The religions of fury and hatred are here to stay. They include the radical right wing of Christianity and of Islam. They are certainly the most sensationalistic and obvious ones. The stunt pulled by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who threatened to burn Korans on September 11, 2010, made the news much more than the interfaith outreach of peaceful Christian groups. Islamist terrorists always make more news than the peaceful Muslim Sufis, so much so that most people do not even realize that there is a philosophical meditative branch of the Muslim religion. (Incidentally, the group that plans to build a mosque in lower Manhattan consists of Sufis.)
At first this seems strange, because the peaceful, constructive branches of Christianity and Islam seem so much more beneficial and reasonable. Why do the religions that want to build a better world fail to predominate over those that wish to destroy as much of the world that they can?
Religions consist of sets of ideas that spread through a process similar to natural selection in nature. In this sense, religions evolve. The religions that get themselves propagated most successfully from one human mind to another are the ones that predominate. As with the evolution of plants and animals, success depends not on long term quality but on immediate success. Plants and animals will do whatever they can, destructive or constructive, that allows them to have as many surviving offspring as possible: they can harm their fellow creatures, or benefit them, depending on the circumstances.
It is unfortunate that the religions of hatred are thriving at the expense of the religions of peace. The reasons are obvious. All that a religion of hatred has to do is to press a single button in the human psyche, releasing primal fury, fury that is powerful enough that the spouter of hatred contradicts him or herself and does not even notice it. (Example: the same people may claim that Obama is godless, and also a Muslim. What, pray tell, is a godless Muslim? Of course, he is neither.) In contrast, the religions of peace require people to stop and think. While some people are thinking, the spouters of hatred have already contaminated a dozen other people. Fundamentalist religions are simplistic: just give money to the preacher, go to church, vote Republican, and hate gays. Peaceful religions, in contrast, require a more thoughtful attitude about literally everything in the world.
But the spread of the religions of hatred is not automatic. It occurs mostly in disrupted social and political circumstances. People are already thinking only brief thoughts in the short term, since the economy and world events are in such turmoil. How do you think ahead when everything may change in a few weeks or years?
I study plant ecology. I could not help but notice that the religions of hatred resemble weeds. Weeds are plants that grow rapidly, produce a lot of seeds, then die. Before you know it, you have thousands of weeds. The religions of peace are more like trees, which grow slowly for many years. Weeds grow best in an open space that has been recently disturbed, often by human activity such as bulldozing. Eventually the trees will take over, unless the disturbance continues. In places where disturbances occur frequently, weeds can spread but trees never get a chance to grow big enough to produce their seeds. Natural selection has favored weeds that produce a lot of seeds and then die, in disturbed environments, and trees that produce fewer seeds and live for a long time, in stable environments.
The religions of hatred are weedy religions. They grow and spread rapidly. The tree-like religions of peace never get a chance to grow because disruptions and crises keep happening. This will only get worse in the “long emergency” of climate disruption, as described by David Orr (Down to the Wire) and Bill McKibben (Eaarth).
For a weed, there is no future. A weed is going to die soon anyway, and there is no point in preparing for the future. For a tree, the future is the environment in which it will spend centuries of its life. The parallel with religion is unmistakable. To a fundamentalist, there is no future; God is going to come right away and destroy everything. But to a peaceful religious person, the future is what is most important.
Unfortunately, it appears that the immediate future of the Earth is going to look like a continually ravaged and re-ravaged weed patch, both in terms of its physical appearance, the plants and animals and the places that people live, and in terms of its religious and social environment.
A version of this essay will also appear on my website.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Optimism and Hope
The major human evolutionary adaptation is culture. Without culture, which includes writing and altruism, the human species has no hope. Global warming is rapidly leading to climate collapse which may interrupt human cultural transmission.
I recently read David Orr’s book about climate collapse (a better description than global warming), Down to the Wire. He made a distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism is when you can realistically predict a good outcome, however uncertain. Hope is an attitude that keeps you working even when optimism is not a realistic possibility. He said that no rational person could give an optimistic assessment that the Earth is going to avoid climate collapse—that is, enough of a collapse to mess up human civilization. But we need to have hope, even if not optimism.
But as I read the book, it became clear that, if Orr is right, the only way we can avoid climate collapse is for everyone to do everything right, right now, even though we are doing almost nothing right, right now, in terms of reducing carbon emissions. No grounds for optimism here, and hope is a fantasy, even though it may be an essential one.
