ClimateChangeFork

 (Source: Designhubz.com)

Last week, I promised to use this week’s blog to show the results of an initial exploration of the role that AI presently plays in sustainability. Sonya Landau raised the question with me, so I used Copilot (Microsoft AI) to look into three important, sustainability-related themes: global human survival and sustainability, energy cost, and sustainable reality. As I said last week:

Meanwhile, the Sustainability program/course is excellent preparation for the students’ post-undergraduate lives. By the time present students graduate, it is probable that they will be able to generate content for a sustainability course through AI. The challenges will be to motivate the students to go beyond this and to give them the tools to critique the generated content.

Below are the results of my three searches:

“Global human survival and sustainability”

Copilot

Sent by Copilot:

Ah, the grand challenge of our time: ensuring the survival of both our species and the beautiful blue marble we call home. 🌍 Let’s dive into this, shall we?

1. Planetary Boundaries: A Wake-Up CallScientists have been busy with their cosmic stethoscopes, and they’ve diagnosed Earth with a few health issues. You see, our planet has these nine primary “planetary boundaries” that act as vital signs. Think of them as Earth’s version of cholesterol levels or blood pressure. And guess what? We’ve been a bit reckless.

• Climate Change: Yep, we’ve blown past this one. Our carbon emissions are like a fever that won’t break.
• Biosphere Integrity: That’s a fancy way of saying biodiversity. And guess what? We’re not doing so hot. The Amazon rainforest side-eyeing us right now.
• Freshwater Availability: Imagine a water cooler at a global office. Well, it’s running dry. We’re guzzling more than we should.
• Land Use: We’ve been redecorating the planet, but not in a good way. Urban sprawl, deforestation, and highways—oh my!
• Nutrient Pollution: Picture phosphorus and nitrogen as the party crashers in Earth’s aquatic ecosystems. They’re causing algal blooms and ocean dead zones. Not cool, phosphorus. Not cool.
• Novel Entities: These are like the uninvited guests at the planetary party—microplastics, radioactive waste, and other human-made pollutants. They’re littering the place.

But wait, there’s hope! Ocean acidification, air pollution, and ozone depletion are still within the safe zone. So, it’s not all doom and gloom. These boundaries aren’t “tipping points” of no return; they’re more like flashing warning signs. Like when your blood pressure spikes—you know you need to cut back on the fries and take a walk. Earth’s giving us side-eye too, saying, “Fix this, humans!”

2. Sustainable Population: How Many Is Too Many?Now, let’s talk numbers. How many of us can comfortably share this cosmic apartment? Well, estimates vary, but recent science suggests we might be overbooked. Like a crowded elevator during rush hour.

• Some say the sweet spot is between 2 and 4 billion people. Yep, that’s quite a range. It’s like saying, “Party’s full; no more RSVPs!”
• Paul R. Ehrlich, a population guru, thinks the optimum population is even lower—around 1.5 to 2 billion. That’s like having a cozy dinner party with close friends.

So, what’s the prescription? Well, we need to be mindful roommates. Sustainable living, conservation, and responsible resource use are our best bets. Imagine Earth as a co-op—everyone pitches in to keep the place tidy. No leaving dirty dishes in the sink (looking at you, plastic waste).

3. Human Sustainability: It’s PersonalBut here’s the twist: Our survival isn’t just about Earth’s health. It’s also about our well-being. When we’re stressed, burned out, and running on fumes, we’re not great roommates. So, self-care matters too. Think of it as maintaining your own little corner of the planet.

Remember, we’re all in this together. Earth’s our shared home, and we’ve got to be better tenants. So, let’s turn off the lights when we leave a room (literally and metaphorically), recycle, hug a tree (figuratively, unless you’re a koala), and maybe—just maybe—consider carpooling to the cosmic block party. 🌱🌎

And hey, if you ever need a pep talk about planetary boundaries or sustainable living, I’m here. Just like a cosmic life coach, minus the crystals and incense. 

The main references, based on which this AI gave this response, are shown below:

Smithsonian: Humans Have Exceeded Six of the Nine Boundaries Keeping Earth Habitable

Wikipedia: Sustainable population

Thrive Global: Introducing Our Human Sustainability Hub

Springer Link: Creation, humanity, science and sustainability for human survival

My own descriptions have been a bit more modest. Table 1 in the August 20^th blog shows the global changes in five key areas that took place over my lifetime in the 10 most populated countries. These changes directly impact our global environment, with some of them having a direct impact on global survivability. This theme repeats in number of blogs.

“Energy cost of AI”:

Ah, the energy appetite of artificial intelligence—quite the hot topic these days! 🌍🔌

So, let’s dive into it. AI, especially the more powerful and resource-hungry models, can indeed be quite the energy hog. Imagine a model generating an image—just one image—using something like the Stable Diffusion XL. That seemingly innocent image creation process can gobble up as much energy as charging your trusty smartphone. 📱💡

But wait, there’s more! If you were to churn out a thousand of those images, you’d be emitting as much carbon dioxide as driving just over four miles in a gas-powered car. 🚗💨 Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of virtual road trips for some pixels!

However, not all AI tasks are equally voracious when it comes to electricity. Creating images? Energy-intensive. Generating text? Not so much. It’s like comparing a marathon runner to someone casually strolling through a park. 🏃‍♂️🌳

And here’s the twist: using smaller, task-specific AI models can be dozens of times more efficient than summoning the colossal, all-purpose ones. It’s like opting for a compact car instead of a gas-guzzling SUV. 🚗🌿

Now, let’s zoom out a bit. The big picture: electricity consumption from data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency combined could double by 2026, according to projections. Yep, that’s right—AI, data centers, and crypto are collectively adding “at least one Sweden or at most one Germany” to global electricity demand. 🌐🔌

So, while AI is flexing its computational muscles, it’s also doing a little dance with our power grids. But hey, it’s not all doom and gloom. Researchers are working on making AI more energy-efficient, like teaching it to sip electrons instead of chugging them. 🤖🍵

Remember, though, these numbers aren’t just about AI; they’re a mix of data centers, crypto mining, and AI. It’s like trying to figure out which ingredient makes your grandma’s secret sauce so addictive—tricky business! 🤔🔍

In the end, balance is key. We want AI to be smart, but not at the expense of our planet. So, let’s keep innovating, optimizing, and maybe throw in a sprinkle of solar panels for good measure. ☀️🌎

And hey, if you ever need a virtual energy-saving tip, just holler—I’m here! 😊👋

Again, the main three references, based on which this AI gave its response, are shown below:

MIT Technology Review: AI is an energy hog. This is what it means for climate change.

Nature: Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

Penn Today: The hidden costs of AI: Impending energy and resource strain

Here is another recent opinion on this: MSN: The AI boom is spurring an energy crisis: is there a sustainable way out?

Essentially, there are a lot of cases where AI is being used unnecessarily. Separating the tasks that need AI from those that don’t will cut back on energy use. Also, once electricity generation is fully carbon-free and mostly solar (see the June 25, 2024 blog), AI’s energy hunger will be considerably less threatening.

