The Force of Water

The subtext of war in the Middle East (to which I will add Iran-adjacent Afghanistan) vacillated somewhere among ancient religious and ethnic animosities, a 19th and early 20th century European proclivity to colonize and in more recent years, oil. Then came the double whammy of explosive population growth and climate change. You can speak of those in the region seeking power – the monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula, the extremist Muslim cleric-politicians, war lords and tribal chiefs and out-and-out dictators – as the real cause, but they are either guided by or have taken advantage of any form of nature’s disruptions and religious/ethnic instability to consolidate their power… even as that power is threatened by those very same factors.

This entire region is and will become increasingly volatile for the foreseeable future. Our foreign policy decisions – Biden’s immediate concern with when and if to pull the few remaining US troops out of Afghanistan, for example – are unlikely to bring stability to a region that has become a roiling and constant global powder keg. And yes, Israel’s signal to the Biden administration that it is willing to compromise – a little bit by beginning to supply a dribble of COVID vaccines to Hama’s controlled Gaza – will save a few lives. 

But there are so many fuses lit in a region with so many human beings with little or nothing left to lose. Folks who perceive their backs pushed to the wall, who have lost everything or feel that they are about to lose everything. The most dangerous people on earth. Desperate victims. Their rhetoric, their expressions of fear and angst, aren’t so different from our own populist right-wing domestic terrorists… except those in the cacophony of the Middle East really have lost everything. And still, with food impairment, desertification and murderous conflict, amplified by the pandemic, the population in the region continues to rise… and migrate.

“The pressure of such growth underscores an existential threat to the region as governments already on the brink contend with a future in which they can no longer support some of the world’s fastest-growing populations.

“Water scarcity, climate change and erratic weather systems are likely to further imperil stability across the Middle East. No fewer than 12 countries in the region make the list of the world’s most water-stressed nations; already-scorching summer temperatures are expected to rise twice as fast as the average global warming, according to the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. The World Bank predicts the Middle East will become the most economically damaged place on Earth due to climate-related water scarcity.” Nabih Bulos and Marcus Yam, writing for the February 21st Los Angeles Times.

When the mostly Sunni farmers in western Iraq watched a never-ending drought turn their once productive farms into desert dust, they petitioned the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad for vital aid. The memory of a brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein who led a 20% Sunni minority to run roughshod over the 60% Shiite majority, was still fresh in the minds of the PM Nouri Al-Maliki and his Shiite flock. Shiites believe only a supreme cleric can interpret the Quran; Sunnis believe that each Muslim must read the Quran, preferably in the original classical Arabic, and take it at face value. Think of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, Catholics against Protestants, as a Western example. Oh, did I mention that the United States imposed a simple majority rule government on Iraq, one that quickly disenfranchised the Sunni minority. Needless to say, that Shiite led government in Baghdad turned their back on those desperate Sunni farmers.

A similar pattern repeated itself in Syria, this time with a tiny (10% of the population) Alawite-Shiite dictator in power, Bashar al-Assad, running roughshod over his 80% majority Sunni population with a lot of help from Russia and a clear alliance with Shiites in Iran (95% Shiite and home to a theocracy run by those supreme Quranic interpreters) and majority Shiite Iraq. The lack of water, dust bowl farms, were heavily concentrated in that area adjacent to the Iraqi farmers. 

Angry Sunni farmers, having lost everything that mattered (well over a million were displaced by perpetual drought), abandoned by their respective Shiite governments, were ripe pickings for al Qaeda… and ISIS, which promised so much more. The rest, as they say, is history. But there is a lesson for policymakers: CLIMATE CHANGE IS FAR AND AWAY THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THIS PLANET, PEACE, STABILITY AND LIFE.

The conflict that defined the region in the longest military conflict the United States has ever experienced is quite literally the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The mass exodus to Lebanon, Turkey and then north into Europe represented a geopolitical shift with far reaching consequences. European nations faced serious moral issues in dealing with so many immigrants. Lebanon added 20% to its population very quickly and literally collapsed. The story of water in Lebanon is simply part of a mega-trend for human survival. 

Bulos and Yam continue: “Lebanon stores only 6% of fresh water in reservoirs, far below the regional average. That’s perhaps a good thing, because most natural water sources are bacterially contaminated, a result of some 400 million cubic yards of wastewater dumped into its aquifers or the Mediterranean with little or no treatment, according to the government’s Capital Investment Program. (A study by the American University of Beirut found fecal coliform bacteria in 80% of tap water.)