At the same time, I was reading Margaret Atwood’s novel of a dystopian future, Oryx and Crake. It was a future in which humans and most wild animals are nearly extinct, replaced by genetically engineered humanoids and animaloids, and a future with brutal global warming. (Atwood is the master of dystopias, of which The Handmaid’s Tale is the most famous.) She made the point that, in humans as in other intelligent animals, all it takes is for cultural transmission to be interrupted for a single generation, and the game is over forever—the most important aspects of human adaptation will be lost. Our bodies and our instincts, by themselves, will not get us very far. Climate collapse would not need to cause extinction; all it would have to do is to interrupt human culture for a generation.
Evolution will go on, the human species will persist in a physically recognizable form, but we now face the possibility of global cultural interruption.
A version of this essay will appear this fall on my website.
I recently read David Orr’s book about climate collapse (a better description than global warming), Down to the Wire. He made a distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism is when you can realistically predict a good outcome, however uncertain. Hope is an attitude that keeps you working even when optimism is not a realistic possibility. He said that no rational person could give an optimistic assessment that the Earth is going to avoid climate collapse—that is, enough of a collapse to mess up human civilization. But we need to have hope, even if not optimism.
But as I read the book, it became clear that, if Orr is right, the only way we can avoid climate collapse is for everyone to do everything right, right now, even though we are doing almost nothing right, right now, in terms of reducing carbon emissions. No grounds for optimism here, and hope is a fantasy, even though it may be an essential one.
At the same time, I was reading Margaret Atwood’s novel of a dystopian future, Oryx and Crake. It was a future in which humans and most wild animals are nearly extinct, replaced by genetically engineered humanoids and animaloids, and a future with brutal global warming. (Atwood is the master of dystopias, of which The Handmaid’s Tale is the most famous.) She made the point that, in humans as in other intelligent animals, all it takes is for cultural transmission to be interrupted for a single generation, and the game is over forever—the most important aspects of human adaptation will be lost. Our bodies and our instincts, by themselves, will not get us very far. Climate collapse would not need to cause extinction; all it would have to do is to interrupt human culture for a generation.
Evolution will go on, the human species will persist in a physically recognizable form, but we now face the possibility of global cultural interruption.
A version of this essay will appear this fall on my website.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Slime
Nobody could ever accuse Tom Delay, former congressman from Texas, of humility. When he was House Majority Leader, he was called “The Hammer” because he used political pressure to get all Republicans to vote the same way. This made the Democrats in the House of Representatives pretty much irrelevant, even though they had a larger number of members than the Republican minority currently has. When he was asked to not smoke his cigar in a Washington, D.C. restaurant, because it was against federal law, he answered, “I am the federal government.” For a list of his other breathtakingly arrogant quotes, see his Wikipedia quote page. When Delay resigned over revelations of illegal campaign finance contributions, one would think that he would be a little contrite. But no. He decided that he was still such a celebrity that he could be the hero of Dancing with the Stars. Fractured feet prevented this arrogant dream from coming true.
Delay holds no esteem for anyone who disagrees with him. Despite his ethical lapses, he still holds himself up as a great beacon of morality. In this, he contrasts himself most sharply with those who accept an evolutionary explanation for the history of life on Earth. In 1999, he opined that one of the causes of school violence (such as the Columbine shootings) was that children are being taught in school that they “evolutionized” from slime. He made this statement with full confidence even though he knows practically nothing about evolutionary science or sociology. Truth, to Delay, is something to make up as you go along.
Delay considers that the human species is too noble to have evolved from slime. This is incorrect in two ways.
First, humans (especially those who act as Delay has) are not particularly noble.
Second, slime is not such a bad thing. Most slime consists of bacteria. There is an amazing diversity of bacteria all over the world and even deep into the Earth, and all of life is dependent upon what they do. Slime is one of the things that keep the Earth alive.
Not only that, but slime has something to teach us. A visible layer of slime (“biofilm” in science talk) is not just bacteria; it is bacteria that have produced a sticky material that holds them together. It is an example, in fact, of altruistic cooperation. Larger organisms that might eat individual bacteria cannot eat the ones that are protected inside of the slime. The bacteria produce, at considerable metabolic expense, a material that provides for their common defense. Even though bacteria are single, simple cells, they can form multi-cellular cooperative structures. Slime is, sometimes, more internally cooperative than groups of humans.
