The Long Emergency: Transportation

Many people who consider themselves to be environmentalists have a romantic vision of people living in rural communities in some form of harmony with nature. That sort of worked, or could have worked, before the demographic transition and the population explosion we looked at in the first installment of this series. But it doesn't work with 7 billion people or even 1 billion.

Remember that half of the earth's habitable surface is already dedicated to agriculture. Rural places aren't generally natural at all. And as affluent granola crunchers build their houses along the wilderness interface, they degrade what's left of the wilderness and consume resources commuting. In low income countries, rural villagers do not live in harmony with nature, they despoil it.

While we ultimately need to reduce the human population, we must understand that the most sustainable way for people to live now is for most of them to be concentrated in cities. That gets them out of what's left of the wild and has many benefits for individuals and humanity as a whole. Benefits include:

• Better access to health care and to public health amenities is possible.
• Shorter distance to transport goods and people saves energy and time.
• Increase in labor productivity because you have a critical mass of people.
• People who live in urban areas earn more.
• Better sanitary services are possible: potable water, sanitation, transport and recycling of waste.
• Tight grouping of people allows social and cultural integration at a level not available to people in rural areas.
• Economic opportunities for people who would otherwise be destined to subsist without hope of economic improvement.
• Faster technological improvement, creation and dissemination of knowledge is facilitated.
• Reduced pressure on forest and wilderness areas from human population. 

But, if government doesn't make the necessary investments to make urban living socially and environmentally sustainable, all these good things won't happen. 

A new WRI working paper finds that though cities are hotspots for jobs and other opportunities, many urbanites are finding it increasingly difficult to access these benefits. Analysis of Mexico City and Johannesburg found that 56% and 42% of people, respectively, cannot easily get to jobs because of their location, limited transport options, or both. Many residents in these cities experience long and expensive commutes in often uncomfortable and unsafe vehicles through heavy traffic. Others have so few travel options or nearby opportunities they are essentially stranded.
The same patterns that restrict access in Mexico City and Johannesburg are present around the world. Access to jobs, healthcare, education and other opportunities are increasingly out of reach for millions of people like Emmanuel.

Okay. Take a look at this:



Most European cities feature wide sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and excellent mass transit that gets you everywhere quickly and cheaply. The Dutch have a culture of bicycling, and that's how people get to work, and to school. In those two photos from Amsterdam, there is a single car. In Basel, there are hardly any stop lights because they aren't necessary. People just don't use cars to get around town.

Here's a conception of a redevelopment proposal for New Haven. Note the transit station in the back, the mixed uses, and the food environment. If you live in this kind of a neighborhood, you can walk to get to most of what you need and take the train if you need  to go far.



I wanted to show you a picture of Norwalk, California by contrast, but Blogger isn't letting me post three images for some reason. But you can follow this link to see the alternative. Where would you want to live?

Sunday Sermonette: I hate it when that happens

As we continue with the plagues, keep in mind that the Torah as it now exists was published in the 5th Century BCE, long after these events supposedly occurred, and that the Egyptian captivity is entirely mythical. The composition of the various elements of the Torah happened over the preceding 200 years or so. Psalm 78 recounts this mythical history but lists only 6 plagues. Psalm 105 lists 7 plagues, in a different order. Apparently someone decided to insert 3 more to make 10, but who knows why?

^1 [a]Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. ² If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. ³ The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. ⁴ The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.’”
⁵ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.’”

It's mysterious that God needs Aaron to use his staff in order to make this happen. God can't just do it himself.

⁶ So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. ⁷ But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

Again, the point of this seems to be that the magicians are trying to show that God is nothing special, they can do it too. But it's hard to see how they could have demonstrated this since the frogs were already there. Also, evidently, they couldn't make it stop. For my part, I will say that this is a pretty lame plague. It might be annoying, but some people might find it amusing, or even nutritious. (I'm sure the French weren't the first people ever to eat frogs.) 

⁸ Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
⁹ Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”
¹⁰ “Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.

Why does Pharaoh want to wait until tomorrow, if the frogs are really so awful?

Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. ¹¹ The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.”
¹² After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. ¹³ And the Lord did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. ¹⁴ They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. ¹⁵ But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.

¹⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” ¹⁷ They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. ¹⁸ But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not.

The Hebrew word is not specific. KJV translates this as lice, but it could be any small arthropod. In any case, this is the first miracle the magicians can't duplicate. Apparently gnats or lice are harder to make than frogs.

Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, ¹⁹ the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the Lord had said.
²⁰ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the river and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. ²¹ If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies; even the ground will be covered with them.
²² “‘But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. ²³ I will make a distinction^[b] between my people and your people. This sign will occur tomorrow.’”

God is moving on to a new phase with the plagues, now demarcating Goshen and the Hebrews so they will not be affected. Unfortunately this does create a contradiction with a later event which is the central event in the Jewish liturgical calendar. Oh well.

²⁴ And the Lord did this. Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh’s palace and into the houses of his officials; throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies.
²⁵ Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land.”
²⁶ But Moses said, “That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the Lord our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? ²⁷ We must take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, as he commands us.”
²⁸ Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the Lord your God in the wilderness, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.”
²⁹ Moses answered, “As soon as I leave you, I will pray to the Lord, and tomorrow the flies will leave Pharaoh and his officials and his people. Only let Pharaoh be sure that he does not act deceitfully again by not letting the people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
³⁰ Then Moses left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord, ³¹ and the Lord did what Moses asked. The flies left Pharaoh and his officials and his people; not a fly remained. ³² But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.

Footnotes:

1. Exodus 8:1 In Hebrew texts 8:1-4 is numbered 7:26-29, and 8:5-32 is numbered 8:1-28.
2. Exodus 8:23 Septuagint and Vulgate; Hebrew will put a deliverance

You get what you pay for

And if you are obscenely wealthy, what you pay for is Republican politicians. Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times summarizes the Congressional Research Service analysis of the effects of the December 2017 tax cut legislation. Bullets:

• The tax cuts had a negligible effect on economic growth, 0.3% at most.
• Far from paying for themselves as Republican proponents claimed, they produced less than 1/20th of the growth that would have been needed
• In fact, they caused federal revenue to fall. Overall revenue fell in 2018, largely because of a $40-billion decline in corporate tax revenue.
• But working individuals didn't get a tax cut at all.  Although the legislation increased the standard deduction and child credit, whatever tax reductions those would produce for families were “largely offset” by the elimination of personal exemptions, and limitations on itemized deductions such as those for state and local taxes.
• People didn't get a wage increase either. “There is no indication of a surge in wages in 2018 either compared to history or relative to GDP growth.” Real wages (that is, adjusted for inflation) increased by only 1.2% in 2018. “Ordinary workers had very little growth in wage rates.”
• Corporate shareholders, however, have made out great. The repatriated earnings mostly have been used for “a record-breaking amount of stock buybacks, with $1 trillion announced by the end of 2018.”

Hiltzik concludes:

The bottom line, then, is becoming clearer with every quarter. The tax cuts did almost nothing for ordinary Americans and may even have cost them money. The apparent gains in their income were negligible and short-lived. Wealthy Americans reaped the benefits of lower taxes and higher dividends. The cuts had a negligible effect on U.S. economic growth while depriving the government of revenue.

Put it all together and this massive restructuring of the U.S. tax system should prompt average Americans to ask Republicans in Congress and the White House that age-old question: Who are you really working for?

We already know the answer.