Iraq orders Blackwater to leave
Bob Morris @ Sep 17th 2007 11:10 - Category: Unfiled ;
This after a gunfight in which eight civilians died.
Archive for September 17th, 2007
The root problem: too many people?
Bob Morris @ Sep 17th 2007 00:17 - Category: Climate change, Peak oil ;
The question is being raised more and more. In the coming era of climate change and peak oil, where resources are becoming depleted and carbon emissions change the weather, isn’t the underlying problem one of overpopulation?
SusHI raises the question in a thoughtful post (the graph is from them) as does an Op-Ed in The Guardian.
As the environment finally gets the prominence it deserves, some environmentalists are prepared to assert that population management has to be on the agenda.
There’s no point giving up your meat and your car, recycling your rubbish and producing lots of children. The challenge is to have that debate while steering well clear of racism - or of the authoritarianism that lurks in the background of environmentalism.
China mandates that families only have two children. An unfortunate result of this is that first-born girls sometimes are deliberately killed so the parents can try to have boys instead. There’s little chance repressive authoritarian methods like that could ever be instituted in the U.S., nor should they be. And the obvious racism that could happen when an area decides to keep Them out must also be avoided.
Optimum Population ran the numbers and concluded
Even if the world managed to achieve a 52 per cent cut in its 1990 emission levels by 2050 - not far off the IPCC’s 60 per cent target - it would be canceled out by population growth.
Can the planet really handle 2.5 billion more people in the next 43 years? I doubt it. Sane and rational ways to slow population growth need to be found else Mother Nature might do it for us.
Northern Rock. British bank run
Bob Morris @ Sep 17th 2007 00:08 - Category: Credit crisis ;
Northern Rock, a bank in England that is their fifth largest mortgage lender, has been decimated hit by the subprime crisis, and will probably be sold to a consortium to stave off what was becoming into a run on the bank.
I assume the only way anyone would buy Northern Rock is by purchasing its loan portfolio assets at pennies on the dollar. They got into trouble by borrowing short-term money to re-invest at long-term higher rates offered by mortgages, a risky strategy made worse by being leveraged. It all blew up when the underlying mortgages became highly risky investments and the margin calls started, leading to a death spiral. Then the Bank of England attempted a bailout, which only made things worse by panicking depositors , who then began withdrawing money in huge quantities. Computer systems crumbled under the load, and bank branches ran out of money. Which of course just spurred more to withdraw money.
There will be more like them, both in England and here.
