Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
– Rabindranath Tagore
My eyes caught sight of one particular tree somewhere in Los Angeles. It was a moderately huge tree with extremely odd but beautiful roots formation. I hate Los Angeles. Perhaps, the only thing that I like about it is this tree, and a few other things.
p/s – unbelievable goal!
Today is Thursday, September 30th, 2004. A day that, in my humble opinion, should be called the Kyoto Day.
The Russian cabinet approves the Kyoto Protocol today, barely a few hours ago, blowing life and even extra strength to the once-zombie international treaty on climate change. With Russia backing the Protocol, a legacy of the Earth Summit, the quorum needed for the Protocol to come into force is met.
This victory, the one that might change the fate of our home and us as a species, is probably one of the most important achievements in human cooperation. With such unison, surely pressure will be mounting on the next President of the United States, whoever it might be, to give Kyoto for another thought.
As this great development happens in Moscow, Lieberman and McCain have been continuously working on a bipartisan effort to push for the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act in DC. The act seeks to introduce capping and trading of greenhouse gasses emission which in general is similar to part of the idea in the Kyoto Protocol. I can proudly say that I and a few others have written a snail mail petition to Michigan representatives Carl Levin and Deborah Stabenow to urge them to support the act a few weeks ago via Environmental Defense. So far, though support for the act has been steadily gone up, it still shy a few votes from being passed. The proposal will be brought back to the Senate floor soon for another voting.
While the east coast is stuck with red tape, California reaffirms itself as the most political green caucus in the United States. Earlier, California passed the world’s toughest emission regulation and later claimed to be an global warming free-zone (though I think that term is by far is ridiculous but hey, we got what we want. I’m won’t complain too much on the so-called global warming free-zone.) Under the regulation, cars and trucks need to cut their emission by 25 percent while SUV must cut 18 percent before 2016 and it must start as soon as 2009. The auto industry has called this stupid but I say they have gotten off the hook long enough. It’s time they face the music.
At the same time, San Francisco, one of the hotbeds of US environmental movement, plans to reduce 2.5 million tones of carbon dioxide emission by 2012. It is believed that New York would follow the lead soon. How soon is yet to be seen but nonetheless, the snowball effect is taking shape. With enough momentum, hopefully, the Senate won’t be able to refuse their responsibility to reduce the six greenhouse gasses.
These are exciting time for the advocates of Kyoto Protocol. I myself am very excited. Barely a few years ago, things were gloom right after the US removed itself from the treaty and then calling others to do same. Australia joined the US, Canada almost. But now, it’s time we call the US and Australia to reverse and ratify Kyoto.
The European Union must be commended for having a hand in Russia’s change of heart. Without the EU, it would not be possible for Russia to ratify the treaty and in turn, it would be impossible for the Protocol to come to existence. Possibly, there would be less time for us to act against the mistake of our parents.
The initial stage has now been set. It is a high time to call in the developing countries, especially China en India, to join in the fight. It’s time to rally to world against what might come in the future.
Now is the exact point in time where we must redo what the Russians had done; they repelled Napoleon, resisted Hitler. We must confront the accelerated climate change.
p/s – an advertisement has been running on the TV for quite sometimes now. I first saw it during the Michigan – Notre Dame game. It is one of the coolest ads I’ve ever seen. Make sure to beef up the volume.
Ajax was beaten flatly by Bayern Munich, courtesy of a Dutchman. I had thought we stood a chance by the way we played against Juventus. I guess we didn’t. I wish Koeman had played 4-4-3 instead of 3-4-3. I wish Zlatan was with us.
Ajax would probably be in the UEFA Cup soon.
It feels like winter today. With the loss and the winter, tomorrow sets to be gloomy.
I saw the tree above against the blue sky last Sunday by the river Huron. It was a good day and I was in a good spirit.I wish tomorrow to be as bright as it was in the summer. I don’t mind the heat. The cold reminds me of how I hate the winter.
I wish the trees could stay green just a little bit longer. I wish the cloud could stay white for one more moment. I beg the sky would stay blue for just another day.
Cut the chatter, Red 2.
I attended the Michigan – Iowa game yesterday. From the way Michigan was performing in the last two games, I had expected a loss for us. It turned out, I was dead wrong.
We somewhat slacked off in the very first quarter, allowing a huge yard gain for Iowa. Within a few minutes into the game, Iowa was leading by seven points and my intuition of seeing a loss was strengthened. But thank goodness, that was about the only time Iowa looked stronger.
Well into the second quarter, Michigan slaughtered the Hawkeyes. A couple of beautiful passes, it seemed surreal when you were there and saw it with your own pair of eyes, even more if you were less than ten yards away from the end zone with the ball and the play was garnering momentum to your general direction, were made. I have two favorite plays.
First is the one where Henne, our new quarterback, threw a ball that seemingly hung in the air and was guided by the hands of the angels’ right into the hands of the receiver, who was on the far end of the press box. The receiver was Edwards I believe but I can’t recall who it really was.
