Claude Forthomme's Blog, page 4
May 10, 2020
Two Great Pandemic Novels: The End of October and The Cover Up
I just reviewed for Impakter Magazine two great books, perfect reading for our pandemic times. Here is the opening of the article:
Book Reviews: The End of October by Lawrence Wright, published April 28, 2020, by Knopf (400 pages) ; The Cover Up by Oscar Sparrow, published September 19, 2019, by Gallo Romano Media (107 pages, free on coronavirus lockdown) These pandemic novels are unexpected for two reasons: it is so early in the COVID-19 outbreak that nobody expects writers to (1) come up with a meaningful fictionalized version of the pandemic, and (2) offer a perfect escapist book to try and forget our sorrows.
Yet two writers managed just such a feat: Lawrence Wright with The End of October and Oscar Sparrow with The Cover Up.
The Cover Up is a literary spoof that provokes peals of laughter and is as distant from the pandemic as can be. Yet it is relevant in that it addresses a nation's collective reaction to what is perceived as a national catastrophe. The End of October confronts the pandemic heads on. It presents itself as a futuristic thriller but it’s a very serious book. Nothing futuristic about it, on the contrary, it’s very much about the here and now. And it poses existential questions about the pandemic we are living through, the kind of questions we all need to consider.
They are both widely and wildly different, standing as far apart as can be, at each end of the literary spectrum of possible genres. Yet both, in their own way, manage to provide us with an expanded perspective on what is happening now - which is precisely what we demand from good fiction.
Both are excellent in their own way, the kind of novel that draws you in from the first page, that keeps you reading as fast as you can, and when you’ve reached the end, you close the cover and wish it would go on. And you start thinking about it, the plot, the characters, the setting, the meaning of it all.
Let’s take a closer look at each one.
The End of October by Lawrence WrightThe book, just out, is already climbing Amazon’s rankings and has been applauded by reviewers in the mainstream media, from the New York Times ("the book not only reads like nonfiction, it is nonfiction"), the Wall Street Journal (“an eerily prescient pandemic thriller”) to the Texas Observer:
As Scott Detrow said in his review on NPR, this book has “everything you ever wanted to know about pandemics.” As he put it, as we go through the worst “outbreak in a century, these stories provide a strange mix of catharsis ("I felt the SAME way that character did!" — and relief ("Welp, at least things are nowhere near THAT bad!").
...
The rest is on Impakter, to read it, click here.
To read more of my articles, please click here: https://impakter.com/author/claude-forthomme/
I haven't had the time to post on my blog, including several articles about the ongoing pandemic. My sincere apologies.
Book Reviews: The End of October by Lawrence Wright, published April 28, 2020, by Knopf (400 pages) ; The Cover Up by Oscar Sparrow, published September 19, 2019, by Gallo Romano Media (107 pages, free on coronavirus lockdown) These pandemic novels are unexpected for two reasons: it is so early in the COVID-19 outbreak that nobody expects writers to (1) come up with a meaningful fictionalized version of the pandemic, and (2) offer a perfect escapist book to try and forget our sorrows.
Yet two writers managed just such a feat: Lawrence Wright with The End of October and Oscar Sparrow with The Cover Up.
The Cover Up is a literary spoof that provokes peals of laughter and is as distant from the pandemic as can be. Yet it is relevant in that it addresses a nation's collective reaction to what is perceived as a national catastrophe. The End of October confronts the pandemic heads on. It presents itself as a futuristic thriller but it’s a very serious book. Nothing futuristic about it, on the contrary, it’s very much about the here and now. And it poses existential questions about the pandemic we are living through, the kind of questions we all need to consider.
They are both widely and wildly different, standing as far apart as can be, at each end of the literary spectrum of possible genres. Yet both, in their own way, manage to provide us with an expanded perspective on what is happening now - which is precisely what we demand from good fiction.
Both are excellent in their own way, the kind of novel that draws you in from the first page, that keeps you reading as fast as you can, and when you’ve reached the end, you close the cover and wish it would go on. And you start thinking about it, the plot, the characters, the setting, the meaning of it all.
Let’s take a closer look at each one.
The End of October by Lawrence WrightThe book, just out, is already climbing Amazon’s rankings and has been applauded by reviewers in the mainstream media, from the New York Times ("the book not only reads like nonfiction, it is nonfiction"), the Wall Street Journal (“an eerily prescient pandemic thriller”) to the Texas Observer:
The Texas Observer hasn't always been kind to me, but this makes up for it. https://t.co/RxmTqeBSll— Lawrence Wright (@lawrence_wright) May 9, 2020
As Scott Detrow said in his review on NPR, this book has “everything you ever wanted to know about pandemics.” As he put it, as we go through the worst “outbreak in a century, these stories provide a strange mix of catharsis ("I felt the SAME way that character did!" — and relief ("Welp, at least things are nowhere near THAT bad!").
...
The rest is on Impakter, to read it, click here.
