Tag: environment

Stupidity as Policy: the Phrase, “Climate Change” is Banned!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure

I was having class one day and in the front row was a veteran of several combat tours in Iraq. The class got into a spirited discussion about a woman’s time of the month and the things you can buy like tampons and pads to help with that very common malady.

My combat veteran laid his head on the desk, covered his ears with his hands and tried to make the subject go away. I doubt if he was successful. We were friends, probably still are, haven’t heard from him in some years. I respected his service and gave him class time to talk about it.

Not everyone is going to be comfortable with every topic brought up in class. And I understand that.

But removing the phrase, “Climate Change” is different in a major and important way.

Climate Change is real, observable, and needs to be dealt with. And our government is supposed to dealing with it.

Before we go any further, let me give you a link and a quote from the current topic:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/energy-dept-adds-climate-change-184725341.html

“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid — and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the directive from acting director of external affairs Rachel Overbey said.

“Misaligned with the administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the weasel words for pitiful stupidity from the reality denying loons that currently form our ruling regime.

(Admiring the latest delusion at the Dept. of Energy.)

Tell me, do you think that covering your ears and making racket will drop the earth’s temperature? Because I don’t.

What are these idiots doing? Well, they are completely devoted to chasing fossil fuel money, billions of dollars, and in pursuit of that money, there is no action no matter how obviously moronic and stupid that they won’t do.

And this is one of the stupid and moronic decisions that these people are embracing in the hope of stalling effective action against climate change so that fossil fuel companies can rake in the cash.

It is wrong. It is immoral. It is pathetic. And I hope and pray for the time when these fools are driven from the government, polite society and any hope of profit.

James Alan Pilant

Does the Trump Administration Have Dumber People than Kennedy? – Why Yes, Yes They Do!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, corruption, Government Failure

I want you to read the following quote, so you can have the same reaction I had:

“Even if you wrapped the entire planet in a solar panel, you would only be producing 20% of global energy. One of the biggest mistakes politicians can make is equating the ELECTRICITY with ENERGY!”

I was amazed. My first response was “What??” My second response was to quickly mentally review the many articles I have read about the efficiency and practicality of solar panels. while noting that my high school physics text book “claimed” that electricity was a form of energy.

And don’t let the facts like the little tiny obscure fact that I’m typing on a machine powered by electricity confuse you.

Who is this public official?

It is Chris Wright, our Energy Secretary!

Wow, now there is a first rate intelligence!

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/energy-secretary-says-wrapping-earth-233101352.html

Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee writing for the site, Benzinga, wrote an article: Energy Secretary Says Wrapping Earth With Solar Panels Would Produce 20% Of Global Energy, X Users Swiftly Community Note Official.

Energy researchers at MIT note that Earth receives on the order of 173,000 terawatts of solar energy continuously, orders of magnitude more than humanity’s total energy use, highlighting that the constraint is not raw solar resource but economics, siting, transmission and storage.

Global solar already supplies a rising share of electricity and is projected to keep growing through 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

So, Energy Secretary is “unfamiliar” with the nature of electricity. And there I was thinking that vaccine denial was bad. Foolish me.

And he also appears to believe that solar energy barely exists and is almost useless which is contrary to any simple examination of the facts.

You have to wonder what kind of decisions results from these two misconceptions. Just imagine how many other misconceptions he has.

It really makes you wonder. This is a very minor news story but before the age of Trump, it would be front page news and dominate the news cycle.

But it can’t. Because we as a nation have long ago come to the realization that competence, truth telling or even the most mediocre levels of ability are absent in those chosen for high office in this administration.

That cabinet secretaries can deny basic facts with complete certainty is not a surprise.

But it does bode ill for all of us who had come to expect capable public servants.

James Alan Pilant

When We Destroy Forests, People Die

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economic Justice

In Brazil, organized crime and a wave of loggers and prospectors have murdered and raped their way across the Amazon Basin. In Asia, forest destruction and the immense fires that resulted have devestated many lives. These are terrible, terrible crimes but a twenty year study finds that there is collateral damage in the form of heat related illness.

(This is from a book of detective stories from more than 120 years ago. It is dramatic and indicates important issues are about to be resolved. I am using it for my writing on this occasion.)

In the United States, we have the largely unpunished and uninvestigated murders of indigenous women although there is a local, state and federal preference of a kind of quasi-legal seizure and destruction of natural resources. Of course, no intelligent human being can fail to mention the massive corruption of our current regime, its wholesale destructions of regulations and enforcement agencies, not to mention the “open for business” attitude that if a corporation has a problem, arrangements can be made.

