I grew up in an inner-city area. The only wild animals I ever saw were squirrels, pigeons and the occasional rat, and their wildness was in question. I never saw a deer or raccoon other than behind bars until I went away to college in a more rural and mountainous setting. My eyes opened up...

Before that, at my first university, I took a class in environmental and bio-medical ethics. I was assigned a project about wolves, which was the beginning of me embarking on some path I still haven't quite finished traveling on. At the end of the semester, the professor, an animal biologist with a compassionate streak for his subjects, bought me a book on wolves as a gift to foster my new passion. As he put it in my hands, he said, "When you understand the wolves, the rest kind of all comes together...it's like coming home to yourself."

Wolves are not the only subject of my fascination with nature, but they definitely marked the beginning and the pinnacle of it. Because of them, I put aside my poetry and my dreams of writing to pursue a path as a wildlife biologist and natural resource scientist. I couldn't underscore the significance of this enough even if I spent a whole book writing on it. I do not possess a naturally scientific mind; numbers scare me, and though I love nature, I still have a city girl's stubborn fear at being in it alone or for too long. Yet despite this, I went down this path, bringing with me a poet's perspective of our endangered wild world and marrying it to the science I learned over the course of the next several years...

Sometimes, I have to say, I find myself a bit putoff by the plague of ecological illiteracy that pervades our society.

The other day at an open reading, someone read a poem she wrote. At one point, she speaks of a family of ducks, describing the father duck and its role in the group. Something in me cringed because I know ducks by nature to be a promiscuous species. That is, the daddy duck doesn't stick around much after he's planted his seed, and he definitely doesn't invest in his children.

Geese, on the other hand, are monogamous and both genders work together to raise their young. I know this from my schooling. I also know a general rule of thumb for figuring out the sexual proclivities of many species: among animals, the species in which it's hard to differentiate gender because the two look nearly identical are usually monogamous and raise young together. However, when the colors differentiate wildly among an animal of the same species, this indicates the males are generally gigolos.

This is particularly true of the majority of bird species: consider the emerald green of a mallard's neck as compared to the dull, drab brown of the female, or the multi-eyed tail of a male peacock next to his intended. Now, think of the little brown sparrows that are everywhere, or the geese, and how you can never tell one from another, think of the lack of bright crisp colors among them all.

BUT GETTING BACK TO WOLVES....

Wolves, whose physical differences are slight (some males tend to be slightly bigger than the females), usually mate for life.

Okay, so some of you may be finding my depiction of wolves as overly romantic, a case of the goggle-eyes for some specimen of charismatic megafauna.

I'll admit, yes, maybe I am romanticizing a bit. But when I lived in Alaska I never feared a wolf attack while walking through the woods. In all of our recorded North American history, there has only been ONE case of a healthy wolf killing a human being. I have often had to correct a zoogoer as she instructs her child of a wolf's man-eating nature. So, perhaps my romanticism is a backlash against the severe and overindulgent (and quite undeserved) hatred, fear and persecution we have subjected them to over the past several hundred years and up to today, an aversion often begun in the cradle when our toddler ears first hear the words, "the Big Bad Wolf."

Our ignorance about wolves runs deep and brings with it bloody consequences. Even in our supposedly civilized modern world, wolves are still shot from planes and helicopters. In Alaska, this is known as an aerial hunting and predator program, and it claims the lives of hundreds of wolves every year.

In Alaska, and other places out West where similar programs are being considered, the politicians prey on people's basic ignorance of wildlife population dynamics. We are told the wolves overpopulate, that they are eating all of our livestock and wild prey, that they are a danger. That, even though it may sound sad, killing them off is an tragic necessity to ensure our race's own well-being and survival.

Here's a quick ecology lesson: in natural conditions (like Alaska), top-food chain predators such as wolves self-regulate their populations. It hits a threshold and levels off. Through some sheer miracle of biological intuition the wolves themselves are not conscious of, their breeding and birthing cycles are dependent upon availability of food, the amount of territory they have, and the harshness of the season, among other factors. A female wolf's body will literally self-abort fertilized eggs under strained conditions. Also, with wolves, it is usually only the alpha pair in a given pack that has puppies, further restricting population growth. Prey species on the other hand, do not self-regulate, and in the absence of top-chain predators will grow unrestrained, overbrowsing their territory and eventually committing a collective suicide.

Now, here's what happens in Alaska: wolves are blamed for killing off moose populations--nevermind that most studies on the subject show that wolves actually have a relatively low success rate in killing an adult moose (Have you ever seen a moose up close? They are mighty big MF'ers; one quick kick of their hind legs to a wolf's head will crack its skull open).

Now, we are told that the people of Alaska need to hunt moose for subsistence, especially indigenous people, and that the wolves are competing too much with people for basic food (again, a moose stands a much better chance with a wolf pack than a single well-aimed hunting rifle). What politicians like ex-governors Frank Murkowski and Sarah Palin (who actually had the audacity to reinstitute a bounty hunt on wolves reminiscent of the Wild West days of slaughtering buffalo) won't tell you is this: out-of-state hunting tourists bring in a nice revenue, and the state wants to keep them coming. Essentially, Alaska is harvesting more moose by instituting mass culls on their predators in select areas (often areas that get a lot of out-of-state tourists looking to bag the biggest bull moose they can find) to keep to money flowing.

Here's what happens with the wolf culls: they kill a bunch of them willy-nilly, shooting them from the air like it's a video game target. It's a slow, gory and agonizing death, being shot piecemeal like that.

Afterwards in the absence of the wolves, moose populations EXPLODE. Then either one of two things happen, which is that the out-of-state sportshunters have a field day picking off the vast abundance of moose, or the moose now overbrowse their territories and so eat themselves out of their own food supply. Their populations then crash. This usually happens right around the time wolf populations are recovering. Then we get to blame the wolves again, and authorize more killings, and so the cycle goes on. And on. And on.

When I lived in Alaska, I worked with the Alaska Wildlife Alliance (AWA), on this issue. I collected signatures for a ballot to overturn the program (the state's people voted twice to get rid of it by ballot, though by an admittedly small majority). First observation: individuals of indigenous origin were resoundingly against the program (perhaps because, like biologists, their rich heritage gives them a deeper understanding of the predator-prey relationship than the rest of us).

Second observation: People in favor of the program liked to pin on the opposition hyperbolic assumptions--that we are crazy, PETA-loving vegans. This was ironic because even though they called us the zealots, they were the ones often pelting rocks at our table and screaming things like, "The only good wolf is a dead wolf." Now, almost everyone I met in Alaska, even in the cities, either hunt, fish, or has someone in the family who does it. The people of the AWA are no different. They have buck hides drying in their garages, too. But there's a difference, both biologically and ethically, between hunting an ungulate (often shot at close range in a clean kill) for the purpose of food, and killing a predator by gunning it down in a plane because it threatens our sense of the heirarchy.

A lot of the predator control proponents will say the science is on their side. It's not, as my basic biology lesson up above illustrates. Also, make note of the fact that the state of AK never bothered really to take any censuses of wolf and moose populations to back up their claims, and disregarded those censuses they did take that contradicted the claims.

Don't believe me? Well, then I defer to the findings of the National Academies of Science Natural Resources, the foremost scientific authority in the country (and one of the biggest in the world), which also concluded in an extensive study that such programs can rarely be justified scientifically, and in fact, may inflict longer-term damage on both the predator and prey species, as well as the larger ecosystem.

If you want to put an end to Alaska's egregious predator control program, please call the state's Governor's office to express your dismay and disgust over this program. Also, consider becoming a member and contributing to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, which works on this issue.

**Laura Kiesel is a freelance writer and editor, with a background in natural resources and wildlife biology. She is the founder and sole author of the blog, Writing for Survival, which is about sustainability, social justice, and scraping by as a scribe.

But as for straws...well, when did my vendetta against them begin in earnest? I had, these past few years, intermittenly refused them at restaurants, though it didn't bother me so much if I forgot to or not (which I often did). If they still adorned my glass, I took it in stride and shrugged it off. I don't eat meat, rarely drive and hang-dry my clothes, so I have done my part...there are so much bigger things to worry about, right?

Last year, I attended the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin. During the evenings, there were small informal dinner meet-ups. As such informal talks do, this discussion for the meet-up I joined weaved and bobbed between the very serious (our potential imminent extinction) to the mundane, to abstract esoteric thought and even gender arguments (are women more environmental than men?). And then, very simply, one of my colleagues picked up a straw out of his glass to prove a point of how prolifigately wasteful we humans can be.

"Do we really need these?" he asked, the offending straw pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Indeed, we don't, and we all nodded and stared at the offenders that took up residence in all of our own drink glasses, shaking our heads in shame...

I wish I could say from then on, I ardently objected to the straw, but it wasn't a strong enough motivator to make me kick the habit for good. Like most people, I sometimes need a visual cue, often something strongly visceral, before I can really change a bad behavior (or even come to really understand the consequences of a societal behavior), and this was no exception.

That visual cue came only a month or so later, while I was perusing an article in either Discover or National Geographic on the phenomenon of plastic waste in our ocean, which tends to aggregate into large patches that come to resemble evil science fiction creatures. I turned a page and then--BAM!--a picture of a biopsied duck, its belly gorged with remnants of our plastic waste, mostly drinking straws. It hit my own stomach like a sucker punch, crept into my cranium and stuck there. It gave me a bad dream.

Ducks don't eat straws because they are dumb. Bits of plastic straws, especially glimmering in the obscuring underwater view, resemble the iridiscent fish that comprise many a seabird's savory meals. And are the ducks really so dumb to think that there would be fish in the ocean as opposed to our garbage?

A similar thing happens with our plastic bags, that we so often see dancing on the streets in the wind (as so poetically portrayed in the movie "American Beauty") that almost always eventually drift into our oceans, lakes and rivers: sea mammals like seals and whales mistake them for jellyfish (also the same fate of most of the balloons we find romantic as we set them "free" into the sky at the peak of their buoyancy, seemingly forgetting or denying that they are inevitably destined to deflate and litter elsewhere out of our sight).

Most of the animals who swallow our plastic waste won't immediately choke to death, but rather the bag will take up residence in their GI tract, where it will slowly but surely strangle their disgestive organs. Just because you are good about throwing away your trash into a can, does not mean it stays out of the ocean either: storms and winds cause a lot of trash to migrate, the smaller the plastic item (straws), the more likely it will end up elsewhere, usually someplace wet.

If I seem to be making too much of a big deal about one little straw, consider this: in the United States we discard of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF STRAWS EVERY YEAR! Think of that number. Think of how many straws you might have even blown through this week. Most likely, in your lifetime, the amount of straws you threw out could build several makeshift homes in developing countries. The drinking straws I am decrying are also made of PLASTIC, and are a direct product of the petrochemical (translation: oil and oil refinery) industry, an enormous market, one large outlet of which exists on the Gulf Coast.