Slime, therefore, is a living critique of human arrogance.
A version of this essay appeared on my website on December 20, 2009.
Delay holds no esteem for anyone who disagrees with him. Despite his ethical lapses, he still holds himself up as a great beacon of morality. In this, he contrasts himself most sharply with those who accept an evolutionary explanation for the history of life on Earth. In 1999, he opined that one of the causes of school violence (such as the Columbine shootings) was that children are being taught in school that they “evolutionized” from slime. He made this statement with full confidence even though he knows practically nothing about evolutionary science or sociology. Truth, to Delay, is something to make up as you go along.
Delay considers that the human species is too noble to have evolved from slime. This is incorrect in two ways.
First, humans (especially those who act as Delay has) are not particularly noble.
Second, slime is not such a bad thing. Most slime consists of bacteria. There is an amazing diversity of bacteria all over the world and even deep into the Earth, and all of life is dependent upon what they do. Slime is one of the things that keep the Earth alive.
Not only that, but slime has something to teach us. A visible layer of slime (“biofilm” in science talk) is not just bacteria; it is bacteria that have produced a sticky material that holds them together. It is an example, in fact, of altruistic cooperation. Larger organisms that might eat individual bacteria cannot eat the ones that are protected inside of the slime. The bacteria produce, at considerable metabolic expense, a material that provides for their common defense. Even though bacteria are single, simple cells, they can form multi-cellular cooperative structures. Slime is, sometimes, more internally cooperative than groups of humans.
Slime, therefore, is a living critique of human arrogance.
A version of this essay appeared on my website on December 20, 2009.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Real World
The real world is the world of light, air, water, soil, and food. It is the world that trees and other plants create for us by producing oxygen and food, by enriching the soil and holding back floods. It is the world of ecology and evolution.
In contrast, the financial world is an artificial world. This fact has become apparent to those who thought that the real world just consisted of moving other people’s money around. Before the Collapse, James E. Cayne was a billionaire and the chairman of Bear Stearns. He lost $900 million of that in 2008. Noted New York Times’ Landon Thomas Jr. on March 28, 2008, “It represents a humiliating capitulation for a brash executive who, with his ever-present cigar, suspender-snapping ways and Friday golf outings…epitomized the classic, if outdated, picture of the Wall Street chieftain.” We have one of these bankers, right down to the cigar, where I live in Durant, Oklahoma. He just built a huge mansion that is a pastiche of every style smushed together; its only unifying theme is arrogance. He paid almost as much for his front door—not the whole porch, just the door—as I did for my house.
If you drive through rural Oklahoma towns, you will see all of the buildings run down, except, of course, the bank. Interest, or usury, is the best source of wealth today. But it is parasitic and unstable. Just ask Mr. Cayne, who now has to suffer with his remaining pittance of $61 million.
I don’t think Mr. Cayne has a clue about what the real world is. But I’ll tell you who does. Wangari Maathai is an African woman who has led millions of Kenyan women to plant trees, not instead of improving their economic lives but in order to improve their economic lives. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, the only environmentalist (and African woman) to have done so. But her Green Belt Movement was a major financial benefit—to the rural poor of Kenya. Now there is a woman who understands the real world.
We have to accept the reality of light, water, air, soil, and plants. We cannot create reality. George W. Bush said, “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” To me, this sounds like blasphemy.
The real world is bears, not teddy bears or Bear Stearns; and is green, not greenbacks.
A version of this essay appeared on my website on November 23, 2008.
In contrast, the financial world is an artificial world. This fact has become apparent to those who thought that the real world just consisted of moving other people’s money around. Before the Collapse, James E. Cayne was a billionaire and the chairman of Bear Stearns. He lost $900 million of that in 2008. Noted New York Times’ Landon Thomas Jr. on March 28, 2008, “It represents a humiliating capitulation for a brash executive who, with his ever-present cigar, suspender-snapping ways and Friday golf outings…epitomized the classic, if outdated, picture of the Wall Street chieftain.” We have one of these bankers, right down to the cigar, where I live in Durant, Oklahoma. He just built a huge mansion that is a pastiche of every style smushed together; its only unifying theme is arrogance. He paid almost as much for his front door—not the whole porch, just the door—as I did for my house.
