Sunday, May 31, 2015

REFLECTION


Now in our countdown years,
the consequences 
of our actions can be weighed.
The measure of a person’s 
candor is revealed, 
writing one’s own obituary.
It says nothing of wrong turns, 
what might have been.
Nor does it aver to having
lived a road to redemption.
In the best of circumstances
the text would read:
We did no harm, or tried not to. 
We tried to do good.
We had many friends
and spent our days productively. 
We apportioned time
to relax and play.
We loved somebody dearly.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHERE WE ARE HEADED


Author's note: This article was originally written  in 2011. Minor revisions were incorporated in this copy.


OH, FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS
There is zero evidence that profit-based industrial corporations, financial corporations and the existing aristocracy, collectively identifiable as society’s “Titans,” long for anything but the pre- 1930’s years when there was no middle class, and all power was in the hands of Titans who truly believed that they both owned and governed the country - who believed that the Federal Government was needed only to act at their behest, and to take care of minimal services like Indian Affairs, the Postal Department, a moderate military (the latter needed in case it was necessary to quell striking workers). It can be argued that the view continues to hold true, as not a single Titan has come forward to publicly disclaim or reject the words of Grover Norquist, wealthy president of a taxpayer advocacy group, who repeatedly states: “I don’t want to abolish the government. I simply want to reduce it in size to where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” In other words, back to a deregulated free-for-all for profit based organizations.
FACE TO FACE WITH REALITY
Regarding profit based corporations and institutions, there are some virtually unassailable truths that call for earnest thought.
First, profit based organizations are non-benevolent. They are soulless creations, and there is no reason for them to be otherwise. If any actions appear to have a benevolent quality, one can be certain that internal evaluations have first determined that these actions will be profit-beneficial. Failure to realize this accrues to the various leverages that corporations use to convince legislators to make favorable decisions. For example, awarding subsidies to oil companies that make huge profits and still pay no taxes.
Second, profit based corporations and institutions are ruthless, and are restrained only by regulations placed upon them that became necessary as a result of unacceptable behavior in a civilized society. History records consistent walk-away attitude when disasters occur. Bophal, Exxon- Valdez, the Texas oil refinery fire, the BP deep-water oil rig explosion stand out among recent events. More insidious, as recently demonstrated with failed Japanese reactors, hazardous installations will always be pushed beyond reasonable life expectations if still profitable. Corporations engage in rapacious extraction of natural resources from nations that are then left destitute. His- tory also shows corporations are resistant to the extreme to compensating for damages resulting from accidents. With ability to marshal the strengths of teams of the best lawyers, they always come out winning by purposely prolonging dealings with government officials who have lesser skills and are vulnerable to overwhelming opposition.
Still, it is hard to fault them. They are soulless entities, existing for one purpose only - to make a profit.
The need to regulate operations of profit based organizations is self evident, but recent power plays have worked successfully to eviscerate what laws were in place. How did this happen?


A TAKEOVER GONE AWRY
The appearance of a strong populist president after Herbert Hoover- Franklin D. Roosevelt, scared the Titans witless, even to the extent that some among them considered drastic action necessary to remove the newly elected president from the White House.
In 1934 ex-Marine Lt. Col. J. Smedley Butler testified before Congress that JP Morgan and other interests had approached him to lead an armed force to Washington, take over the White House and remove Roosevelt from office. The consequences of such an action are unimaginable. As
it happened, news media and politicians acted to both downplay the incident and discredit Col. Butler, thus the investigations literally petered out and nothing further came of it. In retrospect, it seems doubtful that Col. Butler would have risked his reputation to fabricate such a story.
In view of what happened in ensuing years, right up to the present time, the story remains credible. Human nature being what it is, it would seem likely that perpetrators would have said to themselves of the heavy-handed venture:
“Well, that didn’t work. We’ll have to think of something else.” They certainly would not have given up. A little constructive thinking would surely turn up a more effective approach. It might take time, possibly decades, but a carefully planned strategy would ultimately return the nation to the rule of the Titans. Meantime, a little distraction - World War II - turned up, and everyone’s attention was temporarily diverted toward meeting
all the challenges of America’s entry, which ultimately stretched across several continents.