By supporting plastic, we are also supporting continued oil production and dependence. Not to mention, as a product made of petrochemicals, straws and other plastics are chock-full of known carcinogens like Bisphenol A (BPA), that leech both into our drinks through straws and into the ocean when they wind up there as waste. This is something those with young kids might especially want to consider when offering their children another sippy straw-equipped drink box.

But the biggest question is: what are they good for?

I mean, straws were something that didn't really come into vogue until a few decades ago. Before that, we lived well without them. For the bigger environmental choices, like driving, we can argue that we sometimes NEED to do it--that because of the way our society is structured, we sometimes simply can't get from point A to point B without getting into a car--and if point B is a hospital or a job, what choice do we have? Even the most adamant of the ecologically-conscious occasionally drive. They do it not because they are hypocrites but because fully abstaining from driving requires a larger infrastructual change that extends way beyond what we can just grasp with our personal choices, and many of us simply can't afford the more efficient or sustainable alternatives.

But none of this can be said about the straw. In almost every situation but a couple (say, you have a handicap that prevents you from having mobile use of your hands and arms), they are nothing but frivolous and contrived conveniences, so small by itself, but so much a part of a larger desctructive whole--how much smaller (or even non-existent) would these ocean plastic patches be if we went sans straws and other superfluous plastic items (utensils, cups, etc.)?

Unlike car culture, our plastic culture is subject to a paradigm shift that can be instigated more from the bottom up than the top down: personal choice trumps political will here. That is why straws are in fact the ultimate symbol of both our profound tendency towards being needlessly wasteful, as well as our extreme potential towards achieving a more sustainable society through our smaller personal choices. And, unlike the automobile, more sustainable alternatives (namely reusable straws made of non-cancerous materials or disposable straws made of biodegradable material) are affordable.

This is one way we can change which won't hurt us at all.

To view my complete article about straws and to find out about what you can do, please visit my blog.

In the area of national security and military intervention, it's been a fascinating exercise in political forensics to witness the response to President Obama's firing of General Stanley McChrystal. If history demonstrates anything it's that its lessons are perpetually susceptible to revision based on new evidence and more informed analysis. So it is that over the centuries, the credibility of Herodotus' rendering of the Peloponnesian War has attenuated, while that of Thucydides is deemed more persuasive.

Moreover, the deeper one delves into the tiered nature of history, the clearer it becomes that discrete causes for events are the exception rather than the rule. A prototypical example is the causes of the Great War, now known as World War One. The standard causal explanation, which has demonstrable credibility, is the abysmal complexity and countervailing influences of the treaty arrangements that prevailed in advance of war.

The issue of Belgium's neutrality obligations date to the 1839 Treaty of London, which isn't commonly discussed except in the more erudite--that is, unread--texts. However, it wasn't merely Belgium's neutrality that was guaranteed under Article VII of the treaty, but rather the grim obligations of the signatories in the event of foreign invasion.

Peeling away yet another layer, Britain's declaration of war against Germany, subsequent to the latter's invasion of Belgium in August 1914, was less a matter of upholding its treaty obligations than with Britain's fear of Germany's control of Belgium's sea ports. A key message in matters as complex as war is that we must move well beyond the gloss of casual observation into the sub-text of nuanced motivations.

To that end, and regardless of the historical incident in question, it's wise to discern patterns of events that evolved over time, ones that indict or reward strategic prescience and the relative efficacy of outcomes. With respect to war, and in contrast to the modern liberal who naively endorses soft power, Plato's maxim prevails: "It's only the dead who will see the end of war."

Axiomatic in the equation is that a consensus among historians typically fractures beyond the empirical description of events. For example, there is little disagreement regarding the effectiveness of weapons and tactics in the Hundred Years War, but the legitimacy of Britain's claims on the French throne and the inbred role of dynastic succession as well as Salic Law, are debated to this day.

On a broader scale, however, the sway of culture and the values that underwrite it is, perhaps, more challenging to decipher, especially when its proximity is so close that it taints our lens. Besides understanding history's many lessons, it's at least as important that we recognize the insidious and noxious cultural influences in our midst, so we can quickly neutralize and correct them.

Against that background, it's particularly curious that the deeper message in Mr. Obama's firing of General McChrystal has been largely overlooked. Even in a military that has suffered at the emasculating hands of political correctness, weakness is correctly understood as a trait our enemy will reflexively exploit. Dating to the appeasement of Hitler before World War Two, as well as the studied reticence to confront Communism under Stalin and fascism under Mussolini, modern liberalism created a template for weakness in foreign affairs that is as resilient today as it is damaging to national security.

Facile analysts in the mainstream media were quick to compare Obama's decision to President Truman's firing of Gen. MacAurthur, asserting that both generals were insubordinate. However, the code of military conduct in a civilian model is the low-hanging fruit of this matter. The deeper and more instructive lesson is that the acerbic battle between Truman and MacArthur signaled the genesis of the American left's descent into national security irrelevance, this despite Truman's unwavering opposition to Communism.

Indeed, under the political aegis of the newly formed Progressive Party in 1948, Henry Wallace, FDR's vice-president, began shaping a foreign policy framework that willfully failed to recognize the threat of Communism. With few exceptions, the ensuing decades have witnessed the tectonic depreciation of the Democrats' steely defense of freedom under FDR against Hitler and the Japanese.

The glaring sub-text, which has been scrupulously overlooked by the mainstream media, is that Obama's firing of McChrystal was merely the latest example of a clash of national security polities.

Liberals, whom Obama faithfully represents, disdain all war and have what amounts to a genetic predisposition to avoid it at all costs. The clear message in the Rolling Stone interview is that McChrystal's staff profoundly disagreed with the president's stringent rules of engagement. even in the context of a counter-insurgency strategy, which predictably hobbles our military's efforts. In this instance the dots are pre-connected to MacArthur's caustic criticism of the Progressive Party's evolving appeasement of Communism, and Obama's approach to our current war is just as feckless.

When combined with his instinctive inability to call radical Islam by its proper name, Obama's apology tour, his obeisance to the tyrants of Iran, his stunning indifference to Russia's evolving autocratic, anti-democratic policies, and his benign response to North Korea's resurgent belligerence, merely reanimate the policy of Democratic appeasement that began decades ago.

Mainstream Americans have a hard-wired understanding that a policy of weakness is doomed to fail. This is a fundamentally flawed approach to dealing with our enemies, and the left's unambiguous role in perpetuating it with strategic policies at odds with our national security interests, is as dangerous as it is ignorant of history.

Mella blogs at http://clearcommentary.townhall.com.

The Republican Party will experience it at the local and state levels first, as Tea Party candidates defeat conventional Republicans and win GOP nominations. Some of those Tea Partiers will be kooky, others will be single-issue ideologues. A few will be anti-immigrant, a smattering will be paranoid. Others will be very like the Republicans they beat.

In November most of the kooks, ideologues, nativists and paranoids will lose to a Democrat. That will cause anguished cries by establishment Republicans: “They cost us Kentucky! They are ruining our party.” The few crazies who win will be magnets for the media and their weird statements will cause embarrassment for the majority of responsible Republicans. After that, individual Tea Partiers - who are shown by research to be as sensible as any other politically involved Americans – will make individual decisions.

Whew, that was fast! Tea Partier Rand Paul won Kentucky’s Republican senatorial primary on June 18. By June 20 he had expressed doubts about the efficacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His reasoning contained two flaws, one legal and the other political. First, a provision of the Act modified a property owner’s right to exclude people when that property was used in public commerce. Second, defending the concept of property rights that forced minorities to the back of the bus was just plain dumb.

Predictably, the gratuitous analysis raised a huge fuss among minorities and in the media. Democrats were only too glad to suggest racism. The Democrats want to brand Paul as an extremist. Paul helped them out. The Democrats want to make Paul the “intolerant” face of the Republican Party. Paul’s willingness to go on television with no preparation is a recipe for more bombs.

Establishment Republicans had not even had a chance to meet the man who had their Kentucky nomination and they were forced to defend him, excuse him or distance themselves from him. They chose distance.

Paul was left to careen along all by himself. Even the most hot-headed GOP senators issued statements that, in total, made Paul look like the inexperienced pop-off that he seems to be. The establishment Republicans should have foreseen the problem. Many people predicted during the campaign that Paul would have trouble with the national media. The GOP establishment in Kentucky backed a boring “I’m-entitled-to-it” candidate. The GOP leaders may not have recognized their choice’s shortcomings because so many of them suffer the same affliction, starting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Whoopee cushion politics

Kentucky’s Republican leaders lack maturity. Like giggling geeks without social graces, the Republican leaders smirk and give the impression that they think they know more than anyone else. They share jokes at others’ expense. They are suspicious of “outsiders.” They whisper in the back of the room during Republican meetings, exchanging knowing glances and grins. They behave like a high school clique. What they know seems to have about the same political usefulness as a whoopee cushion.

So the dire predictions of Kentucky’s GOP establishment have come true: Paul is a loose cannon. During the primary, the GOP leaders warned voters about Paul’s “unusual” ideas and tendency to let his words cause trouble. So why didn’t they have a few advisors ready to counsel Paul before he sat down with one of the cleverest interviewers in TV?

Face it: The Republican establishment – in Washington and in Kentucky – blew it. They did not circle their wagons around their victor. They sulked and consoled the loser. They figured they had time to cozy up to the Tea Partier in their midst. McConnell did embrace Paul after Paul claimed victory in the name of the Tea Party, not the GOP. One bystander said McConnell “looked like he was afraid of catching the flu or something from Paul.”

Paul was fresh meat and the media tigers saw their chance and made a meal of him. When Paul talks, it’s like listening to a college student during a late-night bull session – examining the edges, debating long decided issues, impressed with his ability to verbalize intricate concepts. In politics, that style risks unfavorable interpretations. Two things can prevent Paul from jumping into another frying pan: He can get smart, quickly; or the GOP establishment can get together behind him, even as they dislike him. Place your bets. Will Paul learn quicker than the establishment warms to him? Probably. But beware: If GOP leaders are not there when he needs them most, Paul and other Tea Partiers will feel even more like outsiders in the clubby atmosphere of the GOP.

Let him fail?

The Tea Party offers the Republicans a chance to plug into intensity and to benefit from volunteers with a willingness to work. Instead of reaching out, some within the Kentucky GOP establishment are planning to put a whoopee cushion on Paul’s chair. Think I’m kidding? Some GOP leaders in Kentucky have been discussing whether they will “endorse” Paul – as if Paul’s run-away primary victory needs their blessing. Yes, some GOP leaders have discussed that it might be best to abandon their winner and let him fail in November. That way, the establishment will be done with him. Do they forget that If Paul loses, the Democrats pick up a seat in the Senate?

