Indigenous cultures, on this continent and on all others, though their stories, (including those in the Celtic countries my ancestors came from, like Scotland, Ireland ,Wales, Isle of Man, Breton) value kindness (love and respect). This is universally true and does not disappear in the modern world in the teaching of children. ("Everything I need to know in life i learned in kindergarten." Robert Fulghum.) What I see now, as a grandmother, is a need for kindness to be reaffirmed in the civic discourse, particularly in the candidates running for offices in the U.S. this year!!!
Obviously trump doesn't know bugger all about EV's or semi-trucks. First the "part with the driver and the engine (the tractor) NEVER carries the shipment. All goods are carried in the trailer(s) towed behind the tractor. Second the batteries that supply the energy to move the truck (and the load) are stored beneath the floorboards of the tractor - not in the trailers.
Good for the customers and management at Costco, for demanding Citi Bank withdraw its support of fossil fuels.
As to the divergence in our Country - it is not simple and it has not occurred in one generation - it has been happening over decades, and even those of us who consider ourselves educated didn't see the slow flow to the top .001% of the people owning or worse controlling the countries wealth. It began with a trickle up under Nixon and then a full blown gusher under GW Bush, with the trumpster giving away the 'farm'. We must have a wealth tax; a primary emphasis on mitigating to the best of our ability the horrifying effects of the global warming. Mitigate because we are beyond preventing the worsening effectsl
Polarization isn't the end of the conversation, it's just the beginning. Start ny realizing people aren't their jobs. That oil lobbyist who takes a hard line at the negotiating table? At Starbucks that morning he confessed his kids aren't speaking to him and he's looking for another job. The banker who boasted about returns on oil and gas? At the bar later he acknowledged that eventually these investments are going to tank. Look at history. Over and over entrenched oppisition has melted into surprising agreement. Keep smiling, keep pushing. We'll get there.
Encouraging me to cast a vote for Genocide Joe because he's made some incremental, halting steps toward dealing with the climate catastrophe suggests we throw the Palestinian people under the bus so that I can drive a clean, quiet, smooth electric truck. If I could afford one.
I can't vote for genocide, Bill, no matter how climate friendly it might appear.
There are no "tightly knit groups" large enough to create our highly polarized society. The polarization is the direct result of greed. Small numbers of wealthy (aka greedy) people and massive numbers of greedy people who wish to be wealthy. Humans are the only species whose greed leads them to gather more wealth than they need for survival. The only species who allow some of their members to subjugate other members who labor to enrich the leader for a pittance of the actual value of their labor, and the hope that they will rise above their station or that their labors will benefit their offspring.
🙏🏽’s Bill. With so much on the line, one thing we cannot afford to lose is our humanity. The old line about gaining the world but losing our mortal soul. So I always appreciate your approach of doing ‘the needful’, and not shying from the fight, but with an abiding regard for people and their capacity for good. Frankly, it’s this tension between the need for assertiveness and mutual respect that animates my evolution of DOTS. Join the dots. 🐛🦋
For most of our time on earth, humans have lived in partnership with each other. Models of domination, aka patriarchy, are a much more modern thing. Ladies, we are central to dismantling patriarchy. It only will continue if we are complicit. Please see susancoleman.substack.com
Thank you for your always informative missives. I consider myself to be more informed than many people since I am retired and have ample time to read, but I always learn things I did not read elsewhere.
Salome Agbaroji's poem was wonderful!
One other thing. Recommended reading: Robert Sapolsky's "Behave" -all about why we behave the way we do in 700 pages.
On a more mundane daily financial action note, remember one easy way to get your money out of fossil fuels is through picking a fossil fuel free credit card. Check your card and find good options at https://www.climateaction.center/fossil-fuel-free-credit-card
A veritable Costco of good and up-to-date climate news. Something for everyone. The link to the Norwegian report on electric vs gas cars in cold weather was worth the trip.
The way out of divisiveness in politics is stewardship in money.
