Listen to the Animals

Eva Meijer, a Dutch philosopher, novelist, visual artist and singer-songwriter, is an eloquent advocate for humans to change their anthropocentric view of animals. She has documented her study of animal languages and social activity in two books that will be available this month.  She is one of many scientist, academics and philosophers, who are arguing that it is time to respect the agency that creatures other than man demonstrate.    

One consciousness-shifting example of animals’ inner lives given by Meijer is that wild elephants have a call for humans that also means danger. When we see humans anew via the language of animals, it is not a pretty sight. This is what Meijer would call an anthropocentric idea (hey, let’s find out about what animals think of us), but it is a useful awakening. “It is also a bridge from studying animals as objects to noticing they are subjects – they are thinking about us, they are speaking about us,” says Meijer.

 We seem a long way from granting animals meaningful rights and yet Meijer identifies plenty of progress, from the electoral success of the Party for Animals in the Netherlands (moving from two seats in the Dutch parliament in 2006 to five in 2017) to pensions for police dogs; animal sanctuaries are undertaking “some kind of interspecies negotiations about how the place should look”; while academics such as Barbara Smuts are not simply more alert to anthropocentric assumptions about the nature of “intelligence” or “morality”, but are exploring whether animals can co-determine their research questions.

Acqua Alta in Venice

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Acqua Alta means high tide.  Venice is facing the fifth occurrence of this particular distructive tidal event in the last 20 years.

While we should try to avoid attributing a single event to climate change, the increased frequency of these exceptional tides is obviously a big concern. In our changing climate, sea levels are rising and a city such as Venice, which is also sinking, is particularly susceptible to such changes.

Cows Swim to Safety

In September after hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas, the weakened but still dangerous storm moved northward along North Carolina's coast.  Dorian’s storm surge pushed massive amounts of water into coastal streams and wetlands.  That water rushed back out to sea as the storm moved on creating an eight foot tall Tsunami that washed away horses and cows pastured on Cedar Island.  Twenty-eight horses were lost to the wave and sea, but three intrepid cows somehow managed to survive the surging waters and end up miles away on a narrow barrier island, the last piece of land before the open ocean.

"I'll say it's about 4 miles across Core Sound," Seashore spokesman B.G. Horvat told McClatchy news group, the Charlotte Observer reported. "Remember, the cows and all the horses were swept away with the water surging back. Who knows exactly, but the cows certainly have a gripping story to share."

Cows are recognized as adept swimmers comfortable with covering a few hundred yards, according to the Guardian. But swimming miles of open water in a hurricane is outside their general range of expertise.

Horvat told McClatchy that the cows are grazing peacefully after a harrowing feat of survival, but they will need to go home. He thinks they’ll have to be sedated for the boat trip back to Cedar Island.

Can Koch Kill EVs?

The disruptive nature of electric vehicles (EVs) becomes clear as more of them move onto America’s road.   One of the most significant contributions to the adoption of EVs has been the performance demonstrated by Tesla’s vehicles.  Not the auto-pilot and driverless gimmicks that Elon Musk touts, but the actual performance of Tesla’s as a transportation device. 

It turns out that the cars last five times as long and cost a fraction to maintain. The cars spend less time in the garage, don't need oil changes and other services. They are "blazing far past the 100,000-mile mark after which most fleets sell off cars to keep down the total maintenance costs."

Silly things are big expenses, like those fancy retractable door handles at $1500 a pop. The battery capacity of one car, at 330,000 miles, has dropped 23 percent. But 330K is way more than most cars ever drive, and Sonnad of Tesloop notes that Tesla has figured a lot of these problems out.

Auto manufacturers are going to go through a difficult transition and some of them may not survive intact.  EVs are simpler to assemble (despite Tesla’s ramp-up pains) so auto worker jobs will be jeopardized.  Automotive supply chains will go through a complex transition.  Auto dealerships will struggle as their assured stream of maintenance revenue shrinks.  The same can be said of a whole raft of supply chain and independent repair and services providers.   

Still, the real pain will be at the pump – today roughly 70% of US petroleum production are used for transportation, with the vast majority used for personal vehicles.  Is it any surprise that the most vocal opponents of EVs are fossil fuel companies or their paid supporters in Congress and “think tanks.”  It’s the same politicians,lobbyists and “think tanks” that form the climate change denial brigade. 

Trump's Impeachment Hearing Begins

 Trump's impeachment hearing starting right now.  Hopefully, this house will have a new occupant.

The Past Predicts the Future It Doesn't Determine the Future

“History is just one damned thing after another.”  – Attributed to historian Arnold Toynbee, who said it as a criticism of other historians who did not believe in the cyclical nature of history.

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." – Attributed to philosopher George Santayana.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." – Attributed to Mark Twain

Analytics have become all the rage in fields far from mathematics and science.  Corporations and athletic teams have embraced the concept of big data and its analysis as critical to both short and long term success.  Hundreds of companies have sprung up to both gather and perform analysis of the mountains of data that are publicly available.  And, the computer power for this analysis that once may have only belonged to governments or wealthy corporations, can now be accessed through our smart-phones.

One academic discipline that has remained skeptical of the application of mathematics formulas and scientific analysis has been the study of history.  Some historians have raised strenuous objections to reducing their work to a series of equations that suggest that events occur in both measurable and even predictable cycles throughout human existence.  These objections became quite loud in 2010 when respected biologist Peter Turchin ventured to propose that his analysis of historical, social and economic data suggested a mechanism to use data from the past to predict the future.  In a letter to the then new publication, Nature, he suggested that the year 2020 might not be remembered for its great advances but instead he issued a warning. 

… that all these advances could be derailed by mounting political instability, which was due to peak in the US and western Europe around 2020. Human societies go through predictable periods of growth, the letter explained, during which the population increases and prosperity rises. Then come equally predictable periods of decline. These “secular cycles” last two or three centuries and culminate in widespread unrest – from worker uprisings to revolution.

Since that letter was published Turchin’s analytical process has become a valid mechanism for the cross discipline study of history and the uses to which that study can be employed to model potential future events.  The data that supports the cyclical theory of history has been greatly expanded over the years, which leaves only two major variables that greatly influence the extent and dislocation of the eventual social upheaval.  First, the extent and magnitude of some external factor – say rapid anthropomorphic climate change.  And second, the response of  governments and social elites to that pressure?  

Of course, our experience with the climate crisis suggests that even if we can predict the future the way we can forecast the weather, and come up with a set of preventative measures to stave off social collapse, that does not mean we will be able to muster the political will to act on such recommendations. But while it is true that human societies have in general been far better at reconstruction after disasters than preventing them in the first place, there are exceptions. Turchin points to the US New Deal of the 1930s, which he sees as a time when American elites consented to share their growing wealth more equitably, in return for the implicit agreement that “the fundamentals of the political-economic system would not be challenged”. This pact, Turchin argues, enabled American society to exit a potentially revolutionary situation.

The climate emergency could easily become the global climate disaster over the next decades.  How we respond to that impending disaster will determine the quality of human life on this planet for generations.

"Just do it!"

Ned Haughton, a climate scientist in Australia has some words for politicians who refuse to step up and deal with the global climate emergency.