This post is about the efforts of the Obama administration to institute a new health care system, which are likely to be disallowed as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court this week. The part which is unconstitutional is mandatory coverage, that is, a mandate that everyone should carry health care insurance or face a fine. The idea of mandatory insurance is not new, and that is the point of this post.
When Obama introduced his health care plan to Congress, his advisors were comfortable with the idea that Congress had the constitutional power to mandate that all Americans purchase (or have themselves enrolled in) some form of health care insurance. The idea of mandatory coverage had been knocked around discussions of health care reform for some time, with no concern about Congressional power, mostly by Republican proposers.
The reason mandatory coverage (by private insurance companies and/or Medicaid) was popular with Republicans was that it appeared to be a good alternative to single-payer health care insurance administered exclusively by the Federal government. Republicans did not and do not like the idea of single-payer insurance because, for one thing, it involves a large government program, and for another, it might cut in to the business and profits of private health care insurers.
Making the purchase of insurance mandatory would cover a big hole in the economics of health care and hold down the cost of insurance for everyone. It’s not the most critical problem in health care today, but it is a serious problem; many personal bankruptcies are forced by the cost of uninsured health care. Republicans, who preach personal responsibility, believe that everyone who is rational would buy health insurance coverage as soon as possible anyway. Making this mandatory, however, would require that the government subsidize the cost of coverage for those who could not afford it.
This is not as much of a problem to Republicans as single-payer insurance would be. Altering the system to put everyone under a single-payer “insurance” plan would also solve the problem of unpaid bills, but that might involve changes that the private health insurance business would find unsatisfactory. The Republicans could not tolerate that any private business should be discommoded, much less run out of town.
What has happened to the idea of mandatory insurance, which was originally the Republican answer to the problem? Unfortunately for this idea, it was adopted by a Democratic administration. The Republican response to this adoption was a change from enthusiastic acceptance to adamant rejection. No Republican in Congress would vote for it. Over 250 million dollars in advertising has been devoted to selling the American people on the idea that mandatory insurance, along with all the other parts of the new health care bill, is wrong and un-American.
Republican attorneys general of a majority of American states have sued in federal court to block this new health care proposal. The Supreme Court is about to issue a decision on the constitutionality of this proposal, and if their known proclivities hold true, the Court will find a reason to declare part or even all of the proposal unsound.
So an idea, which may or may not be fundamentally sound, is treated by Republicans as if it is only good when they propose it, not when Democrats accept it. This type of thinking is difficult for the average person to understand. Most people would consider an idea on its merits.
This is what we can expect from Republicans. They hate Democrats and Democratic ideas, even if those ideas used to be Republican ideas. There is even reason to suspect that they hate Democrats specifically because they are part black.
This also shows that the only really and truly reasonable solution to the problem of unpaid health care bills is single payer health insurance with a gradual phaseout of private health insurance companies. Overhead will be much less, total costs will be less, and it will be much fairer to everyone. The detailed advantages of the single payer plan will be left to another post.
Paul Krugman’s latest column in the New York Times bares the ugly truth for all to see: the upper class, those who are in control of the economy, want to use the Great Recession as an excuse cut social programs from government spending and starve the already suffering under class into submission.
There is clearly no other reason why those in control of the economy do not pursue the social spending policies that have been shown to promote growth. Krugman says that he spoke to those in charge in the United Kingdom (which happens to have easy access to huge amounts of credit), and they admitted that “it is essential [to] shrink the size of the state”. They don’t want the economy to get better.
As a matter of fact, the United States has access to even more credit than the United Kingdom: Federal investment instruments are selling like hotcakes at incredibly low interest rates. But neither the UK nor the US is willing to use their borrowing ability to shore up their economies. What they want is to eliminate social spending from government budgets, using the economic crisis as an excuse.
Contrast this position with that of the Chinese government (who are as evil as they come on human rights policies): sensitive to a reduction in their growth rate, they have instituted increased government spending policies that will improve growth again in the summer of 2012. Those policies: increased infrastructure spending, increased small loans to consumers, increased money to pensioners. They did the same thing in 2007-8, only on a larger scale, and as a result, China’s economy resisted the Great Recession.
