Enlightened Self Interest

In what is part of a growing trend across Democratic America, California has once again decided to take advantage of its right to enact policy independent of that of the federal government. The matter at hand is emissions ceilings, specifically the fact that they are not low enough. The old arguments for both sides of the environmental debate were on display as California moved to cut its emission by 25% by 2020. But there was a very strong argument on the side of the environmentalists: the fact that California's water supply depends very much on the rate at which the state's mountain ice-packs vanish in this coming century. California is no stranger to environmental ills. Even the tribes who inhabited the Los Angeles area before the arrival of the missionaries had to deal with smog from their fires being trapped by the mountains which surround the area. So it is somewhat fitting then that California enact some of the most stringent emissions regulations in the nation. And as the old maxim states, "as California goes, so goes the nation." Well, perhaps that is not such an old saying. On the surface this seems ludicrous. California? California can seem so different from the rest of the nation that we forget that it's just ahead of the curve. Culturally this is immediately obvious if you think about it. Fast food, surfing, (and by extension board sports of all types) Hollywood, agribusiness, Disney, megachurches, several different types of music in poor taste, (sorry, but good music mostly comes from the Southeast) highways (actually we got these from Germany) sprawl, strip malls, and, of course, politics. It is that last one that I am concerned with. For the past few decades, California has indeed led the way. Think of Proposition 13, or Proposition 187. The modern conservative movement is based out of Orange County. (And you thought the worst thing they produced was extremely bad television!) The issues that matter in California become the issues that matter for the country in a few years time. That is why I am optimistic about recent trends in the Golden State. Although, to be honest, I think they should have kept Richard Nixon to themselves.

Eyes on 2006: Ohio Edition

As the 2006 elections fast approach, it is time to begin my coverage of the races that may make the difference in November. The first stop is Ohio, a so called "bellwether" in American politics. This year in Ohio, there are two big races, one for the Governorship, and one for the Senate. Governor Bob Taft is not allowed to run again, so the contest will be between Ken Blackwell, the Ohio Secretary of State, and Ted Strickland, a member of the House of Representatives. Ken Blackwell has the dubious honor of being called the Katherine Harris of 2004 for his stringent voter registration requirements which removed thousands of peoples from the voting rolls. (More on Ms. Harris later) Some Democrats have gone so far as to say that Kerry would be in the White House now were it not for Mr. Blackwell. But residual Democratic anger from 2004 is not one of Blackwell's big problems. Instead, Ohio, like much of the nation, is in a fairly anti-Republican mood at the moment. While elsewhere incumbency and unmatched candidates will mean Republicans will hold on to their seats, in this open election between two strong candidates, being a Democrat may be the critical advantage in the race. In the Senate, Mike DeWine is fighting for his political life against Representative Sherrod Brown. Unlike in the race for Governor, DeWine's downfall may come from the conservatives in his own party. DeWine has exhibited something of an independent streak of late. He was one of the 14 Senators who formed the compromise on the Judicial filibuster, incurring the wrath of the Right. I predict that the Democrats will ultimately prevail in both races.

