Pastures of Plenty

Ezra Klein, quoting Tyler Cowen, referencing James Workman:

The carbon emission implications of this are pretty terrifying:

For every newly converted vegetarian, four poor humans start earning enough money to put beef on the table. In the past three decades, the earth's dominant carnivores have tripled our average per capita consumption; in the next four decades global meat production will double to 465 million tons.

That comes via Tyler Cowen, who found it in James Workman's new book, "The Heart of Dryness." Keep in mind that livestock production is a larger contributor to global warming than transportation. But there's been virtually no progress in persuading rich or poor countries to worry much about this fact.

Of course, this isn't even remotely news. But how many care enough to actually change their eating habits? Here's what Ezra had to say about the same issue over the summer:

The visceral reaction against anyone questioning our God-given right to bathe in bacon has been enough to scare many in the environmental movement away from this issue. The National Resources Defense Council has a long page of suggestions for how you, too, can "fight global warming." As you'd expect, "Drive Less" is in bold letters. There's also an endorsement for "high-mileage cars such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids." They advise that you weatherize your home, upgrade to more efficient appliances and even buy carbon offsets. The word "meat" is nowhere to be found.

That's not an oversight. Telling people to give up burgers doesn't poll well. Ben Adler, an urban policy writer, explored that in a December 2008 article for the American Prospect. He called environmental groups and asked them for their policy on meat consumption. "The Sierra Club isn't opposed to eating meat," was the clipped reply from a Sierra Club spokesman. "So that's sort of the long and short of it." And without pressure to address the costs of meat, politicians predictably are whiffing on the issue. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, for instance, does nothing to address the emissions from livestock.

The pity of it is that compared with cars or appliances or heating your house, eating pasta on a night when you'd otherwise have made fajitas is easy. It doesn't require a long commute on the bus or the disposable income to trade up to a Prius. It doesn't mean you have to scrounge for change to buy a carbon offset. In fact, it saves money. It's healthful. And it can be done immediately. A Montanan who drives 40 miles to work might not have the option to take public transportation. But he or she can probably pull off a veggie stew. A cash-strapped family might not be able buy a new dishwasher. But it might be able to replace meatballs with mac-and-cheese. That is the whole point behind the cheery PB&J Campaign, which reminds that "you can fight global warming by having a PB&J for lunch." Given that PB&J is delicious, it's not the world's most onerous commitment.

Given that studies have shown that "real men" who eat meat are less fertile, and the hotness factor in PETA's "naked truth" ad campaign, you'd think that this might be an easier sell.

This, of course, raises the issue over the conflict between feminism and PETA again, but I think this post gets it right:

The truth is, it’s not about women posing nude, it’s about what they are advocating that makes people uncomfortable. People of all types and political ideologies do not like to be told their lifestyle is immoral/unhealty. Get over it. Vegans are hot. If you want to be as hot as a PETA girl, go vegan!

Getting bagels for the UN, continued

More from President Obama's speech at the UN earlier this week:

I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world. Yesterday, I had a constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. We have made some progress. Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians. As a result of these efforts by both sides, the economy in the West Bank has begun to grow. But more progress is needed. We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

The time has come to re-launch negotiations - without preconditions - that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem. The goal is clear: two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish State of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. As we pursue this goal, we will also pursue peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and a broader peace between Israel and its many neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, we will develop regional initiatives with multilateral participation, alongside bilateral negotiations.

I am not naïve. I know this will be difficult. But all of us must decide whether we are serious about peace, or whether we only lend it lip-service. To break the old patterns - to break the cycle of insecurity and despair - all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private. The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. And nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks over a constructive willingness to recognize Israel's legitimacy, and its right to exist in peace and security.

We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It is paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the night. It is paid by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are God's children. And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. That is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land. And that is why - even though there will be setbacks, and false starts, and tough days - I will not waiver in my pursuit of peace.

Now read it again, and remember the audience at the UN.

Two states, side by side, in peace and security. A Jewish State of Israel, with true security. A viable, independent Palestinian state, with contiguous territory, that realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. An unwavering U.S. commitment to Israel's security, coupled with an insistence that Israel recognize legitimate claims and rights of Palestinians. An insistence that UN member nations recognize Israel's legitimacy. An American commitment to help Israel and Palestinians find peace.

Even Avigdor Lieberman was impressed.

Get a job

I have made this point before - that one of the most important reasons for health care reform is the negative impact the current system has on job mobility and entrepreneurship. It is probably the most significant argument that I have made.

