Year: 2013

The High Cost Of Waiting

A recent study in Nature finds that “political choices that delay mitigation” are the biggest factor making climate change unstoppable. Steve Hatfield-Dobbs discusses [paywalled] the implications for efforts to slow warming:

The study’s key message reinforces previous findings that urgent and more ambitious global action is required to maintain any chance of limiting global warming to 2 °C. The clear finding that the world would be better off acting from 2015 rather than 2020 also raises sharp and serious questions about the trade-offs implicit in the current pace of global negotiations and action. The window for effective action on climate change is closing quickly, and Rogelj et al. have put a price tag on each year of delay.

Climate Progress summarizes the study’s findings:

Keywan Riahi, IIASA energy program leader and study co-author said, “With a twenty-year delay, you can throw as much money as you have at the problem, and the best outcome you can get is a fifty-fifty chance of keeping temperature rise below two degrees.” Two degrees is the level that is currently supported by over 190 countries as a limit to avoid dangerous climate change.

Alister Doyle has more:

The study indicated that an immediate global price of $20 a ton on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, would give a roughly 60 percent chance of limiting warming to below 2C.Wait until 2020 and the carbon price would have to be around $100 a ton to retain that 60 percent chance, Riahi told Reuters of the study made with other experts in Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Germany.

Hewitt Award Nominee

"I'm sure that the Arabs are drinking orange juice and toasting Hagel’s good health," – former New York mayor, Ed Koch, on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to head the Pentagon.

Note his use of the phrase "the Arabs." One amorphous entity. Do you think any public figure could use the equally foul term "the Jews" when discussing those with whom he disagrees? Or do you think he'd be called a bigot – and deserve to be?

The Dish Model, Ctd

Noah Millman, who wishes us well on our new venture, contemplates the economics of the web:

[N]one of Sullivan’s revenue will downstream to the content-creators on whom he depends. And that remains the essential business-model problem of the written word in the age of the internet. Newspapers were vertically-integrated: the same organization produced the content, aggregated it, and delivered it. But in the age of the internet, the delivery mechanism and editorial function have been disaggregated from content-production. You get access to the internet from a utility company like Verizon that does not own and is not responsible for providing content. And you find what you want using an advertising-supported search engine like Google that similarly does not own and is not responsible for producing content. Or through a reliable aggregator like Andrew Sullivan, who also does not own or pay for most of the content he steers people towards. These business models depend on content-generation for their own viability, but they aren’t primarily responsible for content-generation.

It’s easy to see how things could be structured differently. Aggregators could downstream a fraction of their advertising or subscription revenue to producers of content that was clicked through to. But it’s not obvious what would motivate these entities to adopt such a model, there being no actual shortage of content. And there will never be a shortage of content, because there is a large enough group of people who will do this for fun, whether or not it is profitable.

All questions we are closely considering as we go along. More on this soon. Freddie DeBoer, for his part, focuses on the Dish’s endless search for new online voices:

I literally started this blog at a public library, here on Blogger’s free platform using Blogger’s free server space, with no connections in media or journalism or commentary, no published work, and seemingly no entrance into the Byzantine and cliquish world of professional media. I had little thought of anyone reading this blog. But within two weeks or so of starting it, Andrew Sullivan had linked to one of my pieces, and from their came far more clicks, links, and attention. My readership is small, but it is committed, and while I am terrible at communicating with people who thank me for my work, their support means everything.

This is still an amateur blog, one for which I have never received a dime, although I have had people buy me books from my Amazon wish list, for which I’m immensely grateful. That amateur status suits me fine, both pragmatically and theoretically. But to be in the conversation, to have the ability to weigh in and be listened to– that’s a blessing, and I owe it to Andrew and his deep commitment to equality on the level of ideas. Whatever disagreements I may have with Andrew or with the Dish as an entity, his fierce commitment to looking anywhere and everywhere for fresh voices, quality writing, and provocative opinions is a profound credit to him. When it comes to writing, he is truly an egalitarian. More than anything, that commitment, and the workload it requires, will be his enduring legacy. I can only thank him and his staff and wish them all the best.

You can read Freddie on a regular basis at L’Hôte, his excellent little blog. Update via email from Patrick O’Connor, whose tweet is embedded above:

FWIW that tweet was made within moments of reading about the plan at Huff Puff before they corrected their story saying the rate would be $19.95 a month, not $19.99 a year. So I retweeted “never mind” soon after. After learning the correct (and very reasonable) amount to be charged, I regretted the flippancy of tweet’s “huh?” I have great admiration for what you all do.

O’Connor adds:

By the way, I don’t know if any of you are Californians, but a dear member of the California Public Broadcast community passed away today at 67. His name was Huell Howser. Everyone I know is very upset at his passing. He was like Fred Rogers for grown ups. His programs on every facet of California life are treasures. His format was simple. No crew for his shoots. There was a hand-held cameraman. Huell was his own sound man, holding a microphone. He would travel thoughout the state, stopping wherever appealed to his fancy to interview the locals. It was as close to blogging as you could do on television. For example, did you know that the world’s biggest wisteria vine was just east of Pasadena in Sierra Madre?

