Possible Go Wrongs...

Image Source: TV Tropes: The All-Devouring Pop Culture Wiki

Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming

Note: I'm writing a report and Power Point presentation on a project in MATLAB on Numerical Methods (Trapezoid Rule, Simpson's Rule and Gauss Quadrature, not that you asked), AND a homework on interpolation (joy). I will resume next Monday on All Hallow's Eve, for no particular superstitious or zombie apocalypse reason.

Tomorrow (October 7th, so this is long past), the EPA is expected to take a first formal step in repealing the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), a regulation designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by approximately 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is a terribly irresponsible decision. Recent ferocious storms, intensified by warming oceans and air, remind us of the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is a sensible, flexible, cost-effective rule addressing one of one of the biggest sources of US carbon emissions, and one of the least expensive sources to control.

Notably, it appears from a leaked draft that the EPA does not base its proposed repeal on a change in policy goals, or on any of the usual considerations such as the rule’s costs, feasibility, or impacts. Rather, the EPA hangs its repeal hat entirely on a legal hook—the EPA now claims that the Clean Power Plan violated the law because it regulates “beyond the fenceline” of individual power plants—a claim that is directly contrary to what the EPA and the Department of Justice argued in court just last fall. With this legal sleight of hand, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt once again forsakes the mission of the agency he heads—to safeguard human health and the environment—to pander to fossil fuel interests.

As I've stated before: N = N₀ * e^rt is the exponential growth formula. N₀ = initial number; N = final number; r = 0.02 (growth rate for humans); t = years. With a little algebra, you can solve for t and find the population doubles in roughly 35 years, our current world population estimate at 7.6 billion. N = 15,256,782,730 (roughly) in 35 years. The problem with climate change and population is our politics like our enterprise are both myopically focused on business quarters and the next election cycle, not mid or the next century. More people simply mean more competition for limited resources, one of which - for LIFE and social stability - is potable water.

The poet T.S. Elliot is the author of the famous poem "The Hollow Men." How apropos a title to relate to this subject. You owe yourselves beyond my meager excerpts to read the full text here, Source: AllPoetry.com, other sources: Biography, Wikipedia

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

(Elliot's last, most quoted stanza)

V

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Scott Pruitt’s Cynical Move to Rescind the Clean Power Plan
Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientist, President, Oct 9, 2017, 12:47 PM EDT