“Creaking water infrastructure — leakage in pipes averages 48% nationally, according to one estimate — means most people drill illegal wells, with 20,000 such boreholes in Greater Beirut alone. That over-exploitation means that what comes out of faucets in coast-side neighborhoods like Beirut’s Hamra is brackish, when it comes at all... Little wonder then that most are forced to pay to truck water in for washing or prohibitively expensive bottled water for drinking.

“The Bisri dam [proposed to cut through a picturesque valley with ancient Roman/Ottoman ruins] was supposed to solve all that. It was proposed in 1953 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; the World Bank approved an updated version of the plans in 2014 as part of the Water Supply Augmentation Project. It gave a $474-million loan to finance the project — the bank’s largest-ever investment in Lebanon, with a total cost of $617 million.” 

But Lebanon is a land of endemic corruption. Hands are always out. The only reason the Beirut harbor blew up is because there was no financial incentive to clean out a hulking explosive mass left from and abandoned Russian ship. Uncollected garbage plagued 11 miles of a highway for months. 

“Described in a U.S. Embassy cable published by WikiLeaks as ‘the epitome of patronage,’ [Council for Development and Reconstruction, or CDR, an uber-state agency that issues the bulk of Lebanon’s public tenders], critics say, disburses funding for public projects to enrich Lebanon’s sectarian leaders. A recent analysis by the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies found that two-thirds of the council’s contracts were granted to 10 politically connected companies.” Bulos and Yam. And indeed, the fix was in. The standard contractors were summoned.

In Bisri, environmental activists, pledged to preserve that pristine valley, laced with corrupt government officials are duking it out with desperate Beirut residents who cannot trust their own water supply. Valley protestors enlisted archaeologists to champion preservation. Thousands of such protestors stormed against preliminary efforts to begin clearance of the proposed construction site. Even as the necessary land was acquired. Eventually, the government stopped the project.

“But the dam project remains on the government’s books; it needs a parliamentary decision to rescind it, meaning it could be revived if funding can be found. It seemed as if it was heading that way. This month, CDR issued a tender for $80 million to continue work on a water-conveying tunnel meant to link up to the proposed Bisri reservoir… 

“In the meantime, the World Bank predicts the project’s cancellation means no reliable access to clean water for more than 1.6 million people living in Beirut and its environs, including 460,000 people who live on less than $4 a day. Despite the furor around the Bisri dam, the bank insists it remains the best option. But Amani and other activists keep their vigil. They have a community of people tilling what is now public land, living off its bounty as their forebears had for hundreds of years, she said.” Across this horrifically impaired region, with corruption lurking behind every corner, activists and government officials facing off… often with money and guns… the solutions are elusive just as the problems accelerate.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while climate change is the big story, it’s the aggregation of little stories that define the solutions and the unanticipated problems.

Voting Rights, Conspiracy Theories and Catch-22

The GOP is facing a hard truth: as a minority party, Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last two first term elections where a Republican president was elected. “On December 17, 2020, Gallup polling found that 31% of Americans identified as Democrats, 25% identified as Republican, and 41% as Independent… 

“As of 2020, the majority of the overall number of seats held in the state legislatures has been switching between the two parties every few years. In the U.S. state legislative elections of 2010, the Republican party held an outright majority of 3,890 seats (53% of total) compared to the Democratic party's 3,450 (47% of total) seats elected on a partisan ballot. Of the 7,382 seats in all of the state legislatures combined, independents and third parties account for only 16 members, not counting the 49 members of the Nebraska Legislature, which is the only legislature in the nation to hold non-partisan elections to determine its members. As a result of the 2010 elections, Republicans took control of an additional 19 state legislative chambers, giving them majority control of both chambers in 25 states versus the Democrats' majority control of both chambers in only 16 states, with 8 states having split or inconclusive control of both chambers (not including Nebraska); previous to the 2010 elections, it was Democrats who controlled both chambers in 27 states versus the Republican party having total control in only 14 states, with eight states divided and Nebraska being nonpartisan.” Wikipedia. For the most part, independents are the deciders these days. Distorted political structures, not true democracy, govern our election processes.

Polls continue to suggest that there are still millions of Americans, including violent extremists, who still adhere to various conspiracy theories that the November presidential election was stolen. As increasing numbers of January 6th Capitol insurrectionists are arrested, as the underlying investigations dig deeper into the extremist edge of the “stop the steal” movement, Homeland Security and the FBI, in ongoing congressional testimony and in their own reports, tell us that underlying domestic terrorism remains this nation’s greatest existential threat.