As a fundamental matter, American workers should not be tied into jobs just because of employer-provided health insurance. It's bad policy, and bad economics. It creates inefficiencies and unhappy employees, strains the budgets of small business, makes American products more expensive and less competitive with foreign products, creates incentives to move industries overseas, and creates more perverse incentives for retail businesses to avoid providing permanent positions, stacking their payroll with part-time employees to whom they don't provide health care insurance. Among the results - lower quality work from unhappy, uncommitted employees who stuggle to get in enough hours to make ends meet, who still face the risk of economic catastrophe from an ill-timed injury or sickness.

And then:

The current health care system, which is rooted in employer-subsidized private health insurance, is a failure for those who don't have access to it, and an albatross around the necks of innumerable Americans who are trapped in unhappy working conditions, a hinderance to entrepreneurship, and an anticompetitive burden on American business. The status quo discourages risk-taking ventures that form the backbone of capitalism; it encourages low wage, part-time employment instead of full-time employment with full benefits. It makes workers less productive and less committed to their employers. It makes our products more expensive and less competitive against foreign products and encourages the (almost complete) shift of our nation's manufacturing base offshore. The current system makes us less stable and less competitive as a nation, and less moral as a people.

Over the last couple of days, Sullivan and Ezra Klein have been tackling the issue, too. Ezra points to a study by MIT economist Jon Gruber, which concludes:

A system that provides universal access to health insurance coverage, then, is far more likely to promote entrepreneurship than one in which would-be innovators remain tied to corporate cubicles for fear of losing their family’s access to affordable health care. Indeed, even the Galtians among us should be celebrating the expanded potential for individual enterprise once the chains tying them to a job that provides insurance have been broken.

The GOP claims to be the party of small business. With its resistance to any genuine health care reform, among other things, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Getting bagels for the UN

During the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the days of repentance, we are commanded to seek forgiveness and reconciliation.

President Obama went to the United Nations yesterday with his message of reconciliation and a new direction:

We know the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words. Speeches alone will not solve our problems -- it will take persistent action. For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete

actions we have taken in just nine months.

On my first day in office, I prohibited -- without exception or equivocation -- the use of torture by the United States of America. (Applause.) I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law. Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.

And later, these key words:

In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations

rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue -- and to vote, often in this body, against the interests of their own people. They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down. Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides -- coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east, west, black, white, and brown.

The choice is ours. We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for. Or we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the

common interests of human beings, and finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations.

That is the future America wants -- a future of peace and prosperity that we can only reach if we recognize that all nations have rights, but all nations have responsibilities as well. That is the bargain that makes this work. That must be the guiding principle of international cooperation.

Today, let me put forward four pillars that I believe are fundamental to the future that we want for our children: non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people.

The first fruits of this new attitude toward the UN? "President Obama, in his first visit to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, made progress Wednesday on two key issues, wringing a concession from Russia to consider tough new sanctions against Iran and securing support from Moscow and Beijing for a Security Council resolution to curb nuclear weapons."

Meanwhile, the Atlantic observes Yizkor for Delicatessens.

(Editor's Note on the photo: International (interplanetary) Jews breaking the fast.)

We fear what we just don't know

On Saturday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, in place of the sounding of the shofar, which cannot be blown on the sabbath, Conservative rabbis across the country read the following message from the Rabbinical Assembly to their congregations:

Friends,

On this Rosh Hashanah our brothers and sisters in Israel face the threat of a nuclear Iran – a threat to Israel’s very existence.

Today, we Jews around the world also confront the anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment of the Goldstone report which blames Israel disproportionately for the tragic loss of human life incurred in Operation Cast Lead, which took place last winter in Gaza. This unbalanced United Nations sponsored report portends serious consequences for Israel and the Jewish people.

On this holy day, which is not only Rosh Hashanah, but also Shabbat, the Shofar is silent in the face of this spurious report, the world is far too silent.

Today the state of Israel needs us to be the kol shofar, the voice of the shofar!

We ask you to write to our governmental leaders and call upon them to condemn the Goldstone report and to confront the threat of a nuclear Iran.

While the shofar is silent today, all Conservative rabbis, cantors and congregations have been asked to sing Hatikvah at this moment in the service.

We rise in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel.

