Afghanistan update: It's really bad

Taliban flag flying over the main square in Kunduz yesterday

The New York Times writes:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban seized three Afghan cities on Sunday, including the commercial hub of Kunduz, officials said, escalating a sweeping offensive that has claimed five provincial capitals in three days and shown how little control the government has over the country without American military power to protect it.

Never before in 20 years of war had the Taliban directly assaulted more than one provincial capital at a time. Now, three fell on Sunday alone — Kunduz, Sar-i-Pul and Taliqan, all in the north — and even more populous cities are under siege, in a devastating setback for the Afghan government.

The fall of these cities is taking place just weeks before U.S. forces are set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan, laying bare a difficult predicament for President Biden.

Since the U.S. withdrawal began, the Taliban have captured more than half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. And their recent attacks on provincial capitals have violated the 2020 peace deal between the Taliban and the United States. Under that deal, which laid the path for the American withdrawal, the Taliban committed to not attacking provincial centers like Kunduz.

Now the map looks like this:

The government doesn't control much. It is rapidly collapsing, as one would expect of a grossly incompetent, deeply corrupt kleptocratic organization.[1] Also notice how useless the February 2020 agreement that the self-described world's best negotiator and world's smartest person negotiated. That agreement wasn't worth spit the day it was signed by the world's allegedly best negotiator and smartest person. 

A bit of historical and personal context 

If I recall correctly, in ~2003-2004 or thereabouts, the Afghan government kicked US auditors out of the country, accusing them of trampling on the sacred sovereignty of Afghanistan. In fact, the auditors were limiting theft of US tax dollars too much. The kleptocrats were pissed that they could not steal freely. They wanted more. The news article I first read those fun facts in was also the first time I recall seeing the word kleptocracy used to describe a country's government. That stuff really stuck with me. When the US auditors got kicked out was when I first concluded that Afghanistan would probably end up being a tragic disaster like Vietnam. And, there's other significant parallels with Vietnam.[2]

Questions: Was the February 2020 agreement between the US and the Taliban good or bad in terms of what it contained (discussed in this post)? Will the Afghan kleptocracy survive for at least six months as US experts have confidently predicted, or will it fall sooner to the Taliban? Should the US welcome the kleptocrats and their stolen billions of US tax dollars into the US so we can get some return on our investment, or is that a bad idea and the kleptocrats should live in France and spend our money there? Because they keep electing crooks and/or liars to office, do the American people deserve to lose their civil liberties, the Republic, the rule of law and democracy?

Footnotes: 

1. I know, deeply corrupt and kleptocratic are duplicative. Bad grammar. I just did it for emphasis.

2. For example, this from the Washington Post in 2019:

U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found. 

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.  

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.  

The interviews also highlight the U.S. government’s botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.

The U.S. government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.

That sure does sound familiar. The press fighting in court to release information that shows the US government to be a bunch of lying liars about a hopeless war. 

Of course we don't know how much we spent. The auditors were kicked out years ago.

What the hell?!?

Obama’s 60th Birthday 

So the party went forward with a “trimmed down” guest list. Who got UN-invited? Mostly Obama’s prior W.H. staffers and “non-essential” types (i.e., read “not Hollywood” types).  Hollywood types and their hair and makeup staff were given a “party pass.”  😳

Now, it’s not the invited/not invited part that sticks in my craw.  No. That’s not the bigger point here. It’s that the birthday party went forward in the first place, in spite of the more virulent delta strain raging on.  I don’t care if this milestone birthday was many months in the planning/making, and that everyone who attended was a low risk.  “Not good enough” (reason) to my way of thinking.

Granted, I don’t know the whole story, but on its surface, I see it as sending the wrong message to the populace-at-large.  Same thing with that “Sturgis Motorcycle Rally” in South Dakota.  Neither gets a pass with me. Both are ridiculous and beyond stupid. ☹️

I’m really disappointed that Obama would let the party go forward.  Yes, you can’t make everyone happy.  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  But Obama’s stock just went down a few notches with me, a Democrat. 

