A Big Banker Speaks Out

A 35-year veteran of the banking industry speaks out. An excerpt:

So far, despite doling out more than $125 billion in new capital to banks, the government has been unwilling to do anything more than politely ask the banks to make more loans. That approach is never going to work. Since 1999, the government has issued several guidelines to the banks, warning them of the potentially disastrous consequences of diving into the risky subprime mortgage market. It has urged them to curtail this behavior. The banks refused to listen and went head-long into that market, driven solely by greed. For the government to now believe that the big banks are somehow going to have an epiphany and change their behavior is delusional.

Best sentiment of the day, so far

People “want to see the executives that drove Wall Street into the ground in orange suits picking up cans along the side of the road.”

Senator Jon Tester quoted by Timothy Egan

Ashley’s story

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008:

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

FiveThirtyEight.com reminded me of this and of two other Ashleys. Click the link and read the context.

But I too am here because of Ashley Baia and her story.

Get out, and stay out

First posted here three years ago today.

What’s the deal with public libraries anyway? Everywhere I’ve ever lived they start herding people out the door with announcements, flashing lights, computers shutting off and dirty looks well before the actual closing time. It happened to me again tonight. They close at 8:00 and at 7:45 they’ve got more rounding up going on than a well-led cattle drive.

NewMexiKen managed a public research facility for ten years. I well remember that some diehards would hang in until the last minute, but I don’t remember having to be rude about it. And I don’t remember my staff or I ever getting agitated if the last stragglers were still pulling together their belongings and filing out at two minutes after quitting time.

Who do these public library staffs work for anyway?

(For the record, I left the library tonight at 7:50, ten minutes before closing. I know what time it was because as I was leaving they made an announcement saying it was ten minutes to closing and you could no longer use your library card.)

Our Warriors

Deserve our very best, nothing less.

Just watch

An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

So begins Michael Pollan in a lengthy — but very worthwhile — article in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

Pollan is the author of the must-read The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and this year’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

Cheney Has Abnormal Heart Beat

News Report: “Vice President Dick Cheney has experienced an irregular heartbeat that will be treated at a Washington Hospital on Wednesday afternoon, his office announced on Wednesday morning.”

Cheney still has a heart? I thought they’d fixed him up with one of those Darth Vader suits years ago?

2 percent fewer morons

“[A] record 89 percent of Americans now say the country has pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track while just 7 percent of Americans say the country is going in the right direction, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.”

The Caucus Blog

Just seven percent of the country clueless. It was nine percent in the Gallup Poll last week.

Palin’s Kind of Patriotism

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? …”
. . .

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

Tom Friedman in a column you should read.

If Social Security Was a Private Corporation Then it Would Sue Tom Brokaw for Every Penny He Has

If a news reporter deliberately makes a false statement claiming that a private company like Boeing or Microsoft is going broke, the company has the right to sue the reporter and the news agency. That is why reporters rarely make statements like Microsoft or Boeing (or Lehman Brothers, AIG, or Goldman Sachs) are going broke.

However, reporters can freely impugn the financial health of a government program like Social Security because a government program cannot sue for libel. That is why Brokaw knew that he could imply that Social Security is going broke, even though it is not true. Social Security cannot sue Brokaw even if he deliberately tells explicit lies about its financial health.

Those who are interesting in learning about the true state of Social Security’s financial health can find out by looking at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s website.

Dean Baker

Line of the day

“[O]nly 9% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States — the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history.”

Gallup

Who are these nine percent and what the fuck is wrong with them?

Our capacity for self-government

James Fallows:

From twelve time zones away, it looks as if the United States is in one of those moments where the capacity to get serious and face big problems is sorely tested.

In the short term, a worldwide financial panic and crisis. Just beyond that, the real economic and social problems that come when large numbers of people lose their jobs, their businesses, their investments, their homes, and even larger numbers become fearful about what might happen to them. And then, when we get a minute to think, profound global energy and environmental challenges, security concerns that range from loose nukes to terrorist organizations, plus a couple of ongoing wars and ever-rising medical costs. Just as starters. The United States is still incredibly rich, powerful, and productive. But the current situation is no joke, for America or the world.

