Age Of Disaster

                                                                                         written 1 March, 2026

                                                                                     published 8 March, 2026

 

             In physics, a shock wave results when forces change the world faster than is can respond smoothly.  The January, 2025 Los Angeles fires created a cultural shock wave.  

            In the new book "Firestorm", Jake Soboroff describes his live news reporting on those fires.  The winds were so intense, and the land so dry, a fire hurricane engulfed the city, overwhelming all efforts to stop it until the winds died down.  The numbers are grim.  Five fires, 40,000 acres burned, 12,300 structures destroyed, 32 dead, more than 200,000 people displaced, with cost estimates over $21B and counting, the most expensive in California history.  

            Soboroff interviewed Captain Jonathan White, of the Health and Human Services Strategic Preparedness and Response.  Based on his years of disaster investigation experience he believes we are in an age of disasters.  "This is the result of four powerful forces coming together: the global climate emergency, aging infrastructure disintegration, changes in how we live, and politics of blame and disinformation".

            Over decades, human actions have changed the climate, amplifying normal conditions, enhancing the extreme drought and high winds that drove these fires.  Infrastructures, such as fire equipment and personnel, water reservoirs and urban water mains, are decades old with massive deferred maintenance and sometimes stressed under normal conditions.  This was no match for the magnitude of the fires.  As cities expand into new wildlands, fire impact increases.  Even as the fires burned, and resources were focused on saving lives, the president elect spewed out his trade mark invectives and lies.

            White said "Democrats are wrong that what we are facing is a future threat.  Republicans are wrong in saying there is no threat.  The threat is here."  Unfortunately, shock inducing changes are not limited to climate issues.

            The Artificial Intelligence (AI) explosion, already disrupting the economy, is rapidly accelerating.  Perhaps half the 70 million mid-level office workers could be fired in the next year or two.  These are mostly good paying jobs, so personal bankruptcies will spike.  The impact will spread as businesses servicing these people will also be affected.  Recent college graduates will face increased unemployment.  College loan defaults will grow.  Office parks will become vacant, depressing real estate values.

            That is the result of AI working, but the entire AI bubble may burst before such extensive damage can be done.  Investors are growing concerned there is little to no return on their massive investment, and the rising value of the stock market is dependent on AI investment.  The frenetic pace of AI data center development demands an equally rapid spike in electrical power production and water for cooling, however, in the real world, these resources can't grow nearly as fast as expected.  The resulting "correction" could crash the economy like the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007.

            Another impending shock is called the "Kessler syndrome".  In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler said "the more stuff we put in orbit, the higher the risk that some of that collides, creating a cascade of collisions, distributing the debris around the entire planet."  Such a runaway cascade could make productive space orbits unusable for generations.  This kind of event is portrayed in the 2013 movie "Gravity", starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. 

            Material orbiting below 320 miles altitude is slowed by atmospheric drag and soon falls to Earth and burns up on re-entry.  Satellites with commercial and military utility must last longer, and orbit between 320-600 miles altitude.  About 14,000 satellites are now in orbit at those altitudes, 2/3 of which are the Starlink fleet.  This is where a cascade could start even if we stop adding anything else.

            As of March, 2025, the debris density at that altitude already exceeds the runaway threshold, with more than 50,000 objects larger than 2.5" and more than 1.2 million larger than .25", all of which can cause damage, given the relative speeds involved.

            Starlink reports currently making 800 course correction every day to avoid debris.  If satellites lose the capacity to correct, perhaps due to a large solar flare, the first collision would happen within 5 days, up from 5 months 8 years ago.

            The climate, AI, and space debris problems have a common root: domination by exclusive gain strategies while ignoring impacts on the whole system.  In a unity reality, any solution that doesn't include everything, isn't really a solution, but just part of the problem.  Case in point, another Republican president starting another middle east war.

            

  

 

 

 

When The Leader Lies

                                                                                   written 22 February, 2026

                                                                                     published 1 March, 2026

 

            When our current president was elected the first time, it was documented that he lied over 30,000 times in those four years, one every 45 minutes he was awake.  Lying is a form of cheating on reality.  Chronic liars and cheaters believe everyone else lies and cheats as well, reflecting their poor view of humanity.  