China doesn’t want their growth rate to drop below 8% because it may cause economic discomfort for the people. This may cause them to complain about government policies that they find intellectually objectionable, but would otherwise have accepted because of their prosperity. In particular, there is the lack of “rule of law” (as so poetically described by Chen Guangcheng in his letter to the American people, published in the New York Times last week) and the censorship that prevents people from talking freely about their problems.
So the Chinese, to prevent social unrest, have instituted pro-growth policies quietly at the very onset of a mild drop in GDP growth rate. The rest of the world, with the exception of countries like Sweden and Austria (with “big government” policies), are by and large sticking to austerity policies. As a result, there is continued weakness and even declines in GDP. Economic weakness has stimulated mass demonstrations, which became violent in the UK.
The upper class thinks that they can handle the demonstrations with restricted movement, pepper spray, and arrests. Limited news coverage and compassion fatigue combined with exhaustion and the crush of personal problems inhibits persistent demonstrations. Even voting and the democratic process is of no help because politicians in all parties have been bought and paid for by the upper class.
Conditions that are this frustrating could lead to organized insurrection and possibly even revolutionary violence. This worst outcome could be easily prevented.
The truth is that the upper class needs the under class as much as the under class needs the upper class. Both are part of an organic whole, a functioning society that contains and sustains all classes of people. The classes must work together for the benefit of society as a whole.
President Obama and the morality of war
There are currently several hundred people (mostly extreme Islamist) who are committed to waging war on the United States by means of “terrorist attacks”: bombings, shootings, and the like. Airplanes have been a favorite target. Most of the people who declare themselves to be our enemies live in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. They advertise by logging on to the Internet, and they make many threats, some of which they carry out. There is no question that these people have a lot to be angry about, but they are not attacking soldiers, they are deliberately killing innocent civilians.
One of the most famous was an American citizen who had converted to Islam and was living in Yemen, broadcasting sermons that called on fellow extremists to carry out bombings and other attacks. He was the inspiration for the Islamic military psychiatrist who went over the edge after listening to his sermons and shot a number of fellow American soldiers in cold blood. It would have been extremely difficult to mount an operation to capture this preacher, as dangerous as the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Instead, a drone aircraft fired a missile at the vehicle the preacher was riding in and killed him as well as the other occupant of the vehicle. His son, only sixteen years old, began to preach in the same way and was dispatched with another missile.
Most of us know that there has been a dramatic increase in drone missile attacks over the last few years against people labelled as terrorists. Few of us know that, unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration has not captured any terrorist suspects (well, one.) The current administration has instead killed several hundred with missiles fired from drones.
The Pentagon and the CIA have entire departments that follow individual suspects and determine whether they are terrorists, eventually selecting some of them for death. A missile fired from a drone can destroy a car and all its occupants. The drones have been operating over large areas, identifying numerous targets.
The problem that Obama has is that there are people out there actively trying to kill Americans, and unless the federal government does something to stop them, they will eventually succeed again as they did on September 11, 2001. It is moral in war to kill someone if he is trying to kill you and there is no other way to stop him (negotiation is impossible and capture is extremely dangerous.) Drones have evolved as the most effective weapon against individuals who want to kill us and who live in inaccessible areas.
The end result of this logical evolution of force is that there are now two government agencies that fly drones equipped with missiles, the CIA and the Pentagon, and both agencies have lists of people who are marked for death. President Obama has taken responsibility for personally approving each kill. He has been very aggressive about limiting collateral deaths and has instituted strict rules of engagement that have greatly reduced the number of people killed in each strike. Obama has been an aggressive, hands on leader in the “fight against terrorism.”
The problem with this strategy of drone missile attacks is that it stimulates intense negative reactions from the civilians in the target areas, especially those directly affected by strikes. Those traumatized civilians, who are already not fans of America, quickly become outraged enemies. They will have few nearby targets on which to vent their wrath but they have long memories.
