses the name change. Any legal challenges to this would take years, and even then Trump could just ignore the court ruling.

Such a decision would profoundly affect my book, Forgotten Landscapes, not only because of its frequent references to giant sequoia trees but also because of its front-and-center defense of the non-savagery of Native Americans, who transformed the North American landscape by fire, hunting, agriculture, irrigation, and orchards. But by then the book will already be rolling off of the presses. Such a decision might even throw a spotlight on my book, which would be positive. The only people who would agree with Trump on this matter are those who do not buy or read books. But, all the same, I would prefer my book to stand on its own merits.

At the present time, this essay is written in a spirit of humor rather than alarm. But if the Oval Office proclaims that the plague bacterium, now known as Yersinia pestis, be renamed Obamabacterium bidenii, don’t be totally blind-sided.

The above essay appeared on my science blog. But this is a religion blog, and I have a few words to add to it for people who are interested in religion.

In Genesis, God told Adam to name the animals (presumably plants, also). Apparently Trump and Musk think God has given them a similar authority. To name something is to take the first step in conquering it. Gaza as an American territory? Canada as an American state? The New American Empire might be taking form as an open reality, not just as a de-facto situation.

Christian Hatred

Conservative Christians are inspired by hatred, as many of us have discovered. This does not mean that all Christians are so inspired, of course, but the existence of Christians who truly love their fellowmen does not disprove the overall truth of my statement. I am not saying Jesus would have done anything I describe below.

A few years ago, I posted a video of scientist Glen Kuban explaining, calmly and with evidence, that the fossilized footprints in the bed of the Paluxy River in Texas are dinosaur prints, not human prints as claimed by fringe religious groups. One YouTube comment posted to the video said, “There are dino human prints the uploader is a liar and a moron.” They simply and viscerally hate Glen and myself (I was the uploader). But this happens so often, so regularly, that we almost do not notice. I had forgotten all about it.

Glen is so calm and nice. I would, myself, have been snarky. The creationist woman said to him, “That footprint has to be human! My foot fit exactly into it!” My response would have been, “Then it must be your print. These prints are 110 million years old. I wouldn’t have put you at a day over 70 million.” I think Glen is glad that he, not I, engaged the woman in conversation.

It gets worse. Conservative Christians are at the forefront of claiming that everyone should have unlimited access to firearms. Jesus said, “Put your sword away, Peter; those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.” Many modern Christians would say, “Yeah! Bring it on! You just try to kill me with your sword, and I will shoot you with my assault weapon.” The final argument for many modern Christians, in defending their doctrinal beliefs, is “our beliefs are true, and we have a thousand assault weapons to prove it.”

I was a biology professor at a university in Oklahoma where most of the students were Christians. But a few of them (mostly, as it turned out, mine) were Freethinkers. They formed a club and had meetings. They posted signs announcing the time and place of their meetings. The signs got torn down so that, like the secret Christian meetings of the Roman Empire, information spread by word of mouth.

If you have your own examples of Christian violence that you have experienced, feel free to post a comment.

When Kings Go Forth to War

The Bible is left over from an earlier era where war was just considered a normal part of leadership. The most recent portions of the Bible were written almost two millennia ago. And while the total weight of evil has increased in the world during that time, so also has the universal awareness that war, oppression, injustice, and slaughter are evil. Much of this new awareness has come from people who have been inspired by the Bible; but they chose this awareness because of their preferred interpretation of scripture, not because of the Bible itself, which has remained unchanged.

I recently visited a memorial to the war dead in Germany and France [photo]. Originally built in 1925 to call for the Great War to never be repeated, it was only a little more than a decade later that the whole story occurred again. The memorial is now to the war dead of two world wars. All the government of Germany had to do was to add a couple of new dates to the stone entablature. In the rising world awareness of the evils of war and oppression, religion followed rather than leading. The peaceful countries of Europe are largely secular. There are many Catholics in France where I now live, but their government is secular.

One passage of the Bible that we often read without noticing it was the beginning of the passage about David and Bathsheba in Second Samuel chapter 11. “And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab…” It was just part of the mindset of people, even those who were supposedly God’s chosen (in particular, of King David), that spring was the time for war. War was just part of the circle of seasons of the year.

That is the point I wanted to make here. If you think that we can do something better than to make war in the spring, when the wildflowers emerge from the hills for some reason other than to drink the spilled blood of soldiers and civilians alike, you did not get this idea from the Bible.

Am I the Enemy?

The ultimate measure of success for big corporations, and little ones, and individuals, and governments, is profit. An enemy is anyone who reduces profits. And it doesn’t matter how the enemy reduces those profits. I certainly reduce the profits of corporations, and you probably do also. That makes us enemies of the corporations.

This has obvious religious implications. If you are less worldly, this makes you an enemy of the world, just like Jesus was.

One way to reduce a corporation’s profits are for governments to force them to pay for their externalities—that is, the consequences of the harm they have been inflicting on people and the Earth. To force fossil fuel corporations to pay a carbon tax (so far, a failure); to force tobacco corporations to pay for the health effects of smoking (a partial success); to force pharmaceutical corporations to pay for the suffering that directly results from aggressive marketing of addictive drugs (a mixed record of success and failure).