“Sustainable Reality”:

“Sustainable Reality” often refers to the concept of integrating sustainability into various aspects of life, including investing, real estate, and business practices. One notable example is the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Reality report, which highlights how sustainable funds have outperformed traditional funds, especially during volatile periods like the COVID-19 pandemic¹². This demonstrates that incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria can potentially provide better financial returns and reduce investment risks. 

This AI description reads more as advertisement for Morgan Stanley than a productive summary of the issue.

Ideally, I would have liked to change the title of the required, college-wide category of the ASU General Education course that was described last week’s blog. I would have re-named it “sustainable reality,” similar to the title of Roger Penrose’s book, “The Road to Reality,” with the obvious difference that Penrose focused on Einsteinian Cosmology, while my focus is confined to our human reality.

Admittedly, all three AI descriptions that I am including in this blog are initial responses and represent me opening a conversation with the AI site. I have asked students in the past to start such conversations in my cosmology course, starting with large abstract questions (see “How to Explain Reality,” January 26, 2022).

I will return to the role of AI in future blogs to follow the progress of the technology. Even the best AI will not be very helpful with navigating our present reality. The simple reason is that the all-important training of our computers that run the AI is based on present and past realities that are in a constant state of change.

We are approaching the end of summer (“officially,” it ends on September 22^nd, not on Labor Day). Watching from my terrace in NYC, I can see that the sun rises a bit later and sets a bit earlier every day – days are getting shorter and nights longer. Fall semesters are starting and presidential elections are visible on the horizon. It’s time to think about the future.

About two weeks ago, I got an email from Sonya Landau, my editor and friend who lives in Arizona and is studying at the University of Arizona:

I think that your new focus on technology, specifically AI, is really interesting but I also think it’s important to talk about the environmental impacts of that technology. I don’t have time to write a guest blog about it and I’m not asking you to drop everything and write about this but maybe you could cover it soon.

I assumed that the request came as a partial response to the Global Digitalization and Algorithmic Decision Making (August 13, 2024) blog that she had just finished editing. But it’s very likely that her focus was also on the huge price in energy use that these technologies extract. Some of you might remember her previous guest blogs on October 9, 2018; June 22, 2021; and June 11, 2023, and wish that she would change her mind and write a guest blog on the topic. Please use the comment area to let both of us know.

I promised her that I would have a look.

The first thing I did was to check what I had already written on the topic. Just put AI into the Search box and scan a few of the entries. I followed with a literature check of the topic. There is already a rich array of literature on the topic that I will refer to in future blogs. A Nature reference can serve as an example: The role of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

I followed this with a Copilot (Microsoft AI) exploration of “Global human survival and sustainability” and the “energy cost of AI,” which will be discussed next week.

The final thing that I did, trying to respond to Sonya’s request, was to search for interesting recent contributions that her home state, Arizona, is now offering. The best example that I could come up with was a recent change that Arizona State University has made to its General Education Program.

I will start with the statements that the university’s website issues about the objectives of its undergraduate General Studies (General Education) classes (according to ASU’s website):

In addition to preparing students for careers and advanced study, a baccalaureate education should prepare students for satisfying personal, social and civic lives. Students should both acquire a depth of knowledge in a particular academic or professional discipline and also be broadly educated, with knowledge of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to address an array of questions. They should develop the general intellectual skills required to continue learning throughout their lives. The ASU general studies requirements complement the undergraduate major by developing critical learning skills, investigating the traditional branches of knowledge, and introducing students to approaches applicable to addressing contemporary challenges.

The structure of the new General Studies program is shown in Figure 1

Figure 1 – Structure of the undergraduate General Studies program at ASU (Source: University undergraduate General Studies requirements | Academic Catalog)

The main innovation here is the last contribution, which introduces “Sustainability” as a required category rather than just a course (even though it is still in the form of a single 3-credit course), with the following learning objectives:

Upon completion of a course in Sustainability, students will be able to do the following:

1. demonstrate an understanding of the earth and its ecosphere, including the measures that indicate their capacities and limits

2. trace historical impacts of a range of socio-economic, political or cultural choices on integrated human-environmental well-being

3. envision pathways toward futures characterized by integrated human-environmental well-being

4. articulate an approach to addressing contemporary questions or challenges that employs concepts or practices of sustainability.

According to the site:

The learning objectives emphasize systems thinking, where human and non-human systems are understood as intimately connected, with human actions affecting all life on a planet with limits and boundaries.

Here is how the course works:

All students, regardless of major, will fulfill a three-credit course that address sustainable development, socio-ecological systems and how they relate to global challenges and opportunities.

The last thing that I explored was the meaning of sustainability. I searched Google for synonyms and I got the following list: green, imperishable, livable, renewable, supportable, unending, and worthwhile.

Two of the four learning objectives of the Sustainability category are anchored on timing (trace historical impacts and envision pathways toward futures). All of them are globally targeted. Only one of the 7 synonyms directly refers to timing (unending). Renewability can be interpreted as a mitigation for unsustainability.

Most people interpret sustainability as “green,” as in environmental. The synonyms of environmental (also Google) are: ecological, conservationist, environment-friendly, eco-friendly, ozone-friendly, sustainable, and recyclable. Again, of these terms, only recyclable can be related to timing, and even then, only indirectly. On the other hand, if you ask for the opposite of environmental sustainability you will get environmental degradation, which definitely involves time.

I haven’t decided whether I’d like to try to enroll at ASU as a student (there’s no age limit) or join as an adjunct professor to teach the Sustainability course. However, I have one strong piece of advice for these students: I recommend taking this course toward the end of their degree; all the other 32 General Studies courses serve as excellent prerequisites. Meanwhile, the Sustainability program/course is excellent preparation for the students’ post-undergraduate lives. By the time present students graduate, it is probable that they will be able to generate content for a sustainability course through AI. The challenges will be to motivate the students to go beyond this and to give them the tools to critique the generated content.

😄

Last week I tried to analyze the recent Paris Olympics by using a similar methodology to that I used to analyze global trends such as climate change, fertility decline, digitization, global penetration of electricity, and the use of nuclear energy. These trends were quantified and analyzed in the 10 most populated countries, which together represent more than 50% of both the global population and the global GDP. Similarly, the Paris Olympics were analyzed through 10 countries from which athletes, collectively, won 61% of the gold medals and 59% of the total medals. These 10 countries were analyzed in terms of their collective population (28% of present global population) and collective GDP (63% of global GDP). This analysis shed light on the issue that the Paris Olympics winners mostly came from the countries with the top GDPs. A similar analysis of future Olympics (starting with the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028) will show us if we are making progress in making the Olympics more inclusive by serving a higher percentage of the global population.

An interesting example of such progress can come from a different global trend: gender equity. Table 1 shows the share of males and females in the recent 10 Olympic games, compared to the first modern game that took place in Athens in 1896. We started with all-male games and ended in the “promised land”: full equity in athletic participation in the Paris Olympics.