Yet the primary belief in this “stolen election” – despite a tsunami of evidence to the contrary and over 60 consistent judicial decisions supporting the results and confirming a total lack of any proof of widespread voter fraud – remains both the driving force behind such extremism as well as becoming an anchor plank in the Republican Party. “Donald Trump may be spending his post-presidency golfing at Mar-a -Lago but he remains front and center in the hearts and minds of millions of Republican voters, as evidenced by the 46% who said in a new Suffolk University/ USA Today poll released over the weekend [2/22] that they would join a Trump Party if he decided to split off from the GOP. A whopping 80% of Republican respondents said they support punishing any Republicans in Congress who voted for Trump’s impeachment. He is still their Dear Leader even in exile…

 “A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 76% of Republicans still say they believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election and that Trump was the legitimate winner. Republican lawmakers in states across the country are now rushing to pass various draconian vote suppression schemes.” TruthOut.org, February 22nd. In short, these numbers suggest that a very substantial mainstream body of voters support any steps necessary to disenfranchise voters who oppose what they believe are traditional mainstream (read: rural, white Christian) values and governance. That only seven Republican Senators voted to convict Donald Trump in the 2021 impeachment trial, and that most of these face local GOP party censure and/or extreme voter pushback, confirms that the Republican Party is Gorilla-glued to the “stolen election” mythology. Confirmed by the parallel treatment of the 10 GOP representatives who voted to impeach the President.

The modern impetus to begin the serial disenfranchisement of such opposition voters began in 2013: “Shelby County v. Holder, legal case, decided on June 25, 2013, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared (5–4) unconstitutional Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which set forth a formula for determining which jurisdictions were required (under Section 5 of the act) to seek federal approval of any proposed change to their electoral laws or procedures (‘preclearance’). The formula identified as ‘covered jurisdictions’ any state or political subdivision of a state that as of November 1964 imposed tests (such as literacy tests) or other devices as a condition of registration or of voting and was characterized by voter registration or voter turnout below 50 percent of the voting-age population. Although Sections 4 and 5 of the VRA were originally scheduled to expire after five years, they and other provisions of the act were renewed several times, including in 2006 for a period of 25 years.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Those “covered jurisdictions” were nine Southern states who had been brought under direct Justice Department supervision for egregious efforts – from poll taxes to onerous photo ID to other clearly racially-driven criteria – to exclude or prevent African American voters from voting. Immediately after Shelby County released such states from such VRA-imposed  DOJ supervision, each of these states began re-imposing voter restrictions against minority voters likely to vote Democratic. Especially African Americans. The result in Georgia, from the presidential vote tally to the election of two Democrats to the US Senate, prompted a GOP “never again” program to amend local laws to seal in minority disenfranchisement.

Court challenges to each of these exclusionary efforts have generally resulted in federal courts’ reversing these statutes almost as quickly as they are passed. Readjusted and passed again. And challenged in court again. Since the entirety of the Voting Rights Act was not repealed, it remains the tool for federal courts to contain these attempts at voter suppression. Inevitably, two of these seminal cases are now before the US Supreme Court: “Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Arizona Republican Party v. Democratic National Committee. At issue is the applicability of still-valid Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color or language.

Constitutional scholar and Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky, writing for the February 25th ABA Journal, summarizes the import of these cases: “The Supreme Court granted certiorari [an agreement to review] on two issues: 1) Whether Arizona’s out-of-precinct policy, which does not count provisional ballots cast in person on Election Day outside of the voter’s designated precinct, violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; and (2) whether Arizona’s ballot-collection law, which permits only certain persons (i.e., family and household members, caregivers, mail carriers and elections officials) to handle another person’s completed early ballot, violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or the 15th Amendment.

“The cases are enormously important because the court will likely address what is needed for a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The federal courts of appeals have split—as did the judges of the 9th Circuit—over what is the appropriate test for applying Section 2.

“One interesting aspect of the case before the court involves the shift from the Trump to the Biden administration. The Trump administration filed a brief on behalf of Arizona to reverse the Ninth Circuit. On Feb. 16, the solicitor general’s office informed the Supreme Court that the new administration reconsidered the issues in the case and that it ‘does not disagree’ with the federal government’s earlier stance that the Arizona laws do not violate Section 2, but said that the Department of Justice ‘does not adhere to the framework for application of Section 2 in vote-denial cases’ laid out in the Trump administration’s brief.

“There are two widely different perspectives on voting in the United States. Republicans see voter fraud as a major problem and favor laws like Arizona’s that limit voting. Democrats see voter suppression, especially of minority voters, as a major problem and see Arizona’s law as accomplishing exactly that. How the court decides these cases could have a profound effect on what state laws are enacted and allowed with regard to voting, and who votes and how elections are conducted for many years to come.”