I wrote last month that Republicans have a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Are Kentucky Republicans about to do just that? Paul won the nomination decisively. He is the Republican candidate. He could use some help.

Put away the whoopee cushions, kids.

The boycotts are starting to mount up, from school boards meddling in politics and depriving their student athletes of the chance to participate in sporting events in Arizona to the Los Angeles city council's recent vote to suspend business activities with that state. Arizona will soon begin to feel their negative effects.

Let's replace the lost business and revenue by providing them with some of our own. Make Arizona your primary vacation destination this year. Buy as many products as you can that are made in Arizona. Look for produce that comes from Arizona. Encourage your friends and family members to do the same. Get the word out.

And there's something else we can do. Encourage your state legislators to pass a similar bill in your state to show solidarity with Arizona as well as protect its own borders from illegals. This would also make things more difficult for the boycotters. They can't boycott but so many states at one time. The good news is that it looks like Oklahoma may soon be about to come on board.

I've seen this movie before. Time and again, liberals have ganged up and boycotted people, businesses, nations, states, or localities that were doing something that they didn't agree with. They've accused them with some of the most favored words and phrases from their arsenal, such as bigots, haters, racists, homophobes, meanies, baddies, agents of intolerance, etc. In almost every case, the object of the boycott has capitulated and the liberals have won.

Now they're at it again. This time, they are making reactionary pontifications about a law they know little about. Even people who should know better, such as Attorney General Eric Holder, are making public judgments and pronouncement about Arizona's new law without even having read it. It was a delicious development to hear Holder have to admit before Congress and the nation that he had not read it, days after having questioned it on NBC's Meet the Press. Shame on General Holder!

This is not a bigoted law that promotes racial profiling, as some would have us believe. Americans are good people in general. The majority of them would not support a law that they believed to be mean-spirited. And most of them are smarter than the media and academic elite give them credit for. Of course, these elitists are a condescending sort that think they know so much more than the rest of us. They just know the Arizona immigration law is evil because, well, it's inconsistent with their world view.

However, most of those who oppose it do so innocently out of ignorance. They have heard so much false propaganda about it, including many dire predictions, that they have become unjustifiably frightened. Most of us know that ignorance often leads to fear. That seems to be the case here. As Sarah Palin has suggested, perhaps a little education about this law will allay some peoples' fear about it. Therefore, she has joined forces with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to try to accomplish this end.

At any rate, let's make sure history doesn't repeat itself. We need to stand up to the instigators and tell them they're not getting their way this time. I'm getting so tired of the minority pushing the majority around in this country. We should at least be willing to put our collective foot down and say enough is enough every once in a while. This is the perfect time for us to begin to exert this power. In fact, we must do so. It's not just a matter of practicality; it's a matter of survival.

PS: Kudos to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig for refusing to cave and remove baseball's All-Star Game from Arizona next year. The same goes for Los Angeles Lakers' coach Phil Jackson for declining to involve his team in any kind of political statements against Arizona. We need more men like them - men with backbone.

Under the best of circumstances, the strong have trouble lifting the weak. More often, the weak pull down the strong. When the forerunner of the European Union was created with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, Europe's political leaders heralded a new spirit of cooperation that would bring the disparate countries into political and economic union that could close the gap of economic disparity among Europe's many nations. Eventually, through cooperation on continent-wide problems, Europeans would adopt a single currency, followed by a coordinated monetary policy and - possibly, just possibly - a single foreign policy.

After centuries of rivalry and warfare, Europe would settle into maturity under a single flag. Although partly realized, the vision was never completely practical. Early on, Europe's leaders ducked the key constitutional and economic decisions concerning joint economic policies.

A common currency can go only so far with no coordinated, underlying economic policy. Without a constitution or other governing document, a flag can be hoisted only so high. Eventually, as with so many things, the situation comes down to money. The problem, then and now, is that Europe's leaders wanted the benefits of a common currency without the consolidation of financial authority. The Euro became an attempt to float a common currency on an inadequate institutional foundation. Most of the individual nations trade in the new currency but keep their national books in whatever budgetary jumble suits from time to time. Each nation can claim that its books balance, even when any casual observer can detect that what balances in Greece does not balance in Germany.

Searching for the Holy Grail

The founders set Europe on a quest for the modern Holy Grail. In ancient times the Grail was never found and brave knights were lost in the search. Today's Europe has not found monetary union and citizens of other Eurozone nations will suffer for Greece's foolishness. There is no other way, at least no other way that does not tear at the union itself.

As is so often the case, money is at the root of this family argument. A few weeks ago, we all heard the squabbling as Germany and other stronger nations struggled to decide whether to rescue Greece, their weakest and most profligate member. The politics of the May 9 German state election in North Rhine Westphalia made the decision harder for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She dithered. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France pounded the table, insisting that if Germany did not back a bailout for Greece, the Eurozone would collapse - with France headed for the exit first. In the end, once again, Germany cast its lot with Europe. The Euro survives to be fought over another day. As expected, the election went badly for Merkel. Her government lost control of the upper house of parliament.

This brinksmanship was not about the Greek people. Who does not love Greece and the Greeks? Combine a beautiful place with wonderful people and you have a paradise - but a paradise that has courted fiscal disaster for generations. Now, at least temporarily, you have paradise lost for the Greeks and more taxes for the citizens of the better managed countries.

Merkel had to act despite the political risk. Greek default might have triggered panic and Portugal might have followed, perhaps with Spain and Ireland not far behind. Suddenly, Greece let the whole world see that by declining to create strong leadership in a central government, Europe merely pushed problems down the road - and Greece was the end of this road. Brussels has thousands of EU officials issuing hundreds of directives, but no central finance ministry. The European Central Bank was designed to be impotent. It could not issue debt on behalf of the EU member nations. It lacked authority to intervene with extreme and creative monetary policy as the U.S. Federal Reserve attempted during the 2008 financial crisis.

Jealous countries

There were no good or easy solutions to the Greek crisis. One investment manager spoke for many when he advocated letting Greece go belly up: "Investors had always regarded the Euro as a de jure German mark; it is dawning on the world that it is becoming, de facto, a Greek drachma." Most influential investors pushed for short-term solutions - in essence, to buy time to unload their investments - and they were willing to mortgage future generations with a crippling debt burden. But the burden is already beginning to hobble the present generation.

Some analysts worried that the more mobile Greeks would abandon their homeland for other parts of Europe, leaving behind those incapable of functioning in a competitive economy. Vultures would gather to pick at the bones. The EU would have a third world country filled with dependent people on its southern fringe. Those gloomy analysts may overstate the situation. But they focus attention on the fact that when countries join the Eurozone, they lose their ability to devalue or manipulate their currency to stave off disaster. A one-size-fits-all Euro does not accommodate every country, every budget and every political and economic situation.

Politicians and academics have speculated for years that European unification could be undone by East-West tension, especially between the old Soviet Union and the United States. One reason the Eastern Europeans were brought into the EU so quickly was to put that fear to rest. The concern might have been better directed from East-West to Europe's North-South fault line. The financially disciplined nations of northern Europe, led by Germany, resent the loose financial ways of the southerners, who have treated the Euro like a credit card with a bloated balance that never needs to be paid.

Warnings ignored

European politicians had warnings: Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden, among other countries, demonstrated concern. France, the nation that championed the dream of one Europe, barely ratified the Maastricht Treaty that established the common currency. Then, five years ago, French voters rejected the European constitution that was shepherded into existence by their former president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

The warnings were ignored and now Europe and the rest of the world must sort out the mess. Perhaps there will be an orderly - albeit costly - sorting out under Germany's leadership. More likely, Europe's leaders will criticize the deal in order to placate their own citizens. Europe has accomplished much. Ancient enemies have been reconciled. Communism has been conquered and Europe has experienced unimagined prosperity in the last half century. Now, Europe must try to form a more cohesive union, binding countries of very different cultures, ethnicity, traditions, attitudes and old antagonisms. From such disparity they will try to create a real union, encompassing financial controls. If they succeed, Europe will take its place as a powerhouse among nations and regions.

If not, another Greece awaits, but perhaps not in Europe. All over the world, we are all Greeks now.

The same argument could be heard in recent months in a public debate over revising Texas' school curriculum. The Texas board of education considered changing the Founding Fathers' strong commitment to a secular government to a more Christian-based interpretation. Never mind that the idea of America as a Judeo-Christian nation has been revised and discussed for decades. The Texas School Board of Education treats these ideas as established and unmovable truth. And never mind that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was a strong advocate of a strict separation of church and state. The board simply removed him from its canon.

And these are not the only changes. The board added Confederate President Jefferson Davis' inaugural speech to its curriculum, altered the portrayals of conservative movements to a more positive one, and presents the U.S. Army as one of the revolution's greatest achievements, even though it were precisely the Founding Fathers that had strong reservations against a standing army.

Conservative members of the board see their efforts as correcting a curriculum that has been skewed by liberal teachers over the years and Texas is not the only state with these tendencies. Virginia's governor Bob McDonnell declared April to be "Confederate History Month" and urged Southern values should not be forgotten. Civil rights activists were rightly shocked since this declaration essentially results in a trivialization of slavery.

A split along party lines can frequently be found in American public life, no surprises here. But in this case even one of the ten Republicans on the board exclaimed during a meeting "Guys, you're rewriting history now" and its consequences could soon spread beyond state borders. Texas has one of the largest education funds in the country ($22 billion), which is used to finance a huge amount of textbooks every year (48 million), keeping costs per book low. Other, less wealthy, states like to profit from these comparably low prices and buy Texan textbooks instead of publishing their own. Since January more than 100 amendments have been added to the 120-page curriculum that affects history, sociology and economics classes from elementary to high school. In March, the changes were passed by a 10-5 vote with all Republicans on the board voting for it. A final vote will be taken this month although, with a Republican majority, changes are unlikely to happen.

But a ray of hope remains. Conservatives wanting to Christianize schools' curricula have never remained in office for very long. For one, Don McLeroy, leader of the conservative faction of the board, was not re-elected in March. His term will come to an end in the beginning of next year. After all, term limits is what the Founding Fathers intended, isn't it?

On Thursday, the 6th of May, for a few minutes, you could have bought a delicious Sam Adams plus a substantial interest in its maker, the Boston Beer Company, all for the price of a pint. Boston Beer stock, along with dozens of others on the major U.S. stock exchanges, plummeted to zero, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average nosedived 700 points in a matter of minutes.

To the great relief of most traders and to anyone whose financial well being is linked even indirectly to the stock market--and that's pretty much all of us--the market rebounded almost as quickly. Still, the wild ride left even seasoned traders in shock.