Table 1 – Trends in share of athletes of each gender in the last 10 Olympic Games and the first modern Games in Athens (Source: Statista)

In terms of medal winners, we are very far from equity (defined as fully scaled with population –  equal global chance of producing a medal winner, independent of geography). However, in terms of performance, life is more complicated.

One important reason is that in order to be an Olympic medal winner, you have to be both very gifted and extensively trained. The two are obviously connected. Superb training enhances achievements but the ability to pay for the training is concentrated in rich countries. Since winning medals gain prestige, rich countries are happy to spend the money to attract promising athletes from emerging countries. To partially counter these trends, the Olympic committee limits the number of athletes from each country in most sports and allows people with dual citizenship to choose the country that they will represent. Rich countries may facilitate citizenship applications from gifted athletes from poor countries and thus encourage emigration similar to the “brain drain” that was described before in a different context (See “Back to the Energy and Population Transitions: Electrification and Brain Drain,” February 1, 2022). On the other hand, gifted athletes from rich countries who either didn’t make the team or didn’t want to represent their original rich country, have an option to represent more needy emerging countries.

American colleges play a central element in that dynamic:

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, 272 former, current and incoming NCAA student-athletes combined to earn 330 medals for 26 countries. The medalists competed in 21 Olympic sports and represented 90 schools and 22 conferences.

Of the medals earned by athletes with NCAA ties, 127 were gold, 95 were silver and 108 were bronze. Women accounted for 58% of all NCAA medalists and 80, or 63%, of the 127 gold medals.

The United States included the most NCAA medalists of any country, with 184 medalists.

Details about the dominant American colleges in the medal distribution can be found in (NCAA’s comprehensive Olympic qualifier dashboard):

Top five NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) schools, by number of medals 

1. Stanford: 34 medals won by 22 medalists — 12 gold, 11 silver, and 11 bronze
2. California: 17 medals won by 13 medalists — 4 gold, 6 silver, and 7 bronze
3. Texas: 16 medals won by 13 medalists — 7 gold, 7 silver, and 3 bronze
4. Virginia: 15 medals won by 8 medalists — 7 gold, 5 silver, and 3 bronze
5. Southern California: 13 medals won by 12 medalists — 6 gold, 2 silver, and 5 bronze

Top teams/countries based on NCAA athletes are listed below:

1. United States: 385 athletes from 138 schools, 45 conferences, and 19 NCAA sports
2. Canada: 132 athletes from 69 schools, 19 conferences, and 13 NCAA sports
3. Australia: 44 athletes from 32 schools, 13 conferences, and 7 NCAA sports
4. Nigeria: 38 athletes from 35 schools, 10 conferences, and 3 NCAA sports
5. Jamaica: 34 athletes from 25 schools, 11 conferences, and 2 NCAA sports
   
6. Germany: 34 athletes from 33 schools, 14 conferences, and 7 NCAA sports
   

Colleges and universities in the US are willing to spend large sums of money to acquire the best training facilities and best trainers to attract the best athletes from all over the world. The athletes benefit by getting a good education as well as celebrity that could help them with post-college opportunities.

However, these dynamics might slow down as we move to the next Olympics in LA. As was discussed in previous blogs, many colleges now face declining enrollment and schools need to economize—and in some cases close—to accommodate these changes.

The issue was discussed in the October 10^th and October 31, 2023 blogs. These blogs also discussed some of the steps that colleges are taking to counter this trend. Figure 1, taken from the October 10^th blog, shows the trend.

Figure 1 – Historical US college enrollment from 1970-2020 (Source: Education Data Initiative)

A major factor in the drop in enrollment comes from the drop in fertility that was discussed in earlier blogs. The first impact of a drop in fertility is a drop in the age population of present and future college students. Most college students are Generation Z (born from 1995 – 2012). Per definition, the present drop in fertility directly impacts generation Alpha (born from 2013 – 2025). By the time of the LA Olympics, most college students will be generations Alpha and Z. The drop in enrollment will probably continue as colleges continue to economize. College administrators will have to decide how and where to balance tight budgets. Athletic fields will not escape those cuts entirely, and American colleges will likely become somewhat less attractive for athletes.

Throughout the more than 12 years that I have been writing this blog, my emphasis has been on trying to identify and analyze what I see as evolving global trends that can help both students and others navigate through changing realities. I have not always been consistent in my way of presenting these realities. In almost all cases, I have tried to quantify the trends and present the results either in terms of a figure and/or using individual sovereign countries to illustrate the changes. Two recent examples make these points: last week (August 13^th), the emphasis was on global digitization (access to computers), to illustrate global technology penetration. I assembled a table similar to Table 1 below. Earlier this year (January 30^th), the emphasis was on global changes in the fertility rate and I included many more developed countries than Table 1 shows. The main difference was that my objectives in compiling these data were different. Showing computer access, my objective was to represent global trends with an emphasis on emerging countries, while the table that shows the decline of fertility was meant to show important issues that are more abundant in developed countries. Both tables included the population and recent GDP/capita of the selected countries.

In this blog, I am including Table 1, based on a compilation of recent population and GDP/capita. I showed last week that the 10 listed countries simultaneously account for more than 50% of the global population and more than 50% of GDP and thus fairly represent our world. In this table, I have included 5 recent trends that were discussed in previous blogs (put them in the search box to scan through the examples). The 5 trends include computer access, electricity access, fertility, carbon emissions, and estimated number of nuclear warheads. All five trends are anthropogenic (generated by us humans). All five have a major impact on our lives and all of them started in my lifetime. Each trend has a set of complex impacts, with both destructive and positive potential. The impact they have on our lives is projected to increase.

Table 1 – Recent trends in 10 large countries that exceed 50% of the global population (4.5 billion people) and 50% of the global GDP (55 trillion $US). The approximate global population is taken as 8.2 billion and the approximate global GDP is approaching 110 trillion US$.
(The data for the nuclear warheads were taken from the March 22, 2022 blog and the data for the carbon emissions per capita were taken from the carbon offsets website COTAP.org.

Using a similar format, I have compiled a similar table of the 10 countries that won the most medals (both gold and total) in the recent Paris Olympic Games that just finished. The objective was the same: to explore what a concentrated list of the 10 top medal winners can teach us about the world at large.

Table 2 – The 10 countries from which athletes collected the largest number of medals in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games

The Olympics had a total number of 329 medal events in 32 sports. There were three medals: gold, silver and bronze. Taking the recent global population to be 8.2 billion and the recent global GDP as approaching 110 trillion $US, the 10 countries listed in Table 2 account for 28% of the global population and 63% of the global GDP. Combined, these 10 countries won 61% of the gold medals and 59% of all the medals.This closely matches the 10 countries’ share of the GDP  (63% of the population to 61% and 59% of the medals) but lags considerably behind their combined share of the global population.

The recent summer Olympic Games are the fourth Games that I have briefly covered, starting with the ones in 2012 (see August 27, 2012; September 8, 2016 and August 17, 2021 blogs for previous Games). Each event came  with different perspectives.

