90 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT (=Doomsday)!

A week ago (on Jan. 23), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced the setting of what they call the Doomsday Clock. Contrary to my expectation, the clock was set the same as last year: 90 seconds to midnight (with midnight representing “doomsday”).

For 75 years now, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been announcing the setting of the Doomsday Clock. That nonprofit organization was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and former Manhattan Project scientists. They introduced the Doomsday Clock two years later.

The first setting of the Clock was seven minutes to midnight. In 1949, with the explosion of a nuclear device by the Soviet Union and the beginning of the arms race, it was reset to three minutes before midnight.

The testing of the hydrogen bomb in 1952 led to resetting the Clock in the following January to just two minutes before doomsday. Relations between the U.S. and the USSR improved over the next few years, though, and in 1960 the hands on the Clock were moved back to seven minutes.

Over the next decades, the Doomsday Clock kept going up and down, reaching the farthest from midnight, 17 minutes, in 1991. But in 2002 it was back to seven minutes and has never been further since. In 2015 it was back down to three minutes where it started in 1947.

In January last year, the Clock was set at 90 seconds. the closest to midnight it had ever been, and it was kept at that setting last week. I expected it to be set even closer to “doomsday” because of the threat of expanding, and perhaps nuclear, war in the Levant.*

The threat of nuclear war was the main basis for setting the Doomsday Clock for the first 60 years. In 2007, however, climate change was added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as another portentous threat to humankind, and the hands on the Clock were set at five minutes to midnight.

The announcement regarding this year’s setting of the Clock stated that there were four main considerations for determining that setting: 1) the many dimensions of nuclear threat, 2) an ominous climate change outlook, 3) evolving biological threats, and 4) the dangers of AI.**

How should we respond to the current setting of the Doomsday Clock? This question surely demands our thoughtful attention. Let me suggest three things:

1) Don’t ignore the Doomsday Clock. It would be easy to shrug off the Clock’s warning because of denial, indifference, or the unwillingness to face seriously the present predicament the world is in—or even just due to the pressure of meeting the demands of our everyday lives.

2) Don’t let the Doomsday Clock get you down. Depression, of course, is the result of feeling “down” for whatever reason. Too much attention to the Clock can certainly cause depression. Just as we shouldn’t ignore the clock, neither should we think about it “all the time.”

3) Work actively to elect candidates of the better political party, that is, the party working more consistently to deal with the dire problems besetting the whole world.

On the website linked to in the second footnote, we are told that the threats the world is currently facing “are of such a character and magnitude that no one nation or leader can bring them under control.”

They go on to state that “three of the world’s leading powers—the United States, China, and Russia—should commence serious dialogue about each of the global threats.”

Further, they contend that those three countries “need to take responsibility for the existential danger the world now faces. They have the capacity to pull the world back from the brink of catastrophe. They should do so, with clarity and courage, and without delay.”

I am not at all optimistic, though, that the three countries mentioned will even begin to do most of what is necessary to move the hands on the Doomsday Clock farther from midnight.

But I am quite sure there is much more possibility of that being done under the Democratic Party in the U.S. rather than by the MAGA party, which includes so many xenophobic people who, among other things, are also global warming and pandemic deniers--as well as deniers of the clear results of the 2020 presidential election. 

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  * I previously wrote about the Doomsday Clock in August 2020 (see here) and mentioned it briefly (here) in March 2018. Some things now are much the same, but there are some distinct differences also.

Note too that the Doomsday Clock elicits attention from around the world. See, for example, this Jan. 17 article from the Hindustan Times, an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi.

** See here for the official “2024 Doomsday Day Clock Statement” and related information. 

Praise for the Pope

Like most of you who read this blog, I am not a Roman Catholic, but I have considerable appreciation for Pope Francis. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936, ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1969, and elected Pope in March 2013. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. 

Pope Francis speaking at the Vatican on 10/4/23]

There are many reasons to praise Pope Francis. For example, just nine days ago (on 10/4/23), the Pope issued an “apostolic exhortation” under the title Laudate Deum (=Praise God). That document, which can be read in full here, was directed “to all people of good will” and was “on the climate crisis.”

Last month, I read much of Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis’s encyclical officially published by the Vatican in 2020 on October 4, the feast day of Francis of Assisi. While there was much good and important content, I was somewhat critical of it as it seemed to be lacking specificity or concreteness.

This month’s new document, however, which is a commentary on Laudato si' (=Praise Be to You), the Pope’s major 2015 encyclical on the environment, is generally quite specific and concrete. In the second paragraph of this recent “exhortation,” the Pope says:

…with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.

Over the past twenty months, I have cited Michael Dowd and others who have spoken warningly about collapse, but here is a clear statement about that fateful future by the Pope.**

Also, an Oct. 4 Vatican News article (see here) states that in Laudate Deum the Pope “criticizes climate change deniers, saying that the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt.”

Early this month, the Pope convened the three-week General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, sometimes called the Super Bowl of the Catholic Church. It drew bishops from around the world to discuss hot-button issues.