The US, using a dramatic technological advance which is difficult to counter, has eliminated the top leadership of most of the groups dedicated to waging war against us, and the new leaders of these groups have strong popular support but no way to fight back. Inevitably, these groups will evolve their strategy and tactics to meet this new threat from America.
What does this evolution of terrorists tell us? That something is going on that is deeper than anyone involved realizes. The secret is that “terrorism” cannot be eliminated, and it can never succeed in destroying society. All this sincere effort will never end terrorism, only hold it back for a while.
Mitt Romney spent a reported 25 years working in the world of “high finance.” He specialized in venture capital and private equity (leveraged buyouts.) In that period he earned a large amount of money (in addition to that which he inherited from his father) and he now reportedly has a net worth of 250 million dollars. He retired from “high finance” many years ago and has been employed as a governor of Massachusetts as well as gaining the reputation of having saved the 2000 Olympics. During his retirement he has continued to receive large amounts of money from his financial firm based on contracts he was given when he was Chief Executive Officer; reportedly he is presently receiving ten million dollars a year.
What did Mr Romney do when he worked in “high finance”? He helped to arrange funding to start a big box retailer that became successful and made a big profit. He also bought out a number of companies through the magic of “leveraged buyouts.” What happens when you do a leveraged buyout is that you buy a company (successful or not) and pay for it with about 1/4 to 1/10 of your own money (capital) and a about 60-90% in the form of a loan that is written in such a way that the payments of interest and principal on the loan are said to come from the operations of the company itself (in effect, taking out a loan on the value of the company and putting the responsibility for paying on the company (since you’ve just bought control of the company, you can do that.))
The magic of a “leveraged buyout” is invoked in the creation of a loan based on the ability of a company to pay. Once you control the company, you can do anything you want with it. In order to create profits that can be stripped out, parts of the company that have more value can be sold off and their functions outsourced. It is not hard to make one employee do the work of two, reducing payroll costs. Theoretically, you could create improvements in the company that would increase its profitability and viability, but in most cases, the changes are made with the primary motivation of stripping profits and reducing costs. The kicker comes when you have stripped the company of tangible assets and laid off any extra employees, creating a company that appears to be profitable, you can sell the whole thing for a large profit, especially if the stock market is going up at the time.
The con in the “leveraged buyout” is the loan paid by the victim company’s profits. Naturally some people object to this, whence we get the term “hostile takeover.”
Unfortunately (and Mitt Romney has nothing to do with this) the private equity markets came to a standstill in late 2007, after the real estate market and before the election of Barack Obama.
The point I am trying to make is that Mitt Romney inherited a lot of money, then spent most of his working life buying out companies and stripping them of assets before selling them again. If you read my previous post, you will, I hope, put two and two together: Willard Mitt Romney is a sociopath who made an enormous amount of money destroying vulnerable companies. The best part is that his enormous income was taxed at a total of 15% instead of the 30-50% rate that the average salaryman has to fork over to the government.
(if you don’t believe me, go to Wikipedia and read the entries on private equity and venture capital.)
Most people, unless they are obsessively following the presidential election campaign, missed the “expose” of something that Mr Romney did when he was sixteen years old. The rationale for dismissing this “expose” is that “he was only sixteen, and kids do dumb things in high school.” It is not that simple. If, for example, we were told that Mr Romney had gotten so drunk that he was taken to the emergency room, we probably wouldn’t say “kids do dumb things in high school.” , because we know that “kids” who abuse alcohol tend to become alcoholics later in life. This incident has a similar portent in regards to Mr Romney’s personality.
The incident, as described by several of the participants, involved an attack on a fellow student. Mr Romney was the leader of a group of four or five fellow students who chased down another student, forcibly restrained him, and cut his hair (with scissors, we assume.) Why was Mr Romney motivated to do this? It was said that the victim had unusually long, bleached blonde hair. It was not said that he was gay, but it is very likely that Mr Romney and his fellow assailants were motivated by that perception. In fact, the victim much later came out as being gay.
