We live on a finite Earth. But really understanding what that means is difficult. I guess because most of us think that in our own little way we can’t really be doing any harm to the planet – I mean what’s another few grams of CO2?
Al Bartlet, University of Colorado
Well here’s Dr Albert Bartlett of the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado chatting about arithmetic! And if you go to his website, you will come across this quote on the home page:
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
Want to sit in on his famous lecture, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101”? Well you can.
The lecture is broken down into 8 10-minute videos, each of them on YouTube. The first two instalments are in this post with each of the following three days having the next two.
Trying to say anything new about the implications of the terrible disaster in the Gulf of Mexico would be impossible.
All I can do is to admit my very great discomfort at knowing that later today, I shall be returning to Phoenix by flying across the Atlantic in a Boeing 747.
A small amount of web research suggests that there are about 600 transatlantic flights a day and that my B747 will use roughly 10 tons of fuel an hour, i.e. conservatively 100 tons for the flight LHR-PHX.
So 600 x 100 = 60,000 tons of fuel every day just in flights across the Atlantic!
So pointing the finger at BP is, in a very real sense, misdirected. BP are only responding to our need for oil, in all its forms.
Do watch the videos from Prof Al Bartlett being shown on this Blog from tomorrow to understand the mathematics behind our unsustainable way of life.
What is the role of government in education? The problem of central government power and corruption in relation to education is a cause of great concern for me. I still remember learning that Abraham Lincoln was a champion of civil rights who wanted to end slavery, and that American exceptionalism defeated the aggressive Soviet Union. I also now realize that there were gaping absences from my education, like the complete absence of any classes concerning philosophy, even as an introduction that scratched the surface, or any study of the decline of empires such as Rome whose glories I studied so intensely.
Ancient Rome
If there is any quick fix for the problems I am noting, it would be decentralization of power in respect to our education system. This becomes more problematic on a daily basis, as more and more federal stimulus funds are poured into local education systems. While the beltway political community often paints this as government helping small communities, I see the benefit of a temporary boost in funding being far outweighed by the cost of our central government grabbing more and more local power. Education systems will, in the long run, be forced to either permanently entrust more of their budgetary matters to federal power, or suffer the pain of doing away with an infrastructure that big government created and, consequently, only big government can support. Decentralization would help the education system of the United States to be more diverse as well, as different regions would certainly have different educational programs, and these programs could compete in the form of their graduates to show which programs had the best results.
However, no discussion of education in the United States would be complete without taking a look at the intent of our country’s founders. Here I must thank Professor Jarrell for injecting this concept into the current discussion. In a recent LFD post addressed to me and interested others, she wrote:
The Federalist Papers made it clear, to me at least, that our founding fathers believed that the government, our federal government in particular, should have nothing to do with educating the populace.
I realize it sounds a bit radical now, but I believe that any discussion of what is right and wrong about public education today must begin with a healthy debate about whether the federal government should be involved in public education at all.
Your thoughts? Thanks!
In a very soon-to-come post, I will begin yet another discussion, one that I hope will heavily involve Professor Jarrell and many others, about the original intent of our founders in relation to public education, and whether or not there is any hope of returning to their proposed system at any point in the near future.
Therefore, it has been quite some time since I wrote my original post — which at that point was posted by Professor Jarrell with me as a guest author — in which I laid out my goals pertaining to a discussion of the United States’ education system. Since then I have discussed the positives of our system, the negatives of our system, and pointed out the view of Sir Ken Robinson, who believes that creativity should be given the same status as literacy in education systems.
We are often surprised after researching a topic to find our conclusions to be in opposition with our previous line of thought. However, sometimes it can be equally as surprising to do a great deal of research and then wind up back where you started, simply with a larger factual foundation behind. This has been the case for me throughout this entire discussion of the United States’ education system. Despite the attempt I have made to challenge my own viewpoint and think critically about my own biases, I continue to see the costs of the United States’ education system as far greater than its benefits.
Brick and mortar school building
As I have stated before, there is a great difference between formal education and learning. Or, to be more precise, perhaps I should say that formal education is merely one part, and perhaps not even that large a part, of what “learning” entails. I would suggest that the problem is not so much that the United States’ education system is damaging merely because of its existence, but rather that the greatest damage comes from society expecting far too much from this system. School is no replacement for the learning that entails integration into a complex and competitive global society that necessitates human interaction, critical thinking skills, and creativity. Sure, one can force youths into cinder block rooms and force them to learn multiplication tables and historical dates. And, to an extent, I think this is necessary in a mass society as we have today. However, this formula of forcing youths to learn facts and then having these facts regurgitated has been entrusted with far too much of what we today consider “learning,” and if we are ever to have a positive shift in our society from one of idea-accepters to idea-creators, this must change.