Some of those issues are whether priests should be allowed to get married, if divorced and remarried Catholics should receive communion, whether women should be allowed to become deacons, and how the church will handle matters around the LGBTQ community.

It remains to be seen how, or when, these contentious matters will be resolved, but for those of us who are egalitarians, the Pope’s willingness to consider such matters is certainly praiseworthy.

Sadly, many USAmericans have little praise for the Pope. Politics takes precedence over their religious faith. Or for others, they hold to an outdated, conservative Catholicism and are, literally, more traditionally Catholic than the Pope.

According to an Aug. 28 APNews.com post, “Many conservatives have blasted Francis’s emphasis on social justice issues such as the environment and the poor,” and they have also branded as heretical his openness “to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.”

As an example of politics taking precedence over the position of the Pope, consider the contrast between Francis’s recent “exhortation” regarding global warming and U.S. Catholics.

The Pope, as well as the preponderant majority of climate scientists around the world, emphasizes that “the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt.”

But last month, Pew Research Center (here) reported that only 44% of U.S. Catholics say Earth is warming mainly due to human activity—and of U.S. Catholics who are Republicans or lean Republican, only a strikingly low 18% think that global warming is human-caused.

In response to such criticism, the Pope has called the strong, organized, reactionary attitude of some Catholics in the U.S. Church “backward,” and has stated that their faith has been replaced by ideologies.

Francis reminds these people that “backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correction evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals” that allows for doctrine to progress over time.

Such progressiveness is one of the main reasons I have praise for the Pope. His deep concern for the future well-being of all people around the world has led him to claim that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.

Would that all Catholics, and all Protestants as well, could embrace these progressive ideas of the forward-looking Pope.

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** With considerable sadness I am sharing the news that Michael Dowd (b. 11/1958) died on October 7 as the result of a fall in a friend’s home. More information about his death and memorial service is available here. 

“We” Most Probably Won’t Do It

For decades now, I have had high regard for Al Gore, who served as vice president of the U.S. from 1993 to 2001 and who barely lost the presidential election in 2000. Since then, Gore, who celebrated his 75th birthday earlier this year, has been known primarily as an environmentalist.

Logo of Climate Reality Project
(started by Gore in 2006, new name in 2011)

An Inconvenient Truth is the name of Al Gore’s film about his campaign to educate people about global warming. in July 2006, June and I went with friends here in Liberty to see that powerful new documentary, which includes Gore’s slide show about environmental issues.

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

In January 2008 I had the privilege of hearing Gore speak (and show slides), and I was highly impressed with not only what he said (and showed) but with him as a genuine, insightful person. I thought again how it was such a shame that he didn’t become POTUS in 2001.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is Gore’s 2017 film documenting his ten years of effort to combat global warming after his first film that had garnered so much publicity. (I can’t explain why June and I hadn’t watched this until last week; it certainly was well worth watching.)**

The climax of this documentary is about the Paris Agreement reached at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 21). On Earth Day (Apr. 22) 2016, 174 countries signed that agreement.

But Gore’s joyful hope soon turned to feelings of despair as the Trump administration announced in 2017 that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Agreement as soon as possible (in 2020).

The film, of course, doesn’t show how Pres. Biden announced on his first day in office that the U.S. was rejoining. Since then, Biden has continually pushed measures to counteract the steady and detrimental increase of global warming, in spite of constant opposition from the GOP.

But has he done enough? Perhaps he has done about as much as he could have done because of the climate change deniers, but no, he has not done nearly enough to stem the coming collapse.

Al Gore remains hopeful that “we” can solve the problem of climate change, etc. A 9/20/19 opinion piece in the New York Times is titled: “Al Gore: The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win.”

Speaking at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Oct. 2021, Gore declared, “We have the solutions…. I have an enormous amount of hope about our future.”

Then last month, David Gelles published an article based on a recent interview with Gore. The NYTimes reporter stated that “the events of the past few weeks have Gore even more worried than usual.” Still, “Despite the apocalyptic weather news, Gore is also hopeful.”

Gore said in that interview, “The faster we stop burning fossil fuels and releasing other planet-warming emissions, the more quickly global temperatures can stabilize.” Further, “We know how to fix this…. We can stop the temperature going up worldwide…” (bolding added).

While these words are perhaps true, the sad fact is that in all likelihood, “we” won’t do it. All the books and films about global warming end with what we need to do. But in spite of some encouraging signs, we (meaning the vast majority of people on Earth) don’t seem to be making much progress.

Part of the Paris Agreement goal was the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO²) in the atmosphere to no more than 350 ppm. In 2006 that figure was 380 and it had risen to 410 by 2017. But now in August 2023, it is 420, and it keeps going up, as is clearly seen in the following chart. 

I’m afraid the much-respected Mr. Gore is somewhat affected by “hopium” (holding on to false hopes that prevents us from accepting reality). “We” are most probably not going to prevent the coming collapse resulting from overshoot.