A STROKE OF GENIUS
By the end of the War, President Roosevelt’s policies were firmly in place. Two economic policies were placed into operation that cemented a strong middle class into the mix of a population that previously consisted of the industrial and financial Titans and a dollar-an-hour farmer/ worker class. First, high tax rates on the wealthy provided a bulwark against a reversion to the pre-1930’s rule of the Titans. No one suffered, though they did not like it. Thoughts of how to get out of this situation among the Titans were omnipresent, though overthrow of the government was ruled out.
Second, the government assumed very strongly a role that it has always played - a redistributor of wealth. With millions of men and women returning home from the military, war production factories shutting down, Europe and Japan in shambles, the Soviet Union posturing as a new potential enemy with its development of nuclear weapons, and the prospect of extremely high unemployment, the challenges were formidable. Decisions that contributed to a robust recovery included the Marshall Plan, a continued maintenance of a strong military and development of advanced weaponry in view of the Soviet threat, the GI Bill for funding college education for returning veterans, funding of research and development on many fronts, and funding of vast infrastructure projects like the national highway system. All contributed to an emerging middle class that had never been in place before. The policy of redistribution of wealth arguably brought about most of the technological improvements that are in place today. A major influence was the military and NASA need for ever smaller electronics, which made possible handheld computers, cell phones, high capacity communications satellites, and many other advancements. But for these drivers and newly opened opportunities, we might still be using black AT&T dial phones for communications and sending telegrams by wire.
There are, of course, constant rumblings that redistribution of wealth amounts to socialism, depending on what definition of socialism suits the critic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Redistribution of wealth is a bold operational strategy for a healthy democracy. It was demonstrated to work admirably well in the years following World War II. Meanwhile, the Titans grumbled, and never lost sight of their objective.
The policy of robust redistribution of wealth continued with Democratic and Republican presidents alike, up to the election of President Ronald Reagan, a likeable romantic, an easy mark for the Titans who still wanted the old ways back. The skids were already greased by a weak preceding administration, with Carter having little success in governing a nation worn down by the Vietnam War and a letdown after the spectacular achievement of placing humans on the moon for the first time. President Carter was probably right in his speech lamenting a national “malaise,” but the fault was largely his. A strong president would never let such a situation like this develop, especially during a period of rapid technological progress.
With President Ronald Reagan in place, the Titans seized their opportunity. Overturning the gov- ernment was out of the question. Instead, they would buy it. No need to buy all of it. Just enough to turn legislation their way. Moreover, the preferred tactic was to preserve some of the populist legislators so the appearance of a give and take atmosphere could be maintained. The tipoff, however, evident to everyone, was the eventual lockstep response to all legislation by Republicans in the Senate. Nothing else explains their reluctance to think for themselves.
But first things first. The era of high taxes on the wealthy would have to come to an end.
 

THE SELL OUT BEGINS.
Reagan, entering office derisive of what he called “the welfare state,” and a proclaimed champion of small government, felt endeared to promoters of Supply Side Economics, popularly known as “trickle down” economics. Lower the taxes on the wealthy and the money will be reinvested in the economy and it will grow like corn on a warm summer day. Subjectively, administrators knew this doesn’t happen. The wealthy tend to keep their money, to grow ever more wealthy, and in the process become more powerful.
The policy was viewed with scorn by no less an economist than David Galbraith, who recalled that the tactic was employed before, an underlying cause of the panic of 1896. Galbraith’s response was “If you feed the horse more oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
Nevertheless, under forceful promotion by David Stockman, Reagan’s Director of Management and Budget, the Kemp-Roth act was finally passed by Congress as the Economic Recovery Act of 1981. It didn’t work. A good measure of how the economy is doing is the increase in Federal debt as a function of GDP, expressed as percentage gain or decrease. With higher taxes, debt/ GDP growth from the Roosevelt/Truman administration through the Carter administration ranged from -24.9% to +.2%. With lowered revenue, debt/GDP increased +20.6 % during the Reagan presidency and another +15% in the George H.W. Bush presidency. It was reversed in Bill Clinton’s administration to -8.% by the end of his two terms, after he had raised taxes. But the buying of the government had gained a foothold. Loosened policies and deregulation saw two events that were harbingers of troubles to come. The Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980’s and early 1990’s involved failure of 747 thrift institutions, which were deregulated by a Congressional act in 1982 and promptly fell into bad financial practices. Resolution cost taxpayers, who ultimately had to bear the cost, over eighty billion dollars. The second event was the stock market crash of October 1987, for which exact an exact cause was never determined, but appeared to be a convergence of events like pending legislation, out of sync trading of stocks and derivatives, changing interest rates, the stock market at a new high, all combining to make the market particularly vulnerable at that moment in time.
The Clinton years appeared to be a time of good growth and prosperity. But people in charge failed to realize, or act on what they must have seen occurring. Alan Greenspan, heading the Fed-
eral Reserve, engraved in history forever his comment regarding the “irrational exuberance” of the housing market. He knew what was occurring but did nothing. Greenspan gave high approval to the derivatives market and hedge funds, which produce nothing, but contributed enormously to the near economic collapse at the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008. It was not that people in charge could say, “We didn’t know.” They knew, and did nothing.
 