I want you to understand that I am well aware that greed and evil are international problems and that while deforestation is a more dramatic crisis in east Asian and South America, the United States and its corruption are in no way exempt for causing and profiting from forest destruction.

What kind of collateral damage are we talking about? Over the last twenty years, over half a million have died from heat related illness and many, many millions more have suffered such illness.

I don’t see much need for a business ethics analysis. Destroying huge swaths of the planet to make money is wrong.

There should fines, imprisonment and shaming. The people who do these horrible things should have their pictures published and their names removed from colleges, dorms and cultural institutions. They should at all times be exposed for the destructive cockroaches that they are. But be well aware, a good and moral society would not just rely on shame but would punish them for their crimes.

James Alan Pilant

Jonathan Watts writing for The Guardian has an article: Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/27/deforestation-has-killed-half-a-million-people-in-past-20-years-study-finds

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

Deforestation is responsible for more than a third of the warming experienced by people living in the affected regions, which is on top of the effect of global climate disruption.

About 345 million people across the tropics suffered from this localised, deforestation-caused warming between 2001 and 2020. For 2.6 million of them, the additional heating added 3C to their heat exposure.

The Resistance Fights Back

On By southwerkIn moral philosophy

The Climate web site whose staff was fired and operations halted is getting a second shot at life. This time as a private venture,  climate.us.

Anyone with any concern for our future on this planet should add this to their browser as a useful and important web site.

Rebecca Lindsey is quoted in the article linked to below as saying:

“What’s happening can feel so overwhelming that it’s easy to feel like you’re powerless to do anything about it,” said Lindsey’s team member. “But sometimes you have to just look out and see what’s within your reach. And this problem is within our reach, so we just see it as sort of doing our part.”

And she is right. Every day some new horror, some new obscenity, some new assault on justice, on knowledge, on actual Christianity is thrown out there like a stain on white silk by the current administration and it is easy to get exhausted by the flood.

Eric Holthaus writing for the Guardian wrote the following article: Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/30/climate-gov-website-trump

Earlier this summer, access to climate.gov – one of the most widely used portals of climate information on the internet – was thwarted by the Trump administration, and its production team was fired in the process.

…

Now, a team of climate communication experts – including many members of the former climate.gov team – is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission.

Their effort’s new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin to directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change.

This is an important lesson, an act of defiance against the fools and charlatans running the current regime.

We must never give into hopelessness.

Our democracy is at stake.

We must fight. They are fighting for scientific knowledge and a respect for factual data. Look at their courage and hard work and realize that what we do matters.

James Alan Pilant

A One Billion Dollar Fine!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economic Justice

Environmental destruction is a world wide problem. Some nations are taking the problem seriously. I don’t live in one of those. I live in the United States where environmental rules and regulations are on the chopping block, victims of dark money, ruthless corporate officials and the right wing media machine.

But other nations have not given up the struggle and one of them is Sri Lanka.

I want you to know that fines as in this case are a good way of punishing miscreants who do severe harm. Money is useful in repairing environment damage and making victims whole.

But a message that resonates requires imprisonment and other directly personal penalties. It is one thing to require a corporation to pay a billion dollars but another to make the CEO pay money out of his own pocket, suffer travel restrictions and and an inability to do financial transactions or serve on corporate boards. Those kinds of penalties will get corporate officials’ attention. Corporations have a lot of money. What they don’t have are officials willing to suffer.

We can also destroy corporations who sin against the nation’s collective interest. The corporate death penalty where the corporation’s legal existence is ended and its assets sold as a penalty would also serve to get the attention of the wrong doers.

Corporations are creations of the state. Their charters can be revoked and they can be ended. It is a choice we should have. Corporate incompetence and villainy have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, billions upon billions of dollars in damages and massive destruction eco-systems. If we “killl” a few, they might do less harm. We might at least get the idea across that we take their destruction of the planet seriously.

We have a responsibility as patriots to protect our nation. That includes the land, the water and the air. It is a profoundly moral duty. For those of us who believe in Christianity, we also have a responsibility to act as stewards of God’s creation. That also calls us to action.

Let us go forth armed with righteousness and a willingness to confront and defeat evil.

James Pilant

(Probably the proper attitude for hauling a dangerous cargo and chemicals and microplastics.)