Brennan And Torture

A blemish or an opportunity? My view is that it’s both. We have an unusual opportunity to grill a nominee over the vital issues of torture and accountability, drones and secrecy. We need more sunlight – including public access to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s definitive report on the torture program under Bush-Cheney. But the Brennan hearings are a start.

Big Babies Watch

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Recent polling has convinced many Republicans that they have the upper hand on the debt ceiling. Jonathan Bernstein isn't buying it:

[T]hat people think “raise the debt limit” is bad tells us nothing about how they would react to an economic crash caused by government default. As for spending, it’s well known that generic calls to “cut spending” are popular, but so is increasing spending on virtually every individual program the government actually spends money on. In any actual battle, Republicans will eventually be identified by specific cuts (even if they resist supporting specific cuts, Democrats will fill in the blanks). In other words, this kind of polling tells us absolutely nothing about how a real debt limit fight, much less a default, would play out in terms of public opinion.

I wish I were so certain. But if there's one thing we know about the great American public right now it is that it is firmly in favor of no cuts on spending, no increases in taxation, and no raising of the debt ceiling limit. Very few of our actual politicians, including president Obama, has been bold enough to tell them that this is impossible, and that they are effectively big babies, incapable of making basic choices about what to pay for, and how. In that sense, what America truly lacks right now is a real conservative: a Thatcher figure who can insist that things have to paid for or cut, and that you cannot have it both ways. Neither side has that courage, and since Reagan, it has been a truism that stark fiscal honesty with the public is political death.

But that's precisely why we have the debt we have and the impasse we have. And if Obama pretends that we can resolve this by revenues alone, he is part of the problem, not the solution.

Kristol vs Hagel: Flashback II

Hagel-vietnam

A quote from 2002 worth re-reading today:

"If disarmament in Iraq requires the use of force, we need to consider carefully the implications and consequences of our actions. The future of Iraq after Saddam Hussein is also an open question. Some of my colleagues and some American analysts now speak authoritatively of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq, and how Iraq can be a test case for democracy in the Arab world. How many of us really know and understand much about Iraq, the country, the history, the people, the role in the Arab world? I approach the issue of post-Saddam Iraq and the future of democracy and stability in the Middle East with more caution, realism and a bit more humility… Imposing democracy through force in Iraq is a roll of the dice. A democratic effort cannot be maintained without building durable Iraqi political institutions and developing a regional and international commitment to Iraq's reconstruction. No small task."

Now let's take a look at the record of Bill Kristol, who, unlike Hagel, didn't serve in uniform. Here's how he attacked Hagel at the time:

Iraq's uncertain future, as opposed to its totalitarian present, has become the principle [sic] concern of many realists. "What comes after a military invasion?" Senator Chuck Hagel would like to know. "Who rules Iraq? Does the United States really want to be in Baghdad, trying to police Baghdad for twenty or thirty years?" … Predictions of ethnic turmoil in Iraq are even more questionable than they were in the case of Afghanistan. Unlike the Taliban, Saddam has little support among any ethnic group, Sunnis included, and the Iraqi opposition is itself a multi-ethnic force…

[T]he executive director of the Iraq Foundation, Rend Rahim Francke, says, "we will not have a civil war in Iraq. This is contrary to Iraqi history, and Iraq has not had a history of communal conflict as there has been in the Balkans or in Afghanistan…"

Which one would you trust to have input on foreign policy in the coming years? A pro-Greater Israel fanatic who has been proven definitively wrong about almost everything in the past decade? Or one of a handful of senators who stood up against the tide for war and his own party and asked all the questions I didn't?

(Photo via TPM: "Chuck Hagel and his brother Tom sit on an armored personnel carrier in Vietnam in 1968. More photos here.")

Why Hagel Matters, Ctd

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In one of their more desperate moves, the neocons, who have shown zero interest in the plight of gay servicemembers in the past, decided to play the gay card. Some of them may even have shoveled money at the Log Cabin Republicans to get them to reverse position on the Purple Heart Republican (LCR won't tell who financed the Hagel smear ad in the NYT). But the reality is that Hagel has clearly evolved, which again offers an opportunity, not a threat:

The charges of Hagelian insensitivity to gay rights, based on several of past votes and one 1990s comment, have largely evaporated. Hagel, like most of the country, has “evolved” on the issue. If the question comes up in the hearings, it will be as a coming out party for  acceptance of the gay rights revolution by the Republican establishment. Those who have  been involved in the struggle will cheer, as indeed will many who have done no more than observe, often skeptically, from the sidelines.

It seems to me that politically-attuned gays, far from engaging in AIPAC-style smearing, should be thrilled to see a Republican military figure openly backing open gay military service as a nominee for defense secretary. He's a blow both to the neocons and the Christianists. Which, believe it or not, is why many of us supported Obama in the first place: a voice of reason against the fanaticism, utopianism and cant of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld years.

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) during a personnel announcement in the East Room at the White House on January 7, 2013 in Washington, DC. Obama has nominated Hagel for the next Secretary of Defense and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan to become the new director of the CIA. By Alex Wong/Getty Images)