To read more of my articles, please click here: https://impakter.com/author/claude-forthomme/
I haven't had the time to post on my blog, including several articles about the ongoing pandemic. My sincere apologies.
January 18, 2020
The Battle of Billionaires
By the end of last year, as is the custom when a decade ends, I started thinking about the future. Obsessively. Climate change, environmental degradation, the collapse of democracy - if you project those facts into the future, you have to wonder: are we are living at the end of times? But there is an odd fact right under our nose, a small fact that sounds more like a piece of gossip than real news: The battle of billionaires.
Yet this is no fluffy gossip, it's very real! We tend to discount the political role of billionaires. We shouldn't. Consider that n ot all billionaires are bad news. Some fight for social justice and the preservation of the environment. A battle between the two kinds of billionaires is shaping up and could last well into the coming decade. I just wrote about this in an article for Impakter, here's the opening:
The 2010s are coming to a close. Reviewing the decade, what can we say about the future? A tech person will look at technological progress (stunning). A sociologist will look at cultural diversity (explosive). My take (disclosure: I’m an economist) is that this decade, with growing income inequality, saw an unprecedented number of billionaires taking center stage. “Good” billionaires like Bill Gates concerned about climate change and equity, “bad” ones like Betty De Vos, defunding and dismantling America’s public education system.
This fact alone, the rise of the billionaires, will shape our future, for better (a peaceful, balanced world) or for worse (climate Armageddon).
Much depends on what kind of billionaire takes power. Some of them can be alarmingly aggressive, for example, Trump ordering the summary execution of Iran’s General Qassem Suleimani killed last Friday at Baghdad airport via a drone strike. A strike that could escalate dangerously in the Middle East’s explosive environment.
Unsurprisingly, the 2020 campaign for the US presidency is seeing the rise of left-wing Democrat Bernie Sanders with declarations like this one (in Los Angeles on 21 December):
“Our campaign is not only about defeating Trump, our campaign is about a political revolution. It is about transforming this country, it is about creating a government and an economy that works for all people and not just the 1%.”
I am highlighting this because it is a remarkable statement. It marks the distance we’ve covered in a single decade: This is the language of the Occupy Wall Street movement that opened the decade in 2011. And now the once derided concept of the 1% against the 99% has gone mainstream. So much so that it can buoy a candidate in his bid for the White House (Sanders, as I write, is just behind Biden and ahead of Warren).
You see rants in headlines, like this one from C-Net ’ s Jackson Ryan: “We see the effects of climate change and our leaders continue to ignore the science”. A rant coming not just from journalists but scientists too.
Now, in 2019, we can all agree that the “world is on fire” and that the 2010s have been a “lost decade”. Yet back in 2013, K.C. Green, a talented cartoonist could still joke about it in a stunning piece of black humor. This is the closing panel of his 6-panel piece (screenshot):
Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
Let me know what you think!
Yet this is no fluffy gossip, it's very real! We tend to discount the political role of billionaires. We shouldn't. Consider that n ot all billionaires are bad news. Some fight for social justice and the preservation of the environment. A battle between the two kinds of billionaires is shaping up and could last well into the coming decade. I just wrote about this in an article for Impakter, here's the opening:
The 2010s are coming to a close. Reviewing the decade, what can we say about the future? A tech person will look at technological progress (stunning). A sociologist will look at cultural diversity (explosive). My take (disclosure: I’m an economist) is that this decade, with growing income inequality, saw an unprecedented number of billionaires taking center stage. “Good” billionaires like Bill Gates concerned about climate change and equity, “bad” ones like Betty De Vos, defunding and dismantling America’s public education system.
This fact alone, the rise of the billionaires, will shape our future, for better (a peaceful, balanced world) or for worse (climate Armageddon).
Much depends on what kind of billionaire takes power. Some of them can be alarmingly aggressive, for example, Trump ordering the summary execution of Iran’s General Qassem Suleimani killed last Friday at Baghdad airport via a drone strike. A strike that could escalate dangerously in the Middle East’s explosive environment.
Unsurprisingly, the 2020 campaign for the US presidency is seeing the rise of left-wing Democrat Bernie Sanders with declarations like this one (in Los Angeles on 21 December):
“Our campaign is not only about defeating Trump, our campaign is about a political revolution. It is about transforming this country, it is about creating a government and an economy that works for all people and not just the 1%.”
I am highlighting this because it is a remarkable statement. It marks the distance we’ve covered in a single decade: This is the language of the Occupy Wall Street movement that opened the decade in 2011. And now the once derided concept of the 1% against the 99% has gone mainstream. So much so that it can buoy a candidate in his bid for the White House (Sanders, as I write, is just behind Biden and ahead of Warren).
You see rants in headlines, like this one from C-Net ’ s Jackson Ryan: “We see the effects of climate change and our leaders continue to ignore the science”. A rant coming not just from journalists but scientists too.
Now, in 2019, we can all agree that the “world is on fire” and that the 2010s have been a “lost decade”. Yet back in 2013, K.C. Green, a talented cartoonist could still joke about it in a stunning piece of black humor. This is the closing panel of his 6-panel piece (screenshot):
Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
Let me know what you think!