In these circumstances, and with a presidential election four weeks away, is it conceivable that candidates will waste time arguing whether one of them has been in the same room with a guy who had been a violent extremist at a time before most of today’s U.S. citizens were even born? (William Ayres was a Weatherman in the late 1960s. Today’s median-aged American was born around 1972.) Of course, it’s not only conceivable: it’s the Republican plan for this final push — “turning the page” on economic concerns and getting to these “character” and “association” questions about Barack Obama.

Grow up. If John McCain has a better set of plans to deal with the immediate crisis, and the medium-term real-economy fallout, and the real global problems of the era — fine, let him win on those. But it is beneath the dignity he had as a Naval officer to wallow in this mindless BS. I will say nothing about the dignity of a candidate who repeatedly winks at the public, Hooters-waitress style. A great country acts great when it matters. This is a time when it matters — for politicians in the points they raise, for journalists in the subjects they write about and the questions they ask of candidates. And, yes, for voters.

Best factoid of the day, so far

“[I]nsurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.”

Paul Krugman

Worst President Ever

George Walker Bush is not a stupid or a bad man. But in his conduct as president, he behaved stupidly and badly. He was constrained by neither the standards of conduct common to the average professional nor the Constitution. This was not ignorance but a willful rejection on Bush’s part, in the service of streamlining White House decision-making, eliminating complexity, and shutting out dissenting voices. This insular mind-set was and is dangerous. Rigorous thinking and hard-won expertise are both very good things, and our government for the past eight years has routinely debased and mocked these virtues.

President Bush was unmoved by any arguments that challenged his assumptions. Debate was silenced, expertise was punished, and diversity of opinion was anathema, so much so that his political opponents–other earnest Americans who want the best for their country–were, to him and his men, the moral equivalent of the enemy. It is important to note just how different such conduct has been from the conduct of other presidents from both parties.

From a Ron Suskind piece in Esquire. He explains.

I didn’t vote for him

“It would have been nice to let Bush’s two terms marinate a while before invoking Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan from the cellar of worst presidents. But then — over the last two weeks — he completed the trilogy of national disasters that will be with us for a generation or more.”

Timothy Egan, who adds:

“If ever there was an argument for voting against politicians who are confident about their cluelessness, Bush is it. So it was heartening to see that a majority of the country, in some polls, now views Sarah Palin as unqualified to be president.”

Cure worse than the disease

“The banking system needs another $500 billion to survive beyond the $700 billion rescue plan being contemplated by Congress, said Pimco founder Bill Gross.

“Gross said on CNBC that the government bailout plan will help free up bank balance sheets so they can start lending again, but will provide only about $50 billion in real capital to the system.”

CNBC.com

Fuck it. Just give it all to them. The dollar won’t be worth anything anyway.

Scared yet?

Tar and feathers would also work

It may be that this bailout is necessary to stabilize the economy — but someone’s going to have to be held accountable.

We need more stocks — not the financial instruments, but those things where people are clamped in place and exhibited on the public square.

Achenblog

From my email

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Via Cheers and Jeers.

Current Threat Level

All I can believe is that they figured out that the old terrorism threat level scheme (aka crying wolf) wouldn’t work this time around — like it did in 2004. So they’ve installed a financial threat level to scare us with instead.

And while I think of it, how come with all the shit we go through to get on an airplane, the threat level on all flights is still orange? Shouldn’t the threat level on airplanes of all places be green by now?

Best line of the day that gives you some perspective

“But since 2000… Put it this way: we have just finished the first American business cycle ever, the first since British settlers landed at Jamestown and promptly began dying of malaria, the first ever in which median household incomes did not grow from peak to peak.”

Brad DeLong

We’re number what?

But today, John McCain declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” — and also explained that we’re “the most innovative, the most productive, the greatest exporter, the greatest importer.”

Exactly why we’re boasting about being the biggest importer isn’t clear — not to get all mercantilist, but buying a bunch of stuff isn’t a great achievement. And last I looked, we weren’t the greatest exporter; that distinction went either to the European Union, or, if you restrict yourself to countries, Germany.