So, what’s your opinion on this?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Chapter review: The Blueprint for an Assault on Civil Rights

Context

This review covers the introduction and chapter 1, The Blueprint for an Assault on Civil Rights, of Sarah Posner's 2020 book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. Posner is a journalist (JD, University of Virginia) who spent years doing research among Evangelical Christians. She attended various Evangelical activities, ranging from national meetings to small prayer groups in churches and people’s homes. She listened carefully to their fears and aspirations. She watched how they operate, usually quietly and actively shunning major publicity wherever possible.

What she sees is a political movement completely focused on opposing secularism, and the civil liberties of non-Christians and minorities. The movement intends to elevate Christianity and White people to a privileged central place in American government, society and commerce. They want government and society to operate on a biblical worldview and biblical law. The do not want government or society to be based on the Constitution or the laws of mere, fallible men. 

Posner traces the modern origin of this movement to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The court order to desegregate public schools sparked an intense backlash among White Evangelical Christians (WECs; Christian nationalists) and it launched a political movement that culminated in power and influence with the election of the ex-president and his close, calculated alignment with powerful WECs. Once established as acceptable among powerful elite WECs, Trump’s influence and acceptance spread within months to the rank and file.

Like no other Republican candidate, the ex-president spoke directly and clearly to the fears, resentments and hate that decades of WEC propaganda had instilled in the rank and file. They loved Trump and were loyal, even despite most of them understanding that he was a cheating philanderer and clueless about Christianity. One astonishing thing about the WEC movement is that it not just overlooks, but even justifies and glorifies the ex-president’s rotten, immoral character and behaviors because he was chosen by God. The burden is on true believers look past his flaws to see God’s hand in human affairs. The burden is not on the ex-president to prove himself worthy.

The question now is whether the ex-president’s influence will remain strong and how the WEC movement’s push for power and privilege will play out. WECs sincerely and firmly believe that God chose the ex-president (i) to save Christianity from evil secularism and acceptance of civil liberties for detested groups including the LGBQT community, Muslims and racial minorities, and (ii) to rescue them from years of intense, harsh governmental and social persecution of Christianity and the exercise of religious freedom in public activities and private worship. What the WEC movement wants is power, wealth and exclusive privilege. The movement is willing to use all available means that it can get away with, moral or not, legal or not. For the WEC movement, the sacred ends fully justify all means, even evil ones. 

Introduction

The introduction of Posner's book is a short summary of the origins of the ex-president’s grip on the WEC movement. Posner writes:

“When Donald Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015, I was deeply skeptical that he would be their [the WECs] man. He did not even try to tell a personal salvation story or display the most rudimentary Bible knowledge. Instead, he was enthralling the alt-right, a once-fringe movement of White supremacists and neo-Nazis that was, alarmingly, was finding a foothold in mainstream politics as Trump buoyed them with his cruel nativism and his casual racism. But as Trump energized his sordid faction, he simultaneously drew the attention of curious white evangelicals, many of whom responded to his racist anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric, cheering it as a brave assault on political correctness. .... one thing became clear: as a ‘Christian,’ Trump was a work in progress. But God had a plan. Trump was a strong leader, a rich man, a successful real estate mogul. He could fix what was broken .... and restore America’s true redeemers to their rightful place in American political leadership.”

Posner says that her ‘aha moment’ came once she understood that the ex-president was the strongman the Christian right had long been looking for. He talked the talk. When his rhetoric or behavior was bad, that was fine because it swept away the evil political correctness that was dragging America down into secularism and darkness. WECs saw in him a leader who would directly attack the legal, cultural and social changes that the movement hatred and feared. She directly linked racist WEC grievances to the 1950s Brown v. Board decision and accompanying changes in the 1960s and 1970s. All of this mindset was built in years before opposing abortion became the top evangelical priority. 

Posner points out that the press was and still ill-equipped to report on this movement, and its scope, complexity and power. She sees the origins of the Trump-WEC axis of power as having roots that go back decades and a grounding in relentless radical right fundamentalist Christian deceit and manipulative propaganda. All that dark free speech prepared the soil for the time when a toxic seed like Trump would just fall in, take root and grow into the kind of power the WEC movement had been dreaming of for decades. 

