Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2010--"New Rules on Shallow-Water Exploration Expected as Economic Woes Mount".
Folks, there's a lot at work here among which is jobs. If a person is not directly affected one way or the other the only thing one has is a prejudiced idea of reality. Any answers are going to be very convoluted.
Some have lost jobs because of the environment damage; others have lost jobs because of a lack of drilling.
So what's the answer? Too complicated to sort out, or can there be progress made in ALL areas, ie. a balance?? technology?? planning?? learning from mistakes?? greed?? moral compass?? etc.
I don't think it has much to do with nature photography. I'm an environmentalist, and post in environmental issue forums. I wonder if it is appropriate here?
And consider, there is no endeavor, including photography, that can divorce itself from other portions of life.
I agree that many things are connected, but this site is about nature photography. I agree with Jim and do not feel like this is an appropriate topic for NPN. Appropriate for other forums on the web, but IMHO, not here.
The answers are plentiful: Completely end our dependence on fossil fuels in a very quick period of time, or get it from somewhere else (maybe Mars). But these solutions wont happen, because we have no visionaries and no sense of urgency. When we wanted to get to the moon (for less than admirable reasons) we made it happen in very short order. That was over 40 years ago, when technology was practically medeival compared to what we have now. We need people to take initiative.
FWIW, i think this is highly relevant to nature photography, and its the reason the 'Hot Topics' forum exists. We arent talking about "American Idol' here, we're talking about our environment--you know, the thing we all go out and take pictures of No need to read further if it makes you uncomfortable.
Environmental and political discussions relevant to the natural world impact all of us as photographers as well as people. This is what the "Hot Topics" forum was created for, separate from the mainstream "General Discussion" so those who don't wish to participate can easily avoid it. As long as the discourse is respectful and on topic, it should be OK here.
What's the answer? NOT oil and NOT the status quo. We need a major change, and it's not coming soon unless we can get oil money out of our politics. And I'm not hopeful.
Well, of course the problem is much more complex than having a visionary with urgency fix things. This whole country's economy is dependent on the use of oil to get us around. How many of us fly to a shooting destination or just drive our car? We cannot do without it any more than anyone else. Yes, there are a lot of unscrupulus people taking huge advantage of our dependence on oil and they should be ashamed of what they have done, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking there is some magic pill that Obama or anyone else can give us.
This mess will not be solved in a short period of time. It will take decades of diligent effort by millions of people to get ourselves to the point where we can continue our lifestyle and not risk damaging the environment. What we all need to do is keep the country's focus on it long after the newspapers leave the gulf to chase the next big news maker.
I agree to a point, Walt. Note that when i said "urgency" i was referring to the populace, not a leader. Unfortunately, when people are complacent, nothing will get done. The public has been sold on the idea that their "lifestyle" is necessary, and they don't want to give it up unless it's more painful for them not to. But saying that an issue is too "complex" and will take "decades" is music to the ears of the unscrupulous folks lining their pockets at our expense--they want things dragged out and put off as long as possible, and they want simple problems rendered complex so that the problem is never solved. There are many very intelligent people with ideas out there for solving these issues, but their voices are drowned out by the status quo and those who control it. That's why leadership is needed--how else is the focus going to remain after the papers leave??
Leadership depends on many things: 1) innate ability 2) sometimes social status 3) fortunes of war, time or chance 4) conditions beyond our control 5) type of government 6) others.
Plato writing about Socrates' Republic believed "philosopher kings" were the only real leaders, people especially bred for their ability, breeding indiscriminately with only those of the same il. They were to make all decision for the state; they were to be upheld by the general population's effort and assured as such by a military.
OK, sound sort of like some totalitarians entities of the 20th-century and into today. Indeed, whenever decisions are expounded from positions of power I always think of Plato-Socrates
It is more that leadership. I'm not sure what all the issues of environment entail but the inputs to the problem are numerous and the solutions all revolve around human nature.
Unless we have leaders who have the ability to see consequences as well a ALL untintended consequences, what I call super-human ability, then nothing constructive will happen rapidly.
We will move forward, if possible, by a serious of techonlogical decisions which will be fraught by error.
Will we learn, or not, from the error and successes at the cost of further damage?