            The president may know he is lying, or is just so disconnected from reality that he actually believes everything he says.  In either case, anyone expecting constancy, or honesty, from the man will be disappointed sooner or later.  This is difficult to bear in anyone, but a complete disaster when the leader of our country is a liar and a cheat.  His small lies, such as being a stable genius, or being our only savior, can be ignored as simple bloated egotism.  But his big lies have costly consequences.

            The lie that the 2020 election was stolen rises from his egoic assumptions that he can never be a loser and everyone else cheats.  This resonated with enough of his followers that they stormed the Capital to change the results of the election.  A few people died, many were injured, and the global image of the US took a hit.  This lie is still active today, even though 70 lawsuits, and multiple ballot recounts, have shown Biden won in fact.

            The tariff issue is a collection of lies.  The president lied that other countries rip off the US, yet we consume 6 time our share of global resources.  Our trade imbalances, the supposed proof of the rip off, come from US companies investing overseas to maximize profits from cheaper labor, combined with our voracious consumer economy. 

            The president lied that other nations would pay the costs, yet tariffs are a tax paid by US consumers, a reality known to economists of all political orientation, and recently affirmed by a report from the New York Federal Reserve.  But this administration is undeterred by reality, preferring "alternative facts" whenever the truth is too inconvenient.  In his first administration, surrounded by a few competent people, the president was hindered in his freedom of action.  This time loyalty is preferred over competence.  Rather than discuss the facts, White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett quickly condemned the recent Fed report and called for the authors to be prosecuted.

            The president lied that he could unilaterally apply tariffs anywhere he wanted, yet the Constitution gives Congress the power to make tariffs, not the president, a point recently affirmed by the Republican majority Supreme Court.  In response, the president berated two Justices he appointed, and they immediately began receiving death threats.

            The president's tariffs have cost Americans over $200B, disrupted global trade, alienated long term allies, and thrown uncertainty into the entire business community because tariffs change on presidential whim.  The Supreme Court decision means all that money has to be refunded, a complicated process on its own, and there is no guarantee the president will even abide by the ruling.

            While the tariff lie is expensive, the big lie, that the climate crisis is a hoax, risks killing us all, because we have no more time to waste.  With the power of the president pushing this lie, the US has halted all efforts to address the issue, stopped all research on the issue, and even banned all mention of the issue.  He has also pressured other nation to stop responding to the issue.  Instead, hundreds of billions of dollars are being redirected to investments in obsolete, expensive, inefficient, and polluting energy sources.  He wants the Pentagon to run on coal.

            This abrupt change in direction costs the economy for all the investments now stalled, as well as all the investments needed to retool.  The fact that his decisions are out of step with popular sentiment, and the direction of the rest of the world, confuses the business community.  Does it make sense to manufacture internal combustion cars that the rest of the world is moving away from?  Can any domestic company survive without export trade?

            Just because the president believes a fantasy, are we all required to live within that fantasy as well?  The Republican party leadership has deferred to the almost all the president's whims, and don't seem to be willing to address the truth: the president is not fit to lead.  But Americans seem to be waking up from the dream being sold to them.  

Becoming Obsolete

                                                                                   written 15 February, 2026

                                                                               published 22 February, 2026

 

            One of the traditional guidelines for long term financial stability is to live within your income and avoid consuming your savings.  But modern human civilization has disregarded such wisdom when it comes to energy.

            For as long as life has existed on Earth, it has overwhelmingly been solar powered.  Plants live directly on solar energy, and everything else lives on plants, or eats things that live on plants.  

            When humans learned how to create fire about one million years ago, we began using the solar energy relatively recently saved in the form of trees, allowing our civilization and population to slowly increase.  Use of fossil fuels (ancient stored sunlight) began with coal about 25,000 years ago, oil about 5,000 years ago, and natural gas about 2,500 years ago.  These energy dense materials further increased growth rate, and the last two centuries of industrial revolution pushed it into hyperdrive.  Like foolhardy kids, discovering a rich inheritance, we are mindlessly squandering a finite resource, literally burning it up.  

            That is coming to an end.  The entire planet has been explored, and annual consumption has outpaced new discoveries for over half a century.  The easy reserves have been developed and depleted, leaving only the less accessible, and therefore more expensive.  The affordable energy savings account is heading toward empty.  The fossil fuel industry knows this truth, but it still generates $8 trillion annually, so those in control are reluctant to admit they are heavily invested in a dead end.