Unlike the 5 trends that I have compiled in Table 1, the Olympic Games didn’t start in my lifetime. A short history is described in Wikipedia with the following two paragraphs:

The modern Olympic Games (OG; or Olympics; French: Jeux olympiques, JO)^[a][1] are the world’s leading international sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered the world’s foremost sports competition, with more than 200 teams, representing sovereign states and territories, participating. By default, the Games generally substitute for any world championships during the year in which they take place (however, each class usually maintains its own records).^[2] The Olympic Games are held every four years. Since 1994, they have alternated between the Summer and Winter Olympics every two years during the four-year Olympiad.^[3][4]

Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, held in Olympia, Greece from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, leading to the first modern Games in Athens in 1896. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, which encompasses all entities and individuals involved in the Olympic Games. The Olympic Charter defines their structure and authority.

I observed (through TV, I couldn’t get there) these Olympics as much as I could. I thought that France did a magnificent job organizing this event. I was delighted that despite the unrest that France experienced before the Olympics, there were no signs of unrest during the event. Others share my opinion: NYT: Merci, Paris: We needed these Olympics:

Every venue, every day, every event. Full, alive, loud and proud. From the opening ceremony on, the French filled the cup till it runneth over, delivering an Olympic Games that mixed art with sport, and history with future, and national flag-waving with a worldwide welcoming.

For those who watched, and especially those who attended, these were the Games we needed. The Pandemic Olympics were still so vivid at the start of Paris 2024. The 2020 Games were played in 2021, and while broadcast all over the world, were seen live by almost no one. It was the anti-Olympics. As American rower Nick Mead put it: “Part of the Olympic experience is meeting all these people from all over the world, who are doing what you’re doing, maybe in a different sport or a different country, to have that same lifestyle.” The Games bring them together and introduce them all to the world.

And MSN: Why Paris 2024 Was the Most Important Olympics in Recent History:

The moment Zaho de Sagazan hit the opening note of Sous le Ciel de Paris, a great weight was lifted from the sporting world’s shoulders. Nineteen days of fierce competition, outrageous showmanship, and world record-breaking efforts officially complete, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games had finally drawn to a triumphant close. For the athletes gathered in the Stade de France for the closing ceremony on Sunday night, the sound of 70,000 cheering fans was enough to make the lifetime of training, sacrifice and dedication feel worth it, but for the city itself, the deafening roars of approval may as well have been sighs of relief. Amid all the speculation and anticipation, it had been a Games that went off largely without a hitch.

The next Olympics is scheduled for the summer of 2028 in LA, well within the next presidential tenure of the winner of the November election. I hope that both ex-president Trump and VP Harris will tell all of us, before the November elections, how they intend to help LA to run it as well as Paris did. The next blog will focus on the role that college campuses play in the success of Olympic Games.

A recent description of a decision made by Spanish police caught my attention (An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her. – The New York Times):

Ms. Hemid’s husband of more than a decade, Bouthaer el Banaisati, regularly punched and kicked her, she later told the police. He also called her a “whore,” “disgusting” and “worthless,” according to the police report.

Before Ms. Hemid left the station that night, the police had to determine if she was in danger of being attacked again and needed support. A police officer clicked through 35 yes or no questions — Was a weapon used? Were there economic problems? Has the aggressor shown controlling behaviors? — to feed into an algorithm called VioGén that would help generate an answer.

VioGén produced a score:
low risk
Lobna Hemid
2022 Madrid

The police accepted the software’s judgment and Ms. Hemid went home with no further protection. Mr. el Banaisati, who was imprisoned that night, was released the next day. Seven weeks later, he fatally stabbed Ms. Hemid several times in the chest and abdomen before killing himself. She was 32 years old.

This is a disastrous single-case example. Let’s go to the basics to examine if this case foreshadows the global future.

What is algorithmic decision-making? Below is Google’s AI answer:

Algorithmic decision-making (ADM) is the use of computational methods to allow machines to automatically make decisions or complete tasks. ADM systems, also known as algorithmic decision systems (ADS), analyze large amounts of data to find correlations or other information that can be used to make decisions. The data can come from a variety of sources, including databases, text, social media, images, sensors, or speech.

A more detailed description can be found on Wikipedia, starting with the following paragraph:

Automated decision-making (ADM) involves the use of data, machines and algorithms to make decisions in a range of contexts, including public administration, business, health, education, law, employment, transport, media and entertainment, with varying degrees of human oversight or intervention. ADM involves large-scale data from a range of sources, such as databases, text, social media, sensors, images or speech, that is processed using various technologies including computer software, algorithms, machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence and robotics. The increasing use of automated decision-making systems (ADMS) across a range of contexts presents many benefits and challenges to human society requiring consideration of the technical, legal, ethical, societal, educational, economic and health consequences.^[1][2][3]

I have recently started using AI in blogs and occasionally I also used AI in class to give assignments to my students to explore some big existential questions. The present shortcomings of relying on AI for decision-making are being widely discussed and I am sure that conversation will continue. The example that starts this blog, of using AI for police work, is an extreme example with a deadly consequence. However, progress in AI and ADM is rapid and one can see benefits in many computerized decision-making situations. They could shift government regulations and law-and-order decisions, moving away from individual subjectivities and political orientations to apply laws uniformly based on the most detailed information possible. Going back to the Spanish example that started this blog, the main problem that I see is that the police interview was not detailed enough, and the statistical background on which the ADM should have been based, not extensive enough. Work is being done by companies that are employing tremendous resources to try to improve the system. Not surprisingly, these efforts are concentrated in the rich countries.

Converting society to ADM requires extensive global digitization. The question is, are we ready?

A subway ride in my city (NY) can convince most that in developed countries, almost every household owns and uses a computer of one sort or another (yes, an iPhone counts as a computer). The exact number in the US is given in Table 1. In developing countries, the technological penetration is a bit slower. Unsurprisingly, computers have a hard time penetrating households that don’t have electricity. One of my blogs earlier this year (April 16, 2024) discussed electricity penetration in the 10 most populated countries. Table 1 is taken from that blog and modified to include the recent share of households with computers. Data for this column were taken from the World Bank.

The overall picture in developing countries is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – Percentage of households with home computers in developing countries (Source: Statista)

The recent developments of AI and robotics all depend on the penetration of digitization into almost all aspects of life. The beginning of this global shift can be traced to the invention of the transistor in 1948. All of this took place in one decent human lifetime (I was born in 1939).

All signs point to this being just the beginning of the digital transition. A recent article in the New York Times describes some of the changes that digitization produced in India through the eyes of a truck driver. It points out that “The gap between India’s state of infrastructure and that of other large Asian economies remains significant” but looks at some of the progress that is underway.

I will return to this issue in future blogs.