Or we will move forward by the population of countries, and of the world, agreeing to an end which would invovle less "stuff" for developed countries and probably less "staples" for underdeveloped countries? This type of decision will not happen through the masses because they can't agree, don't have the wisdom, and either want more or less.
So, with this I'm left in a pickle. I guess "just do the best we can with what we've got"... live with our successes and our failures.
WE can always try to do the right thing as long as we KNOW what the right thing is...
This follows fairly well with the idea in my former post about planners and knowlege:
Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal
for educational purposes only.
"The Gulf oil spill and the global financial crisis both demonstrate the failings of big government. Partisan politics obscures the linkage, with the consequence that each political party repeats the mistakes of the other as its turn to govern arrives.
"First, consider the oil spill. BP and its contractors are surely responsible for the accident... What is the government's role?... The agency directly responsible for regulating the [dangerous] activity is the Mineral Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior.
"Government regulation is intended to protect the public interest against bad or irresponsible behavior by private parties... Potentially all Americans benefit from the drilling but those living in coastal areas suffer disproportionate harm from mishaps. The government theoretically negotiates on their behalf and establishes rules to protect them.
"Obviously, regulation failed. By all accounts, MMS operated as a rubber stamp for BP. It is a striking example of 'regulatory capture' [whereby] agencies tasked with protecting the public interest come to identify with the regulated industry and protect its interests against that of the public. The result: Government failed to protect the public. That conclusion is precisely the same for the financial services industry...
"I have already discussed... regulatory capture... the second source of regulatory failure is the knowledge problem identified by Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek. The knowledge required by regulators is dispersed throughout the industry and broader economy. For regulation to work, that dispersed knowledge must be centralized in the regulatory agency. To successfully accomplish this requires central planning of the industry, if not the economy. But the local knowledge of specific circumstances of time and place cannot be aggregated in one mind or agency. We must know that is impossible, and that impossibility was the reason for the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the transformation of the Chinese economy.
"... If we add back... the problem of regulatory capture, then we get industries coddled and protected by government. When business and politics become intertwined we move from market economies to crony capitalism...
"The regulatory state did not prevent excessive risk taking whether in financial services, nor perhaps in offshore oil drilling... because big government doesn't work...
"Einstein famously defined insanity as the belief that, if we repeatedly do the same thing, we will eventually get a different result... [And] University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein has observed that we need simple rules for a complex world. The complexity of rules is self-defeating, because that complexity requires more knowledge than can be acquired. Brazil has a simple rule for directors of failed banks: They are personally liable. That concentrates the mind of directors on reining in risk-taking by management more effectively than would creating a systemic-risk regulator...
[Government--the president and congress] should heed Hayek, who observed that 'the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.'"
Source: The Gulf Spill, the Financial Crisis and Government Failure
by
Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. [Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute...]
Wall Street Journal
14June2010, pg A17.
Posted by Larry Fischer on June 15, 2010 at 12:49 PM
Dunno, I've never been on Facebook.
Photographers need sharp minds and a strong urgency to study environmental issues.
Sorry you don't see the importance of this issue.
Those who don't read are no better off than those who can't.
the fisch
Someday this little blue pearl in space, which we have had dominance on for less than a million years will come to the point that it's tired of our presence and take us out.......I feel sorry for any avian photographers that have ever photographed in the gulf. So much for an environmental concern not affecting photographers and not being pertinent to NPN. If there's no nature to make an image of where does that put all the nature photographers? Oh well kick me off my soapbox.
I figure the real yard stick is 6 years out. It took 8 years to get us into the mess we've been in, and in only two years the president has made remarkable progress, in spite of an opposing political party dedicated to failure. If he continues at the pace he's on, the mess will be cleaned up completely by the time his second term rolls to a close. My question is, what's next after that?
Posted by Larry Fischer on September 21, 2010 at 11:39 AM
Hank,
Free enterprise, with all its downfalls, is so much better than attempting to control the situation. The best book I've read was Hayek's, The Road to Serfdom.
History tells us that.
And a recent book, The Black Swan, delves heavily into randomness and how inaccurate so-called experts are at predicting disasters, and also in controlling the economy.