This incident, if interpreted by today’s standards, would be perceived as a physical assault coupled with “unlawful detention” (forcibly restraining the victim, akin to a brief kidnapping.) In addition, Mr Romney and his fellow assailants would be liable to be charged as adults. In today’s climate, an incident such as this would be likely to have serious criminal consequences.
More important, this behavior is a symptom of a condition known as sociopathy, that is a lifelong personality pattern characterized by lack of internal constraints that prevent behavior that violates the person and rights of another. Sociopathy is a condition that begins in adolescence if not earlier, and leads in many cases to a lifetime of criminal behavior with a stunning lack of guilt feelings or concern for other’s hurt feelings. Sociopaths are greatly over-represented among prison inmates as well as among successful stock traders.
This incident is clear evidence of an already well developed sociopathic personality. His response to questions about the incident show even more clearly his lack of concern for other’s feelings. He claimed to not remember the incident, then offered a half-hearted apology.
Finally, Mr Romney claimed that the possibility of the victim’s being gay wouldn’t even have occurred to him “in those days.” I, for one, clearly recall that the issue of homosexuality was very much in the consciousness of teenagers in the 1960’s, and prejudice against those who were thought to be gay was extremely strong and openly expressed. Persons thought to be homosexual (and it was usually hidden) were considered fair game for verbal and sometimes physical abuse by those who felt the urge to abuse someone.
It is abundantly clear from Mr Romney’s personal history that he suffers from sociopathy. It is not just the incident we have discussed, but his career as chief executive officer of the private equity fund Bain also speaks strongly in favor of his sociopathy. What better occupation for a sociopath than one which involves buying companies, stripping them of their assets, and destroying the careers of those who worked for them?
A vote for Mr Romney is a vote for the practical expression of sociopathic tendencies by our federal government.
Romney and Mormonism
There has been too much tolerance for Willard Mitt Romney’s religion. The Mormon Church is seen by most people as “just another church” like the Catholic Church, the Protestant denominations, the Baptists, the Jewish religion, and even (Heaven forgive us!) Islam.
In fact, the Mormon Church is a cult. Members swear secret oaths to the Church. Thanks to a number of ex-Mormons, these formerly secret oaths have been outed, and are available (like everything else nowadays) on the Internet. If you are interested, I suggest you take a look. The most disturbing of these oaths is the one in which members swear loyalty to the Church over all other loyalties, even to the extent of swearing to sacrifice their lives and liberties to the Church.
We already know that Mormons pay ten percent of their incomes to the Church, but how many people know that loyal Mormons are committed to lay down their very lives for the benefit of the Church?
The power of this oath of loyalty to the Church is so strong that it takes precedence over all other oaths, even the oath that a person takes when he or she is sworn in to the office of the Presidency. If Mr Romney were to be elected as President(Heaven forbid!), he would still be bound by his oath to the Church over his oath to protect the Constitution. The benefit of the Mormon Church would take precedence over protection of the Constitution.
Can you see where I am going with this? This means that, if Mr Romney is elected President, the well-being of the United States would be less important to him than the good of the Mormon Church. Any time that the Mormon Church might be hurt by an action that he might take as President, he would think twice and not take that action. Any time the Mormon Church might benefit from an action he could take as President, he would take that action (if he could get away with it.)
This is different, qualitatively, than the consequences of electing a Catholic (say, for example, John Fitzgerald Kennedy) to the Presidency. For those of you not yet born in 1960 who might not have heard this, Mr Kennedy made a categorical statement during the election campaign that he would not take any action as President that might suggest that he favored the interests of the Catholic Church over his loyalty to the United States.
We should NOT give Mr Romney the benefit of the doubt and assume that he would be willing to make a similar statement. In fact, it is of critical importance that someone should ask Mr Romney the same question that was asked of Mr Kennedy. Would you allow the Mormon Church to influence your actions as President in any way? If Mr Romney is truthful (which I doubt) he would be forced to admit that the answer is yes.
