This and that

Responding to some of the responses to my last post on global carbon emissions, yes, we agree on the facts, the issue seems to be the implications. It is correct that at this moment, the U.S. accounts for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and we have been heading downward; while China in particular has been going in the wrong direction and is the largest emitter. Maybe "fairness" is an issue here, since the U.S. is responsible for far more cumulative emissions and China's emissions per capita are not as large, but given the crisis facing humanity I think that's pretty much beside the point. What matters is what is to be done? 

Fifteen percent isn't trivial and it still matters that the U.S. continue to reduce emissions, as quickly as possible. If we say, "We won't bother to do anything until China takes effective action" that isn't going to help the situation one bit. We need to be an example to the world that creating a sustainable economy is consistent with prosperity, quality of life, and equity. And as I say, we need to engage with China and India on this problem. Worrying about whether they are democracies or their leaders are good people is a separate issue.

In health news, severe shortages of common, inexpensive generic chemotherapy agents are putting the lives of cancer patients at risk. As long as we leave drug manufacturing to private corporations and the profit motive, we're going to have problems like this, and the corresponding problem of medications that are absurdly expensive and largely unaffordable. So yes, "free enterprise" and capitalism are not capable of delivering what humanity needs in this instance, as in many others.

For example, large hospital chains and insurance companies are buying up physician practices and turning what had been independent professionals into high status proletarians whose employers only use them to squeeze out money. They have to churn out visits and billable services, and they can't take care of their patients. As a result, many of them are experiencing what's called moral injury.  Physicians, despite their high social status, actually have a high rate of suicide. 

In July 2018, [psychiatrist Wendy] Dean published an essay with Simon G. Talbot, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, that argued that many physicians were suffering from a condition known as moral injury. Military psychiatrists use the term to describe an emotional wound sustained when, in the course of fulfilling their duties, soldiers witnessed or committed acts — raiding a home, killing a noncombatant — that transgressed their core values. Doctors on the front lines of America’s profit-driven health care system were also susceptible to such wounds, Dean and Talbot submitted, as the demands of administrators, hospital executives and insurers forced them to stray from the ethical principles that were supposed to govern their profession. The pull of these forces left many doctors anguished and distraught, caught between the Hippocratic oath and “the realities of making a profit from people at their sickest and most vulnerable.”

 

There is a solution to these problems.