The second was a rush that happened just in front of me. There was this one guy, again Edwards I think, on the near side of the press box, rushing or standing it seemed with four or five, might be six Hawkeyes for all I know, in front of him but at the same time, there was a space between him and me. When I saw that, I shouted a “wow” in my mind. My mouth blurted “Go, go, go!”
The opposing players appeared to see the same thing too and scrambled to close the space. But, alas for them, hurrah for us, he ran past all, as swift as the Greek god Mercury, for a touchdown.
In the end, to my delight, I’m sure it to the Wolverines’ delight, the score line is 30 – 17 in favor of Michigan.
Next week, it-s Purdue. Some say Purdue could overcome us. I say Purdue, like Wisconsin last season, is nothing but a pretender.
The Michigan Marching Band procession. They marched from Revelli Hall near Elber Field right up to the Stadium, chanting “It’s all about the Blue”.
We’ll see.
errata – next week game is against Indiana, not Purdue. Another win for us. Should be a walk in the park. Thanks Weehong.
errata 2 – Revelli instead of Revell. Thanks Kirah.
p/s – Now, is there any more correction?
For the past few weeks, I suddenly have an intense curiosity on tragedy of the commons. The idea is fairly simple. It is a concept in economics where everybody overused a public resource.
In the model that describes tragedy of the commons, there is a public good where nobody owns the good and may freely use it. At the same time, there are a number of resource users. If the users are agreeable, then they possibly can assure the sustainable level of resource usage by voluntarily limiting individual consumption. Let’s just say that initially, everybody limits their usage of resource.
However, since nobody owns the resource (also can be called as the commons) and everybody may use the good, then some user, in fact, every user has the incentive to go over the consumption limit and this is done at the expense of the resource sustainability. The incentive for going over the limit is the higher current consumption level with little immediate cost.
Once a person actually goes over the consumption limit (let’s call this guy as Ferguson the bastard), another individual will follow suit (this guy is van Nistelrooy the crybaby). This is because the crybaby’s future amount of consumption is being taken by the bastard and the only way for the crybaby to retake his (crybaby) future consumption is by shifting his (crybaby) future consumption to the present.
The reason for the crybaby’s reduction in future consumption is that once anybody goes over the limit, the sustainability of resource usage is reduced. Simply put, the future of the pie size will decrease. At the same time, the bastard will enjoy a larger share of the pie and the crybaby will increasingly get a smaller piece of the pie if the crybaby does not increase his consumption.
Thus, the crybaby will go over the limit for his own sake. As a result, sustainability of the resource is sacrificed in favor of current consumption. The rate of the pie getting smaller will be faster; and hence name of the model – it is clear that they all will benefit if they limit their consumption but due to self-interest — it wouldn’t be too much to recognize this as greed — all in the end suffer the cost. The cost is decreasing consumption in the future. Note that, if there is another person using the resource beside the two, then the person will also increase his current consumption for the same reason as described. In actuality, each and every user of the resource will do the same.
In this explanation, I assume that the resource is renewable – at the level where everybody agrees to limit initial, the regeneration rate of the resource equals the consumption rate of the resource. Whenever anybody goes over the limit, the consumption rate is higher than the regeneration rate.
It is not hard to relate the tragedy to the issues related to the environment. The environment in someway is a public good. Nobody owns the air, nobody owns the planet. Also, everybody breathe the same air, everybody lives on the same planet. Similarly, almost everybody is overexploiting the environment.
Knowing that everybody is better off not overexploiting, it is a tragedy indeed seeing everybody is overexploiting the environment.
After reading lightly about cases relating to tragedy of the commons for about a week, I realized and later found out from some reading that one way to reduce this hazard is to privatize everything. A total privatization will eliminate this problem completely, assuming stealing is not an option. How is the problem is eliminated? Simple! There is no public good at all after privatization!
At least in this way, every rational person will rational enough to not overuse his private property though the same can’t be said for irrational person. If an irrational person overuses his private resource, by all means he deserves to face any tragedy caused by his irrationality. Like one of my economic instructors once said, if they want to screw themselves, let them screw themselves.
But it is hard to imagine a total privatization of the planet. I can’t imagine the air being privatized though the same can’t be said for water. I am content to say not everything can be privatized and therefore, I don’t think this is viable.
Another solution is the creation of an administrator over the commons. The administrator will enforce the limit, making sure nobody will go over the limit. If somebody does go over the limit, like the bastard in the first place, sufficient punishment will be administered towards the offender.
And I asked myself: Why is there nobody to govern the environment?
One word came to my mind: Kyoto; all agreements on the environment in general act as that body that governs the “amount of damage” to the environment. But the second option has its own problem – the freeriders. People that don’t agree to the treaty will benefit as much as those that commit themselves to the treaty without incurring the cost of commitment to the treaty, at least when it concerns anything that as global as climate change.