But another way is for ordinary consumers to choose to buy less from corporations, choosing inexpensive and healthy alternatives. Those of us who choose this path are eating into the profitability of large corporations as surely as if they had lost a lawsuit or paid penalties.

On a recent weekend, my family and I visited the Black Forest National Park in Germany, right over the river from Alsace, where we now live. We walked around in the snow and let the kids throw snowballs. We had to drive there, in a family sized vehicle, but we only use the vehicle when there is an unavoidable reason for it. Most of the time we walk or take public transportation, which helps us avoid the parking nightmare that Strasbourg, like any city, is. Then we went home, and enjoyed the free entertainment of one another’s company and educational YouTube videos (such as mine or those of Jamy Gourmaud).

What we did not do was to go on a cruise or buy a lot of hiking equipment. The end of the day was also a perfect opportunity for us to go to a restaurant and have a family meal, but we did not do this; we went home and had leftovers which, I might add, were pretty good. We did not go out to a movie. In just these ways, we deprived corporations of about a couple of thousand euros of income. That money is not part of their income as surely as if it had been forbidden by government policy. We also had less debt, which meant that we deprived financial corporations of debt interest.

Corporations do not want us to consume less or to encourage others to do so. They do not want us to drive less, or buy smaller cars, but to buy big electric trucks. They do not want us to buy fewer of the items that have to be transported all over the continent. They do not want us to simply not smoke; they want us to vape, a market the tobacco corporations largely control. They do not want us to be healthy, but to be permanently in a state of requiring expensive medical intervention. They do not want us to reduce credit card debt, just avoid defaults.

I have a medical condition which requires prescriptions that are, for me as a French resident, free, but which in America required me to pay a thousand dollar deductible each year, and most of that money went directly to the recently-assassinated CEO of United HealthCare. I do not endorse assassination, of course. But for a million people in my situation, these charges were a billion dollar benefit to UHC. Even though my medication is now free, I do everything I can to avoid getting sicker and needing yet more medical intervention.

Any of my readers (which is not a large number) who are influenced by my enjoyment of low-impact pleasures will have a similar negative impact on corporate profits. This makes us, collectively, major enemies of the corporations. We may not be as obvious as the Marxist activists, but we are as significant.

And, I need hardly add, we are happy. To have my grandson try to throw a snowball at me, and miss, is as enjoyable as any cruise. And there is no chance whatever that I will contract the rotavirus for which cruises are famous from the snowball.

A New English Verb: To Trump

For centuries, the verb to trump has meant, in card games, that the hand of cards that one person has prevails over the hand that another person has. The ace trumps the jack, for example. But since Donald Trump has entered the political scene, this word has been given a new meaning, not by the dictionaries and the people who watch over our language, but the way the word is used in everyday speech. I wish to propose a slight extension of the meaning.

It hasn’t just been since Trump entered the presidential campaign the first time in 2016. The image created by his behavior has been going on for decades. Back in the 1990s, news articles commonly presented Trump as an arrogant rich man, an image he cultivated in his television show. Even while he faced one bankruptcy after another, he promoted his image as a powerful man because of his wealth. See, for example, these Newsweek articles from thirty years ago:

·         March 4, 1990, about Trump’s collapsing real estate, casino, and airline empires, and others on May 14 and June 18.

·         A cartoon published on May 4, 1991 with Natives joking about Trump wanting to sell the island of Manhattan back to them.

Trump’s behavior has also given him the popular image as thinking himself unbridled in his approaches to women. Further Newsweek articles from thirty years ago include:

·         March 4, 1990, about Trump’s divorce woes;

·         December 24, 1990 with an article about Trump and Rowanne Brewer;

·         July 8, 1991with an article about Trump and Carla Bruni;

·         April 19, 1993 with a photo of Trump embracing Marla Maples.

But since being president the first time, Trump has used his power to squelch any and all criticism of himself.

Therefore, I suggest a new meaning to the verb “to trump”: it means to screw over. The reason is that Trump was convicted of financial felonies connected to sex, and has been accused of sexual harassment, and has said demeaning things about how much women love to have him grab them. Even in those cases where his negative image did not lead to a conviction, it is still part of his image.

Because of all of this, I suggest that the following uses of the verb to trump are useful figures of speech:

·         A big corporation can trump a smaller one.

·         A big country can trump a smaller one.

·         A man can trump a woman.

Language continues to evolve. Already, according to this article in The Atlantic, people who dislike Trump are avoiding the use of the verb. But maybe we can make it into a useful verb once again.

Trump you.

 

Tipping Points: Any Cause for Hope?

I just finished reading, two decades after it was published, the book Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I read it at the same time that I am still trying to get through This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, about which I wrote earlier. I realized there were things we can learn from comparing the two books.