She points out that under Trump, federal judicial nominees could now refuse to say whether Brown v. Board was properly decided. That seems to open a door to overturning it and going back to school segregation when and if the time comes that society is ready to accept that reversal. That time is not now, but the WEC movement is patient and persistent. It very much wants to correct the severe damage and destruction that liberalism, diversity, secularism and civil liberties have inflicted on America and on their power.

Chapter 1: The Blueprint for an Assault on Civil Rights

Right from the start of the ex-president’s time in office, he was presented with and pushed for a radical WEC vision of America and how the federal government should behave going forward. There was no shyness or ambiguity about their intent to gain exclusive power and wealth for the movement. Posner writes: 

“Less than two weeks into Trump’s presidency, I was leaked an explosive document: a draft executive order ‘establishing a government-wide initiative to respect religious freedom’ [a copy is here] .... As I digested the four-page draft, I saw in it an audacious attempt to end run the democratic process to create with the stroke of Trump’s pen, rights for conservative Christians that exceeded what the courts, Congress and nearly every state legislature had ever granted them. The draft envisioned giving any person or organization .... permission to refuse to transact virtually any type of business with someone based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status, or because they had premarital  sex or an abortion. It would have permitted such exemptions in nearly every facet of life, ‘when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, of interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.’ The document derided the government as the enemy, an arrogant tyrant to religious people. ‘Americans and their religious organizations,’ the draft read, ‘will not be coerced by the Federal Government into participating in activities that violate their conscience.’”

Posner asserts that document was the culmination of radical Christian legal and political advocacy toward an almost unlimited scope of religious freedom. Any objection based on conscience, which includes religious bigotry and intolerance, could be used against anyone who violated the sacred norms the draft specified. 

The draft executive order allowed Christian adoption agencies to refuse to deal with non-Christian couples. It allowed federal social services contractors, spending taxpayer money, to refuse services to a client because of a conscience-based objection to their legal, private sexual activity or because they were gay, lesbian or otherwise not acceptably heterosexual. Government employees could refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Law experts who Posner shared the draft with were astonished. They said that what the draft order proposed was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state. But one has to keep in mind the fact that the WEC movement does not believe that any legal separation of church and state is constitutional or what the Founders ever intended. Both beliefs are false, but are core parts of the WEC movement’s radical, fundamentalist Christian ideology. That ideology routinely and completely sweeps aside inconvenient facts and truths as lies, political correctness run amok, and/or radical left Democratic, deep state socialist tyranny. 

By the time he was sworn into office in January of 2017, it was clear that the ex-president had no regard for restraining customs or norms, including the rule of law. His mindset was already attuned to throwing bombs at whatever obstacles he believed were in his way. He didn’t do political correctness. He just exercised power. 

WEC propaganda about this was sophisticated. The entire WEC agenda had always been shrouded in sophisticated propaganda, lies and emotional manipulation, so this was nothing new. WEC propagandists portrayed it as a simple non-discrimination order. In fact, it was a license for rampant discrimination against anyone that these Christians chose to discriminate against on the basis of personal conscience. In essence, the WEC was arguing that their inability to discriminate against others as they wished amounted to discrimination against them. In the radical Christian view, their inability to discriminate against others was just another garden variety example of the severe persecution that Christians were forced  by evil government to suffer. 

Fifty-two Republican House members and 18 Senators signed a letter in support of the draft order. The House letter asserted that an “overbearing, coercive government under Obama had stolen away God-fearing American's religious freedom.” The House letter stated: “We look forward to coordinating with your administration so that critical religious liberty and conscience protections may finally be restored to millions of Americans who have been harmed and unprotected for far too many years.” WCEs hated Obama intensely and they still do.

The ex-president eventually signed a revised order that was not quite so blunt in attacking the LGBQT community, but the general intent survived to some non-trivial extent. Posner writes that the WCE elites attacked the revised order as “worse than useless” and “betrayal,” but they failed to understand its actual scope:

“But its seemingly bland provision, overlooked by many, directing the attorney general to issue ‘guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in Federal law,’ was broad enough to carry out the scuttled order’s objectives. Five months later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a twenty-five page memorandum, entitled ‘Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty,’ directing federal agencies, in every action they took .... to protect religious liberty of individuals and companies. ‘Religious liberty,’ the memorandum read, ‘is not merely a right to personal religious beliefs or even to worship in a sacred place. It also encompasses religious observance and practice. Therefore, except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced between living out his or her faith and complying with the law.’”