But we (you and I) can work to push the collapse further into the future.  

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** We watched this on Amazon Prime (at a nominal charge), and then discovered that the DVD was available at our local library. In addition to the two books published with the same titles as the two movies, and several earlier books, Gore is also the author of The Assault on Reason (2007, 2017), Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (2009), and The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (2013).

Note: The Buttry Center for Peace and Nonviolence at Central Seminary in Kansas is offering a five-part course titled “Creation Care in a Changing Climate: Doing Our Part to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Please click here to learn more about this course, and if you would like to participate, you can register there. (Courses such as this can help with doing what I suggest in the last sentence of this article.)

Too Many People, or Too Few?

This blog post is about the human population of the world. Are there too many people, or are there too few? 

(A slightly inaccurate graph of the world's population growth, but the point is well made.)

The county of my birth is very small; it could be argued that there are too few people there. I was born in Worth County, Missouri, which is the youngest of the 114 counties in the state. It is also the Mo. county with the smallest land area and the smallest population.**

According to the U.S. census records, the peak population of Worth Co. was in 1900 when the number of residents reached nearly 10,000. But in the 2020 census, the population had dropped to under 2,000.

It can be argued, with good reason, that there are now too few people in Worth Co. for it to be viable still, and the same is true for many rural counties across the nation.

The population of some nations is decreasing, and some people in those countries are worrying about there being too few people—especially too few of the “right” kind.

I have long been concerned about the rapid increase of the world’s population. When I was born in 1938, there were about 2.2 billion people living on this earth, but by 1998 (just 60 years later) that number reached six billion—and this year it topped eight billion!

If my home county had grown by the same percentage as the world’s population between 1900 and 2020, it would have a population of around 49,000, not fewer than 2,000.

But already by the early 2000s, there was serious talk about the declining population in Japan and the need to encourage more Japanese women to marry and for couples to have more children.

And it is true, many of the wealthy countries of the world are losing population, and even some in China, until this year the world’s most populous country, are increasingly concerned about the current population decline there.

The cover story of the June 3^rd-9^th issue of The Economist was “The Baby-Bust Economy,” and they highlighted the problem of the declining population growth in most of the world’s wealthiest countries: “The largest 15 countries by GDP all have a fertility rate below the replacement rate.”

Thus, they project that before the end of this century “the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death.”

The unchecked growth of the world’s population has long been a concern of some scholars, and others. It was 225 years ago when Thomas Malthus published the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798).

Malthus (1766~1834) was an English economist and demographer and is best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that betterment of humankind is impossible without stern limits on reproduction.

Malthus was the first to write publicly about carrying capacity and overshoot, which are central themes of William Catton’s book that I introduced in my March 23 blog post, and that perceptive author refers to Malthus several times.

Malthus didn’t know of the coming industrial revolution in the 19^th century or the “green revolution” that began in mid-20^th century. But as Catton clearly explains, the extension of the carrying capacity of the earth was primarily based on the exploitation of depletable and non-renewable fossil fuels.

It was quite disappointing that the concluding paragraph of The Economist’s recent cover story states, “Unexpected productivity advances meant that demographic time-bombs, such as the mass starvation predicted by Thomas Malthus in the 18th century, failed to detonate.”

True, such time-bombs haven’t detonated yet. But why do they think that those time bombs are not still ticking in this world with its continual global warming, ongoing over-consumption of non-renewable resources, and increasing inequality and strife between the “haves” and “have nots”?

Because of the current, but insufficiently understood, ecological crisis, there will most likely be a drastic, and catastrophic, decline in the world’s population long before the end of this century.

Fortunately, rather than being a problem, the current decline in population pushes the coming catastrophic decline further into the future.

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** You might also find it interesting that the land area that became Worth County in 1861 was the most northwestern corner of the United States after Missouri became a state in 1821. 

Science Always Wins

When it comes to knowledge of the physical world, science always wins. That doesn’t mean that science is always right. Sometimes it is wrong, but science is always open to new information and changes with increased knowledge of the physical world. 

Science has clearly won in many past disputes with widespread traditional Christian beliefs.

1) Science won in the dispute over the age of the earth. The date 4004 B.C. was at the top of the first page of the Bible I had when I was a boy. That was considered to be the date the world was created as depicted in the first two chapters of Genesis.

In spite of a few “young-earthers” still around, most modern people, including most Christians, readily acknowledge the age of the earth as being far, far older than 6,027 years. Science unquestionably won that dispute.

2) Science also won the dispute over the shape and centrality of the earth. Hardly anyone takes the claims of “flat-earthers” seriously; they are treated as a curiosity (as in this article on the LiveScience website).

And despite the persecution of Giordano Bruno (1548~1600) and Galileo (1564~1642), does anyone today (other than perhaps some flat-earthers) affirm the Ptolemaic view that Earth is the center of the universe? Science undeniably won again.

