environmental issues

Hot take: Greenland's Masterstroke. Greenland agrees to voluntarily join the United States on the condition of immediate statehood. It then uses that leverage to push the US government towards more sane governance, including the impeachment of Donald Trump, the reinstatement and strengthening of institutional guardrails, and the repair of ties with the EU. Once those objectives are achieved, Greenland then secedes, gaining full independence with the consent of a future US administration.

Incorruptible Organizations AMA with Eric Ries. Wednesday 2/4 at 3:00 PM CT

Lean Startup author who now focuses on legal structures to protect mission-driven organizations from corruption. incorruptible.co

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"You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”. Dennis Hightower, who at the time was head of Disney International.

He asked me why I wasn’t doing something, and I responded by explaining the pros and cons of two different ways of doing it. Thoughtfully, he replied “You know, there are 13 ways of doing anything. 11 of them will work. Just pick one and do it.”

The best Founders avoid over-analyzing. At a startup, you don’t have time — and the result will most likely be marginal. Pick a way and do it. Be consistently decisive.

Disasters as Political Fodder. Recently, a family member asked me if I knew about the LA fires.  I said "yes, it's terrible".  And they said "and they've proven that the fires were started by immigrants."  I burst out laughing derisively and said "yes, if they'd just shoot all the immigrants, everything would be fine."  It was not one of my finer moments, as sarcasm does't invite connection or understanding.  It invites the opposite, actually. 

When the plane and helicopter collided over the Potomac River a couple weeks ago, killing everyone, immediately the news was about the incompetence of air traffic controllers and the increasing treachery of flying brought on by lowering standards and selecting unqualified minorities and women for air traffic controller jobs.  This was without any data, any analysis, that indicated air traffic control was at fault. There was a dumb, affirmative action policy put in place years ago, that was then abandoned years ago.  That's what the news highighted.   

The Left uses disasters as fodder for their purposes as well.  They aren't in controll of the narative right now, so I'm writing about what's here.  Politics are wicked.  I remember that, after the election, I was going to sit back and watch the political theatre unfolding while eating a metaphorical bowl of popcorn.  I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do, as what's happening is distressing, but I can't find any political action that would be effective.  

What I do know is that the investment of our time in people, through Relatefulness and Uptrust, is real, powerful, joyful work for something good and true.  I am resting on that. 

When it comes "the global warming debate," there are often third ways that are ignored. Often the framing is global warming and climate deniers or something like that.

but it seems like there are obviously multiple perspectives here, and these two black and white boxes keep us from really seeing potential solutions.

Bjorn Lomborg for example believes in man-made climate change, but also doesn’t like the alarmism. Although he cherry picks data like he accuses others of, he also I think rightfully points out lots of flaws in the arguments that help us identify solutions. Much of the hurricane damage increase over time is because we’re building bigger and more expensive houses in hurricane alleys; for this problem, we can stop building there; everybody stopping flying altogether until 2100 delays increases the increase by a few weeks, so stopping flying isn’t the solution. Often the solutions are smaller, more local, less sexy: want less polar bears to die? Increase regulation on poaching. (Polar bear populations are up over the past decade because of this, apparently). I would love to identify and popularize these solutions, so they are spoken in the same breath as global warming rather than it being all gloom and doom and end of the world.

There are real tricky questions about what we’re trying to preserve and for whom, as well. If all we care about are humans and climate migration, then building infrastructure in places like Haiti and even evolving to coal power would be more helpful.

Finally they learned to cut off people's mics. Hot take: If the media wasn’t so Green and did this in 2016, I think Hillary would have won.