At the Little Big Horn in June 1876, one of the Sioux war-leaders was named “Rain-in-the-Face.”  Bjorn Lomborg might be called “Rain-on-the-Parade.”  He’s a “climate skeptic” of a particular type.  He doesn’t doubt the reality of climate change and global warming.  He’s just pretty sure that governments in a panic will do all the wrong things.[1]  This conforms to the general attitude of the Wall Street Journal, so they have published a bunch of his op-eds.[2] 

Broadly, Lomborg believes in the immense value of long-term research on effective and cost-effective responses to real problems.[3]  He believes that the current solutions, exemplified by the climate provisions of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), are a waste of good money.  Most of the $369 billion are devoted to subsidizing the price of “green” solutions that can’t compete on a level playing field with the established forms of energy.  He also doubts that the spending will be sustained over the long term. 

For Lomborg, all types of “green” energy generation must be seriously explored and considered: “from solar, wind and batteries to fourth-generation nuclear and carbon capture.”  He isn’t soft-headed about the result.  He predicts that many leads will not work out.  However, only a few have to work out for the world to solve its energy problems. 

Moreover, the West isn’t at the heart of our current crisis.  From 2011 to 2030, China is projected to emit twice as much greenhouse gases as does the United States, and three times as much as the European Union.  Throw in India and a host of developing nations and you arrive at the real danger.  The key factor is that the countries are trying to raise their people from poverty to prosperity in a hurry and with thin resources.  They can’t throw hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidies.  There has to be a cheap and reliable alternative to carbon to check the massive emitting of these countries as well as the emitting by other already-developed economies.  Only research can provide that solution. 

In the meantime, the IRA isn’t going to make much of a difference.  Carbon dioxide emitted in the United States has already fallen by about 21 percent from the 2005 level.  That, right there, is just over half of the 40 percent decrease that the climate component of the IRA claims to target.  The decline is attributed largely to the “fracking revolution’s” substitution of burning natural gas for burning coal.[4]  There is no reason to think that this trend will not continue regardless of the IRA.  One left-leaning think-tank has forecast that U.S. emissions will fall by almost 30 percent from the 2005 by 2030 in any event.  The climate component of the IRA will reduce them by a further 8 percent for a total reduction of a scosh over 37 percent. 

In short, we would get more bang for the buck from tens of billions spent on research. 

[1] On Lomborg, see: Bjørn Lomborg – Wikipedia 

[2] Bjorn Lomborg, “The Inflation Reduction Act Does Little to Reduce Climate Change,” WSJ, 24 August 2022.  Getting published in the WSJ doesn’t make someone right.  Doesn’t make them wrong either. 

[3] Think of it this way: How long did it take to produce the atomic bomb?  The standard answer would begin with the letter sent by Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt in 1939 and end with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  A more correct answer would begin with birth of modern physics in the last years of the 19^th Century.  Forty years of scientific research on many fronts were necessary.  Why would the same thing not be true of global warming, especially given the need to divert so much time and energy to persuading democratic electorates of the reality of the problem? 

[4] See the charts in Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States – Wikipedia Natural gas burns slightly cleaner than does coal, but it produces much more energy for the equivalent quantity burned.  So you can get the same energy from burning much less fuel.  It’s a useful stop-gap. 

            Back in the 2016 primaries, the self-proclaimed “democratic-socialist” Bernie Sanders ran doggedly against Hilary Clinton.[1]  He lost, but his left-populist message appealed to many voters.[2]  Other progressives took up some version of the Sanders message.[3]  Republicans figured out that they could tar the whole Democratic Party with “Socialism.  This became a major theme in Republican messaging, aided by Sanders’ decision to run again in 2020.  Basically, it seemed to work.[4]  In a recent poll, 69 percent of Republicans believed that American democracy “is in danger of collapse” as a result of “socialist Democrats.”    

            Thinking this over, old-hand John Podesta and rising-star Navin Nayak[5] decided to try the same thing with the Republicans.[6]  They would define the whole party by their portrayal of an extreme wing of it.  “MAGA Republicans” would be the face of all Republicans.[7]  Probably in support of this effort, in some primary races, Democrats poured in money to support the Trump-endorsed candidate against the mainstream Republican candidate.  Obviously, the hope is that many Independents and even a few Republicans would be driven to vote for the Democrat. 

