Perspective and guidance - Polarization and human well being

 Topic One

Political polarization has significant consequences for human well being.

And while the claim might sound extreme, we may in fact be putting our human survival at risk. We confront multiple dangers today that could well be the end of us. The top five on my list (in no particular order): the risk of nuclear annihilation, climate change and its consequences, how the growing gap between the world’s haves and have-nots risks global economic destabilization, misuse of emerging technologies, and the growing potential for widespread disease. It is clear that effectively confronting any of the first four will require that we get beyond seeing the world in polarized, us-versus-them terms. I had not previously framed addressing the risks of worldwide disease in this way, but the 2020 pandemic has made it obvious that there, too, failing to bring more encompassing perspective to bear could be our undoing.

Johnston, Charles . Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord: Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization—and What We Can Do About It (p. xii). ICD Press. 

While Johnston lists his top five risks of survival for homo sapiens, Michael Lewis does a similar thing in this book, The Fifth Risk, and lists a couple of items not on Johnston’s list such as  the shut down of the electrical grid and the fifth risk being the failure of competent management which we have seen manifested in the Trump Administration.

Beyond the values polarization we are experiencing right now in our society, it is managerial incompetence which can be most threatening as we have seen with the Trump Administration’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic contributing to millions of unnecessary infections and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Differences of values, opinions, and beliefs are one thing, but when they contribute to unnecessary harm, the people in our society are at risk for extinction. The polarization of values, opinions, and beliefs has significant consequences if they are not handled in a competent manner to minimize the risk they pose for the population subjected to and engaged with them.

The first step in problem solving is collecting accurate information about the factors contributing to the problem. The second step is naming the problem in a valid and reliable way so that all the stakeholders can agree on what to call it. The third step is working together across systems on collaborative strategies to mitigate if not eliminate the problem. The fourth step is identifying and adopting prosocial values that contribute to positive evolutionary development for our species and the planet.

Second Book discussed in March, 2022 is Perspective and Guidance For A Time of Deep Discord by Charles M. Johnston

  Perspective and Guidance For A Time of Deep Discord by Charles M. Johnston in March, 2022. It is a handbook of sorts which describes who we can manage the topics the are so divisive in our society in the U.S.

Geoengineering and the desire to lower CO2 emissions

 Topic Thirty Eight

How will geoengineering technology lowering CO2 in the air affect people’s desire to mitigate CO2 emissions themselves?

I asked Keith about what is sometimes called the “moral hazard” problem. If people think geoengineering is going to avert the worst effects of climate change, won’t that reduce their motivation to cut emissions? He agreed this was a worry. But he said the opposite was also possible: “opening up the range of options” could inspire greater action.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 178). Crown. Kindle Edition. 

What do you think? Will the geoengineering technologies contribute to a lower desire to stop emitting CO2 or will having greater hope in lowering CO2 with geoengineering encourage people to work harder to lower emissions?

The best way forward is to do everything.

Topic Thirty Seven
The best way forward is to do everything.

Keith believes that the world will eventually cut its carbon emissions if not all the way down to zero, then close to it. He also believes carbon-removal technologies can eventually be scaled up to take care of the rest. But all this—quite possibly—will not be enough. During the period of “overshoot,” a great many people will suffer and changes that are, for all intents and purposes, irreversible may occur, like the demise of the Great Barrier Reef. 

The best way forward, he argues, is to do everything: cut emissions, work on carbon removal, and look a lot more seriously at geoengineering. On the basis of computer modeling, he’s proposed that the safest option would be to put up enough aerosols to cut warming in half, rather than to counteract it entirely—what might be called “semi-engineering.”

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 177). Crown. Kindle Edition. 

There are so many ways to decrease the CO2 in the atmosphere and ameliorate the other negative consequences of climate change. People seem to focus on the magic wand, the silver bullet, the magic key, and, alas, there is no one thing. The situation is multidimensional. So David Keith,  professor of applied physics at Harvard, says that we must do everything. Can we chew gum and dance at the same time?

In order for things to stay the same, they are going to have to change.

 

Topic Thirty Six

In order for things to stay the same, they are going to have to change.

Following this logic, Budyko arrived at the idea of “artificial volcanoes.” Sulfur dioxide might be injected into the stratosphere using planes or “rockets and different types of missiles.” Budyko wasn’t intent on improving on nature, in the fashion of Project Stormfury or damming the Bering Strait. Rather, he was thinking along more revanchist lines, as in the dictum from The Leopard: “If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change.”

 “In the near future, climate modification will become necessary in order to maintain current climatic conditions,” Budyko wrote.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (p. 176). Crown. Kindle Edition. 

What do you think of the statement when it comes to climate modification, “If things are going to stay the same, things will have to change.”?

One of the ways to keep things the same is to engineer artificial volcanoes to inject aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays from the earth back into space. What do you think of this idea? What could go right and what could go wrong?

Book for March is The Dawn Of Everything

 One of the books I will be reading, studying, and making notes on in March, 2022 is David Graeber and David Wengrow's book, The Dawn Of Everything.

Volcanic Explosivity Index and climate warming.

 Topic Thirty Five

Volcanic Explosivity Index and climate warming.

The Volcanic Explosivity Index was developed in the 1980s as sort of a cousin to the Richter scale. The index runs from zero, for a gentle burp of an eruption, to eight, for a “mega-colossal,” epoch-making catastrophe. Like its better-known relative, the VEI is logarithmic, so, for example, an eruption has a magnitude of four if it produces more than a hundred million cubic meters of ejecta and a magnitude of five if it produces more than a billion. In recorded history, there have been only a handful of magnitude sevens (a hundred billion cubic meters) and no eruptions of magnitude eight. Among the sevens, the most recent—and, hence, the best chronicled—is the eruption of Mount Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Under a White Sky (pp. 165-166). Crown. Kindle Edition. 

The Richter scale which measures the intensity of an earthquake is well known but the VEI, Volcanic Explosivity Index, is probably a new concept for many people. The Volcanic Explosivity Index measures the amount of ejecta put into the atmosphere by volcanic eruption. 

The amount of aerosols put into the atmosphere affects the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth and decreases the warming effect of these sun rays which are reflected back into space. . And so we have climate cooling instead of climate warming. 

So the question is raised, what if homo sapiens deliberately put aerosols into the atmosphere to deliberately reflect the sun’s rays back into space to decrease climate warming? Is this a good idea?