With all its mistakes free enterprise [with some kind of morality attached--I think Christianity fits well here] is the only economy worth considering.
Our current administration is elected for two reasons. They have more money in the upper echelons than the opposing party, and they appeal to the emotion of the masses to gain power.
Then they continue to fill their coffers. They have no more morality than the other party.
So the problem is not the economy nor the disasters but the lack of proper voluntary intra-personal relationships.
Right now POWER rules as opposed to TRUTH.
What worms we could uncover it the lid was taken off both parties and all political stuff.
the fisch
PS: Spent 15 days in mid-August on the Matthews River on the south slope of the Brooks Range. Can you spell 'enjoy'....!!!
Fisch,
You must be watching Fox news again. I've worked for all of the oil companies in this country. There is more oil drilling in US controlled real estate than has been seen for well over 20 years. Furthermore, if you could magically remove all the crude from our country and convert it to product, it would only last for a few days. I'm in my 80's, a photographer for 65 years, 22 years in corporate America, there are things that can be done to sharply improve jobs but the House is too obstructionist to do anything but to make the economy worse. I've been in military and management most of my life, have worked in over 30 countries in business in this world and so have pretty strong opinions.
Discussion
19 repliesFolks, there's a lot at work here among which is jobs. If a person is not directly affected one way or the other the only thing one has is a prejudiced idea of reality. Any answers are going to be very convoluted.
Some have lost jobs because of the environment damage; others have lost jobs because of a lack of drilling.
So what's the answer? Too complicated to sort out, or can there be progress made in ALL areas, ie. a balance?? technology?? planning?? learning from mistakes?? greed?? moral compass?? etc.
Comments?
the fisch
So what's the difference, Jim?
And consider, there is no endeavor, including photography, that can divorce itself from other portions of life.
the fisch
I agree that many things are connected, but this site is about nature photography. I agree with Jim and do not feel like this is an appropriate topic for NPN. Appropriate for other forums on the web, but IMHO, not here.
the fisch
FWIW, i think this is highly relevant to nature photography, and its the reason the 'Hot Topics' forum exists. We arent talking about "American Idol' here, we're talking about our environment--you know, the thing we all go out and take pictures of
Environmental and political discussions relevant to the natural world impact all of us as photographers as well as people. This is what the "Hot Topics" forum was created for, separate from the mainstream "General Discussion" so those who don't wish to participate can easily avoid it. As long as the discourse is respectful and on topic, it should be OK here.
Guy
Viva le Revolucion?
This mess will not be solved in a short period of time. It will take decades of diligent effort by millions of people to get ourselves to the point where we can continue our lifestyle and not risk damaging the environment. What we all need to do is keep the country's focus on it long after the newspapers leave the gulf to chase the next big news maker.
Pragmatism and scientific realism can be in such short supply in discussions such as this one. Thank you for injecting it here.
I very much agree--WELL SAID
the fisch
Leadership? Now that's a slippery word.
Leadership depends on many things: 1) innate ability 2) sometimes social status 3) fortunes of war, time or chance 4) conditions beyond our control 5) type of government 6) others.
Plato writing about Socrates' Republic believed "philosopher kings" were the only real leaders, people especially bred for their ability, breeding indiscriminately with only those of the same il. They were to make all decision for the state; they were to be upheld by the general population's effort and assured as such by a military.
OK, sound sort of like some totalitarians entities of the 20th-century and into today. Indeed, whenever decisions are expounded from positions of power I always think of Plato-Socrates
It is more that leadership. I'm not sure what all the issues of environment entail but the inputs to the problem are numerous and the solutions all revolve around human nature.
Unless we have leaders who have the ability to see consequences as well a ALL untintended consequences, what I call super-human ability, then nothing constructive will happen rapidly.
We will move forward, if possible, by a serious of techonlogical decisions which will be fraught by error.
Will we learn, or not, from the error and successes at the cost of further damage?
Or we will move forward by the population of countries, and of the world, agreeing to an end which would invovle less "stuff" for developed countries and probably less "staples" for underdeveloped countries? This type of decision will not happen through the masses because they can't agree, don't have the wisdom, and either want more or less.
So, with this I'm left in a pickle. I guess "just do the best we can with what we've got"... live with our successes and our failures.