FROM COVERT TO OVERT
The main events reflecting a government takeover began in the final years of the twentieth century. All pretense began to disappear, and bolder acts surfaced. One of the first was the lobbying of Wendy Gramm, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, wife of Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, by Enron, which was seeking exemption from regulation that prevented its trading in derivatives. After granting the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned and took a lucrative position on the Enron Board of Directors.
Much more sinister and damaging was the last hour insertion into President Clinton’s final budget in 1999 by Senator Phil Gramm (spouse of Wendy), a 254 page amendment that gutted the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This bill, which served the nation well for nearly seventy years, prohibited commercial banks from collaborating with full service brokerage houses, or participating in investment banking services.
Senator Gramm did not write the amendment by himself. It was a carefully contrived piece of work by experts, bent on reverting the nation to the deregulated pre-1930’s days.
An incredible stroke of luck occurred with the election of an arguablyeasily influenced George W. Bush as President to succeed Bill Clinton. Like Reagan, he was an easy mark for supply-side economists, often repeating the mantra: “It’s your money. You know how to spend it better than the government.” With that mindset, and a compliant Congress, Presi dent Bush put into place a massive tax cut that was scheduled to run for ten years, which, together with Phil Gramm’s mischief, set the stage for invention of various financial instruments that produce nothing but money for a special few, and began a dramatic reversal of fortune for working classes. One of the worst instruments was the bundling of mortgages into salable securities that were marketed all over the world. A measure of the success of the financial free- for-all was an increase in the number of billionaires in the nation from 234 in the year 2000 to 403 in 2010, while the fortunes of the middle class remained stagnant and even reversed. Percentage growth of debt/GDP was the highest ever at + 27.1%. With lowered revenue, two wars of choice conducted off budget, and the financial system heading toward a self-inflicted train wreck, George W. Bush handed off to President Obama, in the closing months of his administration, a nation in near economic collapse.


