Green Options

With Scott Brown’s Senate win pushing health care to the back burner, Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham are blazing the bipartisan trail toward Senate adoption of an energy reform and climate change bill.

Fertility rates are declining around the world and most of what is written about this trend casts it in a positive light.  The cover story of last November’s Economist magazine carried the headline: “Falling Fertility - How the Population Problem is Solving Itself.”  It claimed that countries like China are enjoying a “demographic dividend” over the coming decades.  As positive as an end to human population increase might be for the planet, the question that is not getting much attention is, “what next?”  After population reaches an inflection point and begins to decline, what will society be like?  I won’t live to see this, but my grand daughter who was born last month certainly will.

My good friend John sent me a link to the IIASA website (International Institute for Applied System Analysis) where it is possible to download data from their models of global demographic trends (I’ve made some graphs of that data).  Most such models stop at 2050 but this one goes out to 2100.  If these models are correct, there are some major challenges ahead for humanity.  The most immediate is how to feed the population that will continue to increase until about 2060.  The next is how to deal with a population that is getting very old.  If you are an American, the trends in the following graphs should be seriously unsettling.  We have a dysfunctional, hyper-partisan-dominated, political establishment that is chronically unable to find reasonable solutions to the challenges of medical costs, Social Security insolvency or immigration reform, and yet addressing these very issues will become even more critical in the future pictured in these graphs.  

Fewer and Fewer Children

The first thing that strikes me (see graph above) is the declining proportion of children.  This global trend is well under way in the developed world and is only slightly less so in North America because of immigration.  I wonder at what point colleges will start competing for the few remaining students?

The Copenhagen agreement fizzled, but failure to take global action on climate change may have greased the skids for transition from the post-9/11 epoch into a new global Eco Cold War.

Climategate’s questions recede as island nations walk out. China sizzles and the US fizzles on world stage. What are the political takeaways from week one in Copenhagen and what does it mean for the possibility of a binding agreement?

President Obama outlines his administration’s economic accomplishments, hurdles it faces, and plans to overcome these hurdles.

Climategate may give skeptics some ammunition, but those skeptics will not be at the table in Copenhagen. Still, with China and India eyeing growth and the rest of the world cautious on the cost of carbon capping, these are the three factors that will result in something rotten from Denmark.

Although the emission targets proposed by US, China are significant for climate negotiations it seems that they will have little or no impact on the carbon emissions in absolute terms.

A federal court ruling holds the Army Corps of Engineers largely responsible for flooding in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

For the first time, the United States has agreed to recognize the national mitigation measures proposed by the developing countries in the proposed climate treaty.

United States (and EU) have objected to the principles of Kyoto Protocol and demand that developing countries should also accept responsibility to reduce carbon emissions by accepting mandatory emission targets.

While passage of House a health care bill was hailed as a victory for President Obama, the Democrat divide over the Stupak-Pitts abortion amendment is already playing out in the Massachusetts race for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. After climate change compromise, inevitable escalation in Afghanistan, and little movement on gay rights, is the House health care bill’s abortion amendment a bridge too far for progressives? Will health care galvanize or divide Dems heading into 2010. And, what might it mean [...]