Specifically, stewardship of Fiduciary Money - the tens of trillions, collectively, worldwide, of society's shared savings aggregated into social superfunds for the social purpose of provisioning the social goods of Workplace Pensions and Civil Society Endowments as forever machines, with a legal, fiduciary duty to be there in the future ""so that when [their promisees] retire, they retire with dignity" - Wyclef Jean
This money, pegged to the future by law, has the mission, the duty and the scale to answer the call from COP28 "for transitioning [towards] just, orderly and equitable".
The Washington Post's choice of "experts" seems highly biased. Even the best traditional newspapers sometimes yield to the "if it bleeds, it leads" slogan of yellow journalism. The credibility of WaPo’s biased selection of experts is closer to 15-20% than to 1000%, and Bill has no need to apologize for being skeptical — we all should be.
There are plenty of experts on the other side of this unfinished debate in the scientific community. One is Agustin Fuentes. In his book "Why we Believe," he refers to data showing concrete evidence that human-against-human violence only appears in the human 1-2 million year long prehistoric record about 10 to 15 thousand years ago, following the appearance of intensive agriculture, durable human dwellings, and evidence of a notion of personal ownership, especially land ownership. In other words, the first evidence of such violence follows the evidence of the idea that “this is mine, not yours, so stay away.”
Cooperation between members of the same species, and even members of the same species, is far more common in nature, especially among social animals such as humans. Competition is mostly between some species is natural, but less common.
The current sorry state of affairs in the world is a dreadful consequence of the idea of land ownership, the invention of warfare, and, as David Korten documents in "The Great Turning" (and his better known "When Corporations Rule the World"), the culture of empire.
Virginia Morris' comment got me thinking about this -- thanks, Virginia!
Shame on WaPo for this particular story — they can do much better. They could easily have included experts with a greater variety of opinions. I suspect the work of editors in a hurry rather than the writers.
Indigenous cultures, on this continent and on all others, though their stories, (including those in the Celtic countries my ancestors came from, like Scotland, Ireland ,Wales, Isle of Man, Breton) value kindness (love and respect). This is universally true and does not disappear in the modern world in the teaching of children. ("Everything I need to know in life i learned in kindergarten." Robert Fulghum.) What I see now, as a grandmother, is a need for kindness to be reaffirmed in the civic discourse, particularly in the candidates running for offices in the U.S. this year!!!
Obviously trump doesn't know bugger all about EV's or semi-trucks. First the "part with the driver and the engine (the tractor) NEVER carries the shipment. All goods are carried in the trailer(s) towed behind the tractor. Second the batteries that supply the energy to move the truck (and the load) are stored beneath the floorboards of the tractor - not in the trailers.
Good for the customers and management at Costco, for demanding Citi Bank withdraw its support of fossil fuels.
As to the divergence in our Country - it is not simple and it has not occurred in one generation - it has been happening over decades, and even those of us who consider ourselves educated didn't see the slow flow to the top .001% of the people owning or worse controlling the countries wealth. It began with a trickle up under Nixon and then a full blown gusher under GW Bush, with the trumpster giving away the 'farm'. We must have a wealth tax; a primary emphasis on mitigating to the best of our ability the horrifying effects of the global warming. Mitigate because we are beyond preventing the worsening effectsl
Polarization isn't the end of the conversation, it's just the beginning. Start ny realizing people aren't their jobs. That oil lobbyist who takes a hard line at the negotiating table? At Starbucks that morning he confessed his kids aren't speaking to him and he's looking for another job. The banker who boasted about returns on oil and gas? At the bar later he acknowledged that eventually these investments are going to tank. Look at history. Over and over entrenched oppisition has melted into surprising agreement. Keep smiling, keep pushing. We'll get there.
Encouraging me to cast a vote for Genocide Joe because he's made some incremental, halting steps toward dealing with the climate catastrophe suggests we throw the Palestinian people under the bus so that I can drive a clean, quiet, smooth electric truck. If I could afford one.
I can't vote for genocide, Bill, no matter how climate friendly it might appear.
How distressing. Not one mention of taxing net CO2 emissions.