It's hard to overstate how much value was at risk during this ten-minute event. As just one example, Exelon, a utility worth about $30 billion at 2:49 p.m. was worth nothing three minutes later. It's estimated that one trillion dollars of value evaporated during the "flash crash." That's three times what the U.S. spends on public education per year, $300 billion more the U.S. government bailout of the banking system in 2008, and about equal to the current European package to rescue Greece.

Some of the most extreme trades were eventually erased. The tech-heavy NASDAQ decided to annul trades that took place during those critical minutes and at more than 60 percent above or below a stock's pre-anomaly value.

The grab-your-airsick-bag crash and rebound was an anomaly, but that's not the same as saying that it was an error, in the sense that it was caused by some specific mistake or malfunction.

Economist and market analyst John Hussman points out that U.S. stock markets have hit similar "air pockets"-- in 1955, 1987 and 1999. Like the Thursday event, those episodes resulted in roughly ten percent losses. The big difference is that they played out over weeks rather than minutes.

Since the Thursday debacle there's been no shortage of fingerpointing.

Early speculation centered on a so-called "fat-fingered trade" as the trigger for the selloff. Instead of offering to sell a few million shares of Procter and Gamble, rumor had it that a trader mistakenly put up a few billion shares. Lacking buyers, the stock tumbled, starting a panic that took the rest of the market down with it.

The theory got a lot of attention, but like the infamous weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there's no evidence for it.

The most recent theory is that as the market started to fall a particular hedge fund placed a $7.5 million bet that the drop-off would continue, and the rest of the hedge funds followed suit. Do lemmings come to mind?

One suspect that most market gurus agree on is high frequency trading. Multiple firms now trade using high speed computers linked directly to the stock exchanges. These constantly analyse massive amounts of data and exploit fleeting opportunities by buying and sell huge quantities of stocks and futures in milliseconds. Experts estimate that these automated agents now make from sixty to seventy percent of all trades.

The existence of these computerized agents goes a long way towards explaining what happened, and the absence of an identifiable trigger.

If there's one thing we've learned about complex systems since chaos theory pioneer Edward Lorenz popularized the idea of the "butterfly effect" in the 1960s, it's that they are capable of amplifying the tiniest perturbation to virtually any scale. It takes just one last snowflake to unleash an avalanche.

The stock market is a classic example of a highly dynamic system driven by many independent but interacting agents. One state that it's capable of occupyin--what system theorsists refer to as an attractor-- is when the tug of war between buyers and sellers arrives efficiently at a stock's current value. That's the state that economists tell us represents the stock market's raison d'etre.

It would be great if that were the only way the system functions. Unfortunately, history shows that the stock market can also wander into at least two other states or attractors. It's prone to huge bubbles, in which contagious enthusiasm drives the prices of most stocks well above their "true" value, and, as we've just seen, "air pockets" in which contagious panic does the opposite.

That was bad enough when human traders were the ones calling the shots. Presumably they had some sense that a company valued at $30 billion one minute couldn't really be worth zero a few minutes later. Their interaction led to dramatic booms and busts, but at least these had believable tops and bottoms and unfolded on a human time scale.

Over the years the markets have instituted various fixes to try to keep the market from manifesting its most unattrractive attractors. After the global "Black Friday" market crash of 1987, The New York Stock Exchange, for example, put in place "circuit breakers"--trading curbs that snap into place when the market falls too quickly and that are supposed to slow panic selling and so prevent a full-scale crash.

Some market analysts are blaming the circuit breakers themselves for the Thursday meltdown. They think that when the NYSE circuit breakers clicked in, the effect was to shunt the flood of sell orders to other markets that were even less able to find buyers for them .

(Just as a star needs to maintain a continuous flux of nuclear fusion to keep from collapsing under the force of gravity, stock markets need to continuously match sellers and buyers. If there are no buyers, stock prices start to fall. We now know that computerized trading can drive a sagging stock to zero in minutes, and can threaten to implode the entire market).

The circuit-breaker problem has gained traction. Six major exchanges have now agreed to strengthen and coordinate their circuit breakers. New rules are currently being negotiated and should be in place within a few weeks.

Those fixes may be good ideas, but they almost certainly are nothing but temporary patches. The system remains as complex, dynamic, and unpredictable as ever. It's still shuttling hundreds of billions of dollars form buyers to sellers at inhuman speeds every day, impelled not just by humans vacillating between greed and fear, but increasingly by computerized agents impelled by abstruse algorithms. There's no "beta testing" for these patches, leaving all of us as guinea pigs in a very high-stakes experiment.

Regulators and investors would like to believe that the proposed fixes will result in an efficient, reasonably stable market. I think it's more accurate to view the market as something like a manic-depressive chef on speed--brilliant at what it does but capable of cooking up a disaster at any time.

Thursday's collapse and rebound, and the current fix-it-on-the-fly patches, ought to make normal investors think hard about their nesteggs. Harry Truman's aphorism about politics seems even more appropriate for investors in today's market. "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Too many people were getting too many freebies off the backs of too few others. There was no way that such a system could sustain itself. It was doomed from the beginning. It was just a matter of time before it would begin to collapse. The chickens are now coming home to roost.

The government of Greece is now broke and has therefore been forced to bring the gravy train to a screeching halt. This has led to riots in the streets, as many Greeks are still demanding their goodies anyway. A bailout by the EU may stem the tide for a while, but it will not resolve the current mess in Greece. There is much more pain to come. Things will likely get worse before they get better. And that includes the probability that Greece will default on its debts.

Of course, Greece is not the only country that has linked its fate to this kind of socialism. It was adopted by the majority of Europe decades ago. Therefore, the economic crisis in Greece is likely to soon spread throughout most of the continent.

Unfortunately, during the last decade, the U.S. has begun to slouch in that direction as well. If we don't turn back now, we are destined to meet the same fate as Greece and most of the remainder of Europe. We need to flatly reject all the tenets of socialism and return to the core capitalistic values of our forefathers. But we need to begin soon. Time is not on our side.

To begin with this last item, we no longer have waterways that catch on fire or birds falling dead from DDT poisoning mid-flight, and most of our skies are not rendered mere shadows by smog and soot. Our environmental threats are now more concealed and more complex, and so harder to believe in, or combat. Chemical exposure and climate change are more difficult to see, and their threats are for the most part, slower to take hold.

For the AP article, I was struck by one of the last lines, which contained a quote by a Beltway resident who now lets her children swim in the Potomac, and does not even bother to clean them off afterwards. This is to highlight how we have improved the cleanliness of the River and other bodies of water that once brimmed visibly with sludge. I found this interesting, because having lived in the D.C.-metro area myself and having spent enough of my spring and summer days riverside, I never once saw a swimmer in the Potomac. I also recall that the few times I went sailing, we all had a fear of tipping over into the murky water. This is because most of the fish in the Potomac are reported to be hermaphrodites from exposure to the environmental estrogens in the water. Just two days ago, there was another article again about this issue, and how it has accelerated. Environmental estrogens do not attack our bodies the same way DDT attacks the body of the bird. We don't instantly drop down dead, and so we have been less vigilant about reducing exposure or banning products that contain them. Instead, we develop cancer, usually of our reproductive system (breast, ovarian, uterine--organs that are more estrogen-regulated) and at much higher rates and earlier ages than we used to. We may go on more marches rallying for a cure, but at the same time more and more of our products contain these chemicals, including our cleaning products, personal care products, even most our milk and dairy products. The bitter irony is that most of the "sponsors" of these marches and proactive cure cancer events are cosmetic companies that have refused to phase out the estrogenic chemicals in their products at the request of many cancer victim advocacy organizations, though they have already done so for the product lines available in other countries that have such bans (and where, incidentally, rates of cancer development are decreasing). Not only will chemical companies not voluntarily phase out chemicals in the U.S. they are prohibited from using elsewhere, they are working vigilantly against Obama and U.S. government efforts to do so. Yes, there seems to be a lot of irony, as with the recent explosions of oil rigs and mines at a time when our government is pushing to exponentially increase these activities and has ensured the public that we can do so safely. In addition to the fact that these activities will exacerbate climate change and other environmental maladies, it seems they are still inherently unsafe for workers in the field. (A lesser known piece of news is that concerning the closure of the Yankee nuclear plant in my recent resident state of Vermont, where more reports of leaks and adverse health effects have come to light at a time when we are pushing and planning for more nuclear energy.)

Finally, today's news concerns EPA recommendations for regulating carbon. It's about time. Of course, the rules are still too weak (regulation starts for industries emitting 75K+ tons of CO2 annually). What also fails to be mentioned is that the House-passed climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey bill, contains language that would usurp the EPA's authority to regulate carbon and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it could three years ago. Though some say this bill is as good as dead, the new Senate bill being fashioned by Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham, seems likely to incorporate a lot of the language and provisions of ACESA. And there's the fact that Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski and other Congressional representatives are taking decisive and aggressive action to ensure the EPA is castrated of its legal powers to protect us from climate change. Frankly, the House cap-and-trade bill was a sell-out piece of legislation that would do nothing to genuinely and effectively address climate change. It would giveaway most carbon permits instead of sell them. It would depend greatly on offset schemes--which just yesterday, a huge investigative story ran in the Christian Science Monitor that confirmed a vast majority of offsetting programs are not real and are simply scams. The bill also sought to lavish subsidies on technologies that simply don't exist and are implicitly counterintuitive to addressing climate change--such as clean coal. Clean coal is a myth, as I discussed in my blog the other day about the House cap-and-trade bill.

Which leaves me to my final thought: where is the discussion of cap-and-dividend? Why has the President, Congress and most of the media ignored the fact that there is another climate bill that has been introduced into Congress? One that does not deprive the EPA of its court-ordered obligations and duties, one that does not allow offsets to qualify as emission cuts,one that does not giveaway permits to polluters, and one that would GIVE MONEY BACK TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? That's right, the cap-and-dividend bill, known as the CLEAR Act (Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal), would auction off every single permit. Then, it would take the majority of that revenue from the auction and give it directly back to U.S. citizens in the form of a dividend check distributed by snail mail or direct deposit come tax season. Low-income and middle-class citizens would get the largest share, with our wealthiest 2% either breaking even or losing a small amount. The check would help offset small increases to prices at the pump and in our electrical grid. The smaller precentage of leftover revenue would go towards direct subsidies in conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy programs, that would further deflect the burden of projected energy price increases on our populace. Even our anti-climate bill politicians in the great state of Alaska cannot deny the popularity and effectiveness of dividend programs--the state has subsidized a lot of its infrastructure through its own program from oil revenues and the state citizens are very pleased with their annual checks.