The issues associated with the global decline in fertility rates have occupied us almost since the beginning of this blog (see the Jim Foreit Guest Blog: How Does Population Decline? on January 14, 2014, the follow-up blogs on January 21 and 28, 2014, and the more recent “Fertility Below Replacement Rate” posted on January 30, 2024). The new UN 2024 revision of world population prospects is bringing the data up to date. World Population Prospects – Population Division – United Nations

The activity that brought the issue of births to the center of the approaching American presidential election has very little to do with data. As described in last week’s blog, the presumed Democratic candidate, VP Kamala Harris, has adopted her husband’s two adult children and doesn’t have children of her own. The newly chosen VP candidate of the Republican party, Senator JD Vance, and his wife have 3 children, all of them under 10 years old. Vance called women without children “childless cat ladies,” and tried to make the case that they should be given fewer benefits from the state. Certainly, he hinted, one should not be a proper candidate for president of the United States. He only referred to ladies; he didn’t appear to have any thoughts on childless men or their fitness as candidates. The comments gave rise to a massive response. Below are two paragraphs from the NYT on this issue:

Mr. Vance has come under fire in recent days from elected officials, celebrities and Taylor Swift fans for his past comments condemning Democrats without children, which have resurfaced in the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign. It is a moment when many women, in polls and at the ballot box, are defending their right to make their own choices — about abortion, birth control, access to fertility services or not having children at all.

In an earlier policy speech, an excerpt of which Ms. Kelly aired on her show, Mr. Vance denounced the “childless left,” and named Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as one of her party’s next generation of leaders who he said did not have a “physical commitment” to the future of the nation. In another clip, from a 2021 interview with Fox News, Mr. Vance contended that the United States was being run by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” He again named Ms. Harris.

Well, to put the record straight, Table 1 shows the offspring of all the US presidents (all males!). If Harris were elected, she would join six other presidents with adopted children.

Table 1 – Children, adopted children, and alleged children of American Presidents (Based on data from Statista)

Meanwhile, presidential families aside, there is the serious global issue of declining fertility, which some countries are slowly moving to address. The global example seems to be Sweden, as summarized by a Forbes article written by Elizabeth Bauer, titled “Is Sweden Our Fertility-Boosting Role Model?”:

The conventional wisdom goes like this:

Countries which have traditional cultures (and which lack access to modern contraception) have high fertility rates.  Countries in which women want to build careers but there is no social welfare support structure in the form of parental leave, subsidized daycare, and the like (and in which, as a recent Foreign Policy article, “How to Fix the Baby Bust,” demonstrated, workplace culture demands long inflexible work hours), have fertility rates well below replacement.  And countries such as Sweden, with its heavily subsidized, always-available daycare, generous parental leave shared by both parents, and a culture ordered around community and family life rather than work, hit the “sweet spot” of replacement-level fertility rates.

Further, that conventional wisdom goes, the United States had maintained a replacement-level fertility rate due to the high fertility of immigrants, and the high rate of unintended pregnancies.  Now that women are increasingly using LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives such as IUDs and implants), we will need new strategies to boost our birthrate and prevent unwanted consequences such as an imbalance in young and old and an insufficient supply of young people to support the aged, and we will need to adopt the generous policies of a country like Sweden to induce more couples to procreate.

Except that the notion of a replacement rate fertility in Sweden is itself a bit of a fantasy.  As of 2018, the total fertility rate in Sweden was 1.76 children per woman.  Among native-born Swedes, it was even lower, at 1.67.  To be sure, this rate is higher than that of such countries as Germany (1.59 in 2016, or 1.46 among women with German citizenship), and even slightly higher than the record low rate of 1.72 recorded in the United States in 2018, but it’s still not the replacement-level of 2.1.

As I mentioned in the January 30, 2024 blogJanuary 30, 2024 blog, Japan and South Korea have the lowest fertility rates (0.8 in South Korea and 1.26 in Japan). Both countries realize that they are in a dire situation; below is what they are starting to do:

Japan Launches Plan to Tackle Falling Birth Rate

Japanese officials are reaching out to young people to try to understand why they’re not getting married as the country struggles to reverse its declining birth rate.

“We know that the issue of declining population is the greatest strategic challenge for Japanese society,” Foreign Ministry assistant press secretary Masashi Mizobuchi told Newsweek. “The government has been working to increase productivity, expand labor participation and achieve the desired birth rate.”

He said Kishida’s government had “laid out a road map for putting a sustainable economy and society on track by the year 2030.” This plan includes measures related to aging and the birth rate, such as expanding child allowances.

In June, Japan’s parliament updated laws to make it easier for some foreign

laborers to stay longer in the country and change jobs within the same industry.

South Korean Job Aims to Tackle Population Crisis

You Hye-mi, an economics professor at Hanyang University and mother of two young children, has been tapped for the job, which Yoon announced in May.

“The population problem is the biggest challenge facing the Republic of Korea,” Yoon said Thursday at an event in the western province of South Chungcheong, using South Korea’s official name. “Rapid population decline will have a major impact on not only economic security, but also society as a whole, and threaten a sustainable future.

The president mentioned his plan to launch a new ministry tasked with demographic-related issues such as aging, birthrate, immigration, and housing. He pointed out his administration proposed amendments to the legislature on July 11 to expedite the process.

Yoon also highlighted local government efforts such as Gyeongsangbuk province and Gwangju city’s moves to incentivize small- and medium-sized enterprises to shorten work weeks of parents with elementary students by one hour.

On a global and national level, the prospects of demographic changes are important presidential issues. However, on an individual level, the makeup of a family is personal (and no one else’s business)!!

I started to write this blog on Wednesday, July 24^th, three days after President Biden announced that he would no longer run for a second presidential term, and said he wanted to pass the baton to current Vice President Kamala Harris (Biden Drops Out and Endorses Kamala Harris: Election 2024 Live Updates). In no time, the political atmosphere changed. In two days, VP Harris was able to restructure the Democratic party to make herself the only viable candidate and the money followed the changes. She will most likely be officially declared the Democratic candidate in the first few days of August and is now vetting a few candidates to serve as her Vice President. The party gave her an August 7^th deadline to declare her preference. By the time this blog is posted, the situation should be much clearer.

The American presidential election is a binary operation in the sense that the options are either win or lose. As the 2016 presidential election showed, a majority popular vote doesn’t guarantee a win in a presidential election. The US votes for an Electoral College that represents states with a number of electors equal to the number of members they have in Congress (House and Senate). The minimum number of members that each state can have in the Electoral College is three (two senators and one congressman), no matter how small the state is. There is also the matter of US territories and Washington, DC, which are not states. Washington DC gets three electors and US territories get none!

Every eligible voter has binary options that come in stages.

Figure 1- Stages of binary options in an election

The first stage is whether to register to vote or not. Every registered voter also has a binary option when the election comes (to vote or not to vote). The electoral system in the US is called a two-party system:

The electoral system in the U.S. is called a two-party system. That means that two parties dominate the political field in all three levels of government. In the U.S. these two parties are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Other parties, often generally termed “third parties”, in the U.S. include The Green Party, Libertarians, Constitution Party and Natural Law Party.