One expert commented that “the breadth of what the AG could issue is virtually unchecked.” In essence what the WEC movement had done was to convert religious belief and personal conscience into a sword to cut down the unworthy in both private observance and in public and business, even if it meant using tax dollars to support Christian discrimination and bigotry. 

With that executive order, Trump delivered major power to the WEC movement. On top of that massive gift, he gave 'em an arguably even bigger one. He expanded WEC access to an endless flow of tax dollars. In American politics money = power. In the  minds of these radical Christian fundamentalists, that transfer of power and wealth to them make him obviously someone who God anointed, chosen and sanctified to save America. Clearly, the ex-president can now do nothing to cause most WECs to abandon him. Whopper lies, massive corruption and treason can all be rationalized away. God works in mysterious ways.

 

Question: Is it reasonable to believe that the WEC is as powerful and bigoted as Posner describes, which is much like the description that Katherine Stewart gave of Christian nationalism in her 2019 book, The Power Worshippers?

How to cope with bad world news

  When bad news breaks, it can be hard to escape from it. You might find it tricky to unplug or think about other things. It’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed by the news, especially when good news stories can seem harder to come by. So, if you’re feeling down about the world, we’ve got some tips for you.

This might help if:​

• you've been feeling overwhelmed by the news
• you don’t know how to react to bad world news
• you’re finding it hard to disconnect from the media.

Reacting to bad world news​

There are endless kinds of news stories that can make you feel really down. Some common reactions to bad world news include feeling:

• anxious and worried
• depressed and sad
• helpless
• confused
• angry.

Why does bad world news affect us?​

On a planet with almost eight billion people, it’s really easy to feel disconnected. But when a world tragedy strikes, feelings of worry, sadness and grief are more common than you might think.
When we see upsetting information, our bodies react by releasing stress hormones to deal with the negative emotions. As news outlets can also be skewed towards reporting bad news over good news, this can create long-term negative effects on our wellbeing.

How can I cope with bad world news?​

There are a few things you can do to help.

1. Learn to switch off​

It’s easier said than done, but taking a break from social media and the news can do a lot to help tackle the effects of bad world news. A majority of social media users will see shared news articles on their feeds, and with the media’s emphasis on negative news, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by your time on social media.
If you notice yourself feeling down because of the things you’re seeing on social media or in the news, take a break. You could try going for a walk, reading a book, listening to music or a podcast, playing a game, or just being outside in the fresh air without your devices.
In the long term, you could set yourself some rules. For example:

• Only check the news at one or two set times per day.
• Schedule blocks of time every day that are free of social media. You could try not using social media/your phone for three hours after you wake up, so you can start the day fresh, or for a couple of hours before you go to bed, to help you properly unwind.
• Make sure every day to spend at least 15 minutes on self-care or an activity you enjoy.

Check out some more tips on taming your social media use.

2. Rethink your news sources​

For some people, staying on top of what’s going on in the world is pretty important. Many news sources are focused more on getting clicks and views than on providing unbiased information. This is why the language used in some news articles or videos can be over the top, which can trigger a bigger emotional response.
Good news reporting has these characteristics:

• It is focused on the truth. Not only does it verify facts, but it also presents them in an accurate context.
• It is fair and doesn’t take sides. All sides of an issue are presented, and the context of the story is never left out intentionally in order to influence a reader’s understanding.
• It is independent. Reporters aren’t influenced by sources in any way, including for personal or financial gain.
• It is accountable. Any errors or unfair coverage are acknowledged and corrected.

Have a look at where you’re getting your news:

• Is it from reputable, objective sources that are emotionally neutral?
• Are you getting the full picture, or just snippets from social media and news headlines?
• Are there any sources that upset you less than others?

If you find that certain sources keep popping up and often leave you feeling upset, you can always unfollow or block them.