In an article written for The Cool Down, Alexis McDonell, writes in an article entitled:

Shipping giant hit with $1 billion fine after causing one of worst marine disasters in history: ‘Unprecedented devastation’

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka found a shipping company liable for a billion.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/shipping-giant-hit-1-billion-194500541.html

In June 2021, the MV X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of Colombo while carrying a cargo of chemicals.

The Supreme Court described the result as “unprecedented devastation to the marine environment of Sri Lanka,” citing the deaths of 417 turtles, 48 dolphins, eight whales, and countless fish that washed ashore. Debris from the ship, including several tons of plastic pellets used to manufacture bags, spread across beaches and into the ocean.

“This marine environmental disaster … resulted in the widespread release of toxic and hazardous substances into the marine environment, poisoning ocean waters, killing marine species, and destructing phytoplankton,” the judgment stated.

The Cold Blooded Republican Response to Climate Change

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I was looking at a poll the other day that found that 12% of the members of the Republican Party thought climate change was an important issue.

This is fascinating. I live in the middle of the United States. It is hotter than it has ever been and the weather more dramatic and powerful than it has ever been. You can literally feel climate change in the middle United States.

And yet, the great majority of one of the major political parties in the United States look at the thermostat and mutter, “Oh, no big deal.”

Looking at the news over the last few days, one sees that in the Philippines, it has gotten so hot that schools have been closed and classes moved online. India is in the grip of a huge heatwave.

And just today, now, here is a lead news article that indicates that thirty states are in the midst of record breaking heat wave.

“My Goodness” That looks surprisingly like objective evidence of climate change and maybe even a looming emergency.

So, surely Republicans will notice, right?

That would be nice. It would be part of the duty of a citizen in participative democracy to pay attention to facts and adjust their views accordingly but they will not change their minds. They live in a world where “owning the libs” is much of the meaning in their lives. And you can say, “James, that can’t be much of a life?” Well, yes, it is not much of a life. Thus there is just a ton of hysterical anger.

If you think I’m wrong. Look at the other stuff they are denying. They deny there is any significant racism in the United States (except against white people). Simply, reading the daily new should thoroughly prove that racism continues in America. It seems they don’t read. They deny the evidence of poverty and hunger in the United States to the point of refusing to supplement school lunch programs to feed children during the summer. And I could go on.

Florida has passed legislation removing climate change from consideration when making policy and abandoning a variety of green initiatives while also forbidding the construction of wind turbines on the coast.

To quote the governor of Florida:

“We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” DeSantis said in a post on the X social media platform.

The level of irony in the words of the governor are difficult to approach. Florida is in the middle of very serious heat wave, there are coral die offs all along the coast, and insurance companies are fleeing the state like so many rats from an overheated and perhaps burning ship.

I am concerned. Not about the Republicans, their current fantasies are really just silly. Saving them from nonsense is not something I can do. When you surrender your judgment to a cult, an online posting, the rants of hate radio or some weird conspiracy theory, the death of judgment and intelligence follows. What concerns me is that this nation where I make my home will probably be unable to deal intelligently and effectively with climate change. And because of our enormous economic power, we may doom much of the world with us.

It is the greed enshrined in our society’s goals and the way our corporations are set up solely to take money as their sole goal that will probably doom us and our future generations. It is very sad. We live in a nation developed in the ideas of the Enlightenment. We have the words of Lincoln and Thomas Paine to guide us – and all of that history or righteousness and glory is being denied, diminished and attacked.

Oh well, if I am to die of heat stroke or flooding or some other interesting element of climate change, I will die here in the United States. It is my home and I consider myself a patriot.

It is unfortunate that the limitations, foolishness and greed of a some Americans are going to do so much damage to so many.

James Alan Pilant

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tv-meteorologist-blasts-florida-don-152447336.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hot-mexico-howler-monkeys-falling-165619685.html

After Covid, now heat forces schools to go online in the Philippines | The Independent

‘Red alert’ in Delhi after temperature soars to 47C as heatwave grips India’s north (msn.com)

Meteorologist rebukes DeSantis for scrubbing climate change from state law: ‘Florida is on fire’ (msn.com)

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/terrifying-heatwave-map-shows-30-503037

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/16/1251769080/florida-desantis-climate-change-law

Just the Same as having a Smoker in the Home

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Gas Stoves: The Fracking Tailpipe in Your Kitchen — The Science and Environmental Health Network (sehn.org)

Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States – PMC (nih.gov)

https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/indoor-air-quality/is-your-gas-range-a-health-risk-a6971504915

My title is based on a comparison, that is, having a gas cooking stove in your home carries the same level of asthma risk to children as having someone who smokes in the home. (My sources are listed above.)