The big question before the Supreme Court is whether Congress has the authority to regulate the medical industry by doing something different: requiring everyone to buy health insurance. The question is whether the Constitution, by stating that Congress has the authority to “regulate commerce between the several states”, meant that Congress should be able to require everyone to have (to buy, or if necessary, be given) health insurance. It is clear that medical industries involve “commerce between the several states.” What is not clear is the extent of Congressional authority over the people.
We do know that Congress has the authority to forbid everyone from using cannabis, for example. Does Congress have to authority to prescribe certain behavior as well as to forbid certain behavior?
The problem that is affecting medicine in the United States, at least the one Congress wants to address, is that people who cannot afford medical care wind up going to the emergency room and getting inadequate treatment for outrageous fees that they cannot pay. The resulting bad debt forces the hospitals to obtain funding from the government for the part that insurance will not pay. The people who cannot afford to pay suffer poor treatment and eventually early death, while at the same time hospitals have to write off large fees when these people inevitably pass through their emergency rooms. There is both a monetary and a humanitarian cost to society and government.
To solve this problem on a national level, first Congress established a funding system, the requirement that everyone have insurance, to a pre-existing administration, the private insurance companies. Additional features are funding through federal sources for those who cannot pay for insurance, and regulations that control insurance company behavior to ensure an equitable system. There are many additional provisions in a bill that is reportedly 2,400 pages long.
The normal behavior of Congresspeople when faced with a large, controversial bill has impaired rational implementation of the reforms envisioned by the original bill. There are many places in which changes have been made to suit one pressure group or another. One of the big winners from the bill, it would seem, would be the insurance companies, whose business would have to increase if everyone is to be insured.
To return to the basic issue, the individual financing (personal payment) for medical care is an impediment to the cost-effective provision of medical care. Patients naturally delay medical care when they cannot afford it. Because of personal responsibility for payments, physicians must consider relative affordability or even availability of care. When prescribing a drug to treat any ailment, the doctor has to consider whether the patient can pay for it. If a patient cannot afford the medication best suited to treat his condition, the consequences of taking a less effective or more toxic drug can make the patient’s subsequent care more difficult. If the patient’s condition is not improved or he suffers toxic side effects, further care is more expensive. When the patient didn’t have enough money to pay for the best medicine, he will have even less money to pay for the treatment of toxic side effects or the worsening of his original condition. Thus, the lack of money leads to worse health and more expenses for complications.
The alternative to this cost-based treatment schedule would be a system in which the physician was free to prescribe the most effective medication in the first instance. This medication would minimize the costs that follow the initial treatment. In many cases, using the best medication that cost more would lead to lower costs in the long run. This is the theory behind the use of “insurance” to pay for medical care. Insurance would not necessarily solve the problem of initial cost, unless the company providing the insurance made the necessary assessments and provided coverage for the most cost-effective medication (formularies do not always provide the right medication based on this assessment, but they could do so.)
There is little controversy to the assertion that Americans pay more for poorer health care than many other highly developed nations. We pay approximately 50% higher overall costs for medical care than certain European countries and we have two to four years shorter life expectancy than those countries. The reasons for this problem are multiple, but the most important reason is that patients do not report for early treatment of illness and are not provided the most cost-effective initial treatments. The most important reason for this is that we have personal responsibility for payment, and our initial reaction to illness is to try to minimize initial cost, to the detriment of long term health.
The best way to reduce overall health care costs is to anticipate personal responsibility for individual payment by interposing an advanced insurance-based system for everyone. Under the insurance based system, the long term costs and benefits of medical care would be evaluated and the lessons learned applied to protocols of medical care that produce the best long term health results. By delivering feedback to medical providers in the form of protocols, the insurance based system would modify care to improve outcomes. Patients would be freed from the short-term decision making distortion that initial costs apply to the best medical care, and thus would be better motivated to do the right thing for their health. At the same time, the insurance payments paid in everyone’s name from birth will finance the medical system in a reliable, consistent fashion.