3. Try to understand why the news is upsetting you​

Sometimes, world news can hit close to home. Whether it’s a tragedy in your family’s country of origin, or the death of a person you really admire, world news can feel very personal. If what you’re feeling is more than just a sense of empathy for those affected by a tragedy, it’s worth speaking about it to someone you trust. Chat to your friends, family or even a counsellor about how the news is affecting you. The simple act of talking can help you process what’s going on and make you feel a whole lot better. Get more tips on talking to someone you trust.

4. Have ‘no news’ time with loved ones​

Spending time with friends or family can help boost your mood. Whether it’s doing an activity together, like cooking or walking your pet, or just having a chat, it can help you take your mind off things. Mention to your loved one that you don’t want to talk about news or current affairs. You could even specify which issue or story you want to avoid for the moment.

5. Accept your level of control​

When something bad happens, our immediate response may be to ask ourselves what we can do to help, and how we can put an end to it. Feeling helpless is a natural response, and one that can cause stress.
While there are usually things, big and small, that we can do to help a situation, we can’t stop it entirely on our own. Learning to understand how much influence we can have over something is a very important step in reducing the stress we might feel on hearing bad news.
We’re not saying that you shouldn’t try to help. In fact, helping out and trying to do something positive can often make us feel better. But we need to understand what is the most helpful way to contribute to a cause, and learn to accept the limits.

https://au.reachout.com/articles/dealing-with-bad-world-news

Climate change update

Ocean current system may collapse 

A Washington Post article brings up the periodically mentioned topic of deep Atlantic ocean currents and their slowdown. The currents act as Earth's air conditioner by distributing heat away from the equator to North Atlantic regions. Climate scientists have been warning about this issue for at least the last 20 years. If the current stops, and it can, the climate of Europe, eastern Canada, the eastern US and maybe other regions are projected to undergo major changes. 

The Washington Post writes:

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.

In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.

Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength.

These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world.  

“This is an increase in understanding … of how close to a tipping point the AMOC might already be,” said Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Maynooth University who was not involved in the study.

Since we do not know at what point the currents might shut down, we are playing Russian Roulette with this aspect (and all others) of the environment. Under current conditions, i.e., heavily polluting modern civilization and ~8 billion humans on the planet, effects on ocean currents can be seen as an externality of modern civilization and unregulated business operations. Maybe there will be serious or catastrophic consequences, or maybe not. Maybe bad things will happen fairly soon, but maybe not.

Global warming has unleashed a new major source of natural methane emissions

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas pollutant, about 20 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. At present, human activity releases about 12 gigatons more carbon into the air each year than the Earth can recycle by natural processes. One gigaton is 1 billion tons, or 1,000 million tons. Natural methane emissions contribute to an increasing atmospheric carbon level, which is the major cause of global warming and the climate changes that are now underway. A Washington Post article, Scientists expected thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost. What they found is ‘much more dangerous,’ describes the situation:  

Scientists have long been worried about what many call “the methane bomb” — the potentially catastrophic release of methane from thawing wetlands in Siberia’s permafrost.

But now a study by three geologists says that a heat wave in 2020 has revealed a surge in methane emissions “potentially in much higher amounts” from a different source: thawing rock formations in the Arctic permafrost.

The difference is that thawing wetlands releases “microbial” methane from the decay of soil and organic matter, while thawing limestone — or carbonate rock — releases hydrocarbons and gas hydrates from reservoirs both below and within the permafrost, making it “much more dangerous” than past studies have suggested.

Nikolaus Froitzheim, who teaches at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn, said that he and two colleagues used satellite maps that measured intense methane concentrations over two “conspicuous elongated areas” of limestone — stripes that were several miles wide and up to 375 miles long — in the Taymyr Peninsula and the area around northern Siberia.

The study was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Surface temperatures during the heat wave in 2020 soared to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1979-2000 norms. In the long stripes, there is hardly any soil, and vegetation is scarce, the study says. So the limestone crops out of the surface. As the rock formations warm up, cracks and pockets opened up, releasing methane that had been trapped inside.  

Normally the frozen permafrost acts as a cap, sealing methane below. It also can lock up gas hydrates, which are crystalline solids of frozen water that contain huge amounts of methane. Unstable at normal sea-level pressure and temperatures, gas hydrates can be dangerously explosive as temperatures rise.

