The cost of helplessness

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction defines disaster to mean:

A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to one or more of the following: human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts...  [Disasters] may test or exceed the capacity of a community or society to cope using its own resources, and therefore may require assistance from external sources, which could include neighbouring jurisdictions, or those at the national or international levels.

This comes up because the UNDRR just released its Global Assessment Report, which was (to put it mildly) not optimistic.  The rate of disasters (as defined) has been rising steadily; over the last two decades the world has averaged between 350 and 500 medium- to large-scale disasters a year, but at the current rate of increase we'll be up to an average of 560 by the year 2030.

That's 1.5 disasters a day.

The reason seems to be a combination of factors.  One, of course, is anthropogenic climate change, which is destabilizing the climate worldwide (as just one of many examples, the southeastern and midwestern United States is forecast to have record-breaking heat over the next three days, and summer hasn't even officially started yet).  Sea level rise is not only threatening coastlines, if it gets much worse (and there is no reason to think it will not) there are a number of island nations that will simply cease to exist, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands, and the Maldives topping the list.  The combined cost of all these disasters, especially in Asia and the Pacific, is predicted to cost affected nations 1.6% of their GDP every year.

You can't incur these kinds of costs and continue to function as a society.

South Tarawa Island, part of the nation of Kiribati [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Photo taken by Government of Kiribati employee in the course of their work, South Tarawa from the air, CC BY 3.0]

The UNDRR's report found that the primary culprits in our vulnerability were:

• Optimism -- sure, we built our town on the side of a volcano, but I'm sure it won't erupt.
• Underestimation -- if there's a flood, we'll get a bit of water in our basement, but we can manage that.
• Invincibility -- we'll just ride this hurricane out, I'm not afraid of some wind and rain.

I think that's spot on, but I'd like to add three of my own:

• Helplessness -- what can I do?  I'm just one person.  It doesn't matter if I continue to drive a gas-guzzler, because no one else is gonna give them up.
• Corporate callousness and greed -- strip-mining the Amazon Basin produces valuable resources that are absolutely necessary for industry.
• Media disinformation -- there's no such thing as human-caused climate change; Tucker Carlson said it was a myth made up by the radical Left.

Despite the odds, this is no time to give up and accept catastrophes as inevitable.  "The world needs to do more to incorporate disaster risk in how we live, build and invest, which is setting humanity on a spiral of self-destruction," said Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.  "We must turn our collective complacency to action. Together we can slow the rate of preventable disasters as we work to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals for everyone, everywhere."

Which I certainly agree with in principle, but how do you put it into practice?  We've known about humanity's role in climate change, and the potential devastation it will wreak, for more than three decades.  I remember teaching students about it my first year as a public school teacher, which was 1986.  The people who have been the most vocal in advocating a global climate change policy -- my dear friend, the articulate and endlessly courageous Dr. Sandra Steingraber, comes to mind -- have been fighting a Sisyphean battle.

"Disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks," said Mami Mizutori, who heads the UNDRR.  "By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction.  Critical sectors, from government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk."

Yes, but how?  Humanity is notorious for valuing short-term expediency and profit over long-term safety -- and even viability.  There are certainly days when I feel like I'm shouting into a vacuum; I've been ranting about environmental issues since I started Skeptophilia in 2011.  But giving up is exactly the wrong response, as tempting as it is some days.  Perhaps we don't know what positive effect we can have if we act, but we do know what positive effect we'll have if we throw our hands up and say, "To hell with it."

Zero.

I'll end with two quotes that I think are particularly apposite.

The first one comes from one of my personal heroes, Wangari Maathai, the amazing Kenyan activist, environmentalist, and women's rights advocate: "In order to accomplish anything, we must keep our feelings of empowerment ahead of our feelings of despair.  We cannot do everything, but still there are many things we can do."

And I'll give the last word to my friend Sandra: "We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony.  You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can.  You are required to find your place in the score.  What we love we must protect.  That's what love means.  From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act."

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Sounding the dog whistle

Given the other news this week, I think a lot of people have missed the story about a vote on a resolution in the United Nations, to wit, that countries "that have not yet abolished the death penalty... ensure that it is not imposed as a sanction for specific forms of conduct such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations... ensure that it is not applied on the basis of discriminatory laws or as a result of discriminatory or arbitrary application of the law... [and] ensure that the death penalty is not applied against persons with mental or intellectual disabilities and persons below 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime, as well as pregnant women."

The good news is that the measure passed, 27-13.

The bad news is that the United States was one of the 13.

This puts us in the company of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and China.  The Trump administration has not addressed why the United States voted "no," and at the time of this writing, there is no explanation on the State Department website.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Call me cynical, but this sounds like a dog whistle to the Religious Right to me.  The current administration has made it clear that they are determined to undo every specific protection LGBTQ individuals have, and to place the Bible ahead of the Constitution in determining the law of the land.  No surprise, given Mike Pence as vice president; he went on record as saying that prohibiting same-sex marriage was an "enforcement of god's law," and that if made legal, it would trigger "societal collapse."