December 28, 2019
Why Democracy Produces Incompetent Leaders
My latest article on Impakter. I'm proposing a very easy-to-apply, simple fix that could save democracy. Interested? Here's the opening:
Democracy doesn’t work. Plato thought it was a terrible system, a prelude to tyranny, giving power to selfish and dangerous demagogues. Watching what is happening these days in democracies around the world, it’s hard to disagree with Plato. Democracy appears to produce an abundance of incompetent and dishonest political leaders, who exploit people’s credulity and prejudices and thrive on emotion-driven discourse and fake news.
This Impakter essay looks at the problems and proposes an easy fix - if only we had the courage to implement it.
First, let’s quickly review what’s wrong with democracy.
Why People Have Lost Trust in Democratically-Elected Politicians: The Rise of Incompetent Political LeadersMost people don’t trust democracy to deliver. According to 2019 Pew survey, trust in government is at a historical low: only 17% of Americans today say they can trust the government to do what is right “just about always” (3%) or “most of the time” (14%).
The situation in the rest of the world is not much better. A 27 countries Pew survey (April 2019) revealed that a majority (51%) are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working. Anti-establishment leaders, parties and movements have emerged on both the right and left of the political spectrum. And most people in developing countries find authoritarian figures more trustworthy than democratically-elected politicians. Hence the success of the “China model”.
Bottom line, elections don’t deliver the kind of political leaders people want.
After a honeymoon period between voters and their winning candidate, often as short as a month, he or she always disappoints. Why? Is it the fault of the voters, do they expect too much? Or don’t they understand what is going on - how complex the job of governing can be, how campaign promises can’t be kept?
It has been convincingly argued that, yes, it’s the voters’ fault. Dambisa Moyo, the well-known Zambian economist and author of Dead Aid (2009) in which she famously argued that foreign aid made Africa poorer, placed the blame squarely on voters:
“Voters generally favor policies that enhance their own well-being with little consideration for that of future generations or for long-term outcomes. Politicians are rewarded for pandering to voters’ immediate demands and desires…”
This quote is out of an article she wrote for Foreign Policy when her new book came out in 2018, Edge of Chaos Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth — and How to Fix It. The article sums up her book’s arguments. In a nutshell:
“Because democratic systems encourage such short-termism, it will be difficult to solve many of the seemingly intractable structural problems slowing global growth without an overhaul of democracy.”
Let’s put aside for the moment the question whether our overall goal should be “global growth”: A good argument could be made that the unrestrained pursuit of continued economic growth in a world of finite resources (and where there is no Planet B) can only be achieved at the expense of the planet’s ecological balance.
Yes, climate change is real, have you heard? Ms. Moyo appears not to consider the possibility. But she does make some excellent points regarding “governance” - how we humans govern ourselves. And in particular, governance in a liberal democracy which is (still) considered, to use Churchill’s phrase, the least bad system. The actual quote is: “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...’ Obviously, democracy is always better than dictatorship.
So what are the obstacles to good governance? Let’s list the obstacles Moyo has identified - plus a few of my own:
(1) Too many elections: She sees “the short electoral cycle embedded in many democratic systems” as a major problem...
Click here to read the rest. It's (as always) on Impakter. Yes, I'm still Senior Editor there - I was there when it all began, back in 2014, as I'm sure some of you remember...
Happy Holidays to all, and let me know what you think!
November 10, 2019
What Sustainable Finance Means
Just published my latest article on Impakter magazine, here's the opening:
SUSTAINABLE FINANCE: HOW TO ADDRESS NATURE RISKS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
As our environment is undergoing ever faster collapse, with the rainforest burning in the Amazon, the ice melting in the Arctic and now California ravaged by fires, the goal of achieving sustainable finance appears ever more elusive. It is obvious that nature risks directly translate into financial risks. And with climate change accelerating, it is equally obvious that growing natural risks is the cause of equally growing financial instability.
While the relation between nature, climate and sustainable finance is obvious, the exact impact is not so clear. Natural disasters, from floods to air pollution events to wildlife species extinction, can impact businesses and whole economic sectors in variable ways, some more than others. And a small further rise in global warming, as small as a half degree centigrade, can make a stunningly huge difference:
To illustrate with the famous case of a highly valuable wildlife species threatened by extinction, i.e. bees whose pollination activities are fundamental for agricultural production. A prosperous European pharmaceutical company suddenly faced catastrophic financial losses after it had acquired in 2018 an agrochemical company accused of causing adverse impacts on bee populations that led to a series of health-related trials. Suddenly, it lost almost 40% of its market capitalization in less than one year, causing shareholders billions in losses.
To put a name on these firms: the pharmaceutical company is Bayer, the agrochemical is Monsanto and the cause of the bee-killing is, of course, a pesticide, the infamous “Roundup”. In short, Bayer is worth less today than the $63 billion it paid for Monsanto about a year ago.
