Nothing scares me more than the collapsing ice sheet

[fromderinside]

Today's article by Paul Krugman "Points of no return" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/opinion/krugman-points-of-no-return.html?ref=opinion got me going.

His is an analysis of republican political cliff jumping. But, I'm using it as a starting point for discussing actual relative importance of wrong thinking about economics and the environment. As the title declares nothing scares me more than the collapsing ice sheet. Its my kids, grand kids, great grand kids man. Who gives a damn if some fanatic comes on the scene for a while. If we, humans, can't put the genie back in the bottle who cares if some dies by rendering.

Is it actually more important to consider only what we immediately fear or cause than what we are ultimately causing? Yeah, we ducked a bullet, for now, when we went all nuclear might. Still, there's this nuclear accident, that energy accident, those failures to sustain infrastructure, etc. building up in our own little chamber of endgame horrors. Does reacting to only the nearby actually disaster really make things OK?

It doesn't for me. So here I am saying the collapsing ice sheet and what drove it to this state scares me more than anything.

.... or, we could talk about whether republicans are either stupid, right, playing politics with humanity, or whatever

 

[Petrel]

They're short-sighted. That, right there, is the single biggest problem of democratic government in a capitalist economy. Corruption, lobbying and partisan intransigence are bad but secondary. The primary failing is that politicians live from election to election: they think and act in isolated two-year capsules and how the projects and campaigns are to be funded in those intervals. "Après mon mandat, le déluge" (....this time, literally).

While it's dangerous to leave a professional politician in charge for unlimited periods, when you get a competent and reasonably honest long-term incumbent, you can get long-term initiatives well underway; maybe even build something that lasts a while. If you could somehow detach financial interest from political interest, you could have people re-elected on merit. And - something I would love to see, just once before I die - a candidate saying what he actually thinks and not getting pilloried for it.

 

[fromderinside]

They're short-sighted. That, right there, is the single biggest problem of democratic government in a capitalist economy....
If you could somehow detach financial interest from political interest ....

.... when you get a competent and reasonably honest long-term incumbent, you can get long-term initiatives well underway; maybe even build something that lasts a while.

...

OK you pointed out the problems and you pointed to the goal of the process "a competent reasonably honest ... elected" official set.

I don't see money as evil, or, even bad and it certainly isn't speech. So my goal would be a competent reasonably honest approach to the use of money in politics. IMHO that can only be achieved if money is somehow decoupled from power. Perhaps limiting money contributed to a general coffer from which all certified candidates can dip during election cycles. (few would contribute and from that result we could actually get public election funding.)