Learning the multiplication tables
Perhaps high school could integrate into their programs a larger degree of extracurricular internships that count for course credit — I am sure that this is an experiment that could be undertaken by a few school districts quite easily, and then expanded if it proves successful. Perhaps also school curriculum could be altered to include more classes on philosophy and economics, which I see as foundational for a solid understanding of our world. However, this alteration of core curriculum would be a much more difficult task to accomplish, and would require some serious time and thought.
Many years ago I saw an overview of airline safety rules and regulations which revealed, in my view, a disturbing double standard: airline attendants are provided with protective smoke hoods to use in the event of a crash, but passengers are not.
Could be safer?
These hoods protect your eyes from cinders and smoke, and your lungs from most toxic fumes. The hood (presuming you can get it on in an actual emergency) gives the wearer up to two minutes of precious extra breathing and visibility after a crash, which is when the vast majority of airline crash deaths occur: not during the crash, but afterwards as survivors try to escape the burning wreckage.
A simple, compact smoke hood
That’s right. The statistics clearly show that most of us, up to 75 or 80%, survive the actual impact; it is the dark, confusion, smoke, toxic fumes, and the inability to see or breathe that cause up to 80% of all fatalities in plane crashes.
The airline attendants and crew are provided with officially sanctioned smoke hoods for their use during an emergency, presumably to stay alert and safe enough to help blinded, coughing, choking passengers out to safety … maybe. Once a plane starts smoldering, one has only about 90 seconds to get out alive.
Well, I’m not a big fan of restricted access to a product that I believe could save my life or the lives of my children. So I rattled some cages, asked some airline personnel and made some calls and it turns out, at the time I was pushing this issue, the FAA was considering — as it had been for many years — several different patent-pending smoke hood models for passengers.
In fact, according to the FAA, they were considering so many smoke hood models that it would take some time to find “the” right one.
The FAA banned all such masks until they found “the one.” As of press time, “the one” had not yet been approved. So passengers remain unprotected, and dying.
So I contacted a company in the UK that sold the smoke holds which led me to a distributor in Fort Worth, Texas. As it turned out, I was living in Dallas at the time so could drive to the vendor to do business.
The vendor informed me that in order for him to sell me the smoke hoods at about $60 a pop, I would have to be a business. I asked him what was the smallest order he had ever filled for a business. He said six.
So I instantly became an academic consulting business and ordered six smoke hoods. Within a couple of days, I was the proud owner of six orange-colored, travel savvy smoke hoods for any type of fire or smoke emergency, including in hotel rooms, on cruise ships, and in the cabin of an airplane. This, by the way, was in 1990, TWENTY years ago!
So, I wonder how that federal legislation that is supposed to provide passengers with the same protection as airline employees is coming along these days?
The next time you board a commercial flight, try to get a peek at the safety equipment provided to the airline attendants. Then, you’ll have to ask the attendant why the same safety equipment is not made available to passengers.
Does anyone else see how perverted this story is? A company which is 60% owned by the U.S. Treasury, in other words, 60% owned by taxpayers — not voluntary shareholders, but TAXPAYERS, has hired a private investment banking company to take the company public.
That is, to be sold to public stockholders. For a profit. Which is going to be distributed to whom? The government. Who took the company over by edict, essentially by force, ignoring lawfully binding financial contracts in the process. Oh, yes, technically G.M. went through a “banktuptcy,” but when one of the two involved parties is the federal government — the one who makes up the rules of the game — then it isn’t a game anymore. It’s “do it, or else!”
GM Headquarters
Absolutely unbelievable. This IPO should not be happening. The bailout should not have happened. None of this should have happened. If the company cannot generate a profit in the marketplace, then it should go bankrupt and its resources freed up to be used where they are most valued by the marketplace.
However, the fact that it’s “for students” does not mean that others aren’t encouraged to check it out! (Who says you need to be in school to be a student, anyways?)
The European Union
My article in this issue, “The European Union: Eurocrats and the Eurosphere,” discusses a few problems that I see with the European Union. The article begins:
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, European governments came under attack for their colonial policies in the African continent. One of the primary claims made by pan-Africanists and other anti-European individuals was that such European policies denied the peoples of Africa the right of self-determination. For example, the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, drafted at a 1920 convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association led by Marcus Garby, stated, “We believe in the self-determination of all peoples.” Through policies ranging from direct rule via military force to indirect rule via forced economic dependency, European governments were holding African countries back from determining their own course.
While the modern “third world” certainly is not free from the tethers of traditional western powers, the situation has greatly improved from what it was a hundred years ago. However, the modern European governments now are directly denying the right of self-determination not to the peoples of other continents, but to the peoples of Europe itself. Considering the rhetoric surrounding the European Union, such as a commitment to “sustainable development” and the goals of “peace, prosperity and freedom” for the people of Europe, this is a sad irony indeed.
Other articles in this issue of the FPH include:
“The War on Terror and Sun Tzu: Is American Strategy Sound?”,
“Why Conservatives Should Hate Our Foreign Policy,” and
“Law or Hoax? Disproving Democratic Peace Theory.”
Learning from Dogs 