Paul Krugman

“Country first” — whatever it means it shouldn’t mean saying we’re number one when we’re not. McCain is supposed to be running for president, not head cheerleader.

Magic Marker Strategy

Live along the Texas coast and don’t want to evacuate? Consider this.

Instead of relying on a “Good Samaritan” policy - the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors - the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.

“It’s cold, but it’s effective,” Mr. Judkins explained.

Reported by John Tierney in 2005.

Primer on deficit and debt

What’s the difference between the federal deficit and the federal debt?

The federal deficit is the amount the federal government goes in the red during each fiscal year (October 1 through September 30). This fiscal year it is expected to be around $407,000,000,000 (that’s $407 billion).

The federal debt is the total amount from all the deficits (and surpluses, such as FY 2000) over the years. It gets higher most years because the deficit is greater than the amount of debt that is paid off during the year. The debt at present is about $9,650,000,000,000 (that’s $9.65 trillion).

To whom is the debt owed?

About half is owed to the government itself. The Social Security Trust Funds, for example, hold about $2.24 trillion (23%) of the federal debt.

About a quarter of the federal debt is owed to foreign governments and institutions, foremost Britain ($280B), Japan ($584B) and China ($504B). And we owe Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria about $170B combined. (Guess where they got that money to invest in our Treasury securities.)

The remaining quarter is owed to the American public through mutual funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, etc., in the form of treasury securities — treasury bills, bonds, notes. If you are in a money market mutual fund or have savings bonds, you are carrying part of the federal debt.

Interest paid all those creditors this fiscal year is about $455 billion.

Heck of a job, Goodie

As reported by the Dallas Morning News:

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

Not only is the above immoral and duplicitous, it’s not even true. Can you get physical exams at the E.R.? Can you get blood pressure medication from the E.R.? Can you get insulin at the E.R.? Can you get continuing skin cancer prevention from the E.R.?

Best redux line of the day

The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children’s medical bills “welfare,“ with all the negative connotations that go with that term.

Paul Krugman, first posted here one year ago today.

Of course, Krugman overlooks the fact that many on the right would eliminate public schools as well.

When you care enough to send the very best

From Pharyngula:

It seems that Hallmark Greeting Cards are peddling a line of gay-friendly cards, which irks poor little Donald Wildmon something fierce. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they’re cute, stylish, and witty, but at the same time he’s afraid to mail a coming-out card to his Mom?

Anyway, Wildmon is asking his flock to send negative letters to Hallmark. How about taking a moment to send the very best to thank Hallmark for being non-discriminatory? Use the AFA’s form, or email directly to Donald J. Hall.

You gotta go read and see what he suggests as your Bonus action! It’s perfect.

Most interesting line of the day, so far

“Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.”

David Leonhardt in an in-depth analysis of Obama’s economic policy in The New York Times Magazine.

Now That’s Rich

Paul Krugman’s Friday column talks about levels of rich and middle class — a topic we’ve been playing with around here for a couple of days. Krugman includes this:

The trouble with Mr. Warren’s question was that it seemed to imply that everyone except the poor belongs to one of these two categories: either you’re clearly rich, or you’re an ordinary member of the middle class. And that’s just wrong.

In his entertaining book “Richistan,” Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal declares that the rich aren’t just different from you and me, they live in a different, parallel country. But that country is divided into levels, and only the inhabitants of upper Richistan live like aristocrats; the inhabitants of middle Richistan lead ample but not gilded lives; and lower Richistanis live in McMansions, drive around in S.U.V.’s, and are likely to think of themselves as “affluent” rather than rich.

Even these arguably not-rich, however, live in a different financial universe from that inhabited by ordinary members of the middle class: they have lots of disposable income after paying for the essentials, and they don’t lose sleep over expenses, like insurance co-pays and tuition bills, that can seem daunting to many working American families.

Indeed. Our society is much too complex to be divided into poor, middle and rich; eight or nine tiers are probably the minimum to have any meaning.

Krugman’s whole column deserves a read.