The study said that gas hydrates in the Earth’s permafrost are estimated to contain 20 gigatons of carbon. That’s a small percentage of all carbon trapped in the permafrost, but the continued warming of gas hydrates could cause disruptive and rapid releases of methane from rock outcrops.

So, it's not just methane in rocks, but also microbial sources of carbon production that can release carbon into the atmosphere. Since we do not know if there is a tipping point at which arctic methane and other carbon pollutants might be released rapidly or what the effects of that might be, we are playing Russian Roulette with this aspect (and all others) of the environment.

Context: it's a huge, high stakes war and we need 

powerful allies, regardless of motives

This post is intended to exemplify and make clear the global scope, urgency and seriousness of climate change.

Among a couple of other things, the post here yesterday, Chapter review: Moral Money, was intended to point out that there seems to be a major corporate and business change in thinking about the relevance of environmental damage that arises from normal business operations. In the past, the business community ignored or denied that environmental damage was real and/or important. There was a gigaton of deceit, emotional manipulation and lying to the public going on. 

Now, at least some of the business community leadership seems to be changing its mind about that. The motive behind that mindset change probably comes mostly from corporate greed, fear and self-interest, not altruism or anything else. But setting motive aside, dealing seriously with climate change will require acceptance by most of the leadership of most major corporations and financial institutions. It is clear by now, that the business and finance sectors have major political power and they get what they want via campaign contributions and lobbyists, both of which have worked ruthlessly and in as much secrecy as they could for decades to oppose serious regulation and political action on climate change. 

When one combines what is in this blog post with yesterday's Moral Money post, the absolute necessity of buy-in by the corporate and finance sectors becomes clear. The modern Republican Party is hell bent on stopping and reversing environmental protection laws in the name of their demagogic fascist, anti-government, anti-regulation ideology. That ideology, now amounting to an intolerant, aggressive religion in fact, will not change. Other than occasional fig leaf adjustments for public relations purposes, i.e., deceit and manipulation, here will be no help from the fascist GOP in dealing with climate change. The demagogic FGOP lie will remain the same as it has been for decades: government is bad and always fails, but unregulated free markets are always good and succeed.

Never forget the FGOP war cry: "I'm here from the government, and I'm here to help." That sums up the intense cynical hate and loathing of government that oozes from every pore and orifice in America's political right. Those are the folks hell-bent on playing Russian Roulette with the environment, mostly because they are hell-bent on accumulating ultimate power and wealth, the environment, society and everything else be damned. 'Everything else' includes democracy and the rule of law.

Questions: 

1. This comes back to yesterday's Moral Money post: Is the business and finance communities' commitment to fighting climate change real or just lies, deceit and empty public relations noise?

2. Is the FGOP as rigidly opposed to government action in dealing with climate change as described here, or is there a stirring of genuine concern among some real (non-fascist), mostly young, republicans?[1]

Footnote: 

1. NPR reported in September of 2020: 

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed climate change is the top issue for Democratic voters. For Republicans, it barely registers overall, but there is a growing generational divide.

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows Republicans 18 to 39 years old are more concerned about the climate than their elders. By a nearly two-to-one margin they are more likely to agree that "human activity contributes a great deal to climate change," and "the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change."

Some of these young conservatives are starting environmental groups and becoming climate activists. And now they're pushing their party to do more.

Maybe some of the young 'uns believe that humans cause climate change, but do they reject government regulation or taxation as part of the solution and instead want deregulated markets to run free and wild to solve the problem? Whose side are they really on? Do they even know, i.e., because their ideology and tribe won't let them know?

Chapter review: Moral Money

Introduction & context 

Moral Money is chapter 10 of Gillian Tett’s 2021 book, Anthro-vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life. Tett is an anthropologist by academic training and an influential financial journalist and editor at the Financial Times by profession. One of the things anthropologists key on is areas of silence about things that groups, tribes and people do not talk about.