As a first step to ascertain what the effects of nature risks are on the finance industry, a number of academics at the University of Hamburg have formed a Research Group on Sustainable Finance and analysed for the first time the existing academic literature which highlighted the relationship between nature risks and financial risks. The study has been financed by WWF Switzerland and will be uploaded to their website this month.
They identified 154 peer-reviewed articles published between 1966 and 2019. These articles covered four areas: banking, insurance, real estate, and stock markets; and nine nature risks: disease, drought, erosion, flooding, invasive species, oil spills, pollution/environmental contamination - of air, groundwater, soil/land and surface water -, solid waste, and bushfires.
Incorrect pricing is a major concern. It means that financial institutions urgently need to identify how the activities they finance impact the natural world. Developing a framework for investors to analyse nature risks and integrating these systematically in their valuation models is crucial. It would be the first indispensable step to achieve sustainable finance.
What is interesting is how the literature reviewed by the Research Group on Sustainable Finance identified variable impacts depending on the sector and the kind of nature risk. The sector that tends to suffer the most from nature risks is real estate. The greatest threats to valuation in the real estate sector include flooding followed by air pollution (and environmental contamination in general) and bushfires.
That of course, is a massive financial problem – but it is a problem for individual property owners too. The house you just bought, or that you inherited from your parents, could be worth next to nothing in just a few short years.
...
To find out how other sectors in the economy will be impacted and what should be done, read the rest on Impakter, click here: https://impakter.com/sustainable-finance-address-nature-risks-climate-change/
SUSTAINABLE FINANCE: HOW TO ADDRESS NATURE RISKS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
As our environment is undergoing ever faster collapse, with the rainforest burning in the Amazon, the ice melting in the Arctic and now California ravaged by fires, the goal of achieving sustainable finance appears ever more elusive. It is obvious that nature risks directly translate into financial risks. And with climate change accelerating, it is equally obvious that growing natural risks is the cause of equally growing financial instability.
While the relation between nature, climate and sustainable finance is obvious, the exact impact is not so clear. Natural disasters, from floods to air pollution events to wildlife species extinction, can impact businesses and whole economic sectors in variable ways, some more than others. And a small further rise in global warming, as small as a half degree centigrade, can make a stunningly huge difference:
To illustrate with the famous case of a highly valuable wildlife species threatened by extinction, i.e. bees whose pollination activities are fundamental for agricultural production. A prosperous European pharmaceutical company suddenly faced catastrophic financial losses after it had acquired in 2018 an agrochemical company accused of causing adverse impacts on bee populations that led to a series of health-related trials. Suddenly, it lost almost 40% of its market capitalization in less than one year, causing shareholders billions in losses.
To put a name on these firms: the pharmaceutical company is Bayer, the agrochemical is Monsanto and the cause of the bee-killing is, of course, a pesticide, the infamous “Roundup”. In short, Bayer is worth less today than the $63 billion it paid for Monsanto about a year ago.
As a first step to ascertain what the effects of nature risks are on the finance industry, a number of academics at the University of Hamburg have formed a Research Group on Sustainable Finance and analysed for the first time the existing academic literature which highlighted the relationship between nature risks and financial risks. The study has been financed by WWF Switzerland and will be uploaded to their website this month.
They identified 154 peer-reviewed articles published between 1966 and 2019. These articles covered four areas: banking, insurance, real estate, and stock markets; and nine nature risks: disease, drought, erosion, flooding, invasive species, oil spills, pollution/environmental contamination - of air, groundwater, soil/land and surface water -, solid waste, and bushfires.
"Destruction of ecosystems results in financial risks"Overall, the articles confirmed that the destruction of ecosystems results in financial risks. They also found that nature risks are not adequately reflected in current risk models of financial institutions and therefore not priced correctly.
Incorrect pricing is a major concern. It means that financial institutions urgently need to identify how the activities they finance impact the natural world. Developing a framework for investors to analyse nature risks and integrating these systematically in their valuation models is crucial. It would be the first indispensable step to achieve sustainable finance.
What is interesting is how the literature reviewed by the Research Group on Sustainable Finance identified variable impacts depending on the sector and the kind of nature risk. The sector that tends to suffer the most from nature risks is real estate. The greatest threats to valuation in the real estate sector include flooding followed by air pollution (and environmental contamination in general) and bushfires.
That of course, is a massive financial problem – but it is a problem for individual property owners too. The house you just bought, or that you inherited from your parents, could be worth next to nothing in just a few short years.
...
To find out how other sectors in the economy will be impacted and what should be done, read the rest on Impakter, click here: https://impakter.com/sustainable-finance-address-nature-risks-climate-change/
October 19, 2019
The Climate Emergency: How Humanity Can Avoid the Fate of Dinosaurs
Sorry for the silence, my friends, I've been working on a new book - a book for young children told in the voice of my dog Pepy (woof!) - but I didn't stop working as Senior Editor at Impakter magazine, also contributing articles (yeah, I confess, there's been a break of several weeks, but I was wrapped up in writing the first draft of my Pepy book ...). Now a new article is out, so, as usual, here's the opening:
The climate emergency makes the comparison between humans and dinosaurs inescapable: Both face extinction from a climate crisis. But with a difference. The dinosaurs didn’t bring it on themselves. An asteroid hitting Earth and a giant volcano did it for them. By contrast, humans are doing it to themselves. The scientific evidence is incontrovertible, the climate emergency results from the industrial revolution.