My general feeling is that if all it takes to make your society collapse is giving official recognition to the expression of love between two people who happen to be of the same gender, then your society was kind of a house of cards to start with.

A significant number of the members of Trump's cabinet are evangelical; in fact, it was revealed two months ago that five members of Trump's advisory staff -- Pence, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, and Rick Perry -- attend a weekly Bible study session in a room in one of the government office buildings on Capitol Hill.  Reverend Ralph Drollinger, who runs the study group, is well known for this sort of thing; he runs Capitol Ministries, whose stated purpose is to "evangelize elected officials and lead them toward maturity in Christ."  About Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Drollinger said, "He will go out the same day I teach him something and I’ll see him do it on camera and I just think, 'Wow, these guys are faithful, available and teachable and they’re at Bible study every week they’re in town.'"

Predictably, no one in the administration sees any potential breakdown of the separation of church and state in all this.

But back to the United Nations.  I'm well aware that UN resolutions have no teeth, so even if the United States had voted to support the measure, it wouldn't have made a substantive difference in the way LGBTQ individuals, atheists, and the ex-religious are treated.  But as a symbolic gesture, it sends a hell of a message.  The fact is, we are siding with countries where I, as a blogger who has been openly critical of Islam, would be jailed and flogged at best, and at worst hauled out into the public square and beheaded.

If some member of the faithful didn't murder me first, as has happened over and over to atheist bloggers in Bangladesh.

Oh, but wait: you know what else Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, China, and the United States have in common?  They're all on the United Nations Human Rights Council.  Huh.  Funny thing, that.

In any case, I sincerely hope I'm wrong, that there was some other subtlety I'm missing that triggered the "no" vote.  It's hard for me to stomach the idea that I live in a country whose administration honestly wants to see gay people and atheists killed.  I shouldn't be surprised, however; the current favorite for Jeff Sessions's old Senate seat in Alabama is Roy Moore, who said that "Homosexual behavior is crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it."

Moore currently is leading his opponent, Doug Jones, by an eight-point margin.  So maybe it's not that outlandish after all.

So until proven otherwise, I'm sticking with my initial conclusion that all of this is about Donald Trump reinforcing his image among the Religious Right as a godly man. I suppose this is understandable enough; heaven knows his actual behavior would never lead you to that conclusion.

Keep on truckin'

Remember last summer, when the "Jade Helm" training exercise in Texas got a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists stirred up about how the military (acting under Obama's orders, of course) was about to take out the governor of Texas and institute martial law, complete with guillotining of innocent civilians?

And most importantly, how none of that happened?

Well, here we go again.

A couple of days ago, a guy named Jeff Stern was on a highway near Lexington, Virginia, and noted the presence of several military vehicles labeled "UN" on the road with him.  He took pictures, and posted them to his Facebook page along with the caption, "Can't begin to tell you how many of these I passed today on 81 near Lexington VA.  Interesting times ahead!"

And with that, we're off to the races.

[image from a Facebook screen grab]

Posts began popping up all over with many and varied hypotheses about what was going on with the trucks.  One claimed that these were trucks containing troops intended as peacekeepers during the Republican and Democratic Conventions, scheduled for later this month; another that it was the first sign of martial law being declared; a third said that they were heading south to put down an upcoming armed insurrection that was going to declare Texas to be an independent country; a fourth, predictably, that President Obama is up to something, probably in cahoots with his Muslim buddies; and the fifth and most popular one, that this was the precursor to an invasion by a coalition from the United Nations that was so completely sneaky and top secret that they rode around on an interstate highway in trucks labeled "UN."  

So naturally, every conspiracy theory site in the entire world was buzzing with what this could all be about.  And if you ever want to truly despair of the future of the human race, go to a conspiracy theory site and read the comments.  Because remember the fundamental rule of the internet: the comments section is always weirder, stupider, and crazier than the article to which they're appended.  Here, that sets the bar pretty high.  Take, for example, the following comment on the site Hidden Americans:

Nothing should surprise you as the Obama administration has almost revoked our constitution with the help of congress and the supreme courts [sic] insane decisions.  We can't be surprised at anything that is going down.  We are not going to be surprised if somehow this election is cancelled and Obama declares marshall [sic] law.

I thought Marshall Law had something to do with rebuilding Western Europe after World War II.  But I could be remembering wrong.

Fortunately, while the conspiracy theorists were busy having multiple orgasms over the latest Black Ops, a few people with some degree of common sense did some digging and found out what was really happening.  And it turned out to be... boring.  The actual story was broken in The Blaze, because the only thing that would make this whole thing more ridiculous is having a news site run by Glenn Beck be the voice of reason and common sense:

The U.N., an international organization that does not have authorities in the United States, was simply having their trucks manufactured in Virginia at Alpine Armoring, Inc, an international supplier and manufacturer of armored vehicles. 

A representative from Alpine confirmed to The Blaze that the vehicles were, in fact, purchased by the U.N. and were being delivered to a nearby port for use outside the United States. 