Whether the United States widens the fairness gap in what The Economist calls a “flawed democracy,” tilting heavily in favor of white minority rule, or embraces inclusive democracy is very much on the line… an existential moment for our already challenged and fragile democracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I continue to be shocked at how many people are willing to destroy democratic principles to insure a minority hegemony over the majority of Americans.

Coveted COVID Contrarians

I’ve noticed that in the past few years, there are large swaths of Americans who believe science is wrong, that educated experts cannot be trusted, there are marked conspiracies against them and that there are a number of inherent constitutional rights – somehow unarticulated in the Constitution or any reflective statutes – that individuals have a unilateral right to interpret and enforce. Without any judicial review. Any “facts” to the contrary are simply part of that conspiracy against them. Many believe that Donald Trump is the duly elected president and seem willing to bear arms in support of that notion. There’s a great deal of “my way or the highway” sentiment across the land.

I touched on this in my December 24th Toxic Individualism blog, where it seems there is this sort of pioneer notion of individualism that applies notwithstanding severe negative health, safety and free choice risks to others. With mass media generating ad dollars and subscriptions based on the number of eyeballs they attract, there’s been a double whammy of misinformation: 1. If presenting distorted reality as truth generates viewers/readers, that in and of itself is a business plan. 2. In the modern era of communications and media oversaturation (obviously including social media), those seeking confirmation of their distorted perceptions can easily filter out any contradictory truths and find solace in misinformation that resonates with their perception.

If you carry that notion of individual rights one step further, as many have seen, there is a question as to who actually has a right that others do not share. Citizens United vs FEC (2010 US Supreme Court) seemed to imbue corporations with “individual person” status when it came to political contributions. American business rails at regulations, no matter how necessary or beneficial to the rest of society. Regulations = cost = lower profits.

So, we also have generated a very interesting form of what The Economist calls a “flawed democracy,” one where citizen representation is neither uniform nor truly representational. Where politically favored minorities rule. Few genuine democracies struggle with voter suppression or gerrymandering. Major governing bodies seldom have constitutional governing structures that disenfranchise masses of voters. For example in the United States, the notion that since each state is accorded two US Senators, regardless of population, effectively gives 30% of the voters control of 70% of the Senate.

Within this legal quagmire, we have watched our very attitudes and political structures push us into a dramatic inability to contain the coronavirus. As we have heard repeatedly, with only 4% of the world’s population, we have generated 20% of all the COVID deaths on earth, the greatest of any nation. People have “informed us” that lockdowns, required social distancing and mask wearing are absolute and incontrovertible violations of their constitutional rights. They have marched on state capitols, often armed, in open rebellion at such state mandated actions. 

They have been supported by “I’ll do anything to get your vote” governors, members of Congress and local elected officials – most of whom know better – who confirm that such restrictions violate the Constitution. There is absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution or any resultant and enforceable statute that supports that notion of individual freedom, one that of necessity suggests that affirms the inalienable right to spread potentially deadly infections to others without consequence. 

In this era of vaccine rollouts, the notion of individual rights in the workplace is moving forward. We are about to return to offices and factories in droves; the President believes that meaningful normalcy is achievable by the end of this year. The Biontech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been injected in millions of arms. The number of severe allergic reactions has been significantly less than most recent widespread vaccination efforts. Both these mRNA vaccines effectively use a genomic shaped model of the exterior of the COVID virus (absent the toxic interior of a real COVID virus) to teach T-cells what to look for, what to kill. But the time the second shot rolls around, the body might react as if this were a real attack for a day or two (not fun, to which I can attest), but that is nothing more than proof the vaccine is working.

We may have to add booster shots if the new strains of the virus become commonplace, but the reality is that they are quite effective at preventing a COVID infection… and even where there are vaccine resistant new strains to date, at least in insuring against the most severe consequences of COVID do not happen. 

So far, the rollout of vaccines has been completely voluntary. Even in the US military and most hospitals. This might provide more vaccines to the people who really want that immunity, catering to a large coterie of American who simply believe such vaccines carry unacceptable risks, but in the end, if an insufficient body of Americans fails to get vaccinated, that cherished herd immunity will not happen.

Some of that resistance is generated by distrust and medical mythology, some by religious beliefs, a few for genuine medical reasons. For an example, see my February 10th Skepticism Born of an Ugly Betrayal blog. But most of the resistance is not medically justified. For those returning to work, assuming totally availability of the vaccine to everyone, there are questions as to what employers are able to require of their employees. 

Are employers liable for COVID transmission at work, especially when the disease might be preventable? Is this a valid workers compensation claim? The answer, unfortunately, relies on state workers compensation laws, many of which simple exclude “an ordinary disease of life,” which can include the coronavirus. There is no uniform answer to this question. How about federal workplace rules? 