And the climate emergency is much more than rising temperatures and sea levels. It’s choking pollution, it’s a calamitous drop in biodiversity, with more than half the world’s species gone over the last 30 years. In short, it’s the 6th mass extinction. And it’s happening now. The Artic melted this summer like never before. The question is: Can we survive as a species?
The question is urgent. We can no longer afford to waste time discussing scientific facts with climate deniers. We need to consider what to do concretely to avert disaster - anything less is irresponsible.
That is the point made by a mild-mannered professor at a British university, Dr. Rupert Read who teaches at the University of East Anglia (UK) and self-describes as a committed climate and environmental campaigner. Most recently, he has been a frequent spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and a member of their political liaison team. For anyone who hasn't heard yet about the Extinction Rebellion, here is a quick video that sums it up:
Extinction Rebellion is a people’s movement that was launched in May 2018 with protests in the UK and is now active around the globe. Starting 7 October, and for two weeks, protests are planned in London (you can sign up here) and other major cities (to join, check this site). The movement has become truly worldwide:
It has already achieved one of its goals: It got the UK Parliament to declare on May 1st 2019 a state of “climate emergency”. Through the summer, the parliaments of other countries joined with similar declarations: Ireland, the Holy See, Canada, France, Argentina, Spain, Austria, in that order. Local administrations joined too, including New York and San Francisco in the US; Sidney and Melbourne in Australia; Paris and Mulhouse in France; most towns in Canada and Germany. The list is endless and growing.
At the moment of writing, Extinction Rebellion protesters are defying the London city ban on protests and nursing mothers target Google. Why Google?
...
To find out why Google (and much more), read the rest on Impakter, click here.
If you're curious about my other articles published on Impakter magazine (I started in 2014), here's a list, click here.
The climate emergency makes the comparison between humans and dinosaurs inescapable: Both face extinction from a climate crisis. But with a difference. The dinosaurs didn’t bring it on themselves. An asteroid hitting Earth and a giant volcano did it for them. By contrast, humans are doing it to themselves. The scientific evidence is incontrovertible, the climate emergency results from the industrial revolution.
And the climate emergency is much more than rising temperatures and sea levels. It’s choking pollution, it’s a calamitous drop in biodiversity, with more than half the world’s species gone over the last 30 years. In short, it’s the 6th mass extinction. And it’s happening now. The Artic melted this summer like never before. The question is: Can we survive as a species?
The question is urgent. We can no longer afford to waste time discussing scientific facts with climate deniers. We need to consider what to do concretely to avert disaster - anything less is irresponsible.
That is the point made by a mild-mannered professor at a British university, Dr. Rupert Read who teaches at the University of East Anglia (UK) and self-describes as a committed climate and environmental campaigner. Most recently, he has been a frequent spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and a member of their political liaison team. For anyone who hasn't heard yet about the Extinction Rebellion, here is a quick video that sums it up:
Extinction Rebellion is a people’s movement that was launched in May 2018 with protests in the UK and is now active around the globe. Starting 7 October, and for two weeks, protests are planned in London (you can sign up here) and other major cities (to join, check this site). The movement has become truly worldwide:
It has already achieved one of its goals: It got the UK Parliament to declare on May 1st 2019 a state of “climate emergency”. Through the summer, the parliaments of other countries joined with similar declarations: Ireland, the Holy See, Canada, France, Argentina, Spain, Austria, in that order. Local administrations joined too, including New York and San Francisco in the US; Sidney and Melbourne in Australia; Paris and Mulhouse in France; most towns in Canada and Germany. The list is endless and growing.
At the moment of writing, Extinction Rebellion protesters are defying the London city ban on protests and nursing mothers target Google. Why Google?
...
To find out why Google (and much more), read the rest on Impakter, click here.
If you're curious about my other articles published on Impakter magazine (I started in 2014), here's a list, click here.
June 22, 2019
Facebook's Cryptocurrency Libra: What is it? Can it Fly?
My latest article on Impakter, here's the opening:
Once again, Facebook is shaking the world. After multiple privacy violations, with a potential $5bn fine from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which opened an investigation in response to the Cambridge Analytica revelations, now Facebook has come up with Libra, a brave new cryptocurrency project.
Touted as better than any cryptocurrency to date, stable, secure, fast and protected, the Libra is Facebook’s wager that it can shake up the financial world and make it better. Make it work for the 1.7 billion unbanked people in the world. Financial regulators around the world are dubious and one thing is certain: Facebook will need to engage in battle to get its project approved.
The idea behind Libra and its digital wallet Calibra is simple enough. Sending money to a friend or paying for something will be as easy as sending a Facebook Message. To do this, you will have to wait for the official launch next year but you can sign up for early access when it’s ready here.
In technical terms, it is far more complicated.
Many questions were answered in the 100-page white paper released by Facebook and available on its Libra organization website (not to be confused with the Libra Foundation or the Libra Group), in the Q&A session the press had with Facebook managers in San Francisco’s Mint building and in a Mark Zuckerberg post on Facebook.
While not all answers were satisfactory, a general picture emerges:
...
Read the rest on Impakter, there are some serious concerns about this. Click here to read.
June 18, 2019
A Wake-Up Call for Climate Action
My latest article published on Impakter, here is the opening:
Flooding in Annapolis, Maryland (US). A man observes a stretch of Dock Street in Annapolis, Md., that flooded after the area received over three quarters of an inch of rain in 24 hours on Jan. 25, 2010. (Photo by Matt Rath/Chesapeake Bay Program)Two books that changed the world: David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, makes it impossible to ignore the issueYou are concerned with climate change but the avalanche of news numbs you. Don’t feel guilty, you are not alone. Many are like you, literally turned off - the problem feels like it’s happening on another planet. But there is one book out there that you should read this year if you read nothing else. It will change how you perceive the world and our future forever:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells, a columnist and Deputy Editor at New York Magazine (published by Penguin, February 2019).
Wallace-Wells is no tree-hugger climate activist. He’s a serious investigative journalist, he goes to the sources and interviews the people involved. His book is a compendium of the latest research findings, presented in clear, sober language. And it is a veritable shocker.
There are two reasons for that.
One is that Wallace-Wells has a knack for zeroing in on the unusual striking image, things that climate change will bring about and that you probably never thought of. To illustrate how he does it, I’ll just quote one example but there are many more. Speaking of insect migrations caused by global warming, he writes:
"The imperious West has spent five centuries looking down its nose at the plight of those living within the pale of tropical disease, and one wonders how that will change when mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue are flying through the streets of Copenhagen and Chicago, too."
The other reason is that we are used to getting climate news in bits and pieces, not all of it together. That’s what makes the first part of his book, aptly titled “Elements of Chaos”, so arresting. The “elements” are divided in 12 chapters whose headings make for a truly scary list precisely because they are happening together:
Heath Death -Hunger -Drowning -Wildfire -Disasters No Longer Natural (“in a four-degree-warmer world, the earth’s ecosystem will boil with so many disasters that we will just start calling them ‘weather’: out of control typhoons and tornadoes and floods and droughts”) -Freshwater Drain -Dying Oceans -Unbreathable Air -Plagues of Warming (“trapped in Arctic ice, diseases that have not circulated in the air for millions of years...Which means our systems would have no idea how to fight back...Zika may also be a good model of a second worrying effect - disease mutation” -Economic Collapse -Climate Conflict (“for every half degree of warming, [researchers] say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict”) - “Systems” (Wallace-Wells calls them “cascades”, climate scientists call them “systems crises” and the American military a “threat multiplier”: “the multiplication when it falls short of conflict, produces migration, that is climate refugees. Since 2008, by one count, it has already produced 22 million of them”.They make the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Death, Famine, War and Conquest) look positively tame.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. Depicted from left to right are Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. The Lamb is visible at the top.
That’s what makes The Uninhabitable Earth a must read for climate deniers too. The mounting evidence is such, especially when marshalled together as done here with impartial, scientific observations, statistics and projections, that climate deniers are now in a position similar to those arguing that the earth is flat or was created four thousand years ago in one week.
...
Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
Flooding in Annapolis, Maryland (US). A man observes a stretch of Dock Street in Annapolis, Md., that flooded after the area received over three quarters of an inch of rain in 24 hours on Jan. 25, 2010. (Photo by Matt Rath/Chesapeake Bay Program)Two books that changed the world: David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, makes it impossible to ignore the issueYou are concerned with climate change but the avalanche of news numbs you. Don’t feel guilty, you are not alone. Many are like you, literally turned off - the problem feels like it’s happening on another planet. But there is one book out there that you should read this year if you read nothing else. It will change how you perceive the world and our future forever:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells, a columnist and Deputy Editor at New York Magazine (published by Penguin, February 2019).Wallace-Wells is no tree-hugger climate activist. He’s a serious investigative journalist, he goes to the sources and interviews the people involved. His book is a compendium of the latest research findings, presented in clear, sober language. And it is a veritable shocker.
There are two reasons for that.
One is that Wallace-Wells has a knack for zeroing in on the unusual striking image, things that climate change will bring about and that you probably never thought of. To illustrate how he does it, I’ll just quote one example but there are many more. Speaking of insect migrations caused by global warming, he writes:
"The imperious West has spent five centuries looking down its nose at the plight of those living within the pale of tropical disease, and one wonders how that will change when mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue are flying through the streets of Copenhagen and Chicago, too."