            However, Oilprice.com, an industry mouthpiece, recently posted an article stating "renewables are the long-term winners and will inevitably replace fossil fuels and nuclear".  This is not because of the climate issue (which the industry still denies), but is being driven by basic economics.  

            Life time operating costs of renewable systems are cheaper because the energy is free.  Hardware costs are declining as manufacturing scale and technology improves.  Energy capacities per unit are increasing, and equipment lasts longer.  In the last 50 years, solar panel prices declined by a factor of 1,000, and batteries are getting cheaper almost as fast.  

            In contrast, fossil fuels are not free, and because they are finite, prices continue to rise.  In the last 50 years, gasoline prices have increased a factor of 25.  Nuclear fuel is also expensive, finite, and inefficiently used, consuming only 5 percent before the fuel rod is no longer economically useful.  This radioactive "spent fuel" must then be sequestered for thousands of years, or reprocessed to recover the remaining useful fuel, an expensive procedure that creates even more radioactive waste material.  Nuclear power is already the most expensive on the grid, without including the cost of nuclear waste disposal (which don't exist in the US), fuel reprocessing (which has ended in bankruptcy the two times it has been tried in the US), or reactor decommissioning (which has yet to happen for a large commercial reactor).   

            Renewable systems can be built and deployed more rapidly: with 2 year construction times, versus 5-6 years for natural gas and more than 10 years for nuclear.  Combined with adequate battery storage, renewables are better at meeting real time demand changes.  They are modular, with the same equipment scalable from kilowatt sized household systems to gigawatt sized utility systems.

            These economic realities are driving an accelerating global switch from burning saved energy to collecting income energy.  Just last year, more than 600 gigawatts of solar were installed.  While the sun only shines part of the day, this is still about the same energy capacity as installing 100 large nuclear reactors in a single year.  China is the only country that brought a new reactor online in 2025, after 7 years of construction.  That means solar installation is happening 700 times faster than nuclear.

            "R" stands for reverse, and this Republican administration is going backward, shutting down renewable projects and invested heavily in coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear, working to corner the buggy whip market in an age of automobiles.  This is insane, and self-destructive.  Meanwhile, China is producing the energy systems of the future, manufacturing 80 percent of the solar panels, 80 percent of the batteries, and 70 percent of the EV's produced in the last year.  

            The US could be a player.  A majority of citizens are concerned about the climate crisis, and support taking action.  But our current political system doesn't represent the people, only short-term monetary return.   The result will be irrelevance, and long-term monetary bankruptcy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inevitable Transformation

                                                                                     written 9 February, 2026

                                                                               published 15 February, 2026

 

            One of the persistent illusions of life is linearity, the idea that tomorrow will be just like yesterday.  While this often seems accurate, it lulls us into complacency, unprepared when sudden changes inevitably occur.  Reality is a punctuated equilibrium, smooth periods between unexpected jumps. 

            Earthquakes are a good example.  The deep motion of the tectonic plates is ongoing, but the surface expression is resistant to change, sometimes static for lifetimes, then interrupted by abrupt transformation.  Earthquakes were once considered an "act of God", reeking vengeance on the sinful, but we have evolved, now seeing this as a natural process, which can be mitigated by experience and preparation.  But such awareness isn't always wide spread.

            After the 1906 earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco, modern geology came of age and building codes in California began demanding construction methods designed to withstand shaking, despite increased costs, guiding California's urban expansion for over a century.

            In the Pacific Northwest, with no recent experience of big quakes, building codes ignored what California knew could happen.  Relatively recently, it was realized this region repeatedly experiences extremely large quakes, putting most of that region's construction at risk, the consequence of ignoring fundamental reality.  This wisdom also applies in other domains.  

            For 2600 years, some spiritual leaders have shared that reality is fundamentally whole, interconnected, despite the illusion of separation presented by our senses.  But this has long been a minority perspective.  Lost in illusion, resistant to change, our cultures and religions have been at war with ourselves, each other, and the natural world for as long as history has been written.  

            Until 1800, human population grew slowly, doubling every 240 years, to one billion people.  When the industrial revolution kicked in, population began doubling every 60 years.  Quantum mechanics began in the early 1900's, and western science discovered what spiritual leaders of old knew: everything is energy, the world is whole, and separation is only a relative perspective.  But humanity used this new physical power in the same old way, destroying two cities in a flash.  Now, a few decades later, with population doubling every 25 years, we are still at war, still locked into the old illusion of separation.