“First and foremost, we have to focus on safety. OSHA’s general duty clause, Section 5(1)(1) requires employers to provide their workers with a workplace free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm. On January 29, 2021, OSHA published its latest information regarding COVID-19 titled ‘Guidance on mitigating and preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace.’ The guidelines are described as containing ‘recommendations as well as descriptions of mandatory safety and health standards.’ Among the many points noted under the elements recommended for an effective COVID-19 prevention program is the guidance that employers should be ‘making a COVID-19 vaccine or vaccination series available at no cost to all eligible employees.’” Max Koonce writing for the February 19th Sedgwick.com. You may recall abortive attempts by Republican members of Congress to add a “no employer liability for COVID infections” clause to past stimulus and recovery bills.

But with a few exceptions, if getting vaccinated is required by an employer and you refuse… you can be discharged. So far, only about 6% of employers say they will implement this mandate once access to vaccines is ubiquitous. Zlati Meyer, writing for the February 19th FastCompany.com summarizes that reality: “Any workplace vaccine policy must include what federal law calls ‘reasonable accommodations’ for disability and sincerely held religious beliefs. Examples of accommodations are allowing the person to telecommute or to come to work double-masked.

“Attorneys and human resources managers are looking to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for guidance. Beyond those federal Big Three, there could be some distinctions state by state, because each has its own department of labor, overseeing workplace safety.

“‘Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the regulations [question whether] you present a risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of the individual or others,’ explains Long Island, N.Y., labor and employment lawyer Domenique Camacho Moran of Farrell Fritz… Employees who don’t want the vaccine simply because they don’t trust it are out of luck.” What an alarming vision of the great polarization and divide that is still tearing this country apart, is the passionate and most selfish belief in too many Americans that their perception of their individual rights, without any judicial or statutory basis, is absolute even if on an object plane the practice of their beliefs might kill or seriously infect others… even a lot of others.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you ever wonder what a society looks like in a “me first and only” environment, hold a mirror to the United States of America.

And We Think We’ve Got It Rough

     A very poor part of Medellin, Colombia

Everyone’s pain is within their personally focused intensity. No matter our capacity for empathy, a quality that seems to be sorely lacking these days particularly in the American body politic, when we suffer personal loss (breakup, death of someone close, job loss, accident, illness, etc.), it often impossible or at least very difficult to rise above our own pain to see how so many others have it worse. It’s often not much consolation. Easier to deal with fictional pain. Indeed, in times of severe challenges, we seek at least mental escape. Here, in the United States, our film (mostly migrated into streaming) and television production finds popularity in comedy (often dark), new worlds with people of mythical power battling evil, dark drama and horror… where the subjects face horribles that make us feel better. So do alcohol (sales are way up) and drugs.

And yes, millions of Americans are facing terrible economic upheaval, cloistered existence facing a mutating virus and fading hope about that comfortable future most of us had expected. For those at the top of the food chain, the pandemic provides a reason to shed employees, often replaced by artificially intelligent machines, without difficultly and even without the usual union resistance (although unions in the private sector represent less than 7% of the workforce). Such efficiencies and a new tax structure have pushed share prices through the roof. Luxury real estate is selling like hotcakes to the mega rich. 

For those in the middle, with a little debt and some government support, life is interrupted but trundles on… somehow. For those at the lowest economic rungs, running out of food, facing evictions or finding a way to pay back rent, dealing with a particularly harsh winter and a disproportionate share of COVID-19 infections and death, life is really, really hard. Yet somehow, though it might not happen in the immediate future, at least they are on the list of inevitable inoculation with one of the approved and government provided vaccines. There is feeble but quivering hope that the government will figure it all out. At least maybe.

But for vast populations living in developing countries, particularly those with large, crowded cities where spreading disease accelerates, there are no vaccines on the horizon, demand for the few resources they extract, or products they grow or manufacture, has fallen. That thin and fragile dividing line between life and death seems to be withering away. So is hope. 

For the developed world, with access to vaccines, it is understandable they have prioritized getting a vaccine to their own populations first. That this developing world is a fertile ground for storing and expanding the spread of the novel coronavirus until it can return as a global threat, that the virus is mutating in these fertile, vaccine-free fields in a way that threatens the developed world, seem to fall on deaf ears. “Me” first. Add ramped up starvation and the rising climate change decimation of subsistence agriculture to this litany of misery, and you get a truly sad view of so much of this planet.

Mike Cummings, writing for the February 5th issue of Yale News writes: “The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp decline in living standards and rising food insecurity in developing countries across the globe, according to a new study by an international team of economists… The study, published Feb. 5 in the journal Science Advances, provides the first in-depth view of the health crisis’s initial socioeconomic effects in low- and middle-income countries, using detailed micro data collected from tens of thousands of households across nine countries. 