If you drive through rural Oklahoma towns, you will see all of the buildings run down, except, of course, the bank. Interest, or usury, is the best source of wealth today. But it is parasitic and unstable. Just ask Mr. Cayne, who now has to suffer with his remaining pittance of $61 million.
I don’t think Mr. Cayne has a clue about what the real world is. But I’ll tell you who does. Wangari Maathai is an African woman who has led millions of Kenyan women to plant trees, not instead of improving their economic lives but in order to improve their economic lives. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, the only environmentalist (and African woman) to have done so. But her Green Belt Movement was a major financial benefit—to the rural poor of Kenya. Now there is a woman who understands the real world.
We have to accept the reality of light, water, air, soil, and plants. We cannot create reality. George W. Bush said, “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” To me, this sounds like blasphemy.
The real world is bears, not teddy bears or Bear Stearns; and is green, not greenbacks.
A version of this essay appeared on my website on November 23, 2008.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Absurd Creativity
This essay was recycled from my website (November 21, 2009).
Absurd creativity—that is what evolution has. The pathways of evolution follow no course of deductive logic, to design organisms or ecosystems the way an engineer would. Evolution tries all kinds of things, some beautiful, some silly, some ordinary—and keeps the ones that work. There is no Designer/Engineer in control of the process; it just spreads out in a million directions and produces adaptations that are essentially unpredictable.
This was brought to my attention as I was writing the entry about reptiles for my upcoming Encyclopedia of Biodiversity. Like most of you, I just assumed that any legless reptile that slithered through the undergrowth was a snake. But this is not correct. There are about a dozen different lineages of partially or wholly legless lizards, which have evolved the same adaptation as snakes, but independently. Lizards have long tails, whereas most of a snake’s length is its body. “Glass snakes” are actually lizards, without legs, and with a long tail. They are called glass snakes because they can break off parts of their tails (like broken glass) to confuse a predator that is pursuing them. Real snakes cannot do this. Legless lizards are examples of evolutionary convergence, where different lineages of animals independently evolve the same adaptation.
One day about a billion years ago (seems like yesterday), the first plant cells got their chloroplasts. These are the green structures that make sunlight into food. It might really have just happened in one day. Photosynthetic bacteria invaded, or were consumed by, larger cells with nuclei. But instead of killing or dying, these bacteria took up residence inside the plant cell. It was a mutually beneficial relationship; the bacteria made food from sunlight, and the larger cell provided fertilizer and protection. The chloroplasts of plants are cells inside of cells. From this event, the red algae and the green algae separately evolved. Some of the green algae evolved into land plants.
But there were some other large cells that also consumed, or were invaded by, the red or green algae. And the red or green algal cells became the chloroplasts of what are today the brown algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and euglenas. (Brown algae are the large seaweeds.) That is, brown algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and euglenas have chloroplasts that are cells inside of cells inside of cells. The chloroplasts of dinoflagellates even have little degenerated nuclei inside of them! Just as legless reptiles evolved several times, so did chloroplasts.
The evolutionary process tries endless combinations of mutations and adaptations, resulting in a living world that has much more variety that is hidden than variety that is obvious.
Absurd creativity—that is what evolution has. The pathways of evolution follow no course of deductive logic, to design organisms or ecosystems the way an engineer would. Evolution tries all kinds of things, some beautiful, some silly, some ordinary—and keeps the ones that work. There is no Designer/Engineer in control of the process; it just spreads out in a million directions and produces adaptations that are essentially unpredictable.
This was brought to my attention as I was writing the entry about reptiles for my upcoming Encyclopedia of Biodiversity. Like most of you, I just assumed that any legless reptile that slithered through the undergrowth was a snake. But this is not correct. There are about a dozen different lineages of partially or wholly legless lizards, which have evolved the same adaptation as snakes, but independently. Lizards have long tails, whereas most of a snake’s length is its body. “Glass snakes” are actually lizards, without legs, and with a long tail. They are called glass snakes because they can break off parts of their tails (like broken glass) to confuse a predator that is pursuing them. Real snakes cannot do this. Legless lizards are examples of evolutionary convergence, where different lineages of animals independently evolve the same adaptation.