            But like the smooth, steady motion of the underlying tectonic plates, the evolution of consciousness is proceeding.  The truth of unity, which had been kept secret for ages to protect practitioners from lethal reaction by the dominate culture, is now available everywhere.  This fundamental unity is experienced in quantum mechanical hardware such as the world wide web, and two thirds of the world now have smartphone connectivity.

            Such wide spread connectivity increasingly stresses the separation structures that dominant our culture.  Even before the smartphone introduction, cell phones with cameras were everywhere.  In 2003, the secret US torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, routine behavior for any dominator culture, was exposed to the world when private trophy pictures were unexpectedly shared with the whole world, shaking the political structure.

            The 2020 murder of George Floyd was captured on video by several bystanders using their smart phones.  This was not unusual police abuse, but the wide spread exposure prompted massive public rection and forced changes.  Today the thuggish ICE abuse of everyone is being well documented, immediately exposing the blatant lies of this Republican administration.  

            When America was founded, democracy was an experiment in political unity, not expected to survive.  The ideal of everyone having equal rights under the law was revolutionary, and inspired changes all over the world.  In fact, this was only an aspirational concept; just ask any woman, person of color, or the native inhabitants of the country.  However, America has made slow progress toward living the truth we all sing about.

            But our retrograde president personifies the selfish, corrupt, isolated individual, ignorant of unity reality.  Civil rights, human rights, and even the climatic viability of our species, are being destroy for one person's vanity.  This perspective is not new, but the extreme insanity of his position is on worldwide display.  The lie of equal rights has surfaced, demanding response.  We are too numerous, too powerful, and have pushed the system to a breaking point, to remain so ignorant.

            Many of us know the experience of unity reality, caring for others and the planet that supports us.  The question is: will we tolerate such institutional insanity, or will we more fully live our aspirations?  The answer will shake the world.

 

 

 

 

Does Cold Disprove Global Warming?

                                                                                      written 1 February, 2026

                                                                                   published 8 February, 2026

                                                                                            

            Last week, winter storm Fern impacted half of the US with bitter cold, heavy snow, and ice.  Records were broken, dozens have died, more than a million people lost power, and damage estimates are already above $115B.  Like a broken record, the administration claimed this proves global warming is a hoax.

            The climate crisis was first called "global warming", because the overall temperature of the planet is slowly increasing, the result of changing atmospheric chemistry due to combustion of fossil fuels.  In preindustrial times, the average planetary temperature was 13.6°C (56.5°F), which is now confirmed to be 1.5°C (2.7°F) higher, and increasing.  But it is simplistic, and misleading, to think this means everywhere will be just a little warmer than before.  

            Climate is a dynamic atmospheric system, distributing tropical heating to the higher latitudes.  Although the Arctic is much colder than the tropics, Coriolis forces create and sustain the jet stream, a fast flowing, highly constrained band of high-altitude wind, which restricts cold air to the polar region.  However, the Arctic region has warmed 3-4 times faster than the rest of the planet, reducing the Arctic/tropic temperature contrast.  Consequently, the jet stream is now less constrained, and wanders more than previously.  It often dips south enough to include most of North America, expanding Arctic cold to areas where it is not normally experienced.  The damage inflicted by storm Fern is demonstration of the growing climate crisis, not disproof.

            The fossil fuel industry, generating trillions of dollars each year, routinely funds self-serving climate denial lies.  But the industry has known about the climate problem since the 50's, political leaders have known since the 70's, and the general public has known since the late 80's.  However, wide spread societal lack of whole systems thinking has kept the industry climate lies popular.  But the issue has gotten worse each year, with ever increasing economic costs, so popular opinion is shifting.  

            The current administration, subservient to the fossil fuel industry, is profoundly retarded on this issue, making climate denial federal policy, eliminating any mention or research, and defunding efforts to deal with reality.  However, it now claims Greenland is necessary for national security because Russia and China are developing shorter trade routes to Europe using the Arctic Ocean.  These routes are now possible because there is less sea ice during the Arctic summer months.  There is less sea ice because the Arctic is rapidly warming.  Yet the administration denies warming is happening.  This refusal to consider the whole system is insane.