Who’s rich?

The discussion continues.

Maybe they’re drinking foreign beers, a sure sign

Also speaking at the press conference: a Denver activist and homeowner who was recently questioned by the police about bricks being unloaded at her house. Says the ACLU, “Although the bricks were acquired for masonry repairs, Denver police accused the activist of ’stockpiling’ the bricks for the [Democratic Convention]” Just a few hours ago, I walked down Denver’s 16th Street Mall. A number of restaurants appeared to have stockpiled chairs and tables for patrons to sit at. The patrons themselves appeared to be stockpiling bottles of beer on the tables. I’m not sure what to think.

Michael Scherer, Time

Doldrums

Maybe part of it is just August — last year I had a poll on your least favorite month and August edged out January. I see that FunctionalAmbivalent is taking some time off to reconsider his blog.

Maybe an exciting new NewMexiKen poll would help.

At Saturday’s Saddleback Forum (NewMexiKen and family lived just down the road for 10 years), Senators Obama and McCain were asked to define “rich” with a number. They were asked the question in the context of taxes and so answered with an income number (though one could argue that rich is defined by net worth and includes much more than income).

Granted then, that like so much of our discourse, this is too simple to be very meaningful, but —

‘We Are All Georgians’? Not So Fast.

An excellent, brief summary of the situation in Georgia — past and present — by Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post.

Take five or so minutes and you will have a balanced understanding. Very worthwhile.

Best line of Friday evening

Would President McCain have handled the Georgia-Russian thing as well as Bush:

“It’s hard to know since he’s a corrupt, pandering politician who is clearly willing to do anything to get elected, but if we take him at his word, we’d have to assume that we’d have declared war on Russia.”

digby

“I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed. 20-30 million tops…”

Most ‘I don’t think so’ line of the day

McCain said he told [Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili] “that I know I speak for every American when I say to him today, we are all Georgians.”

The Trail | washingtonpost.com

Dangerous and Unstable

It’s sort of funny when he’s just an unhinged senator. But think for a moment where we’d be if this man were president right now, as he may well be in six months. This man takes the counsel of the people who got us into the Iraq War. On foreign policy, he is in league with the people who were so extreme they’ve now largely been kicked out of the Bush administration. People like John Bolton and others like him.

It’s beyond Obama or political strategy or dinging McCain on this or that policy.

This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he’s giving us of a McCain presidency.

Joshua Marshall

NewMexiKen agrees with Marshall. Keep your eye on the ball people. War, and war especially with a powerful foe, trumps all other issues — except, of course, who’s wearing a flag lapel pin.

Let’s Compound the Blunder!

From an insightful piece about Georgia-Russia by Gregory Djerejian.

This is what our foreign policy mandarins masquerade about as they play policy-making, in their Washington work-stations. It’s, yes, worse than a crime, rather a sad, pitiable blunder.

And one McCain would have us compound, I stress, again! An honorable man who served his country well, it is clear his time has past and his grasp on the most basic foreign policy calls we’ll need to make in the coming years is very tentative indeed. He’ll be surrounded by second-tier ‘yes-man’ realists and residual neo-con swill, few with any ideas worth pursuing if we mean to take the national interest seriously with sobriety and freshness of perspective. So let us help him exit off-stage gracefully, as he served his country with dignity when called upon, but let us not sacrifice our children’s future to ignorants with deludely romantic notions of empire. Been there, done that.

Georgia and the Utter Fecklessness of Condi Rice

One would have thought that having an ace Kremlinologist on board as Secretary of State might have helped America defuse this Russo/Georgian powder keg.

But apparently this resurgence of Soviet style aggression (re-birth pangs, perhaps?) wasn’t enough to make Dr. Rice disrupt her vacation.

I do hope that this episode is the final nail in the coffin of the myth of Condi’s competence.

Tim Dickinson

Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia

Many factors are involved in the present conflict but the central one is straightforward: the majority of the Ossetes living south of the main Caucasus range in Georgia wish to unite with the Ossetes living to the north, in an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation; and the Georgians, regarding South Ossetia as both a legal and an historic part of their national territory, refuse to accept this.