Medicare has consistently been shown to have the lowest administrative costs of any form of insurance, less than half that of private insurance companies. Therefore, we will gain the most cost savings from financing our medical care by deductions from everyone’s paychecks and universal eligibility for treatment under Medicare.
The individual mandate to purchase health insurance is, sadly, a compromise forced on the president by lack of whole-hearted support from Democrats in Congress for a real solution: the public option. The lack of support can be traced to lobbying by insurance companies against the “public option” and any other solution which might compromise the profits and control of health insurance companies. Health insurance companies are usually subsidiaries of larger insurance company conglomerates, and they spend huge quantities of money on lobbying for their interests. The insurance companies have taken a position against “single-payer” health insurance because they believe that it will have a negative impact on their businesses. They would be better informed if they lobbied for contracts to administer single payer insurance rather than opposing a critical driver of efficiency that reduces costs.
I loved this comment from the NYT online so much–in response to a Paul Krugman editorial–that I just had to quote it verbatim: (from “Kathleen” of Oakland CA)
“Mark Thomason (6:51 pm 2/19) is correct: austerity policies provide real and significant benefits to the few, the elite, the ones making the policies.
For starters, austerity policies:
– keep tax rates low for the wealthy, and for those claiming unearned income
– drive wages down, severely
– generate insecurity among workers so that they so fear for their survival that they will do as they’re told, without complaint or attempting to organize unions)
– drive prices of real property down, severely, and those with money can swoop in and buy at fire sale prices
– deprive people of the government benefits that were previously “guaranteed” so that they will distrust government and any other promises made in the future
– increase the disparity between the wealthy and non-wealthy, because what fun is it to be wealthy if it doesn’t make you stand out as “special”?
– prevent educational opportunity to the young of the non-wealthy, thereby enhancing the opportunity for the young of the wealthy, giving them an even better head start in life
– make people so fearful for their own survival that they begin to lash out at others “beneath” them, or at public employees who have it better than they do; scrabbling for scraps keeps our attention focused away from those really calling the shots
– accustom people to a life of kowtowing to employers for even poverty wages, and voila! Good help is now quite easy to find!
Austerity would not be adopted if there were no benefit to elites.”
This comment was the most popular one in the comment thread, out of 790 comments accepted. It even beat out “Winning Progressive” who usually comments first and wins the popularity contest.
It reflects a cause and effect relationship that I have always used to understand things: things that happen have reasons to happen, despite whatever reasons make it unlikely to happen. In this case, instituting austerity policies, despite their obvious history of failure in every instance in which they have been applied, still occurs under the direction of the controlling authorities. Why? Because they benefit the elites in control. The only way to change this is to wrest power, by constitutional means, from those who currently are making the great mass of people suffer needlessly for their own private benefit.
Stop the massacre in Syria with drones
“We must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere.”
The above is a quote from former President George W Bush. On its face, it seems quite reasonable. Unfortunately, he used it as a justification to spend a trillion or more dollars off budget to invade and occupy Iraq from March 2003 to the end of his presidency. Current President Barack H Obama has just ended our occupation of Iraq (too soon, it seems, for conservatives) as of the end of December 2011. Saddam Hussein was convicted in a show trial and hanged. Bush never even considered handing Hussein over to the World Court, where his life would have been spared. Total American deaths exceeded 4,000. Worst of all, the government we left behind is deeply flawed and shows signs of reverting to the repression and terror that Hussein used.
In the meantime, (March through November 2011) President Obama authorized our participation in a “no fly zone” that, liberally interpreted, protected the Libyan rebels until they were able to capture (and hot headed militia men murdered) Muammar Gaddafi. All told, the cost to the US taxpayer was said to be about a billion dollars, and no American fliers were killed.
Which of these two interventions would you prefer? Neglecting the cost, which was more humane?
