Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Global warming revisited; also, an election of national significance This article was written upstate, in picturesque Hudson Valley, hiding from the powerful sunshine, and completed during a brief heavy-duty downpour, little late to help my plants. So be it. Anyway, this summer has been disastrous, climate-wise. We East Midtown cityites were minimally bothered by the heat, being able to escape it behind air-conditioned walls, but up here in the North Hudson Valley the country garden produce, local and commercial, ripened early and badly, and ran out fast. Mowing lawns was easy if you did not mind brown foliage; the grass turned color and did not grow.. Agricultural America was in trouble, 27 mid-country states, the breadbasket, suffered the plagues of destroyed crops, cattle died for lack of fodder and water, and prices for food essentials grew alarmingly, Republicans could not blame it on President Obama, along the recession and 42 months of eight percent joblessness, since denial of climate changes as human handiwork has been a basic element of the GOP and tea party philosophy. However, finally, an impotant reversal of scientific opinion, Professor of Physics at UCAL Berkeley, Richard A Muller, who discovered and made public three years ago some climate change findings misstated by overanxious savants in Britain that threw doubt on climate change and gave impetus to the deniers' outbursts, reverted a year ago.. Growing doubtful of the magnitude of the errors, he and a dozen other scientists in 2011 reviewed the data and found that the conclusions if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN project, were correct. This project in 2007 reported that much of the warming in the past 50 years was attributable to human activities, with earlier years' damage shared by humans and nature. Prof Muller now founded a Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, and thoroughly reviewed all prior research and more , and found that facts substantially fault human activity The Muller group finds that the 3 1/2 degree F temperature increase in past 250 years is due to human emission of greenhouse gases, with2 ½ degrees due in the next fifty years. There is a July 30 summary on the op-ed page of the NYTimes, that you should read for details, if you are still doubtful. It is getting to be serious, deniers of the greenhouse effect should listen up. Apart from the horrible impact on this year's agriculture product growth throughout the world, the political ethicists must address such questions as the long term impact on mankind, China's 10 percent annual economic growth , which may accelerate the expected global heating from a 50 year slot to 20 years. Also, also the question of how the people of the Appalachia’s four key states will earn a livelihood without coal. , listen up. Getting away from the global, I have a personal climate-related ethics problem , that of insect proliferation. During the heat, household flies and stinging insects literally swarm into the house, despite thick screens. Flypaper and similar mechanics do not help, and a flyswatter has to be carried from room to room. Having to swat flying insects by the dozen is not only esthetically unpleasant , it also raises an ethical problem. The Buddhists addressed it by shushing the creatures away, accepting the discomfort and praying Om Mani Padme Hum whenever some creatures got squashed. It maay be claimed that nature did provide non-lethal remedies for horses and cows, giving them ample tails to swat the creatures off their skins, probably muttering ample imprecations in cow-ese. Seriously though, there is a religious general ethics problem of protecting the lesser species. Has the Almighty declared humanity a superior entity, allowed to kill all lesser entities at will, for food, comfort , or pleasure.? Are only such sentient entities as human sperm, ova and embryos to be protected by strict law, and the others only selectively – from salmon and whales to songbirds? If memory serves, the social contract philosophers, such as Hume, Locke and Rousseau had words to say about mutual responsibility , though Hume saw morality as sympathy- weighted, and later philosophers – A.J.Ayers and C.L. Stevenson in 1930s – ho-hummed about consistent morality as non scientific, because it is non-measurable, and therefore iffy. On the religious side, one might think that the All-knowing is protective of other sentient creatures, since Noah was ordered to take two of each variety to preserve the species, although Job got huffy with the Creator because God had condemned both men and guiltless domestic animals. This said for climate change and morality, we want to turn to a really significant upstate political campaign, that of Democrat Julian Schreibman for Congress, in the much re-divided 20th CD, a skinny strip from north of Westchester County to Canada, encompassing hunks of 10 counties, touching four states. It was ayt times, part of the 17th, 18th, 22nd, 24th, or 19th CD , then represented by Fusion’s Fiorello LaGuardia , ALP’s (near-Communist) Vito Marcantonio, and liberal Bella Abzug; more recently by current Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Since 2010 it has been held by a Tea Party representative, Col. Chris Gibson (R, 20 year military vet and West Poin’s Professor of American Politics) supporter of the Paul Ryan budget (now he’s recanted, sees the military chunk too high), also supporting the turning of Medicare into a coupon program and for reducing Social Security, for weakening Fresh Air Act, for defunding Planned Parenthood, for cutting Broadband budget for rural areas by $21M and for providing $2B tax break for big oil companies. Julian Schreibman, Yale grad (two degrees, paid from scholarships and summer jobs) protects Med and SS coverages, defends environmental legislation (is anti oil fracking), is for job creation ( broadband is a necessity), and for women’s health . He was an Assistant General Counsel at the CIA, (prosecuted terrorists who in 1998 bombed US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam), then fought crime as an ADA for Ulster County, and a federal prosecutor, Schreibman, from conversations, shows a deep fund of cross discipline knowledge and understanding of prblems, here and abroad. What makes this 20th ED election special is the fact that it is one of eight, that Dems Central expect to win it back. What can New York cityites do? Well, my intuition based research says our splendid rainbow of East Midtown citizens points to many apple knocker transplants who have ipstate roots and interests. . One comment re good jobs from broadband accxes. I have heard of a developer who refused fed funds, because that carried with then union rates, and he would have to raise his current employees, well compensated by local standards. It is ugly but here it is. GM unions had to accept rate differentials. Should Obama compromise for this ugliness, in the interest of jobs? Look, the golden age of US supremacy of everything is over, we have to live on less to compete in the world. Europe is getting a beating, and we are close behind. More anon from upstate, about how politics undermine basic principles of behavior we learned in kindergarten.