I just wanted to show people this chart if they haven't seen it. For some reason seeing the chart gives a better sense of things that just reading about it. I'm not sure where the image came from, but links to the data it was based on is found here and here. [Read more…]

Can someone explain to me how in the world those in favor of small government regulation in business can expect to protect the environment? It seems a fantasy to expect corporations to just be good world citizens on their own. Won't the financial motive always favor doing something for their own bottom line over doing something good for the planet?

Public / consumer education and outrage seems to make for a miniscule feedback system. People can't follow complex issues as a whole, and tire of hearing any message too often. They are also easy to fool into thinking they've done their part. Think of the people who buy brand new hybrid cars, oblivious to to the damage they continue to cause and typically not even considering doing something more serious than this trivial gesture.

We have a thousand years of detailed history of the interplay between companies and the environment, across many eras, fads, peoples, lands, etc, and I don't read any of it as showing evidence that an unregulated business community will on their own make the environment better than it is.

Pointing out one small set of companies or sectors here or there does no good. One must show that this is good for the whole of a country's businesses.

My friend John and I have launched a site this afternoon based on the photo in the previous blog post here, called YesWeCanHas.com. Join the, uh… movement?

Digg it if you like it.

(The beautiful cat is Milos.)

(for reference:
"Yes We Can" YouTube video)

Very interesting to watch documents morph over time as the decisions change about what's to be blocked out of documents. It's even more insightful when they first publish documents and then later take out even more information. [Read more…]

I need a better name for this, but this is a project I was daydreaming about today: the Human Constraint Project. The goal is to form a group for the massive reduction in human population in a healthy way (psychologically, sociologically, intellectually). It is perhaps unrealizable, but you can never tell what you can accomplish until you try. It would be a group dedicated to studying ways in which one can get humans to voluntarily massively reduce their numbers in a peaceful, constructive way that greatly increases both the standard of living and the standard of living for the rest of the ecosystem.

Over-population is the one problem which, unless it is tackled, all other problems are unsolvable (global warming, despeciation, deforestation, pollution, etc).

Let me present a transcript from Hardball between Chris Matthews, Eric Cantor (Republican Congressman of Virginia) and Steve Israel (Democratic Congressman of New York). It almost drove me berserk when I heard it on air. I almost can't believe that people can be elected to office without knowing the basics about the different branches of government and why they were set up that way. What on earth is wrong with people? [Read more…]