THE MAGNIFICENT PROPAGANDA MACHINE
With a Democratic plurality in both the House and the Senate to his benefit as he assumed the Presidency, Barack Obama was able to take certain measures aimed at righting the economic engine, such as the stimulus plan and restoring General Motors from the brink of bankruptcy. But in the face of an intransigent, lock-step Republican caucus in the Senate that could filibuster every move, much of the restoration appeared to be little more than cosmetic. Until the third year in office, little occurred toward restoring the 2.6 million jobs that were lost under the Bush administration. Despite promises made while campaigning, lesser goals were accepted in the interests of compromise with the opposition.
Meantime, an unprecedented effort was underway in the nation, supported by the Titans, to
regain possession of the Senate and House of Representatives in the mid- term elections, setting the stage for a wholesale reduction in the role of government as a protector of the people.
The mechanism had its base in the 527 political-action authorization that allowed formation of groups with special interests to pursue political objectives without oversight regarding sponsors or funding. They had great sounding names: “Freedom Works,” chaired by former Texas representative Dick Armey, tireless fighter for lower taxes - backed by the likes of Met Life, Philip Morris and the Scarfe family; “American Crossroads,” headed by Karl Rove and backed by Texas billionaire Trevor Rees Jones; “Americans for Prosperity,” backed by the Koch brothers and Richard Fink of Koch Industries; “Progress for America” operated by Tony Feather, political director for Bush/Cheney 2000, and backed by the Walton family, inheritors of the Walmart fortune.
The target, common to these and similar pressure groups, was the very large segment of the population that oddly takes pride in claiming to be anti- intellectual, and known to be highly susceptible to simple sloganeering. The mechanism was thousands of gatherings to gull participants with the same story: get the government out of your lives, trim it down, and reduce taxes. Amazingly, they could also be convinced to be supporters of the very wealthy: “If you make it to become very wealthy, more power to you.”
“ ‘No’ to inheritance taxes.” “You already had that income taxed.” They were unmindful that taxed income gets taxed again in many ways through sales, excise, gas, auto license, telephone and other fees, and also unmindful that not one in the crowd was ever likely to leave an inheritance that would be taxed.
“I want my freedom back.” Freedom for what? Contaminated foods? Unsafe aircraft? Closed libraries? Marginal schools? Dangerous drugs? Stifled research and development? Purveyors of this nonsense knew it was nonsense, but they also knew that it works. They were setting the stage for an eventual takeover of the government - achieve one party rule.
These events were not spontaneous. They had to be organized. Participants had to be gathered up and transported to the meetings. They cost money, a lot of money, and that is where the supporting Titans came in. They could stay in the background and let the PACs do their work for them. With the mid-term election of a Republican majority in the House, bent on reducing the size of the government and lowering taxes, the policy devised by Roosevelt/ Truman—redistribution of wealth as an operating strategy—appeared all but dead.
Two other events seriously tilted the course of history to favor the takeover objectives of the Titans. An organization called “Citizens United,” headed by David Bossie, dedicated to “restoring the US Government to citizen control,” a campaigner for withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations, filed a suit with the U.S. Supreme Court, the result of which was that the court ruled that corporations could spend whatever they desired in advertising to support a candidate for office
so long as they did not contribute to the campaign. This egregious ruling heavily weighted future elections to favor and represent not the people, but soulless corporations.
A second ominous event was the highly publicized legislation in Wisconsin, and also taking place in other states, to bust the unions of employees of the state. Success in this assures destruction of the last tree in the forest. There will be no one left to compete with the numerous Republican political action organizations, including the biggest supporter of all, the US Chamber of commerce. With one party rule, and the legislators bought, the campaign is won. The ruling Titans can free-wheel the nation back to the pre-1930’s.
 

THE LARGER DILEMMA
Even were the administration able to restructure the tax code to heavily tax the rich, and return to the economy the stimulating benefits of redistribution of wealth, there is low prospect of saving the economy by that means alone. An economy based on growth in consumption is bound to end badly somewhere. At some point it will cease to work. Complicating factors now are an increase in world population by a billion every twelve years. The consequent drain on resources signals a need for conservation, intelligent husbandry and attention to improving efficiency. They stand as essential elements for future survival at reasonably comfortable levels.