“The researchers conducted 16 nationally and sub-nationally representative phone surveys from April through July 2020 in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. In all of these countries, respondents reported drops in employment, income, and access to markets and services, translating into high levels of food insecurity. Many households reported being unable to meet basic nutritional needs. 

“‘COVID-19 and its economic shock present a stark threat to residents of low- and middle-income countries — where most of the world’s population resides — which lack the social safety nets that exist in rich countries,’ said Mushfiq Mobarak, [Yale] professor of economics and faculty director of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE), and the study’s corresponding author. ‘The evidence we’ve collected shows dire economic consequences, including rising food insecurity and falling income, which, if left unchecked, could thrust millions of vulnerable households into poverty.’

“Across the surveys, the percentage of respondents reporting losses in income ranged from 8% in Kenya to 86% in Colombia [the source of the above picture]. The median, or midpoint of the range, was a staggering 70%. The percentage reporting loss of employment ranged from 6% in Sierra Leone to 51% in Colombia, with a median of 29%.” These are numbers. Not the bloated bellies of starving children or the writhing agony of elders expiring without treatment options from COVID infections. They already had issues with access to clean and potable water, food, jobs and even the most basic medical care. 

Climate change and Malthusian overpopulation are forcing nature’s hand. Zoonotic transmission of new potential pandemic level viruses should make us all aware that we live on an over-connected planet. Plague, pestilence, conflict and famine are nature’s tools to contain too many people. Those whose homes and livelihoods are decimated, likewise, tend to move into more productive lands… mass migration, by force if necessary. We better begin to realize that there is no isolationist policy, no border blockade or immigration mandate and no military build-up that will prevent cross border horrors… unless we accept that to solve these issues requires a unified and global solution. And since regions of extreme poverty are the greatest incubators of disruption, we really need to start there. If we don’t, it will blowback to us in a very big way. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the solution to our global issues requires a lifestyle adjustment, particularly in the richer consuming nations, an entirely new dedication to technological research and a total commitment to address poverty, wherever it exists, at its roots.

Alarm Bells & Triggered Responses

Coal miners have canaries. Volcanologists and earthquake scientists use GPS linked tremor and movement sensors placed in strategic spots all over the world. Climatologists have found an explosion of new information from the vast hordes of data mined from satellites from above, measuring devices in oceans and simple data tracking based on a computer assemblance of simply weather reports, doppler tracking and trend analysis. With flawed imperfection – political games based on sheer power enhanced with autocratic control – international health agencies, including the World Health Organization, have been charged with detecting nascent infectious agents with the potential to ignite global pandemics.

Private foundations and academic institutions have combined reports of strange new infections in hospitals around the world, coordinated airline and ship routes and schedules, combined with other relevant medical information, to track infections as they spread. It’s still not a global effort. It is clear that between climate change and zoonotic viral transmission, nature is hell-bent on culling the herd. A population that seems to be over double what the earth can, optimally, sustain. 

It is difficult enough, in environmentally competitive times, to deal with the hard facts behind climate change and rising pandemic risk with realistic and effective scientific responses. Backlash at governments failing to provide what many believe are necessary and credible responses has also generated socio-political trends that make applying fact-based solutions difficult. It’s always been this way. “Since ancient times, pandemics have spurred sharp turns in political beliefs, spawning extremist movements, waves of mistrust and wholesale rejection of authorities. Nearly a year into the coronavirus crisis, Americans are falling prey to the same phenomenon, historians, theologians and other experts say, exemplified by a recent NPR-Ipsos poll in which nearly 1 in 5 said they believe Satan-worshipping, child-enslaving elites seek to control the world.” Washington Post, February 15th. Much of what a government needs to do is now thwarted by mythology and desire to use that mythology to contain the government itself. 

But what is clear to those educated individuals who accept scientific facts, especially when it comes to pandemics, that early-stage data – constant monitoring of blood tests on an aggregated global basis tied to geological reality – needs to be collected, tracked and reported on a near real time basis. Details of infectious agents, immune responses, perhaps even a central repository of relevant blood samples, just might be the path to containing future outbreaks early enough to avoid pandemics. Veronique Greenwood, writing for the February 15th New York Times, explains one possible immune-response-based program proposed by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health epidemiologist, Dr. Michael Mina:

“Back in the summer, Dr. Michael Mina made a deal with a cold storage company. With many of its restaurant clients closed down, the firm had freezers to spare. And Dr. Mina… had a half-million vials of plasma from human blood coming to his lab from across the country, samples dating back to the carefree days of January 2020.