3) Science is winning the dispute over the biological evolution of humans. Partly because of the literal interpretation of the creation story/stories of Genesis, joined with the belief in a “young” earth, traditional Christians long opposed the theory of the biological evolution of homo sapiens.

According to the latest figures I could find, nearly all scientists (97%) say humans and other living things have evolved over time. That is far higher than the percentage of the general public who “believe” in evolution. But the latter will continue to shrink, and science will again be the obvious “winner.”

Science is also winning contemporary disputes as well. Consider just a couple of examples.

1) It will soon be two years since vaccinations for covid-19 began to be used by the general public, but there is a sizeable segment of the population that has spurned the vaccinations. In the U.S., about one-fifth of the population is still completely unvaccinated and fewer than 70% are “fully” vaccinated.

In spite of all the “scientific” tests and precautions taken, many have accepted non-scientific “myths” to discredit the “facts” (see this website, for example) and to refuse vaccination. But science has won this dispute also: there is ample evidence that vaccinations greatly reduced covid-19 deaths.

2) One of the most prevalent, and serious, ongoing disputes currently is regarding global warming. According to this NASA.gov website, “There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.” 97% of scientists believe this.

But, the general public’s views are quite different: according to Pew Research only 57% see global warming as a serious problem, and among Republicans that falls to 25% (compared to 83% of Democrats). However, eventually science will certainly win this debate also. Science always wins.**

When it comes to questions of Why? though, science doesn’t have the answer. As I said at the beginning, science wins in matters pertaining to knowledge of the physical world. But there is a “metaphysical” world as well.

The latter deals with reality “beyond” the physical world that can be known by the senses, which is all science can deal with. Science can only examine/explain the nature of what can be seen, measured, and explored by the senses.

“Metaphysics” deals with questions about why there is something rather than nothing, and with matters of meaning and value. This is the world of the three “transcendental” values of truth, beauty, and goodness. And there, science/scientists qua science/scientists have nothing to say.

These values can only be explored by philosophy and/or religion, not by science. So while it is true that science always wins in matters pertaining to the physical world, science isn’t even a player in the more important “game” of life, which is linked to reality beyond, as well as of, this physical world.

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** See this related 2017 article, “Climate change deniers, science always wins in the end,” on The Hill’s website. And for the few of you who want to think more, and more deeply, about this matter, I highly recommend the following article in the December 2022 issue of BioScience: “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022.”

What about Nuclear Energy?

Tomorrow, August 6, is the 77^th anniversary of the first time a nuclear weapon was used in warfare. That morning at approximately 8:15 a.m. (local time), a U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

As I have made several posts regarding the bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki three days later (see here, for example), this article is mostly about the later use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 

President Eisenhower made a significant “Atoms for Peace” address to the United Nations in December 1953, eight years after the nuclear destruction of the two Japanese cities. That began a period of high hope that nuclear energy could be used for the great benefit of the human race.**

From the beginning, however, the U.S. President’s proposal was partly propaganda and an excuse for building additional nuclear weapons for national security. That led to the Cold War era, and during Eisenhower’s time in office, the number of U.S. nuclear weapons rose from 1,005 to 20,000.

But Eisenhower’s seminal speech also led to the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957, which was set up as the world’s “Atoms for Peace” organization within the United Nations—and as their website shows, it is still quite active.

There have been three major reasons for widespread opposition to the development of nuclear energy.

1) The fear of nuclear weapons being used again in warfare, perhaps by a rogue nation or by terrorists. This was long my main reason for opposing the further development of nuclear energy. I wrote an anti-nuclear article 30~40 years ago for a local publication in Japan.

2) The possibility of accidents. Indeed, there have been three major nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island (Penn.) in March 1979, Chernobyl (Ukraine) in April 1986 (the world’s biggest nuclear accident), and Fukushima (Japan) in March 2011.

The first of those caused a dramatic shift in the enthusiasm for the development of nuclear power in the U.S. Large anti-nuclear demonstrations were held in Washington, D.C., in May 1979, and then in New York City that December.

This is an issue that must be carefully considered, and, indeed, in Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters (2022), Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian historian at Harvard,

holds that the inevitability of accidents is one of several reasons to encourage nuclear power to drift into disuse, rather than give it a new role in the fight against climate change (from the June 25 issue of The Economist).

3) The high cost of building nuclear reactors and disposing of waste materials. According to this website, “the minimum cost per megawatt hour to build a new nuclear plant is $112, compared to $46 for utility-scale solar . . . and $30 for wind.”

And then, disposal of nuclear waste is a major challenge, both in terms of methods and cost.

So, what about now? In recent years, because of increased awareness of the seriousness of global warming, there has again been a growing movement favoring the use of nuclear energy.

The Russian war on Ukraine this year has also once again increased the appeal of the development and use of nuclear power, especially in Europe. Countries that were phasing out nuclear reactors are now postponing those plans.

In Japan, twenty-one nuclear reactors were decommissioned after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, but now ten of those reactors have been restarted and plans are in place for more restarts in the years ahead.

