Why we should be glad of Somalian piracy

It seems like the internets are going a bit mad today about piracy.

It’s not exactly clear whether Somalian piracy is suddenly increasing and media coverage is following suit, or whether the media has decided that this makes a damn good story and so we’re all just hearing more than usual about it. I have my suspicions. It looks like the CNN effect is at work again. Remember, though, correlation does not mean causation. At any rate, it gives everyone an excuse to do this:

The subject of correlation and causation reminds me of the original point of this post: why we should be glad of Somalian piracy. The answer is simple. Piracy helps prevent global warming. The evidence is incontravertible:

Graph courtesy of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that Somalia has the lowest CO2 emissions in the world.

Clearly this data is out of date, though. If piracy has been on the rise since 2000 (and let’s remember, according to all appearances it’s increased, oh, around 10,000% since this February), we can expect a long-term cooling effect. Step aside, Mr Gore, it’s under control.

E.F. Schumacher, according to a former Wall Street CEO

A former managing director of JPMorgan and ex-hegde fund CEO is not the kind of person that I’d naturally expect to be advocating the thinking of Fritz Schumacher. Yet that’s exactly what John Fullerton is doing at the rather excellent Share The World’s Resources. An extract:

Today we face two problems in our economic system.  The first is a cyclical credit driven contraction, which leaves the entire middle class vulnerable and the poor distressed and increasingly desperate.  The second problem is more profound.  So far, we are mostly focused on its symptoms, such as the increased awareness of climate change risk, water shortages, the collapse of whole fisheries, rising raw material prices led by oil, and now food scarcities as well.

However, these are only symptoms of the conflict between our growth driven economic system and the finite limits of the biosphere that are coming into clear focus.

We are at risk of being distracted by the current cyclical stresses in the financial system, which overshadow the more critical scale challenges we face.  Unfortunately, many of the remedies for the first problem will inevitably be in conflict with the difficult choices we face in addressing the second. When stimulating growth is the solution to cyclical downturns, yet this growth of our resource intensive global economy presses against known physical limits of the biosphere, a contradiction arises we cannot ignore.

The Rise of the Frugalista

I have an article at CounterCurrents entitled ‘The Rise of the Frugalista’.

www.countercurrents.org is an alternative news site. “We bring out what the mainstream media fails to tell you, or hides from you. These are the things that really matter. The things which may determine the fate of planet earth! The future of our children! In a word, the survival of the species!”