The most noticeable thing is that Klein’s book is extremely depressing. It is also heavy with references. In contrast, Gladwell’s book (what an appropriate name he has) is optimistic, and has just enough references so that you know he is not making everything up. I read it in a couple of days. Klein’s book will take me months or years to digest.

From Klein’s viewpoint, no matter how much we do, it is not going to make any difference. Unless we totally change our economic system, the Earth is condemned to climatic warming that will exceed the ability of our civilization to tolerate. As I wrote previously, trees are out, weeds are in; this is the world of our future, and we might as well accept it.

But Gladwell’s viewpoint, as indicated right on the cover of his book, is that little things can make a big difference. Some seemingly minor event or process can push just enough on circumstances that they will begin to tip in a new direction. Also, right on the cover of his book is a match. It only takes a spark to start a fire, if the fuel is there and the conditions are right. Gladwell would suggest that we might be able to avoid global climate disaster, if something unexpected and unpredictable occurs that makes people change the way they think and live. It seems impossible, but such things have happened, though on a much smaller scale.

One example from Gladwell’s book is the Broken Windows theory of crime prevention. It would seem that, to reduce crime, which was epidemic in New York City in the early 1990s, it would be necessary to make big economic and sociological changes that would affect and improve the lives of millions of people. In parts of New York that had lots of crime, there were broken windows and graffiti everywhere. These, it would seem, are the symptoms of crime, not the causes. But a campaign to clean up broken windows and graffiti, as if they were the cause rather than the effect, seems to have caused a reduction in the crime rate. If people see broken windows and graffiti everywhere, they to not have a sense of responsibility for their surroundings, while if they see broken windows and graffiti being cleaned up, they begin to identify with their surroundings and notice when bad things happen. Criminals know that they are less likely to get away with their crimes in a neighborhood where broken windows are quickly fixed and graffiti quickly cleaned up. Treating the symptoms is a lot cheaper than addressing the root causes, which might be so large as to be impossible to address.

I have wondered why crime rates are so much lower in France, where I now live, than in America. I wonder if part of the reason is that there is a lot of effort, by property owners and municipalities, to pick up litter. There is a lot of litter in France, but about ten times less than in America (I base this statement on actual counts of I have made). The French do not, or no longer, see their local environments as places to throw garbage, or in which crime is inevitable. One fact that does not fit this interpretation is that practically every public surface in France has graffiti.

Does something like this offer any hope that we might be able to turn around the inevitable global warming? In France, it is seen as perfectly normal for people to walk and take public transit. Even mail delivery is by bicycle. It is not, or is no longer, necessary for municipalities or the government to try to convince people to not drive cars as much.

Gladwell also addresses the problem of smoking in young people, which (at least when he was writing) was increasing even while adult smoking was on the decline. American governments and nonprofits have spent billions of dollars on campaigns that tried to show young people how dangerous smoking is, without much success. I wonder if all the anti-smoking material in my biology classes made any difference. Young people do not respond very much to appeals to evidence and reasoning. Young smokers choose to smoke because of their peers. Smoking is not cool; smokers are cool—the peers whom other young people admire are the rebels who do things precisely because they are dangerous. France and Germany have used graphic images on cigarette boxes in an attempt to scare young people into not smoking, without apparent success.

But how can you make healthy behavior normal or, better yet, cool? And how could you ever get people in general to make healthy choices by making them seem cool?

Gladwell suggests one way to reduce the smoking epidemic. Since there is no way to stop young people from experimenting with cigarettes, the best we can do is to keep them from turning into long-term tobacco addicts. Most young people who play with cigarettes do not, in fact, become lifelong tobacco addicts. Gladwell suggested requiring cigarettes to be below a critical level of nicotine content, so that it would be nearly impossible for a casual smoker to become an addict. The problem is that tobacco industry profits depend almost entirely on addiction. That is how they make their money: customers who cannot not buy the product. Requiring tobacco companies to sell only cigarettes with little nicotine is requiring them to commit economic suicide. Addiction is their product. I see no way out of this problem.

The only way to prevent bad trends is to focus on your own family. That’s what we are doing. We moved to France, rather than to try to raise our grandkids in a social environment that is as wasteful and violent as America. And as for the family context, almost nobody in their immediate or extended French family smokes. Their family, and their peers, enjoy doing healthy and constructive things like taking hikes. And when our grandchildren look around them, what do they see? They see young French people who dart around on electric scooters rather than driving. They look pretty cool and they know it. Young people see their cool peers almost every day on the trams. We do not want our grandchildren to have to choose among their society, their family, and their peers. We want all three levels of influence to maximize the chances that their tipping points will be in the right direction.

All this means that, without us trying to cause it, a tipping point might be reached in which people change their behaviors away from unhealthy and dangerous ones to healthy and constructive ones. It only takes a spark.

Don’t hold your breath in anticipation, however. When a tipping point is reached, the process could tip in a dangerous direction as easily as a healthy one. It is at least as easy for good people to become violent as for bad people to become good. It all depends on who the influencers are. And influencers are very seldom the people who know the truth. A tipping point can accelerate dangerous trends as easily as preventing them.