It seems to me that in spite of the risks (and the cost), the industrial countries of the world must make plans immediately for the increased construction of nuclear reactors for the energy needs of the world.

True, destructive nuclear accidents are possible, but more widespread destruction of the world as we know it is quite certain if global warming is not controlled. Nuclear energy is one of our best hopes for significantly slowing the crisis of global warming.

What do you think?

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** “How The Atom Changed The World” is an informative 55-minute video (available here on YouTube) regarding the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; it begins with Eisenhower’s emphasis on Atoms for Peace and deals with the pros and cons of nuclear energy up through 2021.

++ Some of you may be interested in exploring this link to “Nuclear Prayer Day” tomorrow (Aug. 6); it is especially to pray for a world free of nuclear weapons. 

“Listen to the Scientists”: Considering the Limits to Growth

This post is directly related to the one I made on January 25. It is about the possibility of an “ecological Armageddon” (words not used but implied in the 1/25 post), which might occur even before the end of this century. 

Becoming Aware

I have been much concerned about this issue for 50 years, and more. By 1970 or ’71, I had read Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb (1968), or had read enough of and about that book, to be greatly concerned about what was often called “the population explosion.”

Then in 1972, the Club of Rome published another highly significant book. It was titled The Limits to Growth, authored by Donella H. Meadows et al. The New York Times (here) summarized the central thesis of that book succinctly:

Either civilization or growth must end, and soon. Continued population and industrial growth will exhaust the world’s minerals and bathe the biosphere in fatal levels of pollution. As the authors summarize, “if the present growth trends continue unchanged, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next hundred years.”

It was, however, many years later before I began to be aware of the serious problem of global warming—and I recently learned that the term “global warming” didn’t even appear in a scientific article until 1975.

In fact, as late as that year, some were still talking of climate change making the world too cold—which is why the term global warming is now much to be preferred to climate change.

In recent years, though, I have been very aware of the danger of global warming, and my 1/5/20 blog post was titled “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade.”

However, I have only recently become aware of the fact that global warming itself is not the primary ecological problem confronting humankind. Rather, global warming is the result of a network of problems all related to unrestrained growth, which is also called overshoot.

EarthOvershoot.org explains, “Overshoot is when a species consumes resources and generates wastes faster than the ecosystem in which it inhabits can replace those resources or absorb those wastes.”

Further, “Climate change is just one symptom (and a pretty big one) of a much larger ‘disease’ called overshoot. Overshoot is the all encompassing threat to sustainability posed by too many people consuming too many resources and emitting to much waste.”

The concept of overshoot clearly acknowledges the limits to growth—of the world’s population, of the consumption of nonrenewable resources, and of the global standard of living (and the stock market).

Unquestionably, we all need to be deeply aware of this perilous predicament.

Becoming Alarmed

“Listen to the scientists” has been widely used over the past couple of years in the attempt to get people to fight the covid-19 epidemic by getting vaccinations and wearing masks. That is good advice.

But I am afraid that, as William Rees forcefully emphasizes, politicians as well as the general public don’t listen to scientists well when it comes to considering overshoot / the limits to growth.

Rees (b. 1943), who has a Ph.D. in population ecology, was a professor at University of British Columbia from 1969 to 2012. During that time, he coined the phrase/concept ecological footprint (in 1992).

Since his retirement, he has continued to be an active advocate of protecting human life on this planet. Several recent talks are available on YouTube, and in one of them, he wisely emphasizes the great need for politicians and the general public to listen to the scientists.

In February 2020, Rees gave a talk entitled “Will Modern Civilization Be the Death of Us” (see here). I encourage you to watch that video as well as other more recent talks you can easily find under his name on YouTube.

Given the alarming facts that Rees graphically presents, I wonder when, oh when, are we the general public and political leaders going to listen to the scientists about the limits to growth?

And when, oh when, will we (humankind) begin to take more decisive and meaningful steps to limit growth?

Considering Common Sense: In Memory of Thomas Paine

For most of my life, I have known the name Thomas Paine. But also for most of my life, I have known little about him and his importance. This month, however, seemed like a good time to learn/think a little more about Paine, who was born 285 years ago, and about his emphasis on common sense. 

Who Was Thomas Paine?

Paine was born in England in 1737 on January 29, which was February 9 according to the “new style” calendar used after 1752.

After losing his wife and baby at childbirth in 1760, and then after various failures and the loss of his job in 1774, he moved to Philadelphia and got a job working as an editorial assistant for the Pennsylvania Magazine.

After the first battles of the Revolutionary War in 1775, Paine argued that the colonists should not simply revolt against taxation but demand independence from Great Britain entirely. He expanded that idea in a 50-page pamphlet called “Common Sense,” printed in January 1776.

Why Is Thomas Paine Memorable?

Within a few months after its publication, “Common Sense” sold more than 500,000 copies, and according to Biography.com (here), more than any other publication, it “paved the way for the Declaration of Independence, which was unanimously ratified on July 4, 1776.”