The message here is generally positive. But the good news is packaged with cautionary observations about human nature that most readers here will be familiar with by now. The good news is that concern in American society for dealing with climate change really is beginning to influence the business community in beneficial ways. Some people may be aware of that, but I wasn’t. The caution is that humans will be human, even in the face major threat. The threat turns out to be what is useful here, but it isn’t concern for the climate. It is concern for power and wealth.

On August 19, 2019, I raised the matter of business morals in a post entitled Big Business Morality: Considering More Than Just Shareholders? That post was triggered by a letter that CEOs of ~200 major companies signed, e.g., Walmart, United Airlines, Amazon, Apple, Dow, Exxon Mobile, BP (British Petroleum), etc. These people are members of a powerful but quiet organization called the Business Roundtable. 

On its face, the letter seemed to be a repudiation of Milton Friedman’s narrow ideology that CEOs with a social conscience were “subversive” and a threat to the only moral imperative any company should have, namely profit. But because the language of the letter was both non-binding and hopelessly vague, I concluded it was just an empty PR stunt. I read the intent as only to try to make businesses look like they cared about something meaningful other than profit and not a meaningful expression of  something else. The open letter is here -- see the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” The five business principles the CEOs claimed to want to follow seemed to repudiate the idea that social conscience is subversive and bad for economic markets. Instead of a statement of worship of profit, they expressed some form of a social conscience.

 

Moral money

Tett starts by pointing out that in general and for a long time, companies and economic markets have largely ignored the costs of dealing with externalities, including various kinds of damage to the environment and society. That makes sense because ignoring those costs generally increases profit. Exceptions arise when government passes laws that make companies deal with externalities. The corporate attitude was to let society and government deal with the damage companies leave in their wake as they generate as much profit as possible, as fast as possible. The belief was that whatever damage companies create is more than offset by the social good and wealth the companies created. 

The Business Roundtable letter linked to above expressed what is now commonly referred to in the business community as ESG, environmental, social and governance, principles. Tett described what drove the CEOs to write and sign that letter:

“.... investors were shunning fossil oil and gas stock because they feared that the sector would not be as profitable in the future as it had been in the past, because governments were clamping down on the use of fossil fuel, and consumers were agitating over climate change. That had created anxiety about ‘stranded assets,’ shorthand for the idea that the oil and gas reserves that fossil fuel companies owned might turn out to be worthless, making the company less valuable than investors had assumed. Or to put it another way, issues such as the environment has previously seemed to sit outside investors’ and economists’ models. They were called ‘externalities’ and often ignored. Now the externalities were threatening to become so important that they were overturning the models. The idea of keeping them ‘external’ looked increasingly ridiculous --- as any anthropologist knew it was.

The way that most investors framed this dramatic shift in attitude was in terms of the rise of the ‘sustainability’ movement or ‘green finance’ --- or with reference to [ESG principles]. Another frame that was also used was ‘stakeholderism,’ or the idea that people running companies should not simply aim to produce returns for shareholders --- as men such as Milton Friedman .... had once argued .... but to protect the interests of all stakeholders: employees, the wider society, suppliers, and so on.”

Tett described the mindset change that the Business Roundtable CEOs were expressing as one of changing from a narrow tunnel vision lens to a wider lateral vision lens that anthropologists try to view the world through. Tett takes this as evidence that the lateral vision mindset has gone a long way toward shifting attitudes in the business community, and on balance the change is for the better.

Tett admits that when she first saw the Business Roundtable letter and a hoard of emails from businesses about their commitment to ESG, her silent response was “ESG should stand for eye-roll, sneer and groan.” She didn't buy it.

Since Tett is influential and a well-known journalist, she was given direct access to some of the CEOs who signed the letter. Her interviews with them convinced her that their mindset change was real and there was more substance to the letter than she initially believed. She keyed in on key words and phrases, ESG, sustainability, green business, etc., and probed their real meanings in all of her areas of major contact. She found the same thing she saw in the CEO world in the financial sector and in the government and philanthropy sectors. Many investors were looking to finance companies with a broader mindset than just brass knuckles profit. 

There was a major convergence of thinking going on that she was unaware of until she opened her mind (applied lateral vision) to the possibility that ESG stood for something other than eye-roll, sneer and groan.