As to the two main parties:

American electoral politics have been dominated by successive pairs of major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States. Since the 1850s, the two largest political parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—which together have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and controlled the United States Congress since at least 1856.^{[1][page needed]} Despite keeping the same names, the two parties have evolved in terms of ideologies, positions, and support bases over their long lifespans, in response to social, cultural, and economic developments—the Democratic Party being the left-of-center party since the time of the New Deal, and the Republican Party now being the right-of-center party.

So, if this tradition continues, casting our votes becomes the third stage of a binary act: choosing one of the two big parties or one of the “third parties.” Choosing one of the third parties becomes equivalent (in terms of contributing to the final result) to not voting.

Let us now return to the present. Before President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and especially after the only debate that he had with ex-president Trump on June 27^th, many complained that they didn’t like the choices that they had. But in polls between the two, Biden’s support was steadily declining, and Trump’s support was on the rise. I heard many voices announcing prospective contact with real estate agents in New Zealand and other intentions to leave the country in case of Trump’s victory. I was no different, but I tried to convert my thinking to a binary mode to figure out the best- and worst-case outcomes of either of the two candidates winning the election on November 5^th. I expressed this binary equivalent through the popular expression “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” Below is the AI definition (through Google) of the expression:

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” is a phrase that means to be optimistic while also being prepared for all possibilities. It’s a mantra that’s been popularized by poet and activist Maya Angelou and speaker and sales expert Zig Ziglar. The phrase is also part of exposure therapy, a type of cognitive behavior therapy that involves:

• Envisioning every possibility

• Developing a way to overcome each possibility

• Gradually making the situation a reality

• The idea is that even if the worst happens, you’ll know how to deal with it

From my perspective, the “best” was a continuation of present policies, and the “worst” was unpredictability. For the binary presentation, I didn’t care about details. In 2020, after Biden’s victory over Trump, he “simply” reversed many of the policies that were instituted during the Trump presidency. Taking climate change as an example close to my heart, Trump took us out of the Paris Agreement as soon as he had the power to do so, and Biden got us back into it as soon as he had the power to do so. In the process, we lost four years of mitigation and/or adaptation to climate change. It was a disaster for those who were directly impacted but most people could live with the delay (as long as the extreme weather didn’t hit them). The same applied to other governmental decisions. The situation with halted mitigation and adaptation is entirely different for irreversible impacts. In the next four years, climate change is predicted to have irreversible impacts but other triggers—such as a nuclear war or a major global pandemic more deadly than the one that we have just experienced—are serious threats that a change in government cannot fix. We are now hearing, from leaders in Russia and North Korea, about possible scenarios for triggering these disasters. My binary decision in the vote is a reflection of the way I predict the candidates will respond to such threats. If such a global disaster is triggered, real estate agents in New Zealand will not be of much help.

American presidents are very powerful people. The American Constitution gives the President of the United States unparalleled constitutional power:

Since the Democratic party is now in the middle of the process of finalizing its candidates for president and vice president in the upcoming November election, it is no surprise that various people would like to choose the candidates based on their priorities. These include the following, with related links to MSN articles:

• Settling the present Hamas-Israel war to their liking (I worked to elect Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden on Israel and Palestine)
• Giving their group a larger voice in the process (Black Lives Matter demands DNC host virtual primary)
• Improving their personal economic standing (‘I don’t care’: I’ll never retire and I’m broke. What difference would Donald Trump or Kamala Harris make to my finances?);
• Firing somebody that they don’t like (LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman gives $7M to Harris — while demanding she fire FTC chair Lina Khan).

I understand that people have different political priorities. However, from my perspective, for the reasons that I have outlined above, the only issue in the November 5^th presidential election should be whether you want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States. If we want to pursue other issues, we should do it through the congressional and local elections.

(Image source)

As can be read in the top image, the concept of prerequisites has its origin in academia. However, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to extend the definition to the changing realities throughout life, including almost any job that we hold—especially those in leadership positions. In fact, it is not uncommon for certain jobs to have prerequisites such as levels of education or mastery of certain skills. However, according to the official government website, there are no formal requirements to be a Supreme Court Justice:

The Constitution does not specify qualifications for Justices such as age, education, profession, or native-born citizenship. A Justice does not have to be a lawyer or a law school graduate, but all Justices have been trained in the law. Many of the 18th and 19th century Justices studied law under a mentor because there were few law schools in the country.

• The last Justice to be appointed who did not attend any law school was James F. Byrnes (1941-1942). He did not graduate from high school and taught himself law, passing the bar at the age of 23.

• Robert H. Jackson (1941-1954). While Jackson did not attend an undergraduate college, he did study law at Albany Law School in New York. At the time of his graduation, Jackson was only twenty years old and one of the requirements for a law degree was that students must be twenty-one years old. Thus rather than a law degree, Jackson was awarded with a “diploma of graduation.” Twenty-nine years later, Albany Law School belatedly presented Jackson with a law degree noting his original graduating class of 1912.

A week ago, an opinion piece in the NYT declared that the present Supreme Court was not trying to keep US laws anchored on the Constitution when it issued its recent ruling on the immunity of ex-president Trump. It was reinterpreting the Constitution to fit its present politics, an act equivalent to rewriting it:

The most important takeaway from the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States is that Chief Justice John Roberts, with the approval of his Republican colleagues, rewrote the Constitution to place the president above the law.

The chief justice erased the Constitution’s clear contemplation of criminal charges for presidential misconduct. He conjured, out of thin air, a distinction between “official” and “unofficial” acts that can’t survive the slightest scrutiny. He cloaked the executive in a prosecutorial immunity so complete that it shields almost any act a president might take from legal accountability as long as that president could tie it to a “core” duty. He eliminated, in practice, any distinction between a lawful or unlawful exercise of presidential authority. And Roberts did this, he says, to preserve the separation of powers and the integrity of the executive branch.

My last blog made the same point about nullifying the Chevron Doctrine, which states that professional federal agencies use their expertise to interpret “gaps and ambiguities.” The judges decided to give this important job to themselves, the judiciary. I argued in that blog that the first casualty of that ruling would be agencies such as the EPA, which were formed to execute environmental laws and regulations. I tried to make the case that environmental laws and regulations are an important part of the constitutional defense requirement and thus a central part of what the Supreme Court is charged with protecting.

Our environment derives from our planetary cosmological standing, which is now significantly influenced by human activities. These impacts do not recognize national boundaries. If the impact is destructive, as it often is, we must try to remedy it through adaptation or mitigation. To be effective, both actions require the ability to understand and attribute the likely origins of the impacts. Such understanding requires extensive knowledge of STEM and Social Studies.

Here is what Google’s AI wrote about prerequisites for future lawyers:

Law schools don’t require specific prerequisite courses for admission, but the courses you take and your degree can help show your readiness for law school. Some say that applicants with STEM backgrounds (science, technology, engineering, and math) have an advantage in the admissions process. STEM courses can help you develop skills like problem solving, logical reasoning, and analytical thinking, which are valuable in law school and the legal profession. STEM expertise can also be useful in areas of law like patent law, intellectual property, and tech law. Some popular science majors that can increase your chances of getting into law school include chemistry, biology, ecology, animal sciences, and natural sciences.

