“Environment” to “Creation”

This blog initiates a glossary around the theme that I am not an environmentalist but my concern is the defilement of Creation, a sublime gift from God. The latter reflects the influence of Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis.

OED

On Nov 2, 2019, I ventured into the OED to explore a word I find disagreeable: environment. But, wait, you say: “Aren’t you an environmentalist?.” Uh, no, as in: emphatically, “NO!”

Counterintuitively, at my personal introduction to my scores of classes, I would, with little fanfare, so indicate. My friend Larry Susskind once told me that he, too, was not an environmentalist. So, I figured I better address this in my blog post.

Let me confound this further: So when asked, “Then what are you?” My tantalizing response: “I am Pro-Life,” in the sense of an intense advocacy of all life, all of Creation (a gift from God), Nature writ-large. Thus, any and all degradation, rupture, debasement, denigration, reductionism of the dignity and sustenance of any and all life viscerally offends me. Are you listening, the occupant of the Oval Office?

Definitions

I would like to get my language straight, presented as a glossary to which I will refer throughout this project:

  • environment: The OED etymology refers to the French origin as nearby surroundings.
  • neighbor: My neighbor are the “near-dwellers” who surround me, for whom we should build reciprocal relations.
  • bio-region refers to the ecology that nestles and which I inhabit, dwell, and to which I am obliged to reciprocate
community: social capital, networks
Includes networks
See Putnam and Gordon
capitalism: thus capital itself, implies wealth, investment
See OED re capitalism:

Discussion

Gather the provisional glossary as blog here but switch to html5 page as support on website. Use definition lists and copious links, internal and external. Thus, this blog initiates a writing process after WordPress failed login and poor support from Aabaco web server.

See Guardian on environmental writing.

Costs of Climate Catastrophe

CDP foresees $1T in next five years, but partial survey.

This calculation requires close attention:

  • Stern sees substantial underestimation of damage and out-of-pocket costs. Further, will hit sooner and harder.
  • Infrastructure SOC investment will be immense and unfair, exacerbating inequality and exclusion.
  • However, a Kondratieff Cycle may be forming as public-private coalitions form and as plutocrats segregate themselves in armored enclaves.
  • The fiscal burden cannot be sustained, will distort interest rates (must be permanently low to forestall bankruptcy of sovereigns), and triage sacrifice zones of poor multitudes, who will be forcefully prevented from migration.
  • Productive investments will be crowded out by the emergencies such as fires, floods, droughts, vast unimaginable inundations.
  • Food supplies, perhaps adequate in the aggregate, will fall short regionally, producing mass famine.
  • Mortality and population will fall sharply starting perhaps in 2025 Die Off — population forecasts will have been overly optimistic.
  • Consumption expenditures will be precluded but despite deep bias against the Multitudes, demand will fall short: other than Kondratieff Cycle, private monetized economy will sharply decline.

Infrastructure Rising

A new industrial Kondratieff Cycle looms on the horizon, built around emerging, now tangible, infrastructure needs that will cost perhaps $10 trillion between 2020 and 2030, as discussed below. A partial provisional typology and examples include:

  1. Defensive armoring of (selective) cities and regions with a preference to protect gated enclaves of the plutocrats.
  2. Long neglected, decaying, obsolete infrastructure needs will explode: electric grids, tunnel between NJ and NY), countless bridges, airports, broadband, water and sewage projects.
  3. The food and energy infrastructure and cumulative practices will undergo rapid and massive alteration, perhaps beginning in 2030, way overdue — and way too late to forestall the massive damages.