WE can always try to do the right thing as long as we KNOW what the right thing is...
the fisch
Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal
for educational purposes only.
"The Gulf oil spill and the global financial crisis both demonstrate the failings of big government. Partisan politics obscures the linkage, with the consequence that each political party repeats the mistakes of the other as its turn to govern arrives.
"First, consider the oil spill. BP and its contractors are surely responsible for the accident... What is the government's role?... The agency directly responsible for regulating the [dangerous] activity is the Mineral Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior.
"Government regulation is intended to protect the public interest against bad or irresponsible behavior by private parties... Potentially all Americans benefit from the drilling but those living in coastal areas suffer disproportionate harm from mishaps. The government theoretically negotiates on their behalf and establishes rules to protect them.
"Obviously, regulation failed. By all accounts, MMS operated as a rubber stamp for BP. It is a striking example of 'regulatory capture' [whereby] agencies tasked with protecting the public interest come to identify with the regulated industry and protect its interests against that of the public. The result: Government failed to protect the public. That conclusion is precisely the same for the financial services industry...
"I have already discussed... regulatory capture... the second source of regulatory failure is the knowledge problem identified by Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek. The knowledge required by regulators is dispersed throughout the industry and broader economy. For regulation to work, that dispersed knowledge must be centralized in the regulatory agency. To successfully accomplish this requires central planning of the industry, if not the economy. But the local knowledge of specific circumstances of time and place cannot be aggregated in one mind or agency. We must know that is impossible, and that impossibility was the reason for the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the transformation of the Chinese economy.
"... If we add back... the problem of regulatory capture, then we get industries coddled and protected by government. When business and politics become intertwined we move from market economies to crony capitalism...
"The regulatory state did not prevent excessive risk taking whether in financial services, nor perhaps in offshore oil drilling... because big government doesn't work...
"Einstein famously defined insanity as the belief that, if we repeatedly do the same thing, we will eventually get a different result... [And] University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein has observed that we need simple rules for a complex world. The complexity of rules is self-defeating, because that complexity requires more knowledge than can be acquired. Brazil has a simple rule for directors of failed banks: They are personally liable. That concentrates the mind of directors on reining in risk-taking by management more effectively than would creating a systemic-risk regulator...
[Government--the president and congress] should heed Hayek, who observed that 'the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.'"
Source: The Gulf Spill, the Financial Crisis and Government Failure
by
Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. [Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute...]
Wall Street Journal
14June2010, pg A17.
Photographers need sharp minds and a strong urgency to study environmental issues.
Sorry you don't see the importance of this issue.
Those who don't read are no better off than those who can't.
the fisch
Paul
Free enterprise, with all its downfalls, is so much better than attempting to control the situation. The best book I've read was Hayek's, The Road to Serfdom.
History tells us that.
And a recent book, The Black Swan, delves heavily into randomness and how inaccurate so-called experts are at predicting disasters, and also in controlling the economy.
With all its mistakes free enterprise [with some kind of morality attached--I think Christianity fits well here] is the only economy worth considering.
Our current administration is elected for two reasons. They have more money in the upper echelons than the opposing party, and they appeal to the emotion of the masses to gain power.
Then they continue to fill their coffers. They have no more morality than the other party.
So the problem is not the economy nor the disasters but the lack of proper voluntary intra-personal relationships.
Right now POWER rules as opposed to TRUTH.
What worms we could uncover it the lid was taken off both parties and all political stuff.
the fisch
PS: Spent 15 days in mid-August on the Matthews River on the south slope of the Brooks Range. Can you spell 'enjoy'....!!!
You must be watching Fox news again. I've worked for all of the oil companies in this country. There is more oil drilling in US controlled real estate than has been seen for well over 20 years. Furthermore, if you could magically remove all the crude from our country and convert it to product, it would only last for a few days. I'm in my 80's, a photographer for 65 years, 22 years in corporate America, there are things that can be done to sharply improve jobs but the House is too obstructionist to do anything but to make the economy worse. I've been in military and management most of my life, have worked in over 30 countries in business in this world and so have pretty strong opinions.
BTW, at 81 I still work full time.
Lynn