Then beginning in December of that year, a most uncertain time regarding the outcome of the revolution, Paine began publishing a series of pamphlets under the title The American Crisis, and he signed them with his pseudonym, “Common Sense.”

The first of those thirteen pamphlets famously begins, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” At the beginning of that harsh winter of 1776, a great many soldiers were ready to quit—until ordered by General Washington to read Paine’s Crisis (which can be read in full at this link).

The morale of the American colonists was bolstered and their resolve fortified by Paine’s words, “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

In 1787, Paine returned to England, and two years after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, he wrote The Rights of Man. That tract moved beyond supporting that revolution to discussing the basic reasons for the widespread discontent in Europe and railing against an aristocratic society.

Paine’s last major book was The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, the first part of which was written in 1794 after he had been imprisoned for nearly a year in France.

Paine returned to the United States in 1802 or ’03, but by then his influential revolutionary work had mostly been forgotten. He died in 1809, and only six mourners were present at his funeral.

Because of his last book, though, he became known in the mid-nineteenth century as a leader of “freethinkers.” And then in the early twentieth century, Paine's reputation was restored and he again was (accurately) viewed as a vital figure in the American Revolution.

What Is Common Sense?

“Common sense” can be called that only for those who see the world through the same, or quite similar, “conceptual lenses.”

What Paine wrote about common sense for those who wanted to be free from the “tyranny” of England was, truly, common sense for them. But it certainly was not common sense for King George and all the Redcoats who fought for him.

And so it is regarding many burning issues today.

You would think it is only common sense that everyone would get covid-19 vaccinations and only common sense for the government to mandate vaccines and masks in order to control the spread of covid-19.

But, alas, a sizeable portion of society wears different conceptual lenses: they see the greatest good as personal “freedom” and oppose “tyrannical” governments they see as seeking to usurp that freedom. Even a “Christian” organization is used to support the “Freedom Convoy” in Canada (see here).

And you would think it is only common sense that we humans would acknowledge the seriousness of global warming and take even drastic measures to mitigate the coming environmental crisis. But, again, alas! 

Facing the Grief of Looking Up, Looking Forward

Don’t Look Up has been a much-viewed, much-discussed movie this month. There has been a wide variety of comments about that Netflix film both by “professional” movie critics and by amateur reviewers (like me). Unlike some of the professionals, though, I think it was quite significant. 

The Grief of Looking Up

Don’t Look Up is ostensibly about a huge (the size of Mount Everest) comet which is on track to crash into the earth about six months after when it was discovered by a grad student at Michigan State University. She and her professor seek to warn the world of the coming disaster.

Their message of impending doom, however, is not well received. The media is more concerned with the latest news about celebrities and the President is more concerned with the upcoming election and the breaking news about her own personal scandal.

Additionally, wealthy capitalists seek to take advantage of the looming catastrophe for economic gains. And then soon numerous science (comet) deniers emerge, rallying under the cry “Don’t look up!”

Even though that is what the film is about on the surface, it was produced as a satire about the current crisis of climate change (better labeled as global warming).

A large segment of society—politicians, capitalists, media personalities, and many of the general public—is like the science deniers in the film, but their rallying cry for maintaining the unsustainable present is “Don’t look forward.”

The Grief of Looking Forward

In the past couple of weeks, I have learned of, and been challenged/shaken by, Michael Dowd. A constantly evolving thinker, Dowd (b. 1958) is an American progressive Christian minister (ordained by the UCC) and an “eco-theologian.”

His recent work has been focused on the worldwide ecological crisis, which he is certain will lead to TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).

My initial introduction to Dowd’s alarming thought was through two thirty-minute YouTube videos produced in November 2021: “Collapse in a Nutshell” and “Overshoot in a Nutshell,” both having the subtitle “Understanding Our Predicament.”

In addition, I watched (and recommend) Dowd’s 25-minute video, “Serenity Prayer for the 21^st Century: Pro-Future Love-in-Action,” produced in June 2021. According to Dowd, “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” includes, or is primarily, TEOTWAWKI.

I have many questions and reservations about Dowd’s disturbing message, but what he presents is certainly something that all of us critical thinkers must take seriously—and his suggestions on how to deal with the grief of looking forward may well be very valuable for us all.

So, What Should We Do?

Whether Dowd’s dire analysis is completely correct or not, of greatest importance is to realize as fully as possible that the ecological crisis is much more critical than most people, probably including most of us, have acknowledged.

The result of unchecked global warming is not just one problem among many equally serious social problems. Indeed, it is not a problem that will likely be solved; rather it is a predicament from which there is likely no escape.

If humankind, probably in this century, will likely experience a collapse of civilization as we know it, what should we do? Dowd’s advice is to work through the stages of grief, accepting what is most probably inevitable, but still living each day with joy and thankfulness in spite of the looming doom.