While I am not terribly upset about singing Hatikva during a Rosh Hashanah service, longtime readers of my blog could rightly guess that I am not a huge fan of this letter. Let's set aside whether this aggressive stance is in any way good for Israel or for the Jews; or whether a better approach to dealing with Iran would be to let the brewing revolution inside that country - this week the Iranian people co-opted the annual pro-Palestinian rally in which Ahmadinejad spewed anti-Semitic venom to instead demonstrate against Iran's corrupt and evil regime - create the potential for lasting reform without creating a unifying enemy; or that the Assembly's perspective on the Goldstone report may suffer from a bias problem of its own. (And no, that doesn't mean I endorse the Goldstone report.) What really gets me is how out of touch the statement is with the words out of the Israeli leadership's mouths. To Josh, last week:

Israeli Defense Minister (and former PM) Ehud Barak has told one of Israel's leading dailies, Yedioth Ahronoth, that an Iran with nuclear weapons would not pose an existential threat to Israel. And PM Netanyahu, albeit cautiously and more opaquely, says he agrees with him.

The argument is pretty elementary. Whatever nuclear capacity Iran may have, Israel's deterrent capacity is so overwhelming that it can deter any nuclear attack. It's what most people already think. But having it said by the Israeli Defense Minister sounds a very different note.

So, which is it? Is Iran an existential threat, or isn't it? And does this even register?

Don't you believe them

Look, President Obama is being President Obama, saying that he doesn't believe that racism is a factor at play in his opposition. Good for President Obama, that's what he should say.

But, of course, former President Carter is right. Racism is largely an issue in this discussion, and the fact that the right wing crazies went nuts over Clinton too doesn't mean that the wingnuts weren't racists back then, too. It's a topic that I want to get back to, when I have more time to write in more detail, but these discussions keep missing a large point. The racism is not just racism against one man - Barack Obama - but against the people who are perceived to be helped by his policies.

The racists want their country back - not just from President Obama, but from his constituents. You know, those interlopers who are not real Americans, not like the conservative white Christian Americans to whom America belongs. They didn't like Bill Clinton when he was on the side of those not-real Americans, and they don't like it now that Barack Obama - who isn't even an American, they tell us, no less a real American - is trying to hand their country over to foreign socialist/fascist Muslims. Real Americans didn't vote for Barack Obama. If you take out the blacks and the Jews and gays and the coastal lefties, John McCain was the real choice of real Americans. And they want their country back from those who stole the election and America. Now.

Put it in drive

Andrew posted the following this morning:

From this month's Harper's Index: "Chance a U.S. household that owns a Prius also owns an SUV: 1 in 3." Ryan Sager is unsurprised:

It would surprise you, if you didn’t read this blog and already know that we’re constantly calculating the trade-off between being able to see ourselves as good people and the cost of engaging in all that non-advantageous goodness. Already own an SUV? Soothe your conscience with a hybrid. Already own a hybrid? You’ve been good! You deserve that SUV! Welcome to being human.

Which of course assumes too much. (As we've seen, it's always a good time to try to take Prius owners down a notch.)

First, what that means is that, in 2 car households, there is a 2 in 3 chance that they don't own an SUV.

Second, it doesn't address how often the Prius is driven compared to the SUV.

Third, it fails to acknowledge that a household is comprised of multiple individuals, often with competing values. Dad may be a strong environmentalist, and mom may be more focused on schlepping the kids to soccer practice. That doesn't mean that dad is offsetting his guilt by getting a Prius; he's gotten the car he wants, consistent with his conscience. If mom isn't there yet, that's her issue.

I'm down with that

How did you spend your Constitution Day?

Hot House

What a contrast. A young, idealistic President in command of his subject matter and focused on the moral imperative of health care reform respectfully confronts a hostile, antagonistic, simple-minded, scared, white, mostly-Southern and mostly male opposition as they waive a previously non-existent "plan" in his face in between their yawns, twitters to Rush-bots and disrespectful shouting. At least everyone was true to form.

UPDATE: Josh summarizes the GOP's breaches of decorum.

UPDATE #2: No surprise that the Today show gave John McCain the last word on the President's address on Thursday morning.

Sometimes it's the right thing to cut

Andrew Sullivan, on his ongoing anti-circumcision crusade, again, muffs his attempt at a concession to religious belief:

And circumcision - for all sorts of silly, archaic reasons - is nonetheless a deeply held religious ritual for many Jews and Muslims.

Just so we're clear, this is the biblical mandate that Andrew believes is archaic and silly:

This is My covenant between Me, and between you and your offspring that you must keep: You must circumcise every male. You shall be circumcised through the flesh of your foreskin. This shall be the mark of the covenant between Me and you. 'Throughout all generations, every male shall be circumcised when he is eight days old.... This shall be My covenant in your flesh, an eternal covenant. The uncircumcised male whose foreskin has not been circumcised, shall have his soul cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.