Hail Malthus

Since the publication of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared
Diamond has become one of the nation's foremost public intellectuals. He is probably one of the few people living today who can decide to write "a short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years" and actually pull it off. So when 69-year-old Jared Diamond decides to spend several years of his life writing a massive treatise on the environmental impact of human societies, it is definitely a good idea to pay attention to what he has to say. In this work, Diamond moves closer to the Social Sciences than he ever has before, to the point where he makes some (delicately worded) critiques of the Bush administrations environmental policies. But diamond is, first and foremost, a natural scientist. Interestingly, his science background results in what I think is a very materialist political philosophy. This manifested itself in Collapse's section on the Rwandan Genocide. On the surface, this terrible event resulted from the Hutu's longstanding hatred for the minority Tutsi. But then Diamond brings in a conundrum: an ethnically homogeneous Hutu village where mass killings nevertheless took place. (Note: In this area Diamond is mainly relating the research of other scholars, who he credits in the book) The real culprit in Rwanda? Overpopulation. Diamond shows, quite convincingly, how the increasing population density led to ever smaller plots of land for the farmers of Rwanda, how land became an object of tremendous conflict. This in turn exacerbated strife between those with less (often Hutu) and those with more. (Often Tutsi) Ludicrous, I thought. What about The Netherlands? What about Singapore? I thought Diamond's concern about global population was alarmist, a throwback to concerns about expanding third-world populations a few decades ago. But, in the end, Jared Diamond struck an optimistic tone. He related the story of his visit to the Netherlands, where he was told about a storm surge in the 1950's. It was devastating. The floodwaters killed over 2,000 people of all walks of life. The citizens of the Netherlands realized that they had to work together in order to survive, because the threat of oblivion hangs over all of the citizens of The Netherlands, so matter how rich or powerful they may be. It's a piece of wisdom our own leaders should absorb. For while the powerful do not care when the Lower Ninth Ward floods, they may realize the threat that looms over all civilizations if the waters from the East River enter the UN Security Council chamber.

The Curse of Abundance

Something about the recent conflict in Lebanon continues to bother me. In fact, something bothers me about the many conflicts centering around Israel and Lebanon over the last 60 or so years. The problem is that none of these conflicts, not even the present one, have much to do with religion at all. The problem with the current conflicts in the middle east is that the region is cursed with a vital natural resource. Valuable natural resources are one of the worst problems to ever plague the nation-state. Must-have resources from oil to diamonds to opium, bring blood to the land they occupy. It is supposedly a fact of life that with disturbance in the Middle East, oil prices rise. But what if we are reversing cause and effect? Take, for instance, the 1973 OAPEC oil embargo. On the surface, this is a clear instance of cause and effect. The Yom Kippur War was the proximate cause of the embargo, and thus the spike in oil prices. But the root instability in the region, and across the third-world, was due to oil. Facing stagflation, Nixon made the decision to end the gold standard. While this was good for American industry, the value of raw goods produced elsewhere began to depreciate. While the dollar fell, so did the price of oil. The economies of Israel's neighbors suffered, and instability increased. Ergo the Yom Kippur War. I doubt the current conflict could happen without the price of oil where it is at now. Iran fills Hezbollah's coffers with oil money. Ahmedinejad has the audacity to do this because he knows rational Westerners can do little to retaliate without disturbing world oil markets further, and incurring the wrath of Russia and China. Oil is not only haunting the Shiite crescent. Another big supplier, Sudan, has literally been able to get away with murder because of demand for crude. China has (so far, at least) essentially obstructed efforts by the Security Council to take action on the genocide in Darfur because it needs new oil markets. Do we live in an era of religious fanaticism? Perhaps. But surely God is not the cause of oil nearing $80 a barrel.

Geeks Unite!

Allow your eyes to wander over to the right side of the screen and a link proclaiming "Save The Internet!" meets your gaze. Yes, I am talking about the principle called Network Neutrality, which has governed the World Wide Web since its inception. Net Neutrality commonly refers to a series of agreements between Internet Service Providers, (often your local phone or cable company) online service providers, and users of the internet. These agreements ensure an equal level of service to all internet users. But a cadre of special interest groups are pushing Congress to abandon the regulations that allow us to use the internet uninhibited. In its first decade of serious use, the government has done a surprisingly good job of keeping the internet free and open. We all know the economic, as well as communication benefits this as given our society. In a time with increased media consolidation, the internet is one of the last figurative n"public squares" open for the general public. To begin offering two tiers of service is a step down a slippery slope, which leads to a world where what we see on the internet is controlled not by us, but by large corporations, much like TV today. Of course, this issue is actually quite complicated, and the motivations of some groups in supporting neutrality are questionable. Still, the fact remains that without it, the internet would be something very different from what most United States citizens have come to rely on daily.