The bill definitely has its drawbacks: the carbon cap is too low, and it still offers some funding to dubious technology (again, the dreaded clean coal, though the funding is not as lavish), and it only is focused on carbon. However, the auction and dividend process would aid in naturally tightening the cap and, as the concept of climate regulation begins to face less resistance and as more climate-friendly programs and infrastructure is implemented, the cap could be strengthened. Again, the bill's biggest strong point is it is downright populist and progressive in messaging and intent and has the ability to rouse unprecedented public support. All of the arguments of catering to corporations aren't applicable here, and when people got on board, so would our politicians. So, again, why don't we hear about it? Well, because our corporations wouldn't benefit, and their interests are adamantly protected in our government lately. The Supreme Court ruling in January that interprets them as individuals and money as speech more or less let us in on that secret. If we do want other Earth Days for our children, this is a bill we can believe in. Even if you don't believe in human-induced climate change, or even if you don't believe it's a bad thing, I am sure we can all agree that we need to steer away from fossil fuels, and that we need cleaner air and water (CO2 and other GHGs cause environmental health problems in addition to global warming), that we need energy sources that are safer for our workers and residents, and that we need a system that favors people over industry. And so far, we're wasting time. For more of my reporting and commentary on cap-and-trade v. cap-and-dividend, I invite you to please visit my latest blog post on the issue.

Happy Earth Day!

When I was a kid, I was a baseball pitcher. I loved it: Nothing could happen till I threw the ball. I was in control.

One day, my team went into the last inning with a two-run lead. I got the first two hitters out. The next hitter grounded softly to the third baseman, who picked up the ball and threw it past the first baseman for a two-base error. The next batter grounded to the second baseman, who became confused when the runner did not run to third but drifted a few feet off second base. Instead of making the easy toss to first base to end the game, the second baseman lunged after the runner near second. The runner stepped back on second base, safe. The batter crossed first base, safe without a throw: Another error.

The next batter -- their weakest hitter -- smashed my first pitch over the chain-link fence. Three runs scored and we lost the game.

"How did we blow this game," I shouted as I walked off the field with my sullen teammates? The third baseman was looking the other way. The second baseman was being comforted by his dad. I shouted it again: "How did we blow this game?" The coach put his arm around my shoulders and said, "You threw a bad pitch and their worst hitter got a home run."

Me? I didn't make a bad throw to first. I didn't pull a bonehead play at second base. I didn't make those two errors on easy ground balls. Sure, I had thrown the pitch.

The lesson sunk in. I had blown the game.

I could rationalize that the game would have been over if my teammates had not made those two errors. But I threw the pitch that was hit over the fence. I blew the game.

This isn't Chicago. Or is it?

President Obama blew healthcare reform. When his strategy of aloofness from the Congressional machinations blew up, he got out of sorts and blamed other people. He demonstrated the worst political leadership skills imaginable. He sulked. He growled. He frowned. He pointed his finger at inquiring reporters. His eyes blazed with anger. He was short with his friends and ice-cold to his opponents. As Obama became ever more testy, some of his staff, partly in jest but based on their appraisal of his outsized ego, started referring to Obama as "the smartest man in the room." Little by little, the smartest man in the room was exposed as an overreaching loser. His ineptitude brought him to the abyss -- a failed presidency.

Then a Republican won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Everyone else saw the election of Republican Scott Brown as the end for healthcare reform. Obama chewed on it. He came to see the election of Brown as liberating, not terminating. Somehow, in that moment of defeat, a written-off president realized something that few leaders would understand: His enemy's great triumph was his opportunity. Presidential Advisor David Axelrod has confirmed that Obama intensified healthcare efforts when he perceived a GOP let-down.

Obama realized that he was released by Brown's victory from having to play by the Washington rules. He could play by his rules. He could play by Chicago rules. He could crush a few skulls, trick a few dunces, make one-sided deals with a few congressmen who thought that they were getting the best of a weak president. He could use the old Chicago gangster methods of intimidation: The mob developed to a high art the ability to "rub out" someone without leaving enough evidence to arrest anyone -- but everybody know who ordered "the hit."

Obama announced yet another last assault for healthcare reform while jobs, the economy, the environment and everything else waited. So while Obama made speeches and took the high ground, a few editors and influential Democrats around the country learned of possible ethical lapses by their local congressmen. No one noticed at first that the congressmen singled out for tidbit treatment were all Democrats who had not committed to voting for Obamacare. As soon as a congressman committed to support reform, the leaks stopped and the editors and influential Democrats were told, "never mind!" Sometimes, it was implied that Republicans were behind the scandalous rumors. Quickly and unexpectedly, seemingly unnoticed, several wavering House members lined up behind healthcare reform.

Friends doubted Obama

Meantime, all the smart people -- especially in Congress and the media -- saw Brown's election as more than the end of healthcare reform. They saw it as the end of Obama's pretensions, the end of his grab for greatness. He became the stubborn ideologue who refused to move on to other issues. He seemed intent on dragging the whole world through the folly of brutal, intimidation politics that he could not win. The cynics were wrong. Brass knuckles and full-frontal threats in Washington? Yeah.

By the time the House voted, Obama had made it almost noble to play Chicago-style politics to pass healthcare reform. One gimmick called for the House to pass reform without actually voting on the bill itself. While Republicans attacked that strategy, more undecided Democrats realized that the Tea Party was a lesser threat than the White House political operation. Rather than risk damaging publicity back home, Democrats signed on to Obamacare. Many just wanted to get it over so they could move on to the issues that the voters wanted and that Obama was ignoring.

Obama turned his back on voters wanting jobs. He ignored the economy. How do you think the people of Indonesia feel? They were all ready for a celebration. They had spent their money on Obama tee-shirts and United States flags. Continuing an inexplicable record of irritating and alienating America's allies, the president dissed two important countries. In essence, the president said that healthcare reform in the U.S. was more important than the people of Indonesia, more important than our faithful Australian allies. Essentially, the president implied that Congress could not be trusted to do its job without Obama twisting arms and making ugly and unartful deals.

The final deal with an overmatched Michigan Democrat showed just how skilled the president and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are. You may read about Pelosi's Baltimore-honed political tactics here. They outwitted the poor pro-life congressman into sacrificing his issue for a meaningless promise that can be withdrawn at any time. Overnight, that congressman went from crusading hero on the way to reelection to ridiculed bum trailing in the polls.

Were the wise advisors intimidated, too?

Come November, voters may display their disgust. But it will be too late to bring down Obama. By sheer force of will, and with the vision to see his opposition take it easy after the big win in Massachusetts, Obama made certain that he will not go down as a failed president. He seemed to have squandered his opportunity. Instead, the Republicans wasted theirs. He gambled with the good will of an anxious nation and the hopes of people around the world. He trusted myopic Congressional leaders who did not have his vision or courage. He scared them into voting against their own best interests. He sacrificed them, like pawns on the chess board. They fell in line. Obama won. Americans love a winner.

There is a belief -- perhaps a myth -- that in times of crisis, the political parties have a few respected, gray, seasoned leaders who will go to the president and tell him what he needs to hear. They are the last safeguard, available to protect the president from self-inflicted disaster. They went to Richard Nixon. They went to Jimmy Carter. They went to Bill Clinton and they went to George W. Bush. Nixon listened and left. Clinton listened and changed. Carter argued with the wise men. Bush listened but stayed the course.

Barack Obama got no visit. Does he respect no one enough to make a visit helpful? Are there no people of sufficient gravitas to talk turkey with him? Lyn Nofziger, advisor to President Reagan, gathered steely-eyed men and women on more than one occasion and ushered them into the Oval Office. He remarked once that his job was simple: "To let the president know when he needs a shoe shine. Everyone steps into dog s**t once in a while, that's all."

This president did not need the wise, seasoned advisors. He saw his opportunity and made the winning decisions. The Republicans seemed to coast after Brown's victory. They, not Obama, paid the price of hubris.

This is one time when the smartest man in the room was the smartest man in the room.

Can Obama throw this pitch again?

However, I don't think it's a matter Texas wanting to teach creationism or any other Christian precept as fact in the schools. If that were the case, I would completely agree that they shouldn't be changing school textbooks for that purpose. Instead, I think the changes are being made more along the lines of emphasizing the fact that many of the Founding Fathers held Judeo-Christian values and beliefs. That's a fact, not just somebody's opinion. Therefore, there's nothing inappropriate about including it in U.S. history textbooks.

Unfortunately, modern textbook writers have opted to suppress that kind of information out of deference to political correctness. Some writers have gone even further and are now using textbooks as vehicles to indoctrinate school children with their own liberal, elitist views of the world. Schools are supposed to be places for learning, not laboratories for social engineering. I don't blame the good citizens of Texas for becoming sick and tired of such nonsense.

There are people who actually believe the coming showdown with the federal government could result in Texas (and possibly some other "red" states) opting to secede from U.S., ultimately triggering a second civil war. However, despite all of the rhetoric and bravado, I think it's safe to assume that secession ain't gonna happen. No state official would seriously consider such a move because it's just not practical from an economic standpoint. Besides, think of the logistical nightmare it would create.

Now, with that being said, I don't see why states shouldn't have a right to secede if they wanted to. Should a state be forced to remain joined to an entity it has irreconcilable differences with? Why should one state or group of states have a right to force its/their values on another state or group of states? In my opinion, New England has no more right to boss Texas around anymore than "old" England had a right to boss the 13 colonies around. The latter seceded from England because they desired self-rule. Was the U.S. formed as an outlaw nation?

If secession were ever to occur again in this country, it should be handled peacefully by both sides. Threats and violence are never the answer to our problems. However, like I said, secession not going to happen anyway. What might happen is a constitutional convention. The states can force Congress to call a constitutional convention if two-thirds of them petition for such. Several things happening right now - including the aforementioned textbook showdown and healthcare legislation - could provide impetus for such a call.

If that's not enough, then there's something else currently in the pipeline that could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. Well-known lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies have taken the case of those who wish to overturn California's state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. They vow to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. That could result in a ruling that makes gay marriage legal throughout the nation.

If that happens, look out! We'll have a constitutional convention that amplifies the 10th Amendment and establishes states' rights once and for all. They would finally be able to tell the federal government to kiss their collective backside and bug out of stuff like health care and textbooks. It would underscore a state's sovereignty over - among other things - commerce within that state and what types of marriages it will perform and recognize. And it would probably even establish - yes - their right to secede (theoretically, anyway). Oh, and while they're at it, they should seriously consider repealing the 16th Amendment and abolishing the IRS. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there's a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot."

--Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner & Frederic Loewe

The Legislature of the State of South Dakota distinguished itself by passing an anti-climate change resolution--House Concurrent Resolution No. 1009--late last month,

No, the legislature did not follow King Arthur's lead by attempting to stabilize the state's climate by decree. Instead, it called for "the balanced teaching of global warming" in South Dakota's public schools, borrowing the language and tactics of the ongoing campaign to force the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in America's schools.

On a 36 to 20 vote, South Dakota's House of Representatives urged the state's schools to teach that global warming is a theory rather than a proven fact. Teachers are to impress on students that the significance and "interrelativity" of the "variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological [sic], thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics" that determine global weather patterns are "largely speculative" and that the scientific investigation of global warming has been "complicated and prejudiced" by "political and philosophical viewpoints."

The resolution concludes with a seemingly innocent statement urging that "all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances." The phrase "prevailing classroom circumstances" is a coded way of warning teachers not to present climate change in a way that might anger students or parents who believe that climate change is a hoax hatched by the U.N. to frighten ordinary citizens, justify draconian laws and enrich greedy scientists. It's similar to language advocated by the right-wing group Students for Academic Freedom in its "Academic Bill of Rights", which has been used to attack and even sue college professors whose teaching goes against the beliefs of conservative students.

It's all too easy to trivialize the South Dakota House Resolution and poke holes in the facts and reasoning advanced to support it. The resolution's use of "astrological" instead of "astronomical", the flawed list of anti-climate-change evidence it present--that the earth has been cooling for the last eight years, that there is no evidence of warming in the troposphere, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but "the gas of life"-- and the argument that the existence of naturally driven climate change in the past rules out human-caused climate change today, makes for a document that's hard to take seriously.

Even South Dakota's senate seems to agree. They stripped out the most embarrassing verbiage before passing their own version of the resolution on 24 February.

Unfortunately, the resolution has to be taken seriously. It stands as the lates--but by no means the last--skirmish in a long and continuing battle for the minds as well as the hearts of America's children. As reported by New Scientist, the Texas school board--whose annual purchase of some 48 million textbooks allows it to determine what most of the nation's children stud--voted last March to require textbooks to question the existence of global warming, and, in an astonishing kowtow to "young-earth creationists", deleted the 14-billion-year age of the universe from the science curriculum.

It's not just climate change, evolution, or the age of the earth which are in the crosshairs in this battle, but science as a whole. The religious-conservative movement that helps elect creationist school board members across the country, state legislators like Resolution 1009's author, Don Kopp, the 110 members of the United States Congress who win perfect ratings from ultraconservative groups, or Senator James Inhofe who now wants to file criminal charges against U.S. and British climate scientists, has a far more ambitious agend--nothing less than to replace the pluralistic secular humanism that most people think has defined the United States since its inception with religious fundamentalism.

The movement dates at least to the 1980s, when the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition with the stated goal of advancing a Christian agenda nationwide through grassroots activism. This still growing movement has made it clear that it is determined to redefine America in the light of the "truth" that the nation was founded not on the basis of the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but on fundamentalist Christian beliefs. They see the Bible as true and the wall of separation of church and state as a dangerous myth. Be it evolution, global climate change, or embryonic stem cell research, when science gets in the way, it will be attacked.

As reported in the New York Times, attacking climate change along with evolution may be a way to get around court rulings that so far have found that singling out evolution for so-called balanced presentation in textbooks and classes is clearly religiously motivated and violates the separation of church and state. By also targeting global warming, the age of the universe, or the origin of life, anti-evolutionists can claim that they are merely advocating academic freedom and fair play.

And I suppose it doesn't hurt that the same politicians who seek the votes of true believers are often funded by corporations that are strongly motivated to keep pumping crude, mining coal, or pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

At least in the United States, this is not a challenge to which scientists and those who recognize that science can only thrive in an environment that values facts and reason over Bible-based belief and God-given truth can remain indifferent or uninvolved. A war has been declared, and scientists and their supporters can no more wish it away than South Dakota's legislators can resolve away global climate change.

Like the all other GOP politicians with their eyes on the White House in 2012, the former governor of Alaska will throw her hat into the ring early next year. That will be the easy part. From there, she will begin to raise money and watch the polls. This will continue throughout the bulk of 2011.

In some ways, 2011 will be to Palin what 1999 was to former Vice President Dan Quayle. If you will remember, Quayle declared his candidacy early that year, but was unable to raise much money or gain any traction in the polls. By the end of the summer - more than six months before the first primary or caucus of the 2000 presidential election season - he was out of the race.

However, unlike Quayle in 1999, Palin will be able to raise money - and lots of it. Trouble is, she has a low ceiling on her poll numbers, even within the Republican Party. I'm not sure where that ceiling is, possibly 10, 15, 20, or perhaps even as high as 25 percent. She does a have an extremely loyal band of supporters and admirers, but outside of those people, she's not particularly well-liked. In order words, her support is very deep, but not too wide.

Therefore, while her popularity will appear to be growing at first, it will soon begin to stall at a level that will not lend her much hope of capturing her party's presidential nomination. As political pundits know, the national poll numbers mean very little in the months leading up to the initial nominating contests.

While 25% might seem impressive in the national polls at that point, her problem is going to be in states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, where potential voters would be starting to look closely (and seriously) at all the candidates. I believe she will be having a hard time cracking double digits in any of those places, come November of 2011.

In recent history, it has been impossible to win the Republican presidential nomination without being victorious in at least two of those states, regardless of one's standing nationally. So, not willing to risk humiliation, she will pull out of the race sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Even someone like Palin is pragmatic enough to know when to cut and run. At that point, she will call a press conference and say something to the effect of: "I have decided that I can best serve the interests of my party by supporting [fill-in-the-blank] for president." However, she will never admit that she dropped out because she didn't think she could win.

And, if offered the vice-presidential nomination, she would gladly accept it again. Why, that would be a win-win situation for her. She would have everything to gain and nothing to lose. If her ticket won in the fall of 2012, she would say, "We won." If they lost, she would say, "He lost." From there, she could possibly resurrect her quest for the presidency at some point in the future.

A corporation is comprised of countless individuals, many of whom are probably not residents of the states in which they will be subsidizing campaigns. In fact, since most large corporations are multi-nationals, corporations may be calling the shots in who runs for office in your district even though they may not even be from the United States. The most disturbing aspect of this ruling is its affront against freedom of speech. The founding fathers, in creating the first amendment, sought to offer the constituency rights to which we all equally share. All of us have a voice and a means to communicate. We are, for the most part, on fairly equal ground in this respect. We do not all have easily disposable incomes. Most of us don't: a recent poll revealed that more than half of American individuals make $35,000 a year or less. For a single parent, this toes the poverty line. By claiming that money is tantamount to speech, the Supreme Court has inevitably set up a system in which corporations have the power to hand-pick candidates. We lay citizens cannot compete, as even our individual campaign donations cannot legally exceed $3,600 per candidate. Most of us can't afford airtime or to buy up bill boards as an alternative to our single votes. Our speech has thus been rendered less prominent, and so less important or influential, than that of the corporations.

Whereas we are restricted to one vote per elected official and in our home towns and states, a corporation is now given a free pass to vote with its dollars anywhere and everywhere it chooses. Corporations have hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal and can drown out all of our voices to elect officials amenable to their interests. And since a corporation is not human, it has no conscience or consciousness, and cannot be tried for crimes against humanity. It conjures up apocalyptic images of the dystopian novels we are assigned to read in high school and college. We are told to read them to better comprehend the capabilities of runaway power. We are taught that this is a real risk. It is-we should heed these works of literature and find the lesson in this.

A corporation, by virtue of its implicit purpose and function, is run with one reigning goal in mind: to maximize profits in the shortest time possible. All other things are secondary, or more likely, peripheral. Such goals run counter to public health and welfare, social equality, and environmental sustainability. I fear the worse from this and will use an example. In the Appalachian region, a majority of coal (which makes up most of our electricity source) is extracted using a nefarious method called Mountain Top Removal (MTR). The name is literal: the tops of mountains are blown off with reams of high powered dynamite. What is left blacks out the sky and slides down the tops and fills the valley with rock and soot. It chokes and coats the nearby towns with dust, kills all the fish and birds, and leaves an ugly mess in its wake. Kids in towns where MTR is conducted have high levels of asthma, bronchitis, and GI upsets. One small child asleep in his bed was killed by a stray boulder during an MTR 'extraction.' His parents received a judgement of only a few tens of thousands of dollars for the murder of their son from the multi-million dollar coal company responsible (which did not have the proper permit at the time of the incident). One of the largest silos that stores the coal sludge of MTR debris is kept behind an elementary school, where it threatens rupture and drown the school. Townspeople in MTR towns have much higher cases of diseases like cancer and Crohn's. I was shocked to learn something like this was being practiced in our country. But the reason it still goes on is clear: coal companies have a lot of money, do a lot of lobbying, and even take judges ruling on the cases against them on yacht trips. How can poor people compete? They can't. And yet, an effort has been made recently in both state and federal governments to seriously clamp down on this destructive practice. But what chance would small communities stand if all of the electorate was put in place by corporate interests? The slim chance they might have had quickly becomes none. Their dollars are less, so their speech has much less worth to the point of worthlessness.

Another case is our health care system. Health insurance companies maximize profits and eliminate costs by denying people coverage with pre-existing conditions or canceling when the person becomes too much of a "cost-risk" (e.g.: develops cancer). For some reason, many Americans decry implementing more regulation on these companies or a public option in this system because they think some socialization will lead us down some slippery slope to Cold War-era Russia. This is despite the fact that most other developed nations have universal healthcare and have maintained robust democracies (and have higher life expectancies, lower rates of cancer, etc.). It seems strange to me that people are so scared of government-run healthcare, and not corporate-run healthcare, even though the latter can and does take so much more liberties with our lives. To the corporate run healthcare system, we are and continue to be nothing more than consumers who cease to be of worth once they can no longer maximize profits by our continued patronage. I would think even those hard-lined conservatives who don't want a social option in medicine can still see the atrocity in denying or canceling care for these ends. Under the Supreme Court ruling, these problems will accelerate as health insurance companies will continue to pursue and attain their corporate agenda by these means unchecked. Additionally, other corporations will continue to pollute our air, soil and water, and use carcinogenic chemicals in our products without environmental regulations, thereby exacerbating the rate at which we become sick with a myriad of disorders and diseases for which we then cannot secure (afford) health care to treat.

Think this can't happen? It already has been in the works for a long time. Check the voting records of your Congress person and then check his/her campaign donors: you can easily see connection. The Supreme Court ruling will take this several steps further. We will have outright corporate sponsorship of representatives. Their positions in our Congress will be bought by the highest bidders and the agenda of that bidder will be what that representative is beholden to, not to his constituents! This ruling puts Congress in the pockets of corporations and keeps them there. It measures the significance of our free speech in dollars, and defines its worth by stocks. And we as regular people are vastly outweighed.

