I have a fond little memory from one of the early multi-candidate debates in the last US election campaign. It was on prime-time TV: there were still about a dozen or so candidates in the running, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, each was standing behind a podium, and as the topic of climate change came up they were asked en masse: “So, who didn’t fly here today in a private plane, raise your hand?” The delegates all sheepishly kept their hands down but one – I forget which – raised his. “I came in yesterday,” he explained. (laughter)
So to the Copenhagen climate change summit, and all the luminaries and dignitaries and celebrities landing at København airport, many of them in private jets.
http://www.cph.dk/CPH/DK/MAIN
This tells us something about the future, and what it says is: ‘needs must.’ What are they going to do, row a boat to Copenhagen? Scale that up and you have the real, actual future. People will fly. In fact the entire new global middle class of billions will fly. And they will heat their homes. And they will eat meat, and so on. And any even remotely democratic system that tries to take away this will be out on its ear.
But we will of course move to cleaner, renewable, sustainable systems. How fast this happens depends essentially on money, which in turn depends on political will, which in turn depends on public concern. Money is required to fund new energy technology research, and — the core issue of Copenhagen this week — it is needed to buy off industrializing countries.
There’s no doubt that climate change (manmade or not) is real, and a real danger. But when scientists and academics are worried about it that means little in terms of changes to human practices. When the public gets concerned — as they now are — we get the possibility of fundamental change. This is true of the future generally, not just climate and the environment.
Between the public sentiment and the money lies political will. Essentially the political will of post-industrial economies on the one side, who find it politically easy, relatively, to pay the price of emissions constraints vs. that of developing economies which will be choked economically and therefore politically by those constraints.
Inequality
Correlating degrees warming with ecological and therefore social upheaval is important. But to think that is what the argument is about is to miss the point. The point is global inequality and its future, and how developing economies are not going to allow emissions constraints to further entrench it.
The future goes always to the most powerful side. That’s what power is for: determining the future. The sides are both strong in this dispute, so this battle will not be won or lost in Copenhagen this week. We are still in its early stages. The effects of climate change are incremental (unlike, say, nuclear holocaust) meaning there is plenty of room for postponement even if the planet can’t and won’t ultimately take it. And those who would occupy the moral high ground have burned public and private jet fuel to be there to do it, and will no doubt indulge in a bit of Smørrebrød and Frikadeller too. Needs must.
So expect the political clock to remain stuck as it has been for a while now, at ‘5 minutes to midnight,’ while the issue smolders slowly without definitive resolution — until technology advances get human energy, finally, off fossil fuels and the problem works its way out of environmental and human systems.
I was 5’6” tall and only 125 pounds. This is what I tell people when they ask what was it like being in prison at 16. Even before I pled guilty there was no real consideration given to my size, my immaturity or the prospects for my survival as I was placed in jail cells and blocks with adults. I hadn’t won a fight in years and couldn’t imagine be locked inside a cell with men as violent as reports about prisons in Virginia said. The court process was concerned with whether I was guilty or innocent; my family was lost, trying to figure out how I’d gotten myself in handcuffs.
The recent beta launch for Mac and Linux seems to have had the desired effect and has pushed Google Chrome usage quite a bit from November. In fact, the launch seems to have increased Chrome’s market share by about 10 percent making it the third most popular browser in the world, marginally squeezing out Safari which moves to the fourth place. 
The 2010 U.S. Census is about to hit full swing, and it’s critical that we commit to counting everyone.
