March 10

Sunny today. So things might have a chance to dry out and warm up. Just finished putting together a tuna casserole which can sit on the counter for an hour before I put it in the oven. That should take care of today's and tomorrow's dinners; perhaps even Tuesday's. I know people who hate left overs. My late sister-in-law was that way. I plan on having multiple meals from one cooking session and any leftovers will be frozen to be incorporated in some future meal. Considering it is only Mom and me here that seems the most efficient.

As I read this report from Climate & Capitalism I stripped out the terms "capitalism," "Marxist," and "revolutionary." I didn't need the ideological or political overtones. Take a look at the list of novel (at least to Americans) diseases outbreaks. Take a look at the list of once familiar diseases we once thought extinct or at least under control. There are several features that have little to do with political/economic philosophy. First, the world population became more than 50% urban only a couple of decades ago. Crowding, especially in countries with inadequate or aging sanitary infrastructure. Two, in a global economy any place in the world is only a plane ride or two away from any place else. And more people are traveling. Three, a significant number of people in countries around the world have become skeptical of institutions that we once relied on to keep us healthy: medicine, science, public health, governments at all levels. Fourth, advertising has produced a befuddling amount of information, misinformation, mistaken information, and downright false information. During my lifetime I have seen nutrition ads that touted various artificial sweeteners over regular sugar. Many of those sweeteners are not at all as good for you as the ads claimed. Remember the ads touting pork as "the other white meat" after various studies seemed to condemn red meat. Or how eggs suddenly became a boogyman after studies panning cholesterol? Or the drives against sugar, fat, and almost anything that accounted for flavor in foods because of we had to cut calories? We always joked that we saw ads touting certain foods after the ads condemning those foods drove sales down. 

I have let this post John Michael Greer posted on his Ecosophia site ferment for a few days. I grew up in the same time Greer mentions--when the pundits were hyperventilating over "The Population Bomb", which I read when it first came out. I remember when the Chinese government mandated one-child families and their concern over the pampered "Little Emperors/Empresses" and political/economic thinkers thought they might have a good idea. Things have changed radically in the last twenty or so years.  It has been a long while since demographers noted that the U.S. had the only growing population in the industrialized world--because of immigration. Germany and other countries welcomed the first wave of climate refugees from Africa but now as they face the problems of absorbing large numbers of people who don't know the local language and customs their attitudes have changed. I read a couple of histories which mentioned in passing the problem sudden population losses caused--taxes declined because fewer people meant lower revenues, infrastructure declined because fewer people couldn't maintain it, food shortages because fewer farmers were growing food. In some cases the entire area was abandoned.