“The vials, now in three hulking freezers outside Dr. Mina’s lab, are at the center of a pilot project for what he and his collaborators call the Global Immunological Observatory. They envision an immense surveillance system that can check blood from all over the world for the presence of antibodies to hundreds of viruses at once. That way, when the next pandemic washes over us, scientists will have detailed, real-time information on how many people have been infected by the virus and how their bodies responded.

“It might even offer some early notice, like a tornado warning. Although this monitoring system will not be able to detect new viruses or variants directly, it could show when large numbers of people start acquiring immunity to a particular kind of virus.

“The human immune system keeps a record of pathogens it has met before, in the form of antibodies that fight against them and then stick around for life. By testing for these antibodies, scientists can get a snapshot of which flu viruses you have had, what that rhinovirus was that breezed through you last fall, even whether you had a respiratory syncytial virus as a child. Even if an infection never made you sick, it would still be picked up by this diagnostic method, called serological testing… ‘We’re all like little recorders,’ keeping track of viruses without realizing it, Dr. Mina said.

“This type of readout from the immune system is different from a test that looks for an active viral infection. The immune system starts to produce antibodies one to two weeks after an infection begins, so serology is retrospective, looking back at what you have caught. Also, closely related viruses may produce similar responses, provoking antibodies that bind to the same kinds of viral proteins. That means carefully designed assays are needed to distinguish between different coronaviruses, for example.

“But serology uncovers things that virus testing does not, said Derek Cummings, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. With a large database of samples and clinical details, scientists can begin to see patterns emerge in how the immune system responds in someone with no symptoms compared to someone struggling to clear the virus. Serology can also reveal before an outbreak starts whether a population has robust immunity to a given virus, or if it is dangerously low… ‘You want to understand what has happened in a population, and how prepared that population is for future attacks of a particular pathogen,’ Dr. Cummings said.

“The approach could also detect events in the viral ecosystem that otherwise go unnoticed, Dr. Cummings said. For example, the 2015 Zika outbreak was detected by doctors in Brazil who noticed a cluster of babies with abnormally small heads, born seven to nine months after their mothers were infected. ‘A serological observatory could conceivably have picked this up before then,’ he said… Serological surveys are often small and difficult to set up, since they require drawing blood from volunteers. But for several years Dr. Mina and his colleagues have been discussing the idea of a large and automated surveillance system using leftover samples from routine lab tests.”

 

This is hardly an inexpensive process, requires genuine transparency without political filters or agendas on an unprecedented global scale. With the coronavirus pandemic attacking 219 nations and territories, killing approximately two and a half million people and infecting over 110 million victims, whatever the cost and whatever the complexity, setting up an apolitical global system to implement this early-stage tracking has to be vastly less expensive and less cumbersome that sitting back to let another pandemic explode before we know it’s happening. Now is the time to implement new systems to prevent what the world is experiencing now.

 

I’m Peter Dekom, and this seems more like an ounce of prevention as opposed to gigatons of death and destruction once a pandemic gets out of hand.

Arctic Amplification

The pandemic is clearly our immediate focus. But the effects of climate change are a much bigger, even existential, problem. The ravages of changing storm patterns, migrating-disease carrying insects, drought, flood, coastal erosion – including the recent polar vortex (warmer northern air pushing cold air south) that slammed into the entirety of Texas – mostly happen in ugly moments, explosive surges with scenes of starving agricultural migrants pushing their way into still fertile Europe. We may not completely see the link between conflicts in parts of Africa or the Middle East and climate change, but when you reconfigure those violent and angry disruptions as struggles for dwindling resources in an era of desertification of once arable and productive land, a light bulb should go off. More desertification. More forced migration. More violence. And by the latter half of this century, without significant decarbonization, death tolls that could easily mirror what we are experiencing in the current pandemic.

Our frozen Antarctic and Arctic regions, however, never stop changing, illustrating the most severe constant aspect of climate change. Not only do those regions pump billions and billions of gallons of additional water from melting glaciers, snow and ice – raising ocean waters everywhere – but as that white cold sheet melts away, darker oceans take up a greater proportion of the earth’s surface. White reflects heat; dark absorbs it. Hence a double whammy. Glaciers melt revealing more open sea, and darker open ocean absorbs more heat to melt more glaciers. Faster. This feedback loop has created the harshest temperature changes on earth.