The issue of expertise is not confined to environmental issues. In a recent blog, I summarized what we are trying to teach our children (June 11, 2024). Essentially, we are trying to prepare our children for a fast-changing global environment:

As I have tried to show in the more than 12 years that I have been writing this blog, humanity is in the middle of at least 5 existential transitions; all of these started around WWII. They include climate change, nuclear energy, declining fertility, global electrification, and digitization. These transitions started around the time that I was born, but they will hopefully last (if some of them do not lead to extinction in the meantime) at least through the lifetime of my grandchildren (I call this time “now” in some of my writing).

All of these transitions require prerequisites in the sciences (STEM) and social sciences. An article in the NYT tried to summarize what to expect if President Trump wins back the presidency:

As president, Donald Trump’s sweeping attempts to roll back federal environmental regulations were often stymied — by the courts, by a lack of experience, even by internal resistance from government employees.

But if he retakes the White House in November, Mr. Trump would be in a far better position to dismantle environmental and climate rules, aided by more sympathetic judges and conservative allies who are already mapping out ways to bend federal agencies to the president’s will.

“It’s going to be easier,” said Myron Ebell, who led the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency after Mr. Trump won in 2016. “They’re going to have better people, more committed people, more experienced people. They will be able to move more quickly, and more successfully, in my view.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has promised to repeal federal regulations designed to cut greenhouse gas pollution that is rapidly heating the planet. Many of his allies want to go further. They are drafting plans to slash budgets, oust career staffers, embed loyalists in key offices and scale back the government’s powers to tackle climate change, regulate industries and restrict hazardous chemicals.

November 5^th is less than 4 months out, but we can never be sure about the future. Going over the Republican platform or Project 2025 is not much help. I discussed Project 2025 in the July 9^th blog and platforms are designed to win elections, not to govern. The next blog will try to cover the spectrum of possibilities after November 5^th.

(Image source: Institute for Justice)

The last blog ended with the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions:

These cases questioned whether judges should defer to agencies’ interpretation of gaps and ambiguities in the laws they implement under the Chevron doctrine. The decision to overturn the doctrine will have significant implications for federal regulators.

The fear is that environmental regulations will be the first casualties of this ruling. The justification for such a ruling, long sought by conservatives, was that it will force legislators (and presidents) to create laws without “gaps and ambiguities.” To make such laws, however, you need expertise that most of us—judges and legislators included—don’t have: knowledge about what will be relevant given predicted future environmental conditions.

The main job of the Supreme Court is to try to make sure our laws are consistent with the Constitution. A common attitude is that environmental laws are not a constitutional matter and if we want an institution such as the Supreme Court to confirm them, we need to change the Constitution:

In the United States, we acknowledge and protect free speech, property, and gun rights. We don’t formally recognize a right to drink clean water, to breathe clean air, and to have the healthy environments essential to supporting and sustaining healthy lives. Instead, these fundamental human rights are entrusted to a political system with competing demands — where money and special interests have primacy over justice and basic human needs and where partisan gamesmanship is often more important than facts, science, and human life. As written, our environmental laws accept pollution and degradation as a foregone conclusion — a right of industry, something to be managed through reviews and permitting rather than prevented through good government action.

Under this system, communities are suffering from pollution and environmental degradation. We are facing a growing climate crisis that is causing floods, drought, wildfires, and an uncertain future. That’s why we must add a Green Amendment to the US Constitution.

I will try to show here that we don’t need to do this almost impossible task of changing the Constitution!

A long-standing Conservative attitude is that the only federal constitutional demand that we have is defense. Below is part of the report that was written by Jim Talent for the Heritage Foundation:

Providing for the Common Defense

In brief, the Constitution says three things about the responsibility of the federal government for the national defense.

National defense is the priority job of the national government. Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution lists 17 separate powers that are granted to the Congress. Six of those powers deal exclusively with the national defense—far more than any other specific area of governance—and grant the full range of authorities necessary for establishing the defense of the nation as it was then understood. Congress is given specific authority to declare war, raise and support armies, provide for a navy, establish the rules for the operation of American military forces, organize and arm the militias of the states, and specify the conditions for converting the militias into national service.

… The only substantive function of government specifically assigned to the President relates to national security and foreign policy, and the first such responsibility granted him is authority to command the military; he is the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

National defense is the only mandatory function of the national government. Most of the powers granted to Congress are permissive in nature. Congress is given certain authorities but not required by the Constitution to exercise them…

But the Constitution does require the federal government to protect the nation. Article Four, Section Four states that the “United States shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion.” In other words, even if the federal government chose to exercise no other power, it must, under the Constitution, provide for the common defense.

National defense is exclusively the function of the national government. Under our Constitution, the states are generally sovereign, which means that the legitimate functions of government not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to the states. But Article One, Section 10 does specifically prohibit the states, except with the consent of Congress, from keeping troops or warships in time of peace or engaging in war, the only exception being that states may act on their own if actually invaded. (This was necessary because, when the Constitution was written, primitive forms of communication and transportation meant that it could take weeks before Washington was even notified of an invasion.)

From my perspective, these key two sentences in this report summarize the issue:

Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution lists 17 separate powers that are granted to the Congress. Six of those powers deal exclusively with the national defense—far more than any other specific area of governance—and grant the full range of authorities necessary for establishing the defense of the nation as it was then understood.

The last five words are the most important. The Constitution was drafted in 1787, four years after the end of the American Revolution in 1783.  Given the timing, there should not be much guessing about what the writers of the Constitution had in mind with the term “national defense.” Let us get through some details:

I asked Google about foreign invasions of the US since 1787 (the drafting of the Constitution). It linked to a draft Wikipedia article that is under review but the gist of it is this:

The United States has been physically invaded on several occasions: once during the War of 1812; once during the Mexican–American War; several times during the Mexican Border War; and three times during World War II, two of which were air attacks on American soil.

The Defense Casualty Analysis System has a detailed list of war casualties. However, more than foreign armies, what are invading with increasing frequency are the climate consequences of environmental threats:

The disparate death counts in Kentucky are part of a long-standing problem: Despite the growing danger from climate-driven disasters, there is no single, reliable count of who is dying as a result of extreme weather in the United States. For any given weather disaster, multiple government agencies publish independent — and often widely differing — death counts.

The definitive federal accounting of climate change’s impacts in the United States, the National Climate Assessment, estimates that upward of 1,300 people die in the U.S. each year due to heat alone and that extreme floods, hurricanes and wildfires routinely kill hundreds more. But those numbers are rough estimates.

Or, on a more global scale, as Reuters reports: Extreme heat kills hundreds, millions more sweltering worldwide as summer begins:

LONDON, June 20 (Reuters) – Deadly heatwaves are scorching cities on four continents as the Northern Hemisphere marks the first day of summer, a sign that climate change may again help to fuel record-breaking heat that could surpass last summer as the warmest in 2,000 years.

Record temperatures in recent days are suspected to have caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths across Asia and Europe.