(Genesis 17:1-14)

If that commandment is silly and archaic, then essentially all of Judaism is.

Big deep trouble for a young child

The Great Kenyan Socialist Indoctrinator spoke to my kids through the T.V. at school today. A taste of his mind-bending rhetoric:

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

Country Doctor

And since I've been posting when I shouldn't be, here's another.

Here's something you won't hear me say too often: David Brooks is pretty much right, and his point - that the existing structure for providing health services in America is based on a perverse incentivization of extra spending with little to no information, making the concept of a "free market" in health care almost impossible and ridiculous - is something that's been bothering me for a long time, and something which no existing plan really seeks to address. And David Goldhill's essay in this month's The Atlantic is excellent - I'm about half way though it and he nails the problems with the current American health care system on the head.

Yet where that has left me is mulling the idea that perhaps the best answer is not a guarantee of universal health care, in the broad sense of everyone being covered for everything, but instead only catastrophic care, to address only emergencies. That would restore a free market to standard health care - people would have to make health care choices based on the value of remedies and tests, to look at issues like quality and cost and incremental benefits.

Where, though, would the boundaries be for what is catastrophic and emergent and what is instead standard and, in effect, borne by individuals or supplemental policies? Where do children fit? Where does childbirth fit? And what is the impact on society for a system that doesn't deal with preventative care? How do individuals deal with the costs (societal, health, economic and otherwise) of disease, of possible pandemic like H1N1 swine flu, and other matters?

And so I end up back to where I started, that government-regulated and provided health care is probably the best of what are universally bad options.

UPDATE: Having finished Goldhill's essay, he's proposing much of what I discussed above - eliminating "universal" health care in favor of just a government guarantee of catastrophic care. His answer for the concerns that I raised? Creation of a mandatory Health Savings Account for all Americans, with the ability to borrow against future deposits where needs exceed existing funds. It's a creative solution, and I like it conceptually, but I'm not sure that it could work in reality. Would health care consumers behave rationally? It's a leap of faith, and I'm sad to say that I am not sure I have that faith in people's judgement. What percent of Americans put their trust in FOX News, or still believe that President Obama is not natural born American? Why should we expect them to make rational choices, then, in health care? Moreover, Goldhill's plan would also take a generation to implement fully, and we cannot wait that long for reform. The brakes on unrestrained health care spending need to be applied, and fast, along with an elimination of the dependence on employers for health security.

None of which is to say that I don't think Goldhill is fundamentally right in his diagnosis of the disease, and that his cure should work in a laboratory. But I'm not sure if America is capable of taking his medicine.

A house full of things but I don't care

More on the issue of internalizing the externalities associated with carbon and global warming.

I learned more at home okay

In reponse to President Obama's upcoming speech to school children encouraging them to get an education and stay in school, right-wing parents will be protecting their kids from indoctrination by keeping them home from school.

Ugly words on a wall

Pat Buchanan reminds us that the so-called legitimacy of George W. Bush's 2000 victory over Al Gore was based on the premise that elderly Jews, children of the Holocaust, voted for the guy who wrote this:

But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet’s, or Fidel Castro’s, was out to conquer the world?

They say he's crazy

I haven't posted much lately. We were on vacation, and dealing with family illnesses and the death of my grandmother and a number of other issues.

But much of the silence is because I seem to keep repeating myself. The Republicans are crazy, loud and desperate, and keep getting crazier, louder and more desperate, and they have their own media outlets that broadcast it as gospel, a remainder of the media that knows no better than to broadcast nonsense as a legitimate perspective or theater, and elected officials who have no commitment to honesty but instead and exclusively to political advantage, regardless of the social consequence. Almost every issue boils down to those same points. Add to that the perpetual dishonesty of Joe Lieberman and David Broder, while being given credit by the "MSM" for being moderate and reasonable, and given credit for that, and what more is there to say?

And apparently now the President is so demonized by the crazy right that a national address to schoolchildren telling them the importance of getting an education constitutes political indoctrination.

What's next?

Frau Blücher!

I don't need this but it's so cheap

I want to spend some time talking about "internalizing the externality" and the monetization of the "social" costs of pollution, particularly the burning of carbon, imposed by the user on the rest of society, and how I was first introduced to the concept in Al Gore's Earth in the Balance that I read along ago. (My original hardcover is still on my bookshelf.) But for now, I will just point to this.