SUSTAINABILITY - THE NEW ECONOMIC PARADIGM
The materialistic, consumption based philosophy that underpins present national economies, if nothing changes, is destined to eventual failure. Moreover, in continuing to pursue this course humanity is abdicating all responsibility for preserving Earth’s resources for future genera-
tions. The concern should be across millennia, not the next one hundred years. Without a drastic change, irreparable damage will likely be done before the 21st Century is over. As the world’s largest consumer of goods and resources, and an outward appearance of enviable prosperity, the United States has in effect set the example for other nations. Included are nations with populations of over a billion people, most aspiring to and shaping their economies to emulate what they envy. Proceeding as they are, it is evident that world demand for energy and resources will grow at an ever accelerating rate and far outstrip availability. The energy problem is solvable. Resources, however, are non-renewable.
Something different must occur that will both ensure fulfilled lives across humanity, and halt
the present race to a dreary and dangerous future. Fate has targeted the greatest consumer, the United States, to take the lead. Failure to do this will result in opinion by other nations: “You
are most at fault and doing little. Why should less prosperous, less fortunate nations take up the burden?” On the other hand, defining and adopting a sustainable way of life has the potential of re-energizing a faltering economy, opening vast new opportunities for advancement along many fronts. Among the major issues is energy production, most of which comes from buried deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas, and mixtures such as tar sands and oil- containing shale. Originally found in abundance, the present scenario has already engendered a frantic hunt for more sources, often in extremely difficult circumstances. The reality, however, is that energy is not a problem. Prodigious quantities of methane exist, derived not only from fossils but also dissolved in brines from the original atmosphere in Earth’s formative period. Secondly, we are already blessed with fusion power in the sun. It remains only to harness it in the form of photovoltaic and solar thermal installations.
The fossil fuel legacy from the sun is like the principle in an inheritance, which, if wisely managed, can last indefinitely. On the other hand, if one elects to spend it down, life will become difficult and dreary, if not in danger of extinction. Returning secreted carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide will have adverse consequences not yet imagined.
Solar power reaching Earth amounts to about 89,000 terrawatts, whereas world energy consumption is about 15,000 terrawatts. The methods, both terrestrial and space based transmission to Earth are known. The hardware has been invented. Very large scale implementation is possible. Needed are a strategic energy plan, legislation and funding, all of which require a driving conviction on the part of legislators, administrators and the population in general.
“Electric America” will witness virtual disappearance of the internal combustion engine. And it should. Electric motors operate at more than twice the efficiency of gasoline engines. The ther-
modynamic nature of the internal combustion cycle establishes the limit of engine efficiency at a maximum of around 40%. In other words, sixty cents of every dollar spent to fill a tank is thrown away. Biodiesel engines, however, will surge in popularity.
In the sustainable world deposits of fossil fuels will be mostly restricted to source material for the host of manufacturing processes that yield fabrics, plastics, medicines, and possibly even synthetic foods. They will last as long as humanity survives.
Most of the material wealth that passes through human hands, which originates both in natural deposits and natural growth, ends up in dumps and landfills. The value of ‘junk” is of course recognized and is presently manifested in can, paper and plastic collection, recycling of metals and other recovery industries. The vast majority of the mass, however, is buried or burned. In the sustainable society landfills will be replaced by processing industries that recycle everything that arrives, delivering an assortment of material and hardware back to society. Even the last dregs, neutralized, will be used for paving bicycle paths, walking trails, and an assortment of architectural applications.
In a sustainable society, the governing of communities will be subject to new guiding principles that strongly emphasize conservation and efficient operation. Pilot experiments are already underway in small communities. Out of these experiments will be revealed techniques that span water utilization, recycling of materials, energy conservation, sewage processing, as well as environment and living facilities that offer manifold opportunities for healthy, fulfilled lives for all humanity.

CODA
Realistically, adoption of policies that will lead to a sustainable society may not be possible. Humans are the only plundering species. Other species store food, either internally in body fat or externally, for example as honey in beehives, or nuts in tree cavities- but seldom in excess.
With humans, established industries, profit motive, greed, self interest and irresistability of wield- ing power may be too strongly entrenched to change, unpersuaded and unpersuadable that a problem exists that merits serious attention. In a perverse way, by its own actions, humanity may be shaping for itself a destiny that mirrors the historical near eradication and /or extinction of other species—passenger pigeons, cod fisheries, buffalo, whales—to name a few, as well as massive environmental shifts that span the Cedars of Lebanon to the Amazon forests, to the Aral Sea, to the leveled coal mountains of West Virginia and many, many more.

.This article may be copied and distributed, but only in its unabbreviated form.

CASWELL'S DILEMMA


A SHORT SHORT STORY


“That’s quite a gash you got there,” old Doc Holmes said, holding Tim Caswell’s arm to the early morning light that streamed through the window. “What happened?”

“My Shepherd bit me. Came home from the late shift Thursday last. Keep him chained to the dog house. Went to feed him and he jumped at me, snarling and foaming at the mouth. He bit me good.”