So what is the purpose of this post: is it just a dystopian vision, an apocalyptic rant to bring down your day? Not completely. It probes us first to reflect on the unconstrained power of the Supreme Court. Unlike the executive and judicial branches, these justices are rendered impervious to public opinion or social concern. They are not beholden to voters, or even to the other branches of our government. Once elected, they may and often do sit on the bench for several decades, legislating with ideologies that reflect the era and influences that affected their appointments, ideologies that may now be irrelevant and obsolete. We need to appeal to our government to consider effective checks to the Court, especially when decisions contradict strong legal precedent and undermine individual rights and the overwhelming will and interest of the people. A Constitutional amendment is perhaps in order to restrain corporate financing of elections, as well as the power of Supreme Court justices. A petition for such an amendment, that would clarify that for-profits are not entitled to 1st amendment rights through subsidization of candidates, is available at www.dontgetrolled.org. Another bright light in this dark tunnel is the introduction of the Fair Elections Now Act in Congress, which would waiver limitations on individual citizen donations and offer competitive public financing options as an alternative to corporate backing. Please make sure to contact your House Reps. and Senators and urge them to co-sponsor and vote for the bill when it hits the floor.

In the interim to attaining the passage of legislation or a proper amendment, we need to understand that this is not necessarily a hopeless situation. But it is a David and Goliath case. We can look beyond the dollar signs and ad campaigns the corporations will no doubt bombard us with. The one possible good thing to come out of this is more transparency in campaign financing. This gives us the opportunity to investigate candidates and understand the subliminal messaging of their rhetoric, what it is they are really supporting. We can still vote, and choose the less funded candidates with no or the least corporate representation. We still have the power to reject the beginning of a plutocracy. We can vote with our dollars. Corporations have power because we fund them. Extremely large corporations with huge government influence and shoddy reputations when it comes to human rights protection are good targets for a boycott, as are those that will emerge as the dominant forces in elections. Whereas it is unrealistic to expect we can completely abstain from supporting corporations, as they are now a ubiquitous facet of our society, we can consume much less and consume more conscientiously. By doing this, we refuse to be just consumers, pawns in the chess game of profit playing. This means patronizing our local co-ops and mom & pop shops over big chain retailers, buying second-hand goods over new, sourcing more food from CSA shares, community gardens and farmer's markets, seeking non-profit over for-profit services when it is a viable option, investing in small-scale renewables and conserving energy at home, driving less and shopping from companies that support democracies at home and abroad (The NGO Green America has a comprehensive online Business Directory of socially and environmentally responsible businesses at http://www.greenamericatoday.org/pubs/greenpages/).

Perhaps this sounds Pollyannaish of me, but we need an appeal. If corporations are in charge of our officials, for now the only control we have over corporations is our financial support of them and we need to scale that back considerably.

Rights are God-given. Other people can take them away, and may also defend them for you, but they cannot give them to you. Rights include the freedom to do as one pleases (within certain limitations) and the opportunity to excel, achieve, and succeed. They also consist of the freedom from being harmed by or unduly burdened or inconvenienced by the government and others, as well as the privilege to serve or give in any way that one chooses.

Examples of rights include those set forth in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, such the freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, the right to bear arms, and the freedom from double jeopardy, self-incrimination, and unreasonable search and seizure. Rights do not include money, material items, or services. Therefore, you do not have a right to forcibly take these things from others or authorize the government to perform this kind of confiscation for you.

Entitlements, one the other hand, are established by governments via elected representatives or direct votes by the people. They include money, material items, services, and various forms of aid and assistance. Entitlements can be initiated or revoked at any time. Entitlements can be fully or partially earned. Examples of earned entitlements are Social Security and Medicare, for which the recipient generally contributes while he or she is working.

However, many entitlements are completely unearned. Examples of these would be food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid. Emergency aid such as that which is provided by FEMA is another example. Some would argue that these things are earned as well, via one's tax dollars. But that's a fallacious argument, as many of those who receive this kind of stuff pay little or nothing in taxes, while most of those in the highest tax brackets never receive anything from these programs.

I hope this has helped you appreciate the difference between rights and entitlements. It is important to know the difference because politicians, demagogues, and other scoundrels will often intentionally attempt to confuse the two for their own selfish purposes. Unfortunately, the ignorant (and greedy) masses will often fall prey to them and swallow their deception -- hook, line, and sinker.

Now their latest move has been to take on the banks and ratchet up the populist rhetoric. There's one problem. Before going at the banks, President Obama needs to get his priorities straight. I agree that some of the bonuses the bankers have given themselves are appalling. But the fundamental issue enraging Americans are access to jobs and capital.

Lets start with access to capital. As an entrepreneur starting a business that will create 60 new jobs in Harlem, I can speak first hand to the difficulty of getting capital from the banks, but I can also speak first hand to a situation where one bank was willing to do everything for our business, but was told by federal regulators that their books were not in good enough order to loan any more money for the foreseeable future. I assume there are other banks like that that are in similar shape.

One of President Obama's strengths is his ability to speak thoughtfully and intelligently about an issue, but his grandstanding rhetoric about fat cat bankers and taking the fight to them is sophomoric. The regulators that are telling certain banks not to lend any more money, work for President Obama. If I were President Obama, once the banking system came off life-support, I would have began an ongoing dialogue with the banking community about which banks are willing to give access to capital but have been advised not to. In parallel I would have also started a dialogue with state and municipal economic development agencies about which programs and projects they wanted to fund but due to cash shortages, were unable to. From those dialogues I would have created a list of projects that the banks and agencies wanted to fund. Then on a case by case basis, I would have created partnerships between the banks and the agencies to direct unused and repaid TARP money to the projects on the list.

Where jobs are concerned, the President has to be aware how his push for healthcare has delayed serious movement on jobs. Case in point the federal government has a New Market Tax Credit program that is part of the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000. One big part of this program is to create jobs and spur economic development in distressed areas. The program came to a close in 2009. Currently, there are two bills in Congress, S.1583 - the New Markets Tax Credit Extension Act of 2009 and H.R.3811 - New Markets Tax Credit Expansion Act of 2009, that propose to extend the program. Unfortunately no action has been taken on either bill because of the healthcare push.

So while President Obama can proclaim that a fight with the bankers, is a fight he's ready to have, there's more substantive work to be done to get businesses financed and more Americans back to work. I hope that's work he's ready to do.

But what if you want to know the value of the US or the EU or the world's natural resource--seemingly non-trivial items such as forests, watersheds, fisheries, soils, pastures, wetlands and ecosystem services? Not only can't you find a value, nobody can, because nobody is counting.

At a time when economists track every measure of global, national, and local economies as avidly as the vital signs of a patient in intensive care, doesn't it seem strange that something as crucial to the wealth and health of nations as the natural resources and systems on which they rely remains as uncharted as the terra incognita of medieval maps?

Cambridge University professor Sir Partha Dasgupta is one of a handful of economists who see this blank space as not just strange but, as he puts it, "a gaping hole in how nature is embedded into economics." He points out that as long as natural resources and ecosystem services are not measured and valued, they can't be incorporated into economic models and will be ignored in economic decision making.

Dasgupta and a few of his colleagues are striving to flesh out adequate measures of what he calls natural capital and get them incorporated into mainstream economics.

Economics has been phenomenally successful in shaping the way decision makers at all levels think about and evaluate progress, Dasgupta says. In particular, GDP has become the canonical measure of development and the wealth of nations, and guides the economic choices and policies of every country.

The problem with GDP, says Dasgupta, is that it's both inadequate and misleading.

It's inadequate in that, although it is used to measure of the wealth of nations, it leaves out a vital part of that wealth--natural capital. It's misleading because nations relying on GDP to measure progress can easily find themselves looking richer on paper, while in fact they are becoming poorer by degrading their natural resources. While conservationists have been warning of this for years, Dasgupta is one of the first economists to have the data to prove it.

In a recent article in Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B (doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0231), Dasgupta traces the development of five countries, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and China from 1970 through 2000. All five show seemingly healthy growth as measured by GDP, per capita GDP, and even HDI (Human Development Index, a composite measure of GDP per person, life expectancy, and education).

The catch is that when Dasgupta includes even a partial evaluation of the wealth lost through depleted natural resources and degraded ecosystem services, the balance sheets of four of those five countries shift into the red. Even as their GDPs and HDIs told these nations that they were getting richer, they were actually getting poorer; their development was unsustainable.

Research in this area has been surprisingly sparse, but consistent in showing that even valuing a small subset of their natural resources reveals that many nations are buying GDP growth at the expense of real wealth. "If I had all the numbers," Dasgupta says, "it would be even worse."

Although Dasgupta says that some of his colleagues continue to view nature as if it were an infinite source of resources and an equally infinite sink for waste products, most now accept that, in principal, it's important to value natural capital. And most economists, he says, now grasp something he proved mathematically a decade ago, that it's possible to develop a measure of comprehensive wealth that would incorporate nature and reflect human well being better than the GDP or the HDI.

This represents progress, but it seems painfully slow as forests continue to be razed, fisheries depleted, and carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere at a record pace. The first substantial study of changes in comprehensive wealth was carried out just 11 years ago, and far too few researchers have followed suit since then. In the meantime, thousands of economists worldwide continue to crank out GDP-based studies, which in turn continue to guide and justify the current pattern of economic decision making and development.

The good news, says Dasgupta, is that the World Bank and UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme, are just now starting a project that will produce a world wealth report every two years. Initially this report will include just a few of the better-measured aspects of natural capital such as fisheries, but it will add other natural resources and ecosystem services over time. "This is the first systematic attempt to value natural capital for the whole world," says Dasgupta, "It has never been done before."

If all goes well, in a few years we may be able to punch a few keys and retrieve some realistic measures of the value of our natural resources and ecosystems. More importantly, decision makers will have actual data to show if their nation is developing sustainably or needs to change course.

If Dasgupta and his colleagues are right, it's a vital step that comes not a moment too soon.

For example, there are only two independents among the 100 U.S. Senators, and none among the 434 members of the House of Representatives (there is currently one vacancy there due to a death). There are no independent governors and only a handful of state legislators across the country who do not identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats. And Abraham Lincoln was the last U.S. President we elected from a third party (yes, the GOP was considered a third party back in 1860).

Therefore, anyone who wishes to have a serious chance to get elected to a job higher than the position of dog catcher generally needs to first get nominated by one of the two major parties. And in order to get nominated, one must go through a kind a hazing process in which he or she must demonstrate loyalty to that party. In other words, to get nominated, one must toe the party line. So, while voters in any given general election do actually have a say-so as to who gets elected, their choices have usually been narrowed down to only two (both of whom are loyalists to their respective parties) by the time they go to the polls.