In Saudi Arabia, nearly two million Muslim pilgrims are finishing the haj at the Grand Mosque in Mecca this week. But hundreds have died during the journey amid temperatures above 51 degrees Celsius (124 degrees Fahrenheit), according to reports from foreign authorities.

The yearly US expenditure on defense is about 2 trillion US$, which is one third of the total federal expenditure. Going back to the beginning of this blog, it is true that the Constitution does not guarantee a blue sky and clean water to the population, but it mandates that the federal government must provide security to protect us from deadly harm. It doesn’t specify whether such security must be focused on human invasions or whether it can extend to the environmental consequences of human activities.

This is not a call to reduce expenditures on defense, as currently understood, but it is important not to dress up such expenditures as a constitutional mandate. EPA and OSHA mandates routinely come before the Supreme Court and the distinction is crucial.

The US Army and the US National Intelligence Council already recognize the role that environmental threats play in US national security (see the “global trends” series of blogs, in particular, the May 23, 2017 blog and “The Age of Consequences” movie discussed in the April 9, 2019 blog). It’s time for the Supreme Court and Congress to follow suit and recognize the current and oncoming dangers.

(By Nancy Ohanian, Source: Seattle Times)

It was the aftermath of a discouraging debate that made me create a series about the “day after” November 5^th. I ended last week’s blog with this:

 It was clear (to me) that if given a second term, President Biden would try to continue what he is doing now but his success or failure would depend on the makeup of other governmental branches elected in November. Judging what ex-President Trump would do is more difficult. I couldn’t rely on what he said because he only talked about the great America that he left for President Biden to ruin. However, there are other, richer sources of information about what President Trump would do after winning the presidency in November. I will try to draw some “day after” descriptions gathered from these sources.

A few days after I posted that blog, the Supreme Court got into the mix with a set of decisions that made the follow-up of November 5^th even more worrisome. They convinced me that I needed to change the direction of my blog from the relatively distant future of the “end” of the energy transition (2050??) to the more immediate future.

The first burning question that is now at the center this matter is whether President Biden will be convinced to withdraw his candidacy for reelection. Here is Bret Stephens’ opinion on the issue in the NYT: “The ‘Bad Debate’ Nonsense”:

Wishful thinking, to adapt a phrase, is a helluva drug.

In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s debate with Donald Trump, his well-wishers are claiming that it was just an off night. “Bad debate nights happen,” wrote Barack Obama in a social media post that’s garnered more than 100 million views. Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and a major Democratic donor, wrote that when Biden “does poorly, he tends to bounce back — and then win.” Biden himself told a gathering of East Hampton donors that “I didn’t have a great night, but neither did Trump.”

Pure nonsense.

It’s true that Obama had a bad first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012, just as Ronald Reagan had a bad first debate against Walter Mondale in 1984 — and both men went on to win resounding re-elections. It’s also true that Donald Trump’s performance — by turns bombastic, evasive, mendacious and meandering — would have been seen as embarrassing against nearly any other opponent.

But Biden was his opponent, and the transparent problem with the president’s performance wasn’t that he debated poorly. It’s that he is suffering from serious cognitive decline, something from which there is no coming back. I don’t say this as a medical expert, only as one of many millions of people who have witnessed, in elderly people we love, the same symptoms we saw in Biden on Thursday: the garbled thoughts and slurred words and unfinished sentences; the vacant stare; the confusion.

As a human matter, this is heartbreaking. As a political one, it’s disqualifying. Biden is asking voters for four more years to “finish the job.” Given recent reports in The Wall Street Journal about the speed of his deterioration, that’s a promise he’d be unlikely to keep even if he somehow wins the election.

All this has been increasingly obvious for years — and some of us have repeatedly said so. But this is also a time to ask questions of those who saw the president and insisted there was nothing seriously amiss, or that his verbal stumbles were just a function of his stutter, or that his voice may be soft but his thoughts are clear. Were they clueless? Dishonest? Choosing to not see?

Whichever way, they bear some of the blame for trying to prop up a mentally unwell incumbent in order to stop a morally unfit challenger. To those who love the president, starting with his wife, it’s time to tell him: for God’s sake, and the country’s, and his own — don’t run.

President Biden himself claims that his bad debate performance originated from too much global travel before the debate. His advisers put the blame on a cold that he got just before the debate.

Writing from some experience on this issue (I am 85), the status of neurology and clinical psychology today is such that measurements with MRI, PET scanning, EEG, and blood testing can say a great deal about the nature of cognitive issues and memory loss. Specifically, they can tell if the deterioration is non-reversible, age related, reversible (through slow treatment), or the temporary impact of stress or a cold. However, there was no mention of direct involvement from neurologists or clinical psychologists on the nature and prospects of his cognitive abilities. I am not the only one that sees the need for definitive answers about his physical and mental state.The second issue that I promised last week I would start addressing, is the current, and changing, projections of what Ex-President Trump will do if re-elected on November 5^th. Michelle Goldberg’s article in the NYT, titled “Trump’s Allies Say They’ll Enforce the Comstock Act. Believe Them” gives us a good starting place: 

Named colloquially for the fanatical postal inspector Anthony Comstock, the 1873 act — which is actually a set of anti-vice laws — bans the mailing of “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile” material, including devices and substances used “for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose.”

The Comstock Act is from 150 years ago but the NYT article was referring to a much more recent publication: Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The 920-page document is online and was published by the Heritage Foundation. The first paragraph summarizes its objective:

We want you! The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025. Welcome to the mission. By opening this book, you are now a part of it. Indeed, one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States, and we hope every other reader will join in making the incoming Administration a success.

I searched the document for “Climate Change” and got 54 entries. I am obviously not going to quote all of them. However, this is one of the first:

The NSC should rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense matters, including climate change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation’s finest men and women from enlisting to serve in defense of our liberty.

NSC refers here to the National Security Council. The spirit of the rest of the quotes is similar and I strongly encourage you to go through the document. Many of the organizations and individuals who authored this document will have Trump’s ear if he is re-elected.

Recent reports claim that Trump is trying to disavow himself from Project 2025. I view this reported attitude as more tactical than truthful. It is on the same level as some of his abortion announcements.

The third issue that surfaced over the last few days involved a recent Supreme Court decision that in my opinion will be the most consequential. Many of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions will have a direct impact on who will be elected on November 5^th. But from my own perspective, the most critical decision that the Supreme Court made recently was to overrule the longstanding Chevron doctrine. This will have a critical impact on the future of the US and the world:

On June 28, The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 1984 decision known as the Chevron doctrine.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, challenging a federal rule that requires commercial fishing vessels to pay for the onboard observers who monitor their catches.

These cases questioned whether judges should defer to agencies’ interpretation of gaps and ambiguities in the laws they implement under the Chevron doctrine. The decision to overturn the doctrine will have significant implications for federal regulators.

Jody Freeman, Harvard Law professor and EELP founding director, and Andy Mergen, HLS visiting professor and director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, have been answering questions about Chevron and the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision.

As described, the issue before the court seems far removed from today’s concerns. It needs space to make the case. Next blog will start the process.