“Good God! Then what?”
“Shot him dead with my 12 gauge.”
“You saved the carcass?”
“No. Torched him atop a pile of apple tree prunings I had stacked in the field.”
“That wasn’t very smart. My boy, you could be in a lot of trouble. Chances are pretty good you’re gonna get hydrophobia, better known as the Rabies. You notice any encounters of your dog with other animals in the past week or two?”

Tim appeared in thought for a few moments. “Well, yeah, he had a run-in with a crazy squirrel a couple of weeks age, Varmit stood his ground and mixed it up with the dog before running for it. Ran up a tree by the river, out along the first branch and then fell into the water. I didn’t see him after that.”

“Well. There goes our evidence. I got some bad news for you, Tim. We’re going to have to inoculate you, and it ain’t gonna be fun. I’m gonna stick a big needle into your stomach every other day for two weeks. It’s gonna hurt like hell.”

Tim merely shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s get to it. Will it work?”

“Depends. We’ll know in six to eight months for sure. The virus is very slow moving. There will be symptoms showing up if and when it gets to your brain. Meantime, go on living like you normally do.” He busied himself scrubbing out the wound, applying antiseptic, and wrapping the arm is a bandage. “Now lie down here and we’ll get to the hard part.” He went to a wall cabinet and retrieved a huge needle. He then slowly filled it from a refrigerated ampule and approached his patient.

** *
Ain’t often I slide the barn doors open in the mornin’ and see a man hangin’ from the raf
ters,” I said, as I escorted the local sheriff and coroner there as soon as they arrived- the sheriff, Duke Jenkins in his Pontiac cruiser, flashing red and blue lights and Dwayne the coroner in his Dodge Power Wagon. I’d telephoned them from a neighbor’s house down the road and by the time I got back, they were turning into the driveway.

“You cut him down?” Duke asked.

“Yeah, he was high up. I couldn’t reach him. Cut the rope from above. He fell to the floor like a sack-a-potatoes. I didn’t touch him after that.”

Duke approached the body and turned it over, the contorted face up. “Why, this is Tim Caswell,” he said. “I know him.” He removed the rope from around his neck.

I recognized him then. Tim was my next door neighbor, a quarter mile up the road. Lived alone. He worked night shift in Hazeltine’s excelsior factory, down by the railroad tracks.

“Any nearby relatives you know of?’ Duke asked.
“Only a sister,” I answered. “Lives up Meredith way, maybe New London.”


Dwayne bent over and lifted Caswell’s arm. “ This here’s a fresh bandage, professionally done. Might pay to give Doc Holmes a visit.” He then went to his truck and retrieved a gray, stained tarpaulin. He spread it out on the floor, rolled Caswell’s body onto it, wrapped it carefully and tied the ends. “Grab that end,” he said to me. Together we carried the body to the truck and placed it on the cargo platform. The two men then sped away. Curious, I followed in my car.


It was still early but Doc Holmes was already holding office in the downstairs quarters in his home on Main Street when the men arrived with Caswell’s body. Then I had a change of heart and drove on by, stopping at Ruth’s local coffee shop. Tim was dead. Nothing was going to change that, no matter what Doc Holmes had to say.

Friday, May 8, 2015

SAFETY GUARANTEED?

Before buying into Elon Musk’s dream of equipping homes with solar power and battery packs on the garage wall to store energy for night time use, thus enabling severing of ties with the electric company, serious consideration should be given to safety, primarily from a fire aspect. Fourteen kilowatts or more power in a confined space is a lot of power. If lithium based and a fire starts, fireman will only make it worse, trying to extinguish it with water. Insurance companies won’t allow storage of propane or other compressed fuels in the garage even if stored in ASME code vessels.
 

What will they do in this case, when the first house burns down? An outside, sheltered installation may be the answer. Maybe the answer is to do nothing. Automobiles crash, yet there is no abatement in their usage. The same is true of many modern amenities. What's a few homes, in the big picture?