One day about a billion years ago (seems like yesterday), the first plant cells got their chloroplasts. These are the green structures that make sunlight into food. It might really have just happened in one day. Photosynthetic bacteria invaded, or were consumed by, larger cells with nuclei. But instead of killing or dying, these bacteria took up residence inside the plant cell. It was a mutually beneficial relationship; the bacteria made food from sunlight, and the larger cell provided fertilizer and protection. The chloroplasts of plants are cells inside of cells. From this event, the red algae and the green algae separately evolved. Some of the green algae evolved into land plants.
But there were some other large cells that also consumed, or were invaded by, the red or green algae. And the red or green algal cells became the chloroplasts of what are today the brown algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and euglenas. (Brown algae are the large seaweeds.) That is, brown algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and euglenas have chloroplasts that are cells inside of cells inside of cells. The chloroplasts of dinoflagellates even have little degenerated nuclei inside of them! Just as legless reptiles evolved several times, so did chloroplasts.
The evolutionary process tries endless combinations of mutations and adaptations, resulting in a living world that has much more variety that is hidden than variety that is obvious.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Cottonwood Investments
This essay appeared on my website on February 15, 2009.
How many of you would build a home out of cottonwood? I doubt that anybody would do this. This kind of wood is not strong. Although cottonwood trees grow tall and their trunks are large, they do not live very long. They live along creeks and rivers, where periodic floods turn trees into floating logs.
In contrast, most oak trees have very strong wood. Strong wood is more expensive for a tree to produce than is weak wood. Oaks live for centuries, and strong wood is a necessary investment, but it would be a wasted investment for a cottonwood, which would be probably be killed by a flood before a century has passed. Cottonwood trees follow the James Dean philosophy of life: live fast and die young. Oak trees grow slowly and live a long time. Both patterns of life are adaptations to their circumstances: the first to a temporary habitat, the second to a stable habitat.
Yet another approach to life is found in alder trees. Alders, like cottonwoods, live in streamside habitats where floods frequently destroy them. The 2007 floods in Oklahoma destroyed almost every alder tree that I could see. But alders produce numerous small trunks from a strong underground rootstock. Within a couple of months of the floods, nearly all of the alders had resprouted. An alder clump may persist for centuries, even though each of its trunks may live only for a few decades.
The near-collapse of the financial sector resulted from cheap investments that were not intended to last. For a brief time, these investments yielded immense profits to a few people, but failure was built into the system. Financial markets invested like cottonwoods. The problem is that a nation is supposed to survive for a long time, like a forest of oaks, not like a streamside with cottonwoods. If the United States intends to persist, the correct way to invest is for the long term.
In nature, cottonwoods cannot survive in oak forests. But on Wall Street, all of the biggest corporations followed the cottonwood type of investment and, in effect, forced it on the entire system. By investing in the short term, banks and other financial firms forced their environment to become unstable, and took billions of dollars down with them. Their approach to life turned a country, and a world, into a habitat that lives fast and dies young.
How many of you would build a home out of cottonwood? I doubt that anybody would do this. This kind of wood is not strong. Although cottonwood trees grow tall and their trunks are large, they do not live very long. They live along creeks and rivers, where periodic floods turn trees into floating logs.
In contrast, most oak trees have very strong wood. Strong wood is more expensive for a tree to produce than is weak wood. Oaks live for centuries, and strong wood is a necessary investment, but it would be a wasted investment for a cottonwood, which would be probably be killed by a flood before a century has passed. Cottonwood trees follow the James Dean philosophy of life: live fast and die young. Oak trees grow slowly and live a long time. Both patterns of life are adaptations to their circumstances: the first to a temporary habitat, the second to a stable habitat.
Yet another approach to life is found in alder trees. Alders, like cottonwoods, live in streamside habitats where floods frequently destroy them. The 2007 floods in Oklahoma destroyed almost every alder tree that I could see. But alders produce numerous small trunks from a strong underground rootstock. Within a couple of months of the floods, nearly all of the alders had resprouted. An alder clump may persist for centuries, even though each of its trunks may live only for a few decades.
The near-collapse of the financial sector resulted from cheap investments that were not intended to last. For a brief time, these investments yielded immense profits to a few people, but failure was built into the system. Financial markets invested like cottonwoods. The problem is that a nation is supposed to survive for a long time, like a forest of oaks, not like a streamside with cottonwoods. If the United States intends to persist, the correct way to invest is for the long term.