The other reason is that we are used to getting climate news in bits and pieces, not all of it together. That’s what makes the first part of his book, aptly titled “Elements of Chaos”, so arresting. The “elements” are divided in 12 chapters whose headings make for a truly scary list precisely because they are happening together:
Heath Death -Hunger -Drowning -Wildfire -Disasters No Longer Natural (“in a four-degree-warmer world, the earth’s ecosystem will boil with so many disasters that we will just start calling them ‘weather’: out of control typhoons and tornadoes and floods and droughts”) -Freshwater Drain -Dying Oceans -Unbreathable Air -Plagues of Warming (“trapped in Arctic ice, diseases that have not circulated in the air for millions of years...Which means our systems would have no idea how to fight back...Zika may also be a good model of a second worrying effect - disease mutation” -Economic Collapse -Climate Conflict (“for every half degree of warming, [researchers] say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict”) - “Systems” (Wallace-Wells calls them “cascades”, climate scientists call them “systems crises” and the American military a “threat multiplier”: “the multiplication when it falls short of conflict, produces migration, that is climate refugees. Since 2008, by one count, it has already produced 22 million of them”.They make the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Death, Famine, War and Conquest) look positively tame.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. Depicted from left to right are Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. The Lamb is visible at the top.That’s what makes The Uninhabitable Earth a must read for climate deniers too. The mounting evidence is such, especially when marshalled together as done here with impartial, scientific observations, statistics and projections, that climate deniers are now in a position similar to those arguing that the earth is flat or was created four thousand years ago in one week.
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Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
June 7, 2019
Europe's Darkest Hour: The Danger Comes from the UK and Italy
Two political developments threaten Europe: A no-deal Brexit that would certainly hurt the British economy but would also be painful on the continent, and an out-of-control deficit in Italy. Taken separately, Europe could handle the issues. But the problem is that they come together.The power of Eurosceptic politicians is definitely on the increase across Europe. It has always been so in the Visegrad group of countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) where populists are firmly in government, running increasingly “illiberal democracies”. Hungary’s battle against philanthropist George Soros is a good illustration of what is wrong in those countries.
Yet the threat to Europe seems relatively minor. After all, those countries were always on the periphery of Europe. They were latecomers to the European Union and, because of the Soviet legacy, it surprises no one that the bulk of their population is apparently not attached to democratic values.
What is new is that traditionally liberal West European democracies are now also following in the populist footsteps of Visegrad countries. It first happened in the UK with the June 2016 decision to leave the EU.
The Brexit referendum was astonishingly mismanaged from the start with no requirement to ensure that a real majority had voted Brexit (they hadn’t) and no control over fake news (notably over supposed migrant invasions or Boris Johnson’s famously false promise of regaining £350 million pounds from Brussels).
Yet Conservatives ignored the democratic failures of that referendum and were quick to jump on the bandwagon of Brexit, claiming that it was the sacrosanct “will of the people” and had to be honoured at all costs.
Since June 2018, the UK is no longer alone on that path. Italy joined it when two populist politicians, Di Maio, the Five Star Movement leader and Salvini, the Lega leader came together to form a government. The alliance looked fragile from the start, the two are unlikely bedfellows.
The Five Star Movement is a leftist populism colored by some socialist fantasies (like the Reddito di Cittadinanza, citizens’ income). The Lega is extreme right, with neo-Nazi tendencies - but the government is holding up surprisingly well, even though the balance of power has totally shifted, putting Salvini firmly in the driver seat. Not only did Salvini win a hefty 34% at the European parliament elections in May, but the latest polls in June show he’s ahead by another two points, around 36% against Di Maio’s paltry 16%, a further one percent drop.
Let’s take a closer look at what is happening in the UK and Italy, the two major battlegrounds where the future of Europe is now being played.
The UK: A Future American Colony?...
Read the rest on Impakter magazine, click here.
June 1, 2019
European Elections 2019: A Watershed and Here is Why
My latest article on Impakter:
The 2019 European Parliament elections mark a real watershed for Europe. We are in new territory. European politics will never be the same again. Where there was at best indifference to the dream of a United States of Europe, there is now enthusiasm. And interest in reforming the European institutions to make them work better and bring them closer to the people.
Paradoxically, this upsurge in “more Europe” (to use Merkel’s term) is the result of the populist-nationalist- sovereignist parties’ own campaigns across Europe. With an explicit agenda to undermine European institutions and turn the clock back to the 1960’s - to a De Gaulle vision of a “Europe of Nations” stunningly unsuited to a globalized world, whether one likes globalization or not - they scared people into voting against them. Europeanists, already shocked by the Brexit mess, could not allow them into the control room of either the EU Parliament or the EU Commission.
Populists are both winners and losers in this election: they gained votes but not enough to get into that control room. They are certainly here to stay but they also hit a glass ceiling that they are not likely to ever break through. Because, policy-wise, they bet on the wrong horse: migration instead of climate change. And on migration, they are not able to offer a solution. It is a divisive issue for everyone, populists included. While climate change concerns everyone and the solution exists: Containing greenhouse gas emissions and working towards a sustainable circular economy is something everyone can embrace.