Very often, voters will think they are electing a moderate candidate, only to later discover that he or she was a wolf in sheep's clothing. That's due to a trick that major party candidates like to play (and usually get away with). After being nominated, candidates from the two major parties tend to downplay their party affiliations and create an illusion of independence during the general election campaign (except in areas dominated by one party or the other). After being elected, however, they quickly get back in line with their party's more polarized agenda. They then repeat this scenario during of each of their re-election campaigns.

The bottom line is this: Because of our two-party system, political office holders are more loyal to the whims of their party leaders than they are to the people who elected them. They fear being dumped by their party more so than they fear being rejected by the people. That's the kind of disservice political parties have done to our country. George Washington saw it coming more than two centuries ago.

1. It's snowing in October, how can the globe be warming?
2. It's 10 below today outside--again, how can that be indicative warming?
3. How can we puny humans be causing climate change? Sounds awfully egotistical to me.
4. Warming and cooling periods have occurred since the beginning of the Earth, why is this any different? It's part of a natural geological cycle.
5. Carbon is not pollution, it is needed to sustain life.
6. Politicians and environmental groups created the myth of climate change (and/or our affect on it) to make money/control the public/serve some other elaborate unnamed socio-political agenda.
7. So and so scientists has published papers debunking climate change or our contribution to it.

It's become exhausting to always explain that weather is not climate. That one day, or even several days (or weeks or months) of a weather pattern is not indicative of an overall climate trend. Years and decades are, though. Climate is a cumulation of weather patterns over a long term. When figuring global climate, it is adding up the weather patterns of the entire world for a period of decades and finding the average. (This is why people making assumptions on climate because of the things that occur just in their city or town, actually seems to me to be epitome of egotism, as though their backyard is the center of the world and should be the defining factor of our climate.) It's pretty simple math actually. Of course, overall, the world is warming, though it's confusing to break it down, because just because the world is warming, doesn't mean every place is warming. Some places are even getting colder (which is why "climate change" is now considered the more appropriate term, though it's contributed to confusing and so alienating some people, who now erroneously argue that scientists can't make up their mind what is going on, so keep changing the name).

Then skeptics also ask how humans can be culpable of such change. We humans engage in activities (deforestation, animal agriculture and the burning of fossil fuels) that both release a lot of greenhouse gases while at the same time get rid of global carbon sinks that would other absord and offset these emissions.

Fact: Greenhouse gases (GHGs) warm the atmosphere. This is as accepted in science and in the lay public as gravity (hence, the name "greenhouse gases"). Now, at the same time we are putting in unprecendented levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since humans evolved, we are experiencing a warming trend that anamolous to our understanding of historical natural cycles. It seems to make sense, then, that our activities and their associated emissions would be connected to this warming trend. Again, simple math. Oh but, the amount of greenhouse gases we put in the atmosphere is so tiny compared to what's already there or emitted by natural phenomenons, how does is it enough to force a warming trend? Well, for one, we've degraded most of our natural sinks that would take it out of the atmosphere (the Amazon, the ocean) and two, a system can be strained by something that seems small but isn't in its ripple effects. A large mammal can be taken town by one particular tiny bug or microscopic germ. The germ or bug itself is small, but the disease it causes is large, pandemic even.

Our climate system is like a scale, which had an approximately equal numbers of marbles on each side. But at one point, we humans took a few off one side (the sinks), and put a few too many on the other (GHGs--which might not seemed like a lot, but it was enough), causing the scales to tip and the marbles to spill. We don't know where all the marbles will land just like we don't exactly know all the effects of climate change, but that shouldn't undermine our ability to try to adapt to it or reset the scale so it can become balanced again. Of course, some people argue scale-tipping is a natural geological event, but looking over the planet's geological history, such drastic changes in temperature usually takes tens of thousands of years, not a century and a half, to occur.

Carbon is not a pollution in and of itself. Neither is water. Both carbon and water in moderate doses sustain life and are necessary for its endurance. But too much water can cause flooding, and drowning, as crop farms and New Orleans residents can attest. Likewise, too much carbon in a certain context can be a bad thing as well.

The argument that leaves the most bitter taste in my mouth is that climate change is a fabricated or exaggerated phenomenon to serve some evasive agenda by whacko envionmentalists or the liberal elite. I have asked skeptics on the street who stop me to make this claim, if they have ever been to Alaska or another area in the Arctic. None of them ever have. Well, I have. I ask them what agenda the indigenous peoples of the Arctic are serving in suing the U.S. in the world court to control their emissions, other than trying to safeguard their simple subsistence way of life. These peoples have lived in their regions for a millenia, they now fall through thin sea ice that their ancestors camped on for weeks or months in preparation of Bowhead whale hunts, the whales come much earlier in the season now, and the sea ice is gone. I think they know when there is climate change. A climate skeptic who is a contributor on this site once responded to this by saying "we" (meaning everyone else in the world) can't be expected to sacrifice our ways of life for what he guessed was a few hundred or thousand people who refused to modernize.

Oh, my. Besides the fact that Arctic indigenous peoples actually number in the hundreds of thousands, I found a horrible irony in his words. The United States comprises only 5% of the world population, while it uses over a quarter of its natural resources, including its oil. The average U.S. citizens has a carbon footprint that it is about 15 to 20 times higher than the global average. We have the highest per capita emissions from home energy use, private car use and consumption of animal protein, in the world. And yet, the U.S. is the only developed country that has so far abstained from partaking in a binding international climate treaty or passing its own climate legislation mandate. All this, despite the fact that people in developing countries will suffer the worst effects of climate change. So, really, what country and people is/are truly the minority expecting the majority to suffer for its way of life?

Why would indigenous people lie? Are bugs and animals capable of lying too? I was a wildlife biology student for several years. Resoundingly, species are migrating to areas that are colder than they could historically tolerate. We find tropical sharks swimming in sub-Arctic oceans, diseases now spreading in Arctic waters that never existed because the water was always cold enough to kill the bacteria, bugs that now can live through enough life cycles which lets them eat through trees and make forests fodder for fires in formerly frigid regions. Is ice capable of lying? Ice melts at a certain temperature regardless of our ideologies. And I have seen ice melt in places it never has and is not supposed to. Not because it is following an elaborate lie or agenda, but because it inevitably melts at warmer temperatures. And warmer temperatures is what we have. I have seen houses in coastal Alaska swallowed up by rising sea waters. It is silly to think that such rises won't eventually affect all of us. If we don't want to accredit it to our human behavior, then we are blatantly ignoring the meaning of the word, "greenhouse gas" and how much of it we spew in the context of these effects.

Assuming a perverse agenda on the part of environmentalists is also ironic not only in its implicit and elicit disingenousness, but because it is a projection of the truth of the climate skeptic movement. The truth is, the research of most climate skeptics scientists are heavily subsidized by the fossil fuel and agribusiness lobbies, two groups that undeniably have a strong vested interest in evading the science of climate change and fueling publich mistrust and confusion to keep them paying at the pump and high revenues rolling in.

A typical annual salary for a CEO for a top national or international environmental non-profit usually lies somewhere between $100-$200,000 dollars. This includes only the top dozen or so groups with the most brand name recognition (Sierra Club, NWF, WWF). Admittedly, this is not chump change and it can be validly argued this is too high for any NGO CEO, but this figure needs to be put in perspective. Most other employees at these NGOs, even the higher ups, which form the backbone of these groups and do all of the grunt work, make middle-class wages. CEOs of smaller environmental non-profits, which comprise the vast majority of those that exist (thousands), make barely a middle-class wage, while the other workers might make meager wages at or only slightly above the poverty line. By contrast, the typical annual salary of an oil CEO is several to tens of BILLIONS of dollars, with some of the workers beneath him making millions a year. To keep making that money, the public can't believe in climate change or that our behavior is responsible for it. Again, do the simple math and come up with who has more of a reason to have a devious agenda, and whose scientists are more apt to lie. I have never been provided with scientific research debunking climate change or human contribution to it, that was NOT funded directly or indirectly by oil, gas, coal, car, or livestock interests. However, many of the scientific reports supporting global warming were by government scientists who had their funding cut, were fired, or were marginalized during the heydays of the Bush administration, which got most of their campaign donations from the fossil fuel lobby. Whose agenda are we worrried about?

The E.U. follows something called the precautionary principle, which deems if there is enough evidence to show a connection between two things, the country will err on the side of caution in assuming the connection is not merely incidental and implement the necessary precautions in averting any adverse effect associated with that connection. In other words, the connection does not have to be conclusive, but compelling. So, if there are chemicals that have been linked to cancer (e.g. trends show people exposed to such chemicals have higher rates of cancer, chemicals cause cancer in animal tests, etc.), they regulate or ban that chemical. Similarly, they regulate carbon because of its link to climate change and the projected adverse effects of unmitigated climate change on human and non-human populations. Here in the U.S., we do not follow the precautionary principle (incidentally, we also have much higher incidences of most cancers). With the chemical/cancer connection, we could also argue the connection between climate change and greenhouse gases emitted by our activities are all incidental and there's not enough concrete proof to warrant legislation or behavior change. I would argue, as someone young enough to be expected to live through many of the projected impacts that are though to take place over the next several decades, and who has to ponder if I want to bring children into a world of water wars, floods, droughts, food scarcity and conflict with climate refugees, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (and many more pounds of arrogance).

The climate change we have catalyzed is like a disease. It has its lapses of remission, where the symptoms are confusing, and sometimes seem to be absent. As with someone chronically ill, there are many good days, weeks or months. But that doesn't mean the disease is cured or never existed in the first place. Overall, the sick person is still getting worse, as the T cells drop or the cancer cells grow, the pain is more frequent every year as it winds down to its conclusion, which may be permanent disability or premature death. Because that person has some good days, or does not "look" sick to an outside observer who isn't a medical professional, should that person avoid treatment? Should the disease be ignored?

The good days, though we should all appreciate them, should not fool skeptics as illustrative of an Earth in balance, or even lull climate change activists into complaisancy or calmness. We should understand that answers aren't always linear or apparent. And we should err on the side of caution, for the sake of our future. Perhaps, as Climategate showed, we do not know everything about the future effects and implication of climate change, and evidence of our contribution to it is not 100% conclusive, but is is very compelling (95% sureness among the scientific community). Can we afford our arrogance?

For more, please check out:

New Scientists: A Guide to the Perplexed: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed.html

Skeptics and Contrarians:
http://www.sej.org/publications/climate-change/skeptics-and-contrarians-climate-change-guide

DeSmog Blog (find a scientist and where they get their funding):
http://www.desmogblog.com/

LTEs the fossil fuel lobby sent to NYT and other periodical pretending to be regular people to argue against climate change: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/us/politics/19charity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA): http://www.acia.uaf.edu/

Overview of Climate Science: http://www.sej.org/initiatives/climate-change/overview