            Such limited thinking is wide spread in our economy.  PG&E recently reported their investment in advanced systems to monitor and predict where fire storms are likely, an important achievement, because fires are larger, more expensive, and more numerous each year due to climate change.  But this ignores that part of PG&E's business is natural gas, which creates carbon dioxide when burned, increasing the climate problem.  Additionally, any natural gas leaked into the atmosphere accelerates climate warming 100 times more than carbon dioxide, in the short run.  They are making money while creating the problem they are proudly spending money to prevent.  More insanity.

            Fire insurance is becoming a victim of the growing climate crisis impact.  In other states, flood insurance is having the same problem.  The insurance industry has been paying out more than it collects for years, and can't remain in business.  Not only are prices increasing, but complete cancelations are increasing as well.  This threatens the economy of the real estate industry, mortgage lending, and the tax base of local governments.  Yet the insurance industry invests heavily in the fossil fuel industry, making short term money off of the system that is killing them long term.  Suicidal insanity.

            While the current Republican administration is rapidly losing popularity, and will soon be dumped onto the trash heap of history, the climate crisis is not going away.  It represents the deeper social challenge to remake our entire economy with recognition of whole systems, if we are to have long term sustainability.  This global issue demands something new from humans: real, sustained, coordinated global response, not performative blathering.  Reality doesn't care about your race, nationality, gender, political orientation, wealth, or religious affiliation.  We are either with it, or we become extinct, like most of the species that have ever lived.  We may still have time to choose, but that window is rapidly closing.

 

 

 

 

Who Benefits?

                                                                                      written 25 January, 2026

                                                                                  published 1 February, 2026

 

            Two divisions of airborne troops are preparing to put "boots on the ground" in the US.  ICE tactics grow more erratic, killing another observer, and now expanding into Maine, while the administration gives them complete immunity.  The president gave a rambling, fact free televised speech on his accomplishments.  A day later he gave a similar performance at the Davos Economic Forum, insulting NATO, claiming we deserve to be given Greenland (or Iceland), displaying his growing disconnection from reality.  The whole world sees the Republican leader of America is an incompetent, corrupt, demented bully.

            The stock market dipped, but recovered after another TACO move, where he backed away from threatening to take Greenland by force (this week).  But the damage has been done.  The world sees that America is no longer a trusted partner.  If your friend just tried to bully you with tariffs and threats of invasion, your trust has been broken.  The prime minister of Canada recently stated the global power structure that has dominated for the last 80 years has come apart, and everyone needs to take actions accordingly.

            After WW2, the US was the only major industrial country with an intact manufacturing infrastructure and vast domestic reserves of oil, the dominant energy source.  We led the world, formed agreements beneficial to the US that stabilized the global financial system, helped rebuild much of the planet, with enough wealth left over to create a booming domestic middle class.   

            Eight decades later, we have burned up most of our domestic oil, there is an energy alternative to fossil fuels, we have sent manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor, there is another currency as strong as the dollar, and we have a trillionaire while a hundred million Americans struggle to survive.  These forces have been building for decades, but the general world order has endured.  Until now.

            China has begun valuing liquified natural gas purchases in yuan, their own currency, rather than dollars.  Countries are shedding US financial investments as increasingly risky, and hoarding gold instead.  NATO no longer sees the US as trustworthy.  Canada, our long-standing trading partner, is planning to resist an attack by the US, and opened trade negotiations with China.  The EU announced a South American trade agreement, excluding the US, and is negotiating another with Southeast Asia.  

            The stock market is financially fragile.  The market's steady rise results from just a few AI stocks, while the rest of the economy has stagnated.  This AI frenzy, with hundreds of billions invested, has almost no economic return.  It requires huge increases in electrical power, supposedly from installation of new natural gas and nuclear power systems.  But new natural gas production is limited by supply chain constipation and increasing fuel prices.  Building traditional nuclear takes at least a decade, and small modular reactor development, at the scale needed, may take as long, since none currently exist.  The entire market is poised for a serious correction from reality, which could be triggered by the unhinged element in the White House.

            So, who benefits from this presidency?  In the short run, Republican leadership has power and has been dismantling the progressive agenda assembled over decades.  But I can't imagine any of them anticipated the destruction now being wrought on America's economy or world standing.  They may have known the president is crazy, but mistakenly assumed he could be controlled.  

