Another thought-provoking post, Bill. It reminds me of one of your older posts (https://hwbrands.substack.com/p/to-fix-climate-change-and-other-stumpers) wherein you dabbled with the idea of giving younger people more votes to counteract older people who weren't as concerned about climate change. In regard to your idea in this piece about forming a world gov't to combat climate change, I'm reminded of this quote from James Madison's 1792 article in National Gazette: "A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts" (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-14-02-0185). Also, this quote from Washington's Farewell Address: "There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard" (https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/farewell-address/). The idea of a universal peace or one-world gov't to help combat climate is a great idea, but it doesn't seem like a likely reality.
To get a national Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation, the delegates to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention had to first keep their work a secret fearing they might be seen as doing more than their mandated charge.
The devil is in the details and the details are usually in who pays.
The highest natural point in Florida is Britton Hill at 345 MSL. Will China chip in to compensate Florida for any land Floridians lose? What about New Orleans or Houston? Or even Beaumont? Of course Xi’s solution may be simply to create new land as he has done in the East China Sea.
Should the delegates to the COP27 Egyptian Climate Summit have set an example for the rest of the world by all arriving on camels, showing disdain for the kerosene-burning jet aircraft they surely all (except for the Egyptians) arrived in?
As common access resources mostly knowing no political boundaries or national fences, water and air suffer at a national and certainly international level the tragedy of the commons, solutions to which have long been the grist of political philosophy mills.
Internalizing externalities, which I sense is the direction COP27 collectively thinks we are heading may be sold to the right in the name of privatization, but castigated on the radical left as being but propaganda for those who have the means to acquire and own, the failure of the commons being that all resources are not owned in common. In any event, it is not likely to solve the problem by the time the “experts” say will be the point of no return. Forgive me that I cannot tell you the current date that is projected as the end of the world. It seems to be changing, moving out more as we get closer to each of the dates.
The swift solution would be for a benign world tyrant to gain the means and the methods to impose his or her vision upon the 8 billion humans who now populate the planet and then reconstitute humanity. But that sounds like a “James Bond” movie plot (“The Spy Who Loved Me” or “Moonraker,” I forget which) and we all remember how that turned out.
Can we not find a global lesson-by-analogy in the American Experience post-Civil War Industrialization with Robber Barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller acquiring immense wealth during the Gilded Age, then realizing their mortality and that above a certain level of comfort one might be better not holding on to all that wealth at death, but giving it away, especially after the tide of public sentiment turned bringing to political power populists and trustbusters? Please remind us how Theodore Roosevelt came to the Presidency.
I would like to think humanity has progressed from the time of Washington and Madison. Unfortunately, the evidence does not sustain such a conclusion.
Another thought-provoking post, Bill. It reminds me of one of your older posts (https://hwbrands.substack.com/p/to-fix-climate-change-and-other-stumpers) wherein you dabbled with the idea of giving younger people more votes to counteract older people who weren't as concerned about climate change. In regard to your idea in this piece about forming a world gov't to combat climate change, I'm reminded of this quote from James Madison's 1792 article in National Gazette: "A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts" (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-14-02-0185). Also, this quote from Washington's Farewell Address: "There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard" (https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/farewell-address/). The idea of a universal peace or one-world gov't to help combat climate is a great idea, but it doesn't seem like a likely reality.
Sic semper fuerat, sic semper erit. Maybe.
To get a national Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation, the delegates to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention had to first keep their work a secret fearing they might be seen as doing more than their mandated charge.
The devil is in the details and the details are usually in who pays.
The highest natural point in Florida is Britton Hill at 345 MSL. Will China chip in to compensate Florida for any land Floridians lose? What about New Orleans or Houston? Or even Beaumont? Of course Xi’s solution may be simply to create new land as he has done in the East China Sea.
Should the delegates to the COP27 Egyptian Climate Summit have set an example for the rest of the world by all arriving on camels, showing disdain for the kerosene-burning jet aircraft they surely all (except for the Egyptians) arrived in?
As common access resources mostly knowing no political boundaries or national fences, water and air suffer at a national and certainly international level the tragedy of the commons, solutions to which have long been the grist of political philosophy mills.
Internalizing externalities, which I sense is the direction COP27 collectively thinks we are heading may be sold to the right in the name of privatization, but castigated on the radical left as being but propaganda for those who have the means to acquire and own, the failure of the commons being that all resources are not owned in common. In any event, it is not likely to solve the problem by the time the “experts” say will be the point of no return. Forgive me that I cannot tell you the current date that is projected as the end of the world. It seems to be changing, moving out more as we get closer to each of the dates.
The swift solution would be for a benign world tyrant to gain the means and the methods to impose his or her vision upon the 8 billion humans who now populate the planet and then reconstitute humanity. But that sounds like a “James Bond” movie plot (“The Spy Who Loved Me” or “Moonraker,” I forget which) and we all remember how that turned out.
Can we not find a global lesson-by-analogy in the American Experience post-Civil War Industrialization with Robber Barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller acquiring immense wealth during the Gilded Age, then realizing their mortality and that above a certain level of comfort one might be better not holding on to all that wealth at death, but giving it away, especially after the tide of public sentiment turned bringing to political power populists and trustbusters? Please remind us how Theodore Roosevelt came to the Presidency.