Climate Change Heats Up Global Inequity

Pick a bunch of unimportant technical variables and blow them up. Pick the apparent right answer that turns out to be wrong. Blame one guy for the problems in a $16 trillion economy. Close your eyes to China’s skillful use of partnerships, India’s willingness to entrepreneur, Brasil’s success in using govt support to create a burgeoning middle class, to Germany and Abu Dhabi building individual homes and cities of 50K (Masdar!) with zero carbon footprints—and then examine the promise of jobs without a plan, by a candidate whose mega-bucks are in foreign accounts.

Which of the above are true? Are those climate controlled offshore accounts an unimportant variable, a misleading answer, or blind ambition, driven by power and greed? Wealth’s biggest global inequity shows up in the micro-climate niches of communities where sustenance farmers are losing the battle against drought and children are starving, where education is impeded as children are the water bearers for carrying water from diseased sources, where wood, a renewable resource for warmth, cooking, and construction is no longer available. The planet’s largest wildlife migration is in danger!

One side sees bigger battleships and force protection to return the American past; the other sees a quiet program of expanding the goals of giving, changing the rules of co-operating and confronting the new realities of those with little income. Climate change is a force in the middle of this debate. Which side will we chose?

~Excellent question. The powerful will follow the money because the rich and powerful believe that there will always be some livable place for the super rich on top of the food chain. As long as the right wing is in control in the USA the situation is hopeless. They are demanding an oil sands cross country pipeline and fracking for gas into our water table. There is one choice Americans can make at the pollls this year that will give us more time not less. .

Cynical Is Real

Wow. No doubt expensive teams of lobbyists and providers and corporate leaders are seating down as equals, and holding unnecessary calls, as they monitor profit and revenue data, compare it to previous years and project forward even greater profit increases, reimbursements, labs, drugs, and ancillary services in order to combat the wave of cost reduction that Congress also bitterly wants to avoid.

A community system in Colorado has also reduced its costs and improved its care. As theses stories grow, greater effort will be used to supress these successful techniques of costs and care. Jim DeMint will tell us again, “we have the best health care system in the world.” Bachmann will call the teams “death panels,” deciding the level of care and who is served. (It’s the government’s money and I can spent it how I want to!). Fewer visits and admissions will be spun as a sign communities are being serverely underserved–the team will be cited to point to a primary care physician shortage.

Am I cynical? No. I remember the Palovian reflex, Skinner’s conditioning, and the corporate attachment, through its culture and training, to greed and greater profits. Lowering the costs rings the bell for the attacks.

~Walter –
Your first paragraph is brilliant satire, and captures exactly what is going on right now behind the scenes. [it parallels the structure and description of the Times editorial.]
    It also expresses a thought that had been absent for much of the last 3 years’ debate, to wit: insurance carriers _do_ _not_ _want_ costs to come down. All they want is to shift the burden of costs to patients (in premiums, deductibles and co-pays) and the public (in taxation to cover those whose treatment they have delayed or denied).
    I have yet to hear anyone ask, “Why _should_ an ER visit cost $1900?” and get a clear factual answer.
    And, you do well to mention Congress, since, to the extent costs come down, they are deprived of an issue. Every vote for the repeal of ACA should be followed by the question, “OK, what do _you_ propose?”