He emphasizes the need for “adaptive inattention” to the crisis, seeking the well-being of people now. We can seek to be agents of calm amidst the coming chaos.

While the film Don’t Look Up doesn’t deal directly with the grief of looking forward, the final prayer at the “last supper” of several of the characters in the movie is a good one for us to pray at this critical time:

Dearest Father and Almighty Creator, we ask for your grace tonight, despite our pride; your forgiveness, despite our doubt. Most of all Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times. May we face whatever is to come in your divine will, with courage and open hearts of acceptance. Amen.

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** Even though he is an ordained Christian minister, Dowd says nothing about what Christians have affirmed for 2,000 years: the coming of a “world without end.” I am planning for my first blog post in February to be about that.

In Criticism of Sens. Manchinema (and Their 50 Republican Colleagues)

This blog article was supposed to be about hope—at least that was my plan for this post. But the hopes of so many USAmericans are at the point of being betrayed by two Democratic Senators and by all 50 Republican Senators, and one of the hopes for Pres. Biden that I wrote about on January 20 seems to have been completely dashed.

The Dashed Hopes for the Biden Presidency

One of the hopes for the Biden Presidency that I included in that Jan. 20 blog post was this: “Restoring political bipartisanship to the Capitol.” But rather than political bipartisanship being restored, if anything, it has even worsened during these nine months Biden has been in the White House.

Another hope I had for the current administration was concerted effort to combat the problem of global warming. That hope has perhaps not been completely dashed, but right now it looks as if there will be far less done in that regard than so many of us hoped for.

The dashed hope for bipartisanship seems almost entirely because of the intransigence of the Republicans, and especially the 50 Republican Senators under the leadership of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But the hope for significant action in combatting climate change has largely been dashed by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Right now, the only bipartisanship that seems operative is that which is killing the Biden agenda, as captured in the following political cartoon by Bob Englehart way back on June 9. 

Criticism of Sens. Manchinema

In the U.S. Senate, 48 of the 50 Democratic Senators have been solidly in support of the President and his agenda. But with no Republican votes on most matters, it takes all 50 Democrats (plus Vice President Harris’s tie-breaking vote) to pass bills that can’t be filibustered.

Senators Manchin and Sinema have been so united in their opposition to especially the costly Build Back Better (BBB) legislation that their names have sometimes been conflated to Manchinema (check out #Manchinema).

Sens. Manchinemas’ main criticism of the BBB bill has been the price tag: they have been unwilling to approve little more than half of what the other 48 Democrats have been willing to support. And, sadly, at this point it seems that the major proposed cut is money to combat global warming.

I find it deplorable that just two Senators can wield so much power on such a critical issue. The long-term future of the country, and perhaps the world, is being jeopardized to a greater or lesser degree by just these two.

And the same two Senators have also been unwilling to consider support of a proposed change in the filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act, the voting rights bill which is so badly needed to protect American democracy.

Criticism of the 50 Republican Senators

Among Democrats, and especially those with progressive views, there is strong criticism of Sens. Manchinema—and for good reason. Perhaps it goes without saying, but the criticism of all the Republican Senators should be even stronger.

For example, the proposals in Biden’s Build Back Better proposal would benefit a multitude of USAmericans, not just Democrats. And the global warming counter-proposals are to ward off dire changes that would be detrimental for all, not just Democrats. But there is no Republican support.

And then what about voting rights? Back in 2006 when Bush was President, the Senate voted 98-0 to extend the landmark Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. In 2013, though, the SCOTUS wrongheadedly gutted that bill.

And then on Oct. 20, not even one Republican Senator would vote to even consider Manchin’s watered-down bill to protect voting rights. Manchin promised he would get ten Republicans to vote for the bill, which was less than the original Democratic proposal. But he failed to get even one Rep. vote.

So, yes, I am quite critical of Sens. Manchinema—but even more critical of the 50 Republican Senators, especially because of their unwillingness to help protect democracy in this country.

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** On Oct. 21, The Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson posted an insightful opinion piece that is closely related to the above article; you can read it here (with no paywall).

Hopes for the Biden Presidency

Barring unforeseen events, at noon today, January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden will be sworn in as the 46^th President of the United States. My first hope for the Biden presidency is that it will, indeed, begin with an inauguration unblemished by violence and bloodshed. 

Here are some of my main hopes for the Biden presidency.  

* Bringing the covid-19 pandemic under control

The first daunting challenge the Biden administration faces is the ongoing and even worsening covid-19 pandemic. There have now been over 400,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. Bringing this tragic disease under control must be a top priority for the new President and his administration.

On Jan. 14, Biden announced a massive, $1.9 trillion plan for combatting the pandemic and the economic problems caused by it. Dubbed the “American Rescue Plan,” that bold proposal was soon panned by some GOP politicians and will face much opposition. But I truly hope the Biden administration’s anti-covid efforts will be successful.

* Working to combat global warming

My first blog post of 2020 was about climate change, which I contended was the greatest challenge of the new decade. The last four years have seen a significant weakening of the government’s efforts to confront the global warming crisis.