In nature, cottonwoods cannot survive in oak forests. But on Wall Street, all of the biggest corporations followed the cottonwood type of investment and, in effect, forced it on the entire system. By investing in the short term, banks and other financial firms forced their environment to become unstable, and took billions of dollars down with them. Their approach to life turned a country, and a world, into a habitat that lives fast and dies young.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Conservatives and their Alternate Planet
Have you noticed that conservatives live on a different planet? This is nowhere more evident than in their response to global warming. They deny the reality of one of the best attested facts in human existence. And they bolster it with appeals to religion, making things up that are not even in their scriptures.
In fact, we are all living on a different planet. As Bill McKibben points out in his new book, Eaarth, we no longer live on the old, comfortable planet Earth, but on a planet (which he calls Eaarth) in which global warming and its consequences have already become the norm. Political and religious conservatives have not yet reconciled themselves with the reality of Earth, much less of Eaarth.
The events of this week illustrate the fact perfectly. Three events have occurred that, while ignored by many people, are hugely ominous for the future of our planet.
First, climate scientists have predicted that areas near the oceans would get more rainfall, and get it in the form of big storms. They intended this as a future prediction, but it is the major fact of reality right now in Pakistan, which is having the worst floods in its history.
Second, climate scientists have predicted that areas in the middle of continents would experience droughts and heat waves. This is happening right now in Russia, at the same moment that Pakistan is flooded. Russia had not experienced temperatures of 100 F during the time that reliable records have been kept, but they have had temperatures over 100 F for almost two weeks now. The result has been a massive drought, with the biggest outbreak of forest fires in their history.
Third, climate scientists have predicted interruptions in agricultural productivity and international trade in agricultural products. This has just happened, today. On August 5, 2010, Russia announced that it was banning grain exports for the rest of the year. Add this to the near collapse of Australian grain production, and the price of grain on the international market will get even higher—which will, of course, affect poor people the most. Most Americans may not notice, because we can afford to pay almost any price for food, or so we think.
There are three stages of conservative response to global warming. The first stage is to deny that it is happening. The second stage is to claim that it is happening but is not being influenced by human activity. They are already beginning this second stage. The third stage is to just say that, oh well, we can’t do anything about it so we might as well go ahead and burn all the oil we want to.
These three viewpoints all contradict one another, but conservatives can comfortably accommodate them, because evolution has given us brains capable of maintaining mutually contradictory thoughts. Science has given us a way to transcend the limitations of our ape brains, but conservatives appear in this case to have no use for science.
In fact, we are all living on a different planet. As Bill McKibben points out in his new book, Eaarth, we no longer live on the old, comfortable planet Earth, but on a planet (which he calls Eaarth) in which global warming and its consequences have already become the norm. Political and religious conservatives have not yet reconciled themselves with the reality of Earth, much less of Eaarth.
The events of this week illustrate the fact perfectly. Three events have occurred that, while ignored by many people, are hugely ominous for the future of our planet.
First, climate scientists have predicted that areas near the oceans would get more rainfall, and get it in the form of big storms. They intended this as a future prediction, but it is the major fact of reality right now in Pakistan, which is having the worst floods in its history.
Second, climate scientists have predicted that areas in the middle of continents would experience droughts and heat waves. This is happening right now in Russia, at the same moment that Pakistan is flooded. Russia had not experienced temperatures of 100 F during the time that reliable records have been kept, but they have had temperatures over 100 F for almost two weeks now. The result has been a massive drought, with the biggest outbreak of forest fires in their history.
Third, climate scientists have predicted interruptions in agricultural productivity and international trade in agricultural products. This has just happened, today. On August 5, 2010, Russia announced that it was banning grain exports for the rest of the year. Add this to the near collapse of Australian grain production, and the price of grain on the international market will get even higher—which will, of course, affect poor people the most. Most Americans may not notice, because we can afford to pay almost any price for food, or so we think.
There are three stages of conservative response to global warming. The first stage is to deny that it is happening. The second stage is to claim that it is happening but is not being influenced by human activity. They are already beginning this second stage. The third stage is to just say that, oh well, we can’t do anything about it so we might as well go ahead and burn all the oil we want to.
These three viewpoints all contradict one another, but conservatives can comfortably accommodate them, because evolution has given us brains capable of maintaining mutually contradictory thoughts. Science has given us a way to transcend the limitations of our ape brains, but conservatives appear in this case to have no use for science.
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