When I started researching this topic I expected to find out that over long periods of time gas stove usage produced an uptick in childhood asthma. What I found that according to research published last year, 12.7 percent of all childhood asthma is attributable to gas stoves. That’s 647,700 children. That is much more than an uptick. Just in case, that didn’t alarm me enough, I discovered that gas stoves leak gas all the time and they have an effect on air pollution and global warming.

However and as usual, the culture wars that have made much of public discourse a subhuman cesspool, have taken hold.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/13/house-passes-bill-block-gas-stove-ban-00100492

“We know the motivation of the CPSC and throughout this entire administration is a green climate push,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), the sponsor of the legislation, said. “The goal is to dictate how you live every aspect of your life — how you save and invest for the future by pushing ESG, how you drive by banning gas-powered cars, and now the goal is to control how you cook.”

The federal government at the time wasn’t considering a ban but that didn’t stop them from preventive strike on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. Yes, so you see saving our children and ourselves from indoor pollution caused by a product about which we were told over and over again was safe is all some kind of “woke” political plot to steal freedom.

The research is pretty clear. We need to develop rules on indoor pollution (there aren’t any now) and based on the data in front of me, it seems likely gas stove aren’t going to pass muster. It’s not woke to try to prevent childhood asthma. It’s not work to cut down on pollution and it’s absolutely, positively not woke to call out an industry that told us this product was safe.

You would think that children might find the occasional advocate in the United States Congress. You might think that hearing a child wheezing for a breath of air would be influential in the great hearing rooms of our capital. And you would be wrong. We not only subsidize the fossil fuels industry billions of dollars a year, we have to pretend they are our benefactors and using their products is an example of our “freedom.”

James Pilant

BP Rewrites its History

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

 

Changing memory
Changing memory

BP Rewrites its History

BP edited its own environmental record on Wikipedia – Salon.com

Wikipedia editors have accused BP of editing its own page entry to whitewash its environmental impact in the public record. As CNET reported Thursday, “angry Wikipedia editors estimate that BP has rewritten 44 percent of the page about itself, especially about its environmental performance.”

BP edited its own environmental record on Wikipedia – Salon.com

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Fukushima : simulation of dispersed radiation throughout the northern hemisphere (via canadanewslibre)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is nice. I love pictures and this one is beautiful. Unfortunately, it is similar to the beauty of organisms on a microscopic slide that might very well be killing you.

This dispersed radiation on this graph is certainly doing you no good.

I recommend you look at the graph full size and get a grasp of the seriousness of the matter.

James Pilant

Fukushima : simulation of dispersed radiation throughout the northern hemisphere Radioactive Materials Dispersion Model by Kyushu University Researchers Friday, September 2, 2011 Using the supercomputer program called SPRINTARS, researchers at Kyushu University and Tokyo University created the simulation of how radioactive materials from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant may have dispersed throughout the northern hemisphere. The researcher say their simulation fit the actual measurements. It was published in the Scientific Onli … Read More

via canadanewslibre

CBO … Federal Loan Guarantees for the Constructi​on of Nuclear Power Plants (via Point/CounterPoint)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

You weren’t aware that loans to build nuclear power plants were guaranteed by the federal government?

They had to, you see. No one would loan them money to build a plant because of the risk.

So, you might ask, “If the federal government did not guarantee the loans, would there be any nuclear power plants built in the United States from now on?”

No.

You may resent the fact that if you decide to borrow some money to build a factory, a restaurant, a day-care center, etc., the government isn’t going to guarantee a dime of it.

That’s very small minded of you. Isn’t obvious that the nuclear industry though its exemplary safety record, environmental activism and continuing careful and cost free disposal of nuclear waste, has earned these enormous government subsidies? (Whoops, they don’t do any of that, do they? – Oh, well, it’s still obvious that they are deserving and you aren’t.)

Maybe you should get mad?

James Pilant

Federal Loan Guarantees for the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants CBO's analysis examines the main factors that influence the cost to the federal government of providing loan guarantees for the construction of nuclear power plants. It includes illustrative cost estimates using the methodology specified by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, which determines the budgetary cost of the program, and also estimates prepared on a fair-value basis … Read More

via Point/CounterPoint