Israel and the United States on Palestinian Democracy

I contend that the furtherance of democracy in general and more specifically in the Middle East can be regarded as a strategic pathway toward regional peace. The philosopher Kant wrote a treatise on a global federation as a means toward achieving world peace. The founders of the United States reckoned that all the republics within that regional federation must be democratic for the Union itself to be sustained. A United States of the Middle East would also stand a better chance were it's states republics in form. It follows that especially when democratic bystanders put short-term tactical and strategic advantage above furthering or just permitting the development of a young, unstable democracy, the hypocrisy puts off rather than furthers peace. The reactions of Israel and the United States to a Palestinian achievement in 2011 are a case in point. 

The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, announced on April 27, 2011 “that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East. The deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. It was the first tangible sign that the upheaval across the Arab world, especially the Egyptian revolution, was having an impact on the Palestinians . . . Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas seeks [Israel's] destruction. ‘The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.”[1]

An agreement that puts aside years of bitter rivalry is in itself morally praiseworthy not only because of the heightened possibility for peace, but also because just achieving such an agreement is not easy; rather, this is the road less traveled. As reported at the time, “A desire for unity has been one goal that ordinary Palestinians in both areas have consistently said they sought. Until now it has proved elusive and leaders of the two factions have spoken of each other in vicious terms and jailed each other’s activists.”[2] Tit for tat much more conformable to human nature than putting faith in trust where none has existed.

More specifically, an agreement by rival parties in a young democracy to have common elections furthers the ideal of representative self-government. Putting an ideal before partisan advantage is also morally (and politically) laudable because such a priority is not easy given human nature (nature and nurture). 

This is not to say that the results of an election agreed to by rivals (assuming a fair and transparent one) are pleasing to interested bystanders nearby or halfway around the world who gave their own agendas. If such bystanders brandish themselves as beacons of democracy to the world and yet act on their own agendas, the charge of self-serving hypocrisy can