What should we do about Syria? I would suggest that we use drone aircraft to initiate a “no heavy weapons zone” which would level the battlefield between Bashar al-Assad and the Free Syrian Army. The cost to us would be minimal, the likehood of civilian casualties small, and the effect on al-Assad would be lethal.
Before initiating this policy, I suggest that we obtain the consent of the Arab League. It would be impossible to obtain consent from the UN Security Council, but at least a General Assembly resolution could be requested.
Opinions, anyone?
Our prospects for the near future
The consensus of scientific opinion is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising, and has been ever since it could be accurately measured, in the late 1950’s. At first it was rising, from about 315 parts per million (ppm) in 1958, by one part per million per year. Normally, the concentration varies throughout the year by about 5 ppm, lowest in the late summer and highest in the winter. Recently the rate of increase has been gradually increasing, and now it rises nearly two parts per million per year. In July 2011, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 392 ppm.
At the same time, the average global temperature has been gradually rising; winters are showing increased snow, summers are hotter and drier. Spring comes earlier and fall is later each year. In extreme latitudes, permafrost is melting at an increasing rate. This effect, while much debated, has been shown during the last ten years to be continuing in spite of a solar minimum (when sunspots are less and the sun puts out less light and heat.)
There is also general scientific agreement that carbon dioxide levels are rising because of human industrial activity and the burning of coal and oil. The manufacture of cement is a particularly large contributor to human carbon dioxide release. This is despite the fact that, at present, human contributions to overall global carbon dioxide release are still small. Though small, the human contribution is greater than can be balanced out by forces that globally take carbon dioxide from the air: plant growth and absorption by the ocean.
The first statement, that carbon dioxide levels are increasing, cannot be gainsaid. The second statement, that humans are causing the increase, is still somewhat controversial. The actual scientific controversy has been satisfied more and more during the last ten years; this is in spite of statements to the contrary by the Administration of George W. Bush that date back to shortly after he was inaugurated. It is ironic that during the election campaign, Mr. Bush voiced his recognition of the problem of climage change and the need to do something about it.
During his Administration, Mr. Bush was at pains to instruct his entire executive staff (that is, everyone who worked for him) to downplay or deny the problem by whatever means necessary. Necessary means included censoring a scientific report and inserting language provided by the industry. Propaganda distributed by companies that produce coal and oil for burning has apparently caused much of the population of the United States to seriously question the existence of global warming and/or the human contribution to it.
Even more ironic, the Great Recession, which started in 2007, caused by the crash of mortgage securities (among other things) actually did produce an unintentional reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Though small, this reduction was significant enough to allow China to catch up to the United States in total emissions a few years early.
The most ironic fact about this entire issue is that human carbon dioxide release is estimated to represent only four percent of total global carbon dioxide release from all sources. It is to be hoped that some mechanism in nature will start absorbing carbon dioxide at a higher rate in order to counterbalance human increases; as yet, no such increase in absorption has become evident.
The environmental effects of rising carbon dioxide levels will, on the whole, be negative. Increased temperatures will result in rising sea levels as ice melts, with countries like Tuvalu that are near sea level suffering the most and possibly disappearing. The Netherlands will be hard hit, and their government is actively planning to deal with flooding that will overtop their intricate levy system.
Severe weather events are likely to increase, meaning tornados, hurricanes, and typhoons will be larger and more destructive. Wildfires due to drought are also likely to increase. Changes in the distribution of plants and animals will occur, with some species becoming extinct. Large fish and coral reefs will disappear.
All of these events, and many more, are inevitable regardless of what we do now. Only time will tell how severe and destructive climate change will be. The only thing we can be sure of is that the changes will be dramatic and will last hundreds of years. Even the half life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is unknown; estimates range from as low as five years (very unlikely) to as long as three hundred years. If the half life is fifty years, then even if we stop emitting carbon dioxide now (impossible), changes will continue for a long time.
The final irony is that these negative changes in our environment, particularly if they are severe and cause a marked decrease in population, will have a strong selective evolutionary effect. A new, changed, more viable type of human will replace the current stupid, failed type. That is, unless only cockroaches survive.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 