Starting his kick to the end of the mid-term races, President Biden has called upon Americans to rally to defend democracy against the “semi-fascist” supporters of Donald Trump in the Republican party.[8]  There’s nothing new about this charge.  From as soon as Donald Trump was elected, individuals on the left began proclaiming him a fascist and the leader of other fascists.  They construed everything that he did thereafter as a threat to democracy.  The Russia-collusion investigation dumped gasoline on this fire.[9]  Finally, Trump gave his enemies real ammunition: denying that he had lost the election, pushing schemes to overturn the results, and conjuring the 6 January 2020 crowd, some of whose members attacked the Congress.[10]  The whole Trump term is why 69 percent of Democrats see democracy as “in danger of collapse.” 

The trouble with this appeal is that elections aren’t national referendums on one single issue.  Voters choose between what amount to baskets of positions on many issues.  A vote against a Republican candidate is also a vote for abortion, for gun-control, for federal influence in local school curricula, for aggressive rule-writing in place of legislation, for filling vacancies in the federal judiciary with Democrats, and for expanding the role of government in the economy. 

            So, is this just more politics as usual, or a bi-partisan suicide pact? 

[1] Peter Baker and Blake Hounsell, “Parties Agree On U.S. Crisis, But Not Cause,” NYT, 3 September 2022. 

[2] Just once in my life I wanted to vote for somebody who actually believed the things that he said. 

[3] Notably Elizabeth “I’ve Got a Five-Year Plan for That” Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

[4] Oddly, the chief beneficiary of the Republican campaign seems to have been Joe Biden, who presented himself as the “moderate” who could draw people together. 

[5] On Nayak, see: Navin Nayak – Executive Director – Center for American Progress Action Fund | LinkedIn;  

[6] Maybe there is a buddy-movie in this pairing.  Who gets the Mel Gibson role? 

[7] Necessarily, “all Republicans” would include those Republican officials who played the main role in defeating Donald Trump’s efforts to over-turn the decision of the voters in 2020. 

[8] Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Michael D. Shear, “Biden Portrays Democracy As Under Fire in the U.S.,” NYT, 2 September 2022.  Curiously, the story refers to Biden’s “fundamentally dark message.”  This echoes the frequent references to Trump’s “dark vision.” 

[9] Although its guttering out in what appears to be evidence of a hoax hasn’t produced much sign of a reconsideration by Democrats. 

[10] The House January 6 committee has done a great deal of good work revealing Trump’s machinations. 

Daniel Carney’s father was a British diplomat who had a rough Second World War.[1] Daniel (1944-1987) was born in Beirut,[2] then the family lived in Tehran before “coming home” to Britain in 1948.  Apparently, it never seemed much like home to Daniel Carney.  Or perhaps he just wanted a more adventurous life than Britain and its crumbling empire could provide.  When he was 19, he went to Southern Rhodesia, which had just broken from the Black-ruled Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.  Here he joined the British South Africa Police (BSAP).  This national police force contained para-military units fully involved in the “Bush War” against Black nationalists operating from neighboring countries.[3]  They might be described as “a toughish lot, but very go ahead.”[4]  Carney spent three and a half years with the BSAP, doing stuff and listening to the tales of other people.  Then he packed it in for real estate and writing. 

Carney wrote fiction about what he knew and believed.  The descendants of White settlers seeking a better life at the price of a more rugged life dominated Southern Rhodesia, which had a vastly larger Black population.  Like most of the other “White Africans” who descended from European settlers in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique, and Angola, they saw themselves as besieged defenders of Western civilization.  They saw their opponents as pre-civilized “savages” who were being used by the Soviet Union which often supported their efforts at national liberation.  Before cancer killed Carney at a young age, he wrote two novels that expressed the settler view.  Both were made into movies. 

The Whispering Death (1969).  A former BSAP officer and his loyal African tracker hunt the guerrilla who murdered his fiancé.  He succeeds, but his killed by Army troops for going off the reservation.  Made into “Albino”/”Whispering Death”/”Night of the Askaris” (Dir. Jurgen Goslar, 1976), reviewed by right-thinking film scholars as “a nasty, repugnant tale of racial hatred and revenge.”

The Thin White Line (1978).  Former mercenaries from the Congo are hired to save a charismatic African president from captivity—so that he can be exploited by a Western mining company.[5]  Made into “The Wild Geese” (Dir. Andrew McLaglen, 1978).  One right-thinking reviewer described it as “deadly dull” even as it “exploits racism as some kind of sporting entertainment.”  It was the 14^th highest grossing movie that year, so maybe not that dull. 

