In fables, in biblical parables, in history lessons mostly forgotten, a single theme repeats itself: It’s arrogant to defy nature.
Arrogance is thinking you can build subdivisions in a flood plain, because everyone around you is doing it.
.. Arrogance is the certainty that you can geoengineer your way out of whatever mess you make.
Dealing with FIFA Corruption
However, we ought to recognise his genius. This 79-year-old understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much.
.. Each western bidding country, I now realise, imagined that Fifa thought much like the country itself did. The English and American bidders, instinctive capitalists, thought they could win because they had big soccer markets. The Spanish-Portuguese bidding team probably thought they could win because they had friends inside Fifa. Australia hired lobbyists with other friends inside Fifa. The Dutch and Belgians believed in their green and compact bid. They even cycled into Zurich to present it.
.. Given waning western power, asks Pielke, “how do you effect global change? It turns out it’s really difficult. If we can’t reform Fifa, my goodness, how can we deal with nuclear proliferation or carbon emissions or trade?”
Ben Carson: It’s Not Politics or Economics, It’s the Culture
Carson’s argument that poverty is the result of poor decisions and a culture of government dependency doesn’t fit the media’s narrative.
.. But that similarity highlights how much Obama betrayed his promise of hope with a divisive, cynical presidency. Obama has ignored inner-city issues while hobnobbing with rich elites over esoteric issues like global warming.
The End of California?
It takes 106 gallons of water to produce an ounce of beef — which is more than the average San Francisco Bay Area resident uses in a day.
.. San Francisco, praised for its penurious water ways, gets its life-supporting liquid from the Hetch Hetchy dam, in Yosemite. Many people, dating from the sainted John Muir, believe that flooding that mountain valley was one of the bigger crimes against nature in California history.
.. The urban “almond shaming” chorus is quick to note that the crop uses enough water to support 75 percent of the state’s population. In other words, there would be no water shortage in San Diego or Los Angeles if nut growers shut off the pumps.