Times Online

Update:

Here’s is the essence of what I posted earlier that Rob may be referencing in his commment. On reflection, I thought it was weak and took it out. Upon further reflection, possibly it is a decent illustration. In any case the analogy is not meant to imply right or wrong, simply that it’s not simple.

Let’s assume Texas broke away from the United States about 20 years ago. Let’s further assume that west Texans would rather be united with their compadres and kinfolk in New Mexico, which is still part of the U.S. (In this analogy the U.S. is Russia, Texas is Georgia, west Texas is the part of Georgia that wants to be separate from Georgia — namely South Ossetia, and New Mexico represents the Russian Republic of North Ossetia.)

Texas is refusing to let the west Texans reunite with the New Mexicans. The U.S. is supporting the west Texans and has invaded Texas.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who knows?

You’re In Danger

And John McCain would ramp up all the worst traits of the current administration. His instincts are always toward force and the people advising him come squarely from the Cheney wing of the current administration. In comparison to Bush he’s not just more of the same. There’s every reason to believe he’d be much worse.

The current situation in Georgia and his response should make clear to everyone how dangerous a president John McCain would be.

Josh Marshall

Whatever you think of Obama and the Democratic Party, John McCain would be an unmitigated disaster as President of the United States.

If you’re against Obama, at least demand the Republicans chose someone capable of handling the job. Haven’t we had enough incompetence and wrong-headedness?

Racism by region

FiveThirtyEight.com takes a look at the Bradley Effect today. It includes this:

It may be that in the Northeast, which is arguably the most “politically correct” region of the country, expressions of racism are the least socially acceptable, and that therefore some people may misstate their intentions to pollsters. By contrast, in the South and the Midwest, if people are racist they will usually be pretty open about it, and in the West, which is nation’s most multicultural region, there is relatively little racism, either expressed or implicit.

Allowing for generalization, do you think he’s correct?

The Bradley Effect is named for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. When African-American Bradley ran for governor of California in 1982, exit polls showed him a clear winner. When he lost, subsequent analysis showed that some voters had lied about whom they voted for rather than appear racist to pollsters. The Bradley effect is about lying to pollsters, not about voting on the basis of race.

Best line of the day, so far

“The hazards Americans treat as facts of life — the risk of losing your insurance, the risk that you won’t be able to afford necessary care, the chance that you’ll be financially ruined by medical costs — would be considered unthinkable in any other advanced nation.”

Paul Krugman

Most interesting factoid of the day, so far

“[T]he United States ranks 68th in the world in the proportion of women in national legislatures.”

Jaana Goodrich, quoted by digby.

Is it time to yell “fire” in our crowded theater?

If your oldest child is seven, the window slams shut before he or she will be old enough for a driver’s license. If your first grandchild was born this year, cherish your posterity: that grandchild’s likely to be the last of your line. Unless….unless we force action now and over the next 100 months.

The Window Before Climate Change Closes Down Our Kids’ Future: 100 Months, Or Less?

Here’s why:

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, is the highest it has been for the past 650,000 years. In the space of just 250 years, as a result of the coal-fired Industrial Revolution, and changes to land use such as the growth of cities and the felling of forests, we have released, cumulatively, more than 1,800bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Currently, approximately 1,000 tonnes of CO2 are released into the Earth’s atmosphere every second, due to human activity. Greenhouse gases trap incoming solar radiation, warming the atmosphere. When these gases accumulate beyond a certain level - often termed a “tipping point” - global warming will accelerate, potentially beyond control.

Andrew Simms | The Guardian

It’s a simple equation. There’s this much CO2 in the atmosphere. We add this much more each day. At some point it reaches the tipping point.

There is no credible debate about this among those who study the problem. The debate is when and how bad it becomes. The serious scientists keeping sending stronger and more frightening alarms while we dither.

The carbon industries, and their political cronies, are keeping the sense of doubt alive by getting the media to act as if the question about CO2 was still being debated.

There is, of course, only one time when it is OK to yell fire in a crowded theater — when the theater is on fire.