Saturday, November 03, 2012

The official panheresy political endorsement.

Vote for whoever you want, I find both candidates to be odious in many ways. If you can pretend that third party candidates are real candidates, sure, vote for them, whatevs. As for Mittens, to paraphrase Michael Scott, "I hate so much about the things that [he chooses] to be." As for Barry O, drone strikes, continuations of Bush-style attacks on civil liberties, killing whoever he wants to kill as long as they're not on American soil, several other things.

Neither side is willing to even think about climate change, energy policy, world population, and many other issues related to risk management in the way they must be considered. Barry O is at least willing to admit that global warming is occurring and humans are at least partly responsible, but he is not willing to really take the necessary action. It is politically intractable. For Mittens, of course, this is all just a joke. Roffles. I especially like how the Forbes article - from August 31st, mind you - points out that a substantial portion of the US population is on coastlines, sea level is definitely rising, and this definitely increases risk from storms. As they say, "Denying this (as some state and local governments are doing) is crazy: sooner or later, the people living in these places, and the businesses they built there, will pay the price." PRESCIENT MUCH?

And but so anyways, we will have to get off carbon fuels rather soon. Even if we weren't to do so, in a couple generations, we will have completely burnt through our billion-year inheritance and will discover that we will have to have started today in replacing carbon-based fuels to maintain anything close to our "standard of living", as none of the alternatives are as "nice" as carbon-based fuels. Unfortunately, given the way humans are prone to managing risk (e.g., poorly), we are exceedingly likely to realize this far too late, even if the political process were completely objective and unswayed by unlimited anonymous donations by the fossil fuel industry.

Anyway, my own personal recommendation in this election to vote for the guy who is less likely to set off a nuclear war and who is more likely to reform energy policy away from our addiction to cheap carbon-based energy. Neither real candidate is going to stop the murder of babies and Mittens isn't going to be more "liberal" about killing American citizens outside the boundaries of America.

Frankly, in a certain sense, I don't care about getting out of the current economic abyss, as reforming energy policy may require certain sacrifices, economic prosperity among them. However, you know, sometimes buying insurance is costly, but it's better to buy insurance than to clean up from a disaster. Rational risk mitigation, baby. It's something humans aren't good at.

No comments: