Powerpoint Corrupts Absolutely  

The Guardian has some gloomy predictions about conflict over fresh water in the "Cost of water shortage: civil unrest, mass migration and economic collapse" (check out the "three visions" at the end of the article).

Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy. That was the bleak assessment yesterday by forecasters from some of the world's leading corporate users of fresh water, 200 of the largest food, oil, water and chemical companies.

Analysts working for Shell, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Cargill and other companies which depend heavily on secure water supplies, yesterday suggested the next 20 years would be critical as countries became richer, making heavier demands on scarce water supplies.

In three future scenarios, the businesses foresee growing civil unrest, boom and bust economic cycles in Asia and mass migrations to Europe. But they also say scarcity will encourage the development of new water-saving technologies and better management of water by business.

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According to the institute's assessment, Egypt imports more than half of its food because it does not have enough water to grow it domestically and Australia is faced with water scarcity in the Murray-Darling Basin as a result of diverting large quantities of water for use in agriculture. The Aral Sea in central Asia is another example of massive diversion of water for agriculture in the Soviet era causing widespread water scarcity, and one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

Researchers say it is possible to reduce water scarcity, feed people and address poverty, but the key trade-off is with the environment. "People and their governments will face some tough decisions on how to allocate and manage water," says the institute's report.

Alex at WorldChanging has a post on "Growing Oil" - Brazil's biofuels future (I guess they'd better make sure they have enough water for this).

Brazil may soon become the world's first biofuels economy. Indeed, Brazil has made kicking the oil habit a national priority, on par with redistributing digital technologies to its people.

Brazil has been manufacturing biodiesel and ethanol fuels for decades, a strategy spurred in part by national security concerns on the part of the former military dictatorship.

But the degree to which Brazilians have embraced biofuels today is truly staggering. Brazil is a world leader in biofuel technologies. More than 40% of Brazil's energy comes from biofuels and renewables. This year, over 90% of all new cars sold in Brazil will be flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on either gasoline or biofuels. Those cars can fill up at over 30,000 biofuel filling stations across the country.

It's all part of Brazil's "revolucao energetica" (energy revolution). As Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (or "Lula") pointed out in a recent opinion piece

In the search for new, sustainable economic models, the international community is coming to recognise the need for a radical rethink in relation to the generation of energy, and Brazil is responding by using clean, renewable, alternative energy sources to an ever-greater extent.

Indeed, in speeches now, Lula supposedly routinely calls on the rest of the world to join Brazil in "planting oil."

On the face of it, this is a bright green energy miracle, but things are not always what they seem.

There is, of course, first of all, the biofuel dilemma to be dealt with: that much energy is consumed growing the crops from which biofuels are made, and their production can cut into needed food production and carry other environmental costs.

One of the largest costs, in Brazil, is the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Much of Brazil's biofuel production comes from soy beans, and soya production is one of the key drivers of rainforest destruction.

The cutting of the Amazon is obviously a huge problem in terms of protecting biodiversity. But it also undermines the very goal of building a climate-friendly economy Brazilians seem to genuinely cherish: as one recent report puts it "Deforestation is responsible for 80 per cent of Brazil's carbon dioxide emissions."

One of the answers is to make better use of the farmland already available and of the biomass already being produced. Another is to use smart breeding techniques to improve the suitability of crops for producing biofuels. Still another is to focus on energy efficiency at least as much as energy source.

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The widespread use of terra preta techniques is a long way off, if it's possible at all, but the combination of on-the-ground progress and looming innovation here is truly remarkable. Indeed, the potential here is that Brazil's carbohydrate economy offers one model of what a bright green energy system might look like.

An insane economist is advocating that the best solution for global warming is to do nothing (and he's not advocating Jay Hanson's society of sloth approach either). Grist is running a poll on the question "can capitalism solve global warming" - please join me in voting for a carbon tax - the solution to all that ails us (well - most of it anyway).

Don Boudreaux, an economist, argues that doing nothing is the best policy for global warming.

As David, biodiversivist, Tim Lambert, and ThinkProgress point out, this argument has a lot of screws loose. (ThinkProgress also has a picture of Boudreaux, who looks slightly insane. He is also, by sheerest chance, with the Cato Institute, which according to a book by two University of Colorado law school scholars, "receives most of its financial support from entrepreneurs, securities and commodities traders, and corporations such as oil and gas companies, Federal Express, and Philip Morris that abhor government regulation.")

Just for a moment, let's ignore the whiff of prostitution. Let's ignore the alarming changes that global warming is expected to bring to climate, and the worsening of drought, floods, forest insect pests, hurricanes, species extinctions, among other aspects of life on earth.

Let's focus instead on the politics of the claim.

Because it's not just Boudreaux saying that we must choose between capitalism and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Listen to many a prominent speaker on the right on this subject, and before long you will hear some version of the claim that global warming is a plot to "take down capitalism," as a writer for the National Review recently put it.

Rush Limbaugh says it virtually every time he bellows on the topic. (In January of this year, I heard Limbaugh reveal that believers in global warming were not just "anti-capitalists" but "Communists." But I can't prove it, because although he boasts incessantly about his show's success, Limbaugh doesn't offer any sort of transcript without a subscription.)

Conversely, many moderates and even conservatives think capitalism can survive -- with a few changes. The Economist has been calling for a carbon tax for years. Moderates such as Thomas Friedman and conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan have also spoken up for an energy tax. These prominent voices, along with big corporations like GE and investment firms like Goldman Sachs, don't think tackling global warming means an end to capitalism.

In the words of playwright Sherry Kramer, they seem to think: "Greed got us into this mess; greed will get us out."

Complicating matters is the fact that many environmentalists agree with the capitalists that global warming challenges our economic system on a fundamental level.

Bill McKibben argues as much in a column this month in one this nation's most popular magazines, National Geographic...

I might add, one more time, that environmentalist and capitalist aren't mutually exclusive concepts - and making it sound like they are 2 separate camps is tantamount to agreeing with that fat fascist oaf Limbaugh.

Grist also has a post on "Natural Capitalism".

An excellent professor of mine at MIT introduced our class to the concept of "natural capitalism," pioneered by Paul Hawkins and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins. Their 1999 book on the subject, probably familiar to many of you, was an eye-opener for me at the time. Here is a short synopsis of the book from Publisher's Weekly:

The short answer to the logical question (What is natural capitalism?) is that it is a way of thinking that seeks to apply market principles to all sources of material value, most importantly natural resources. The authors have two related goals: first, to show the vast array of ecologically smart options available to businesses; second, to argue that it is possible for society and industry to adopt them. Hawken and the Lovinses acknowledge such barriers as the high initial costs of some techniques, lack of knowledge of alternatives, entrenched ways of thinking and other cultural factors. In looking at options for transportation (including the development of ultralight, electricity-powered automobiles), energy use, building design, and waste reduction and disposal, the book's reach is phenomenal. It belongs to the galvanizing tradition of Frances Moore Lapp 's Diet for a Small Planet and Stewart Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog.

As David has mentioned, many political moderates like Thomas Friedman argue that this reshaping of traditional capitalism is the only logical solution to our current energy and environmental debacle. In fact, a recent Discover Channel special, "Addicted to Oil," featured Mr. Friedman running around the country looking at market-friendly solutions. One of his stops was the Rocky Mountain Institute, where he interviewed Amory Lovins about switchgrass and its potential to replace gasoline as our prime transportation energy source. (If you haven't seen this show, check it out. Unlike the well-earned but hyperconfident editorial style he brings to matters on the Middle East, Friedman is naive and downright dorky at times.)

On the other hand, I was heavily swayed by Bill McKibben's call for a new environmentalism after reading his essay in last month's National Geographic. After all, even if we can succeed in becoming addicted to efficiency rather than to say, oil, what will we do with that extra money and extra time? Our current consumer-driven ethos dictates that we buy more things with that saved money. Less fuel spent on gasoline? Buy yourself a new iPod! Saving money on electrical bills? Go out and buy a new wardrobe. In order to actually interrupt the current slide towards climate destruction -- rather than just shift the burden elsewhere -- a radical re-examination of what makes us fundamentally happy as human beings is required.

Jamais at Open The Future points to a post at Crooked Timber on the perils of planning the invasion of oil prodcuing countries using Powerpoint (I'll have to fight off the urge to send this link around at work, along with the stronger urge to consider the merits of my own presentations - I really need to work on my Presentation Zen).

Powerpoint is one of the necessary evils of the consulting world. Not necessary in the sense of being required to do your job well, but necessary in the sense of being required by many clients as an artifact of your work. It's entirely possible to construct useful and informative digital presentations (see, for example, Al Gore's Keynote deck in An Inconvenient Truth), but all too often these slideshows end up confusing more than illuminating.

Exhibit A, cited by Crooked Timber, in the wonderfully-titled Powerpoint Corrupts the Point Absolutely:

This is a slide from a Pentagon presentation on the reconstruction of Iraq, pulled from Thomas Ricks' book Fiasco. Setting aside the viability of the strategy, it's mind-boggling that anyone could think that this would be an enlightening construction of information.

My Powerpoint strategy? Pretty pictures, with a minimum of text, that underscore what I'm saying without distracting the audience.

Cryptogon points to a new entrant into the "free energy world" - an Irish company called Steorn. While I'd be more than a little surprised if anything came of this, the free energy meme is a tenacious one and always piques my curiosity (lets face it - who amongst us really understands physics at a subatomic level - as far as I can tell modern day quantum physicists aren't that far off shamans).

An Irish technology firm issued a challenge to the world's scientific community on Friday to give its verdict on technology it says smashes one of the basic laws of physics by producing "free energy."

Dublin-based Steorn said it had placed an advertisement in The Economist magazine seeking 12 top physicists to examine the technology -- based on the interaction of magnetic fields -- and publish their results.

"We fully accept there is going to be cynicism surrounding this but what we're saying to the world of science is come and prove us wrong," said Steorn Chief Executive Sean McCarthy.

Last word goes to Billmon, pondering the cluelessness of George Will about realism and the genesis of the situation in the middle east (to which I'll once again note there is but one solution - ending our dependence on oil and disengaging from the region to let the locals sort their own political systems out).

In which George Will demonstrates that he's more out of touch than the neocons he criticizes:

The [administration] official is correct that it is wrong "to think that somehow we are responsible -- that the actions of the jihadists are justified by U.S. policies." But few outside the fog of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that.

Note the straw man Will uses to try to knock down the straw man set up by his anonymous neocon. This is intended to distinguish himself from those who do think U.S. policies are, at least in large part, responsible for the rise of the jihadis. He's turned us into the functional equivalent of Ward Churchill and sentenced us to wander for eternity in the "fog of paranoia."

I think we can best describe this as the "pseudo-realist" approach to foreign relations. Will wants us to understand that he's a hardheaded guy and doesn't buy into Shrub's democracy illusion. But that doesn't mean he's willing to let go of his illusion, which is that the United States has been a beneficient force in the Middle East, virtuously upholding "stability" for the benefit of all -- the proverbial cop on the beat.

The truth, of course, is quite different. The United States has tried to enforce stability in the Middle East because until Commander Codpiece came along foreign policy elites and American presidents alike viewed it as inherently in our interests to do so -- to protect the flow of oil, keep the Soviets out of the region, open markets to Western capital, and keep the Arab-Israeli conflict from getting out of hand.

However, this most emphatically was not done for the benefit of the people of the Middle East. It was for our benefit, and, secondarily, for the benefit of the colonized elites who transferred their loyalties -- or at least their services -- to America after the old colonial powers exited the region.

You can argue (imperialists almost always do) that the masses benefited from this stability because it created security, promoted economic growth and improved living standards. The British crown tried that same argument on the American colonists in the 1770s with a notable lack of success -- and they were all Englishmen. But there is some validity to it.

However, our stability fetish (and our commercial interests) also required us to do business with brutal dictators and/or prop up corrupt feudal elites -- many of them little more than rent-seeking parasites perched on oil fields disguised as countries. Where authentic or semi-authentic nationalist movements appeared -- in Egypt, for example -- we either tried to crush them or buy them off, and usually managed to do one or the other.

We also encouraged our "friends" in the region to Westernize themselves, to abandon or at least dilute their Islamic identities and become part of the globalized culture of capitalism (not that they needed much encouraging). As the energy importance of the region increased and the penetration of Western capital and culture deepened, so did the level of U.S. intervention -- always in the interests of that precious stability.

It may sound like I'm just reciting the plot from Syriana. But these were real policies, deliberately pursued over many years. And they were, by and large, extremely successful -- both for us and for our clients in the region. They were, however, abhorrent to the fundamentalist, anti-colonial Islamic movements (like the Muslim Brotherhood) that had existed in the region since the days of the British and the French. And they became increasingly abhorrent as our political and military presence in the region expanded and our alliance with Israel became increasingly open-ended. Abhorrence turned to rage as our campaign to contain Saddam degenerated into a long, grinding seige of Iraq (with the Iraqi people trapped inside) and the CIA and the Pentagon helped our Egyptian puppets crush the Islamist revolt on the upper Nile.

Did these policies "justify" the rise of the jihadist movement? Ah, that's a moral argument and Will should know that realists -- real realists, unlike his pseudo variety -- don't do morality. All that's necessary is to recognize that the jihadis regard themselves as fully justified, and are acting on that belief. Like all policies, our relentless promotion of stability in the Middle East had a price, and now we're paying it.

In that sense, if no other, America is "responsible" for the rise of what Shrub likes to call Islamofascism. His own rhetoric about democratization (a.k.a. the "forward strategy of freedom") implicitly recognizes this. It's an effort, albeit a hopelessly naive and contradictory one, to address a problem that Will has decided simply doesn't exist -- that is, outside the blogosphere's "fog of paranoia."

So who's the realist and who's the fool here? Or rather, who's the bigger fool?