            American billionaires have done very well in the last year, but their wealth depends on the post war global order and rule of law, which is now crumbling.  The other global autocrats stand to gain from America's fall from grace, as democracy has always been a thorn in their plans.  

            With NATO distracted by defending against the US, Russia is freer to push their domination in Ukraine.  But corruption has hollowed out the Russian economy, and their only trade good is oil, which suffers from decreasing demand as global renewable investment continues to grow exponentially.

            China is the only clear winner, already the leader in producing the renewable energy systems of the future, while the US foolishly tries to return to the past.  

            Thank Republican leadership, which used to have principles and revere the rule of law, yet they continue to support this destructive administration.  Reality is whole, and cooperation, between individuals as well as nations, produces sustainable results.  Selfish bullies may appear to thrive in the short run, but reality eventually prevails.  The saying goes: nature bats last.

 

 

 

 

Free Market Myth

                                                                                      written 18 January, 2026

                                                                                  published 25 January, 2026

 

            You are reading this more than a week since I wrote it.  The chaos manifesting at the top of our government is accelerating, so anything I say here may have been completely overwhelmed by unfolding events.  The president's dementia is becoming increasingly apparent.  In the last week, more people were shot in Minnesota, as he floods additional ICE thugs into the situation.  NATO countries, normally our allies, sent military units to Greenland, to counter US threats of aggression there.  The president wants to politicize the Federal Reserve, threatening the stability of the dollar, and cap credit card interest rates, disrupting the entire financial community.  He acutely believes he is successful, and "joked" that elections may no longer be necessary.  Literally nobody, perhaps not even the president himself, knows what he will say or do next.  Is Maine at risk? or Cuba? or the entire American way of life?

            This is not happening in a vacuum, but is a culmination.  Adam Smith's 1776 book, "The Wealth of Nations", postulated that an unregulated capitalist economy, allocating resources by the hidden hand of the "free market", is the best for the country.  This has been used to justify the expansion of capitalism ever since.  

            But Smith listed several key assumptions necessary to validate his conclusion.  Among them are equal access to information and capital, which never happens in reality.  Because insider trading and limited access to funds are part of the real economy, greed and exclusive gain are amplified, distorting the market at the expense of the whole society.   

            Smith also assumed that all costs are included in the market price: another fiction, as many costs are externalized, not included in the price, often by design to make an item seem cheaper than it really is.  This also distorts the economy, enriching a few and impoverishing the many, as all costs are eventually paid by someone, but rarely by the original seller who made the financial gain in the first place.  

            An example of an externalized cost was adding lead to gasoline.  It did solve a problem in high compression gasoline engines, but caused lead poisoning and lasting health damage in the larger community.  The gasoline and auto companies made money, but health care costs fall on the individual, who may not have realized the cause, or gained anything economically from the transaction.  If the companies knew they were poisoning the people, they didn't advertise that fact, because it would have scared people away from their product.  Over time, the body of evidence grew to the point that governmental regulation forced the elimination of lead in gasoline.

            This is one of the functions of government, acting for the good of society, against damages caused by the unrestrained economic gain of business.  As capitalism has matured, entering the late-stage form of concentrating into massive industries, the government is the only agency with comparable clout to force an equitable resolution.  An individual has neither the funds, time, nor expertise to fight an issue in court against a massive corporation.

            As the post war economy boomed in America, public awareness of the adverse impact business makes on the world began to grow.  Unrestrained capitalism kills people and the planet for profit.  Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring" in 1962, launching the environmental movement, which was amplified by the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970 to modify that negative impact.

            Of course, the business community, which has always been championed by Republicans, fought back, denying reality to preserve maximum profitability.  Over the decades, the same playbook has been used by the tobacco, pesticide, and nuclear industries, among others.  With sufficient money, it is possible to sell any lie.  The planet is considered the ultimate land fill, and the value of people is diminished, to make the case against effective regulation of any kind. 

            Being rich his whole life, this Republican president personifies the myth of the "free market", unrestrained by morals, ethics, or laws: a metaphor for the supreme individual, acting as if he is isolated from any collective context.  Last week his EPA decided to limit concern to only the costs to businesses, totally ignoring the costs to society.

            But being at war with a fact, at odds with reality, is the definition of insanity.  Failure is inevitable.  The only questions are: how soon, and what will survive his demented tantrums?