When the photos first made headlines, one person who commented on a post by Facebook user Jeff Stern, who shared the images, said, “These are manufactured in Danville. Thats why you saw them in VA. They were being delivered.”

Which, of course, had exactly zero effect on the conspiracy theorists, who immediately began to leap all over the story in The Blaze, claiming that it was TOO martial law, dammit.  Here are just a few of the comments I read before my prefrontal cortex cried "uncle:"

• ANY UN vehicle in the US is illegal AND a legitimate TARGET.  NO UN “resolution” SUPER-CEDES the US Constitution….
• Lock and Load, this is why the 2nd amendment exist
• the ones for our neighborhoods are unmarked.
• Sure, they were just manufactured in the U.S. and are being sent overseas.  Yeah, that’s the ticket and if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor and Benghazi was caused by some stupid video that a Jew produced.  When the anti-Christ takes over America, it will be like taking candy from a baby.

And then, there's my favorite one:

• Like they would tell you they are prepositioning equipment to seize control. lol They don’t even need to preposition just put in a large order and then drop the troops in them and take over.

I wonder how you "preposition equipment?"  "Of the tank, by the tank, for the tank...?"

So yeah.  I have to keep telling myself that the people who post these things are the loud, insane minority.  Because if I start focusing too hard on the fact that these people vote, I end up curled up in a fetal position under my desk for the rest of the day.

In any case, there you have it; this summer's answer to "Jade Helm."  Which will result in nothing, just as Jade Helm did -- no martial law, no executions, no overthrowing of state governments, no troops storming in and taking over small-town America.  In fact, the only thing Jade Helm seemed to accomplish was giving Alex Jones something to rant about for six months, which is probably what will happen again here.  But because the conspiracy theorists never seem to remember that they have a batting average that is so close to zero as to make no difference, the next time some odd-looking vehicle is spotted in Minnesota or somewhere, we'll start all over again from the beginning.

Because conspiracy theories are the gifts that keep on giving.

Anti-blasphemy laws and the right to criticize ideas

Goaded by the recent riots in the Muslim world over a YouTube video ridiculing the prophet Muhammad, representatives of a 57-country coalition are planning to propose a measure to the United Nations General Assembly that would criminalize blasphemy.  [Source]

The move has been tried before, unsuccessfully.  This year, the coalition is led by Turkey, a country with significant clout at the UN.  Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, plans to speak at the General Assembly, demanding international legislation making it a crime to defame religion.  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has given some indication that he is in favor of such a move, saying that there should be limitations on free speech if it is "used to provoke or humiliate."

This is, unequivocally, a terrible idea.

Let me be clear about this.  People deserve respect.  Human beings have the right to have their basic needs met, and to be able to live without fear of persecution.  We also, in differing ways and to differing degrees, should respect and protect animals, plants, and the environment.

On the other hand, there is no good reason to demand that everyone respect ideas.  Ideas only deserve respect insofar as they merit it.  If you believe in something wrong, foolish, harmful, counterfactual, or dangerous, there is no logical reason in the world that I should be required to respect it just because it happens to be your belief.  Enacting anti-blasphemy laws is a way of putting religious beliefs out of the reach of criticism -- which is equivalent to giving carte blanche to anyone, for saying or doing anything, as long as the phrase "and thus sayeth the precepts of my religion" is appended to it.

The bottom line is that your beliefs have to earn my respect, based upon (1) how they are manifested in your treatment of others, and (2) their consonance with the facts about the world that we have discovered from science.  If your beliefs lead you to oppress women, if they encourage you to blow yourself and others up, if they demand that you suppress free speech and dissent, if they impel you to foist your mythological and erroneous views of the origins of life on children, then your beliefs are not worthy of respect.  And your saying, "but it's my religion!" is entirely irrelevant.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying we should silence people from voicing these beliefs.  That's as wrong-headed as the proposed anti-blasphemy laws.  You have every right to trumpet your beliefs from the rooftops, if you want to.  However, no one, myself included, has the right to demand that his opinions, once voiced, be immune to criticism.  Or ridicule, either; ridicule may not be nice, but it is powerful, and satire can be a potent force for positive social change (think of the impact that Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal had).  So, you may not like it if I or others make fun of your beliefs, but your taking offense cannot trump my right to speak.  If it does, it sets up a dangerous precedent, creating a world where every word has to be sifted through the mesh of "Will This Bother Anyone?"

I still think that it would be wonderful if people were kinder.  "Don't go out of your way to be an asshole" is still a pretty good guide to behavior, and I believe that a lot of the recent deliberate provocation of Muslims is mean-spirited, crass, and frankly unwise, given how devout Muslims generally respond to such goading.  But my saying "it isn't nice," or even "wow, that was a dumb thing to say," is a far cry from "you are forbidden by law from saying that."  So, what the filmmaker had to say about Muhammad on his YouTube video might have been banal, crude, foolish, disgusting, and worthy of a hundred other disparaging adjectives.

But he did have the right to say it.  And no one, up to and including Ban Ki-moon, should be able to tell him that he can't.