The new President needs to lead the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement, as he has promised to do. He also needs to restore many of the EPA regulations gutted by the Trump administration. This work is not for his own political benefit in the coming four years, but for the benefit of future generations.

* Supporting control of nuclear weapons

In addition to rejoining the Iran nuclear deal, the Biden administration needs to show support for the U.N.’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which goes into effect just two days from now, on January 22.

The U.S. and the other nations with nuclear weapons have not yet signed the TPNW. But in addition to global warming, the widespread presence of nuclear weapons in the world poses a serious threat to the well-being of all people now and in the future. I hope that will change during the Biden presidency.

* Working for a society with greater economic and racial equality

There is much that needs to be done to overcome the societal structures that favor wealthy people at the expense of the middle class and those struggling in poverty and that favor white people to the disadvantage of people of color.

The USAmerican goal has long been “liberty and justice for all.” ‘For all” means all individuals living in this country regardless of gender, race, economic status, political ideology, or religious background. I strongly hope the new administration will, indeed, lead the nation closer toward reaching this goal.

* Restoring political bipartisanship to the Capitol

In order to fulfill these hopes, there needs to be much greater bipartisanship among elected U.S. politicians. For especially the last twelve years there has been far too much polarization and lack of politicians seeking the common good.

I certainly hope President Biden can cultivate the cooperation needed for there to be good governance.

Much more needs to be said about each of the above hopes, and these are just a few of many other hopes I have for the Biden presidency.

Please note that these are not “political” hopes in support of one political party. They are hopes for the benefit of the American people and for the wider world.

What hopes do you have for the Biden presidency in place of or in addition to the matters I have listed above?

Elections Have Consequences: 1844 and 2020

James K. Polk, the 11^th President, was born on November 2, 1795. As mentioned in my Oct. 30 post, Polk’s 125^th birthday anniversary in 1920 was the day when Warren G. Harding celebrated his 55^th birthday—and was also elected the 29^th POTUS.

Polk, elected in November 1844, was a successful President. His four years in office clearly indicates that elections have consequences—as they all do. 

Polk: One of the Best Presidents?

Presidential historian Andrew Bergen ranks Polk as the seventh best President of the first 43 in the history of the U.S. (see here). That is higher than what is found in most rankings, but Polk is regularly ranked in the top one-third. And yet, he is not widely known—although ten states have a county named for James Polk.

(Polk County, Missouri, where June was born and where we were married, was named after James’s grandfather. And now we live in Clay County, Mo., named after Henry Clay, whom Polk defeated in the election of 1844. My 4/20/17 blog post was titled “The Feats of [Henry] Clay,” and mentions his loss to Polk.)

Harry Truman summed up Polk’s legacy in these words: “James K. Polk, a great President. Said what he intended to do and did it.” Accordingly, Bergen states, “Polk followed through on every single campaign pledge that he ran on in 1844,” and that included not running for re-election.  

Election Consequences of 1844

But Polk’s “successful” presidency doesn’t mean that we should broadly praise him. Rather, there is much that should be denounced. Elections have consequences, and those consequences from the 1844 election were not good for many people in the U.S.

Polk is regarded as a protégé of Andrew Jackson, instigator of the deplorable Indian Removal Act of 1830, and that is one reason the consequences of the election of 1844 were not good for many. He was a strong advocate of “manifest destiny” (a term coined in 1845) that resulted in the extermination of many Native Americans.

Further, the annexation of Texas, which he strongly supported, was linked to the strengthening of slavery in the U.S., for annexation gave slavery room to expand. Subsequently, one indirect consequence of Polk’s election was the Civil War, which started just twelve years after his presidency ended.

Election Consequences of 2020?

The guest host on the Nov. 9 Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC kept repeating the words “radical normalcy” with reference to President-elect Joe Biden. That is one of the hoped-for consequences of this month’s election—a reversal of the abnormalities I wrote about in my 10/30 post and that this very lengthy WaPo Magazine article details.

Just as he promised, President-elect Biden has already set up a panel of experts to draw up plans on how best to find ways to control the covid-19 pandemic. And as an indication of the “radical normalcy” in that move, there were no family members or cronies selected for the team.

As a Nov. 9 WaPo article says, Biden’s appointed task force is “a group made up entirely of doctors and health experts, signaling his intent to seek a science-based approach to bring the raging pandemic under control.” This will surely lead to one very positive consequence of the Nov. 3 election.

Further, according to this Nov. 11 WaPo article, another encouraging consequence of the recent election is how “Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change.”

Of course, some evangelical Christians see negative consequences resulting from the election. For example, on Nov. 10, a conservative Christian Post reporter declared, “Biden planning to reverse Trump’s pro-life policies by executive order.”

It remains to be seen, of course, what all the consequences of the 2020 presidential election will be. I am hoping for, and expect, mostly positive ones that will, indeed, help save the soul of the nation.