How can we expect politician to do the right thing if environmentalist don't enve advocate for it?
There are no "tightly knit groups" large enough to create our highly polarized society. The polarization is the direct result of greed. Small numbers of wealthy (aka greedy) people and massive numbers of greedy people who wish to be wealthy. Humans are the only species whose greed leads them to gather more wealth than they need for survival. The only species who allow some of their members to subjugate other members who labor to enrich the leader for a pittance of the actual value of their labor, and the hope that they will rise above their station or that their labors will benefit their offspring.
🙏🏽’s Bill. With so much on the line, one thing we cannot afford to lose is our humanity. The old line about gaining the world but losing our mortal soul. So I always appreciate your approach of doing ‘the needful’, and not shying from the fight, but with an abiding regard for people and their capacity for good. Frankly, it’s this tension between the need for assertiveness and mutual respect that animates my evolution of DOTS. Join the dots. 🐛🦋
For most of our time on earth, humans have lived in partnership with each other. Models of domination, aka patriarchy, are a much more modern thing. Ladies, we are central to dismantling patriarchy. It only will continue if we are complicit. Please see susancoleman.substack.com
Thank you for your always informative missives. I consider myself to be more informed than many people since I am retired and have ample time to read, but I always learn things I did not read elsewhere.
Salome Agbaroji's poem was wonderful!
One other thing. Recommended reading: Robert Sapolsky's "Behave" -all about why we behave the way we do in 700 pages.
On a more mundane daily financial action note, remember one easy way to get your money out of fossil fuels is through picking a fossil fuel free credit card. Check your card and find good options at https://www.climateaction.center/fossil-fuel-free-credit-card
A veritable Costco of good and up-to-date climate news. Something for everyone. The link to the Norwegian report on electric vs gas cars in cold weather was worth the trip.
The way out of divisiveness in politics is stewardship in money.
Specifically, stewardship of Fiduciary Money - the tens of trillions, collectively, worldwide, of society's shared savings aggregated into social superfunds for the social purpose of provisioning the social goods of Workplace Pensions and Civil Society Endowments as forever machines, with a legal, fiduciary duty to be there in the future ""so that when [their promisees] retire, they retire with dignity" - Wyclef Jean
This money, pegged to the future by law, has the mission, the duty and the scale to answer the call from COP28 "for transitioning [towards] just, orderly and equitable".
Equitable is the antidote to divisiveness.
>>I would not leave my child in his company for five minutes while I went to the corner store to buy some milk. <<
So true!
The Washington Post's choice of "experts" seems highly biased. Even the best traditional newspapers sometimes yield to the "if it bleeds, it leads" slogan of yellow journalism. The credibility of WaPo’s biased selection of experts is closer to 15-20% than to 1000%, and Bill has no need to apologize for being skeptical — we all should be.
There are plenty of experts on the other side of this unfinished debate in the scientific community. One is Agustin Fuentes. In his book "Why we Believe," he refers to data showing concrete evidence that human-against-human violence only appears in the human 1-2 million year long prehistoric record about 10 to 15 thousand years ago, following the appearance of intensive agriculture, durable human dwellings, and evidence of a notion of personal ownership, especially land ownership. In other words, the first evidence of such violence follows the evidence of the idea that “this is mine, not yours, so stay away.”
Cooperation between members of the same species, and even members of the same species, is far more common in nature, especially among social animals such as humans. Competition is mostly between some species is natural, but less common.
The current sorry state of affairs in the world is a dreadful consequence of the idea of land ownership, the invention of warfare, and, as David Korten documents in "The Great Turning" (and his better known "When Corporations Rule the World"), the culture of empire.
Virginia Morris' comment got me thinking about this -- thanks, Virginia!
Shame on WaPo for this particular story — they can do much better. They could easily have included experts with a greater variety of opinions. I suspect the work of editors in a hurry rather than the writers.
OK, now you've got me thinking of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjcuZ-LiSY
Some answers to your questions are articulated by Adam Grant in his book "Think Again", have a look!