Monday, May 4, 2015

THE HUMAN DILEMMA

   
                                         

    The problem for the future, as in the past, is the inherent inability of a chaotic combination of cultures to be led, or to recognize the magnitude of upcoming survival challenges. The time of empire building and leading-by-force ended with the dissolution of the British empire, and on a lesser scale, Spanish, French, and  Portuguese empires, and more recently Soviet Union attempts to bring nations under its control. A misadventure in Afghanistan  led to the ultimate fall and breakup of the Soviet Union.
    Benign leadership, as practiced by the United States, occasionally leading to war, is ineffective also. Tribal cultures in particular resent interference with their centuries old way of life. Heavily religious nations run by clerics  are also unhelpful.
    An ambitious attempt at  international management occurred with the formation of the United Nations Assembly after World War II. Within that organization is the UN Economic and Social council, in which the World Bank Group, created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, is a member.   The United Nations was supposed to solve problems, but so far, weighted be its own bureau racy, has been mainly successful in providing relief from natural disasters and disease abatement. In a large part, the United States has taken the lead in such events, followed eventually by United Nations action. Within its charter, the World Bank Group provides sporadic relief to nations that need a lift or have run aground from corruption and mismanagement.
    A huge problem looms. Since 1960 world population has risen by a full billion on the average about every thirteen years. Ahead of us, in the next twelve or thirteen  years, is an increase of another billion. Who is going to feed, shelter, and provide space for them with  promise of fulfilled lives ahead? The easy part is providing everyone with cell phones (the number of cell phones now exceeds world population.) Nowhere, so far as I can tell, is the grand plan that spells out how to accommodate  the next billion.
     Availability of energy is the least of the problems. But what kind of energy, and how it is managed is all important. Energy based on carbon fuels is harmful if consumed at a rate where natural processes, plant life and oceanic absorption, cannot keep up with the pollution  produced. Oceanic absorption is already limited as the water becomes warmer and more and more acidic, in turn affecting  ocean plant life.
    Fossil fuels, particularly methane, are available in prodigious amounts as technological progress has produced machinery and techniques for extracting it from underground. Moreover, much of the methane may not be fossil fuel after all, but a primeval component of the atmosphere that got dissolved in brines. These deposits are enormous, numerous and widespread
    Water is a huge problem from many aspects. Intensive agriculture depends on underground aquifers for irrigation. These are being depleted at a rapid rate,  Above-ground water is subject to large scale contamination from many sources ranging from industrial and farm waste to human waste. Rivers of heavily populated China and India are heavily contaminated. It begs the question: Where does the water come from for food processing and drug manufacturing. How dependable is assurance that the water is processed to be pure? How vulnerable is the food and pharmaceuticals supply?
     It is frequently stated that the success of capitalism depends on growth. But do you boil it down to mainly population growth and materials accumulation growth? And how do you separate and quantify the two? Economists have failed to make the distinction between growth based on materials advancement and property accumulation, and the basic needs of a growing population.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

AFTER INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION?

     Russia, China, and the United States are developing, or plan to develop heavy lift launch vehicles in the coming years with a low  Earth  orbit capability in the region of 75 tons. What’s up? At best solar system exploration is likely to involve an occasional launch, perhaps years apart. Something else must be afoot, and it probably has ties to the coming end-of-life status of the International Space Station (ISS). Russia has already indicated that  it is departing early to independence. China,  having  no part in the ISS, already has it’s own station.

     The upped launch capability foretells a new era in low Earth operations in the form of smaller, Skylab size work stations, many of them, providing opportunity for research and development, manufacturing, and even tourism on eventually a large scale. Its nature will be such that nations with no launch capability will be able to lease stations, relying on the big three to provide transportation and servicing.

     I had the opportunity to tour the mockup Skylab at Mcdonnell-Douglas shortly before the real article was launched. A multi-story configuration built inside a structure that was a Saturn IV
upper stage,  it seemed adequately roomy and comfortable enough to house several astronauts.
 

     Perhaps this mockup still exists somewhere.....maybe at the Smithsonian. It could still be a model for future turnkey stations.

     Earth orbit occupied by numerous turnkey stations may be the only way for many years to obtain a net positive return on investment, short of finding an asteroid littered with diamonds.

Note: I have previously written op-eds on this subject for Space News.