I sent in my ballot on Saturday, after spending Friday evening discussing the propositions with a bunch of people over dinner at our house. There seemed to be broad consensus on them, which isn’t too surprising, given that I avoided inviting people I thought I might disagree with. I did that on purpose. I wanted it to be an analysis of the questions at hand, not a personal policymaking session. Ballotpedia had a lot of information on some of the propositions. I’m guessing it will only improve in future elections, and I think the wiki model is actually close to being perfect for coming up with summaries of contentious political topics. Here’s how I ended up voting:
Monthly Archive for October, 2008
I watched the PBS Frontline report Heat online. It’s 2 hours long, and explores the magnitude and difficulty of scaling back global carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 (which is what the IPCC says is required). To be a success in my mind, I think it had to do four things:
- Convey the colossal magnitude of the problem, essentially requiring a complete re-imagination of the engines literally driving the global economy: fossil fuels and ever expanding resource consumption, and cooperation between nations and corporations on a scale we’ve never seen.
- Describe the potential costs of inaction, including sea level rise, possibly rapid decreases in agricultural productivity in some areas, water shortages in the world’s most populous regions due to melting glaciers, and ultimately, the irreversibility of the changes, due to positive feedbacks.
- Explain how solving the problem is difficult, politically: due to effective lobbying from old and currently profitable industries, and the inability of tomorrow’s potentially profitable “green” industries to effectively lobby, because they don’t currently have either the billions in profits to “invest” in DC, or a large base of employees represented as constituents. Economically: because there is no cost borne by GHG emitters, making the atmosphere a tragic economic commons.
- Provide at least an outline of what any potential solution will look like: It will have to be measured in terawatts, meaning the only two sources of power that are up to the task in the long run are solar and nuclear (with reprocessing and breeder reactors eventually). It will also require a method of turning electricity into some transportable high energy density form, like liquid fuels, or much much better batteries.
The utter primacy of H. sapiens in all the theistic religions is one of the things that bothers me most deeply about them. I believe we are unique and unusually important amongst life on earth (as were the first oxygenic photosynthesizers, and the first eukaryotic organisms, and the first macroscopic multicellular life forms), but I don’t think that the earth without humans would be without value. Diminished, certainly, but still a precious place. By the same token, I think that we diminish the value of the earth by causing the extinction of other species.
I think this may actually be somewhat related to the abortion question, and the difficulty of coming to any kind of common ground on it. I don’t consider non-viable fetuses human, but to me that doesn’t mean they are without value, or undeserving of any kind of legal protections. I just don’t think those protections should be as extensive as our protections of humans. People are resistant to the idea that “humanity” is a continuum. Some might even say repelled by it, but it seems inescapable to me. I also believe that severely mentally disabled people are “less” human, and that a brain-dead human is, for all intents and purposes, a cell culture with no more moral value than a side of beef. This might seem like something we had better not talk about, since it starts off all kinds of slippery slopes to horrible places, but I think eventually, we will have no choice, because some time in the next few decades, or at most the next few centuries, we will be confronted with positive deviations as well as negative.
What will it mean to be human, when there exist super-humans? When some portion of the population is genetically or cybernetically enhanced, will they have super-human rights, privledges, and responsibilities, or will they simply be more powerful through extra-legal means?
A person, even a politician, can stand up for human rights while condoning abortion if they do not consider the fetus human. The core of the abortion argument is what does it mean to be human? Is it a discrete, or continuous classification? Unless we can come to some consensus on these questions, the abortion issue, and many others, will remain vexing indefinitely.
A surprising amount of information and linkage is to be had at the Wikipedia.
CA Ballot Initiatives:
- (1A) Bond for high speed rail: UNDECIDED (requires federal matching funds, probably will run far over budget because it was priced years ago when commodities were cheaper, won’t be functional for many years, now is a crappy time to take out a loan, but it sure would be nice to have a high speed train between LA and SF… would tickets cost more or less than Southwest?)
- Revised CAFO standards (more space for chickens, pigs, veal): YES? (Seems petty – unclear how slightly more space for chickens will result in fewer antibiotics being used, and better water quality near CAFO facilities… it’s still a hundred million chickens, isn’t it? but it’s a step in the right direction – similar to legislation in the EU, doesn’t fully take effect until 2015… dunno)
- Children’s Hospital Bond: NO (Provides public subsidies for private for-profit hospitals, without also giving public sector a share of the profits, or any control over the organizations they are funding, nearly identical bond measure passed in 2004 – and they’ve only spent half *that* money!)
- Require parental notification and waiting period for abortions: NO
- Reduction in non-violent drug offense penalties, treatment in lieu of incarceration: YES
- Capital expenditure for more prisons: NO (we have enough prisons already! Just let out the non-violent drug offenders if there’s not enough space)
- Renewable energy portfolio standards: NO (based on UCS analysis)
- Outlaw Gay Marriage: NO
- Victims rights and harsher parole requirements: UNDECIDED
- Subsidies for some fuels (esp. natural gas): NO (based on UCS analysis)
- Non-partisan congressional districts for CA: YES
Local Measures:
- Measure R (transportation sales tax in LA County): UNDECIDED No bike/ped call outs (does complete streets apply to this?), way too much focus on highway projects.