Carney wrote two later thrillers, but neither has anything to do with Africa: The Square Circle (1982), which was made into “The Wild Geese II” and Macau (1985).  His novel Under a Raging Sky (1980), perhaps offers insight into Carney himself: a young man chucks a boring white-collar job to seek adventure in Rhodesia.  He finds it. 

It is reported that, after his death, Carney’s heirs opposed republication of his books. 

[1] Various postings in China during the Sino-Japanese War; captured by the Japanese at Shanghai in early 1942;

 eventually exchanged for Japanese diplomats; posted to Natal, South Africa, and then Beirut. 

[2] Where the British were trying to keep the Free French and the Arab nationalists from duking it out before the whole Hitler thing had been sorted out.

[3] See Rhodesian Bush War – Wikipedia 

[4] Sam Collins to George Smiley, in John LeCarre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).  Collins is describing the criminals who own the gambling joint which he manages since being unjustly forced out of MI-6. 

[5] See: Wilbur Smith, Dark of the Sun (1965); Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War (1974); and John LeCarre, Mission Song (2006) for similar themes. 

            Once upon a time, Martin Short asked Mel Brooks “So, what’s your big beef with the Nazis?”[1]  He could ask Andrew Weissmann the same thing about Donald Trump.[2]  In a recent op-ed Weissmann makes several important points about the “raid on Mar-a-Lago.” 

            First, state secrets are STATE secrets and thus government property, not the personal property of any government employee or private citizen.  The government has the duty to defend the security of that information.  That went for the Pentagon Papers and the Edward Snowden revelations,[3] so it has to apply to the stuff that Donald Trump took with him into “a sunny place for shady people.”[4] 

            Second, the government had been trying to get the stuff back for quite a while.  Trump had returned some stuff, but not everything.  (In contrast, at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term, he and Hilary Clinton took home some furniture and other odds and ends that had been meant for the White House.  When they got called on it, they sent them right back.[5])  Meanwhile, the material in question was being stored in a room in Trump’s home.  Eventually, the Feds got fed up.  Nothing short of breaking down Trump’s front door with a battering ram and a warrant would work.  Feds shouldn’t have to get fed up in a situation like this. 

            It seems to me impossible to believe that whatever lawyers Donald Trump had representing him couldn’t figure out all of this, even if they had to refer to WestLaw on-line.  It seems impossible to me to believe that the lawyers didn’t tell him as much.[6]  So, in Weissmann’s words, the “redacted affidavit is further proof that Mr. Trump’s flouting of criminal statutes persisted for a long time and gives every appearance of being intentional.” 

            Third, “Mr. Trump’s penchant for hyperbole and spin to his base will be ineffective in a forum where the rule of law governs.”  That may be true if the intelligence community decides that Trump’s retaining the documents actually compromised American security or if Attorney General Merrick Garland decides that Trump retained them from a demonstrable corrupt purpose.  Either of those cases would likely trigger a prosecution.  Probably lawyers could cite many other legitimate charges.   One real question would be if Garland wants to prosecute the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2024.  Trump himself is shameless, so being charged with something isn’t likely to deter him from running for office.  Trial, verdict, appeals if not acquitted or if there isn’t a hung jury: all this could string out the proceedings for a long time. 

            Finally, an American election isn’t a “forum where the rule of law governs.”  Rather, it is a place where—too often—”hyperbole and spin” are the common currency on both sides.  If Trump loses, that’s one thing.  If Trump wins, it could mean a third impeachment trial.  Or not.  What if there really is a Republican wave in 2022 and 2024? 

[1] Mel Brooks & Jiminy Glick – YouTube Start at 4:41 for the line, but the whole routine is worth a watch. 

[2]  On Weissmann, see Andrew Weissmann – Wikipedia  and on his account of the Mueller investigation, Where Law Ends – Wikipedia

[3] In both of those cases, it seems to me that the revelations served the larger public interest. 

[4] As someone once described Monaco. 

[5] See: Clintons Began Taking White House Property a Year Ago – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) 

[6] OK, he didn’t pay no never mind to Bill Barr or Pat Cipollone.  Perhaps his current lawyers are sitting around with their heads in their hands going “What was I thinking?”