Here is what happened and why it’s a watershed.
Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
The 2019 European Parliament elections mark a real watershed for Europe. We are in new territory. European politics will never be the same again. Where there was at best indifference to the dream of a United States of Europe, there is now enthusiasm. And interest in reforming the European institutions to make them work better and bring them closer to the people.
Paradoxically, this upsurge in “more Europe” (to use Merkel’s term) is the result of the populist-nationalist- sovereignist parties’ own campaigns across Europe. With an explicit agenda to undermine European institutions and turn the clock back to the 1960’s - to a De Gaulle vision of a “Europe of Nations” stunningly unsuited to a globalized world, whether one likes globalization or not - they scared people into voting against them. Europeanists, already shocked by the Brexit mess, could not allow them into the control room of either the EU Parliament or the EU Commission.
Populists are both winners and losers in this election: they gained votes but not enough to get into that control room. They are certainly here to stay but they also hit a glass ceiling that they are not likely to ever break through. Because, policy-wise, they bet on the wrong horse: migration instead of climate change. And on migration, they are not able to offer a solution. It is a divisive issue for everyone, populists included. While climate change concerns everyone and the solution exists: Containing greenhouse gas emissions and working towards a sustainable circular economy is something everyone can embrace.
Here is what happened and why it’s a watershed.
Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
May 16, 2019
Should Robots Be Built to Feel Pain?
My latest article on Impakter, just published, about AI and how we should organize our future with sentient machines. Should we build them to feel pain and other emotions? What is the point of it? What are the dangers?
Neku – Robot Lover Song (Featuring Aline) in Youtube videoWhat is the role of pain in our lives? Pain, we can all agree, is unpleasant, both physically and emotionally. Pain acts as an alarm when faced with danger. Pain can be excruciating, tragic, the forerunner of death. In short, when we feel pain, we feel more alive than ever. Now that robots play an increasing role in our society, should we design robots as sentient machines with the ability to feel pain?
Robots are everywhere in manufacturing, in agriculture, in transport and distribution, in communications, in the home. And they appear not just as androids like the famous science fiction author Isaac Asimov visualized 75 years ago, but in a vast range of devices, from autonomous vacuum cleaners to whole factory production lines and military drones.Arguably, it might make sense to endow some of them with the capacity to feel pain in situations where it could help the machine foresee a threat and save itself from possible damage. But should it be endowed with merely a series of physical reactions demonstrating pain or should it feel it as an emotion the way we humans feel it?When a machine feels pain, will it cry?Or an equally valid question: should it cry?The question of whether robots should feel pain may sound futile, but it’s not. With advances in computing power, particularly with quantum computing just around the corner, we are close to being able to create robots with General Artificial Intelligence. Not just a specific ability like beating human champions at difficult games like chess and Go, but a “general” intelligence that could lead soon to the dreaded Singularity, the point where Artificial Intelligence will surpass human intelligence.In short, we are headed towards a world where science fiction meets reality, where our planet hosts two types of “sentient machines”, us and the robots.How to Organize a World full of Sentient MachinesScientists have been working on this for several years, notably Beth Singler and Ewan St John Smith, both at Cambridge University.
... Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
Find out about our future with robots. Let me know what you think!
Neku – Robot Lover Song (Featuring Aline) in Youtube videoWhat is the role of pain in our lives? Pain, we can all agree, is unpleasant, both physically and emotionally. Pain acts as an alarm when faced with danger. Pain can be excruciating, tragic, the forerunner of death. In short, when we feel pain, we feel more alive than ever. Now that robots play an increasing role in our society, should we design robots as sentient machines with the ability to feel pain? Robots are everywhere in manufacturing, in agriculture, in transport and distribution, in communications, in the home. And they appear not just as androids like the famous science fiction author Isaac Asimov visualized 75 years ago, but in a vast range of devices, from autonomous vacuum cleaners to whole factory production lines and military drones.Arguably, it might make sense to endow some of them with the capacity to feel pain in situations where it could help the machine foresee a threat and save itself from possible damage. But should it be endowed with merely a series of physical reactions demonstrating pain or should it feel it as an emotion the way we humans feel it?When a machine feels pain, will it cry?Or an equally valid question: should it cry?The question of whether robots should feel pain may sound futile, but it’s not. With advances in computing power, particularly with quantum computing just around the corner, we are close to being able to create robots with General Artificial Intelligence. Not just a specific ability like beating human champions at difficult games like chess and Go, but a “general” intelligence that could lead soon to the dreaded Singularity, the point where Artificial Intelligence will surpass human intelligence.In short, we are headed towards a world where science fiction meets reality, where our planet hosts two types of “sentient machines”, us and the robots.How to Organize a World full of Sentient MachinesScientists have been working on this for several years, notably Beth Singler and Ewan St John Smith, both at Cambridge University.
... Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
Find out about our future with robots. Let me know what you think!