Over time, Tett kept listening and refined her understanding of what was going on as she learned more. She describes it like this:

“But do people like [USB Bank chairman Axel] Weber really believe this stuff? .... The idea that banks were selling ESG products seemed a little like priests in the medieval Catholic church selling ‘indulgences’ .... the noise in the system [ESG, sustainability, green, etc.] was concealing a more important area of silence.

The issue at stake revolved around risk management. If you listened to the noise around ESG, it seemed that the movement was all about activism: vocal campaigners were calling for social and environmental change, and companies and financial groups were shouting about what they were doing to support this. But if you looked more closely at ESG, with an anthropologist’s lens, it was clear that there was a second factor at work that was less openly discussed: self-interest. A growing number of business and financial leaders were using ESG to protect themselves. The activists who had initially launched the EGS movement a decade or two earlier usually did not want to admit this.

But while activists who wanted proactively wanted to change the world had started the ESG movement, by 2017 it seemed that many investors has the less ambitious goal of simply avoiding doing any harm to the wider world. ‘That’s the sustainability crew,’ I told colleagues. Then there was a bigger --- and even less ambitious --- cohort who were primarily interested in ESG because they wanted to avoid doing harm to themselves. That category included asset managers who did not want to lose money on fossil fuel stranded assets, or invest in companies that faced reputation risks, be that around sexual abuse inside the office .... or human rights abuse in the supply chain or racial issues .... Similarly, corporate boards did not want to be tripped up by nasty surprises, or see shareholders flee or scandals erupt that might cause executives to lose their jobs.

Did this make the whole venture hypocritical? Many journalists thought so. However, I saw it as a victory of sorts for the original founders of the movement. History shows that when a revolution takes place, it tends to succeed not when a tiny minority of committed activists embrace a cause, but when a silent majority decide that it is too dangerous or pointless to resist change. ESG was nearing this tipping point since the mainstream was starting to be pulled along by the tide, even if they did not want to define themselves as activists at all.”

Tett speculated that by 2017, there was enough worry among CEOs that there was too much uncertainty and instability. At the 2017 Davos meeting, business leaders expressed the realization that progress could go in reverse and history seems to go in pendulum-like trends. The 2008 financial crisis obliterated the previous rock solid belief that financial innovation was always good. The crisis was caused by financial innovations, CDOs and the like, that most people did not and could not understand. That undermined the rock solid belief that free-market capitalism could solve all problems.

So, the corporate and finance worlds embraced ESG. Tett estimates that by the autumn of 2019, at least $32 trillion had been invested by ESG standards. Some estimates were higher. But ESG wasn’t based only on concern about people or the environment. As Tett put it, “there was a more negative, less discussed incentive too: a fear of metaphorical pitchforks.” 

For moral authority for ESG and a social conscience, and in opposition to Friedman’s assertion that social conscience is subversive, Tett points to Adam Smith’s second book published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. There, Smith argued that markets and commerce could work only if there was a shared moral and social foundation among the business sector, government and the rest of society.  

A last point: a comparison with Christian nationalism 

It took Tett a combination of (i) her open-mindedness, life experiences, intelligence and academic training, (ii) a lot of time and persistence, and (iii) access to high level executives in business and finance, to finally arrive at this description of the motives behind the mindset change from narrow to lateral. She admits that her story faces a lot of disbelief and misunderstanding:

“.... journalists faced a story that was developing in a slow-moving, elliptical trend because of clunky acronyms and technical jargon that alienated outsiders. [the same thing that led to the 2008 financial disaster] .... The EGS sector was also opaque and fragmented, since it had been run in a cottage-industry style: .... It was tough to get an overarching picture of what was underway. .... ESG was everywhere but nowhere.”

IMO, that description of ESG sounds a lot like Christian nationalism. Powerful, fragmented, hard to see in clear detail and everywhere but nowhere. There really are complex things in our society that are hard to see and understand, and thus easy to dismiss as a mirage.

Questions: Has public agitation about climate change had an impact on the development of ESG, or is the business community just spewing deceptive public relations to minimize losses and lawsuits? Is it possible to be both cynical and not-cynical about ESG, i.e., to have mixed and maybe even contradictory motives?