Observations of Yale Professor Mary-Louise Timmermans, Yale News, February 12th: “Climate scientists say Arctic regions are a key indicator of the changes that have already occurred worldwide and those yet to come. The Arctic has already warmed at least 3 degrees C [a nasty 5.4 degrees F] in the past 50 years, more than most other parts of the world. Openings in the ocean ice pack are allowing the sun to directly warm the waters there, causing a warming feedback within the region’s ice cover…

“The iconic images of polar bears straddling small ice floes are dramatic symbolism for our changing planet, and this also resonates with the public…  Changes in the Arctic are big. Scientists even have a term for it: Arctic amplification. If we look at global maps of air temperature changes since pre-industrial times, they show a lot of warming everywhere. But these temperature increases are twice as large in the Arctic compared with other regions. That’s where the term ‘amplification’ comes from…

“With every passing year, the Arctic Ocean is generally showing warmer temperatures, and lower sea-ice extents. While there are regional patterns of air and ocean temperature changes that show year-to-year fluctuations, the overall theme of a warming Arctic continues. Along with reduced sea ice, we’ll see other changes like bigger waves, continued coastal erosion, and possibly increased storminess. Here I’m only talking about changes to the physical system. A whole host of ecosystem changes are also underway in this interconnected system…

“[In] general, the coastal boundaries of the Arctic Ocean basin are notoriously under-sampled. To some extent, these problems are geopolitical with many different exclusive economic zones, and data sharing between nations that is often deficient.” Climate change represents slow strangulation. Nature is unrelenting, and the laws of physics simply respond to mankind’s singular irresponsibility. 

Microsoft founder-billionaire, Bill Gates, has deployed billions of his dollars towards various social policy directives, from fighting malaria and increasing the availability of potable water to impoverished communities to the biggest challenge of them all: climate change. His appearance on CBS’ 60 Minutes (February 14th) drove home some most basic points. First, to survive, mankind must fight to achieve net zero emissions on an accelerated basis, requiring a vastly more directed global effort than is currently contemplated. By 2050.

To Gates, it is a combination of efforts across a wide plane. From shifting eating habits away from methane-gas intensive animal protein to simple conservation, we need to accelerate our efforts. But all this, even with a massive shift to alternative energy, will fall short. “Mr Gates' focus is on how technology can help us make that journey.

“Renewable sources like wind and solar can help us decarbonise electricity but, as Mr Gates points out, that's less than 30% of total emissions… We are also going to have to decarbonise the other 70% of the world economy - steel, cement, transport systems, fertiliser production and much, much more… We simply don't have ways of doing that at the moment for many of these sectors…

“The answer, says Mr Gates, will be an innovation effort on a scale the world has never seen before… This has to start with governments, he argues… At the moment, the economic system doesn't price in the real cost of using fossil fuels… Most users don't pay anything for the damage to the environment done by pollution from the petrol in their car or the coal or gas that created the electricity in their home… ‘Right now, you don't see the pain you're causing as you emit carbon dioxide,’ is how Mr Gates puts it… ‘We need to have price signals to tell the private sector that we want green products, he says.

“That is going to require a huge investment by governments in research and development, Mr Gates argues, as well as support to allow the market for new products and technologies to grow, thereby helping drive down prices… [Gates states] he has always supported ‘the basic role of government in terms of roads and justice and education and scientific research.’

“And, on the climate issue, he maintains it will be impossible to avoid a disaster, particularly for those who live near the equator, without governments around the world getting behind the effort… This needs to be a ‘constant 30-year push,’ he maintains. ‘Business just can't change all that physical infrastructure unless the market signals are constant and very clear.’” BBC.com, February 15th. 

But what is particularly interesting, even with conservation, is that Gates does not believe that the expansion of alternative energy, even if widely adopted and deployed, can generate what he sees is required to meet obvious energy demand. His answer? Take a closer look at nuclear power. If we were able to change the technology to reduce nuclear waste and eliminate meltdowns, reactors could be vastly safer. By not requiring extreme heat to create steam that drives turbines, maybe… If liquid sodium chloride, recycled within the system, replaced steam… if operating temperatures could drop significantly. If massive water-cooling systems were not required…

Gates has invested in a new company, TerraPower, that is on the brink of building just such a reactor, with a sizeable government grant. His engineers, he believes have done a ground up redesign of a nuclear reactor (pictured above) that just might fit the bill. But Gates is correct. Climate change must be global priority number one. Every aspect of this existential problem must be tackled at every level. Now. Some of this technology might be feasible today. There will be new systems, including new decarbonization industrial filters, that we have yet to see. We must figure out how to store electricity much more efficiently without using toxic metals in the process. And yes, America, there are millions and millions of jobs that will be created by this effort.

I’m Peter Dekom, and although our attention and resources are distracted at the moment by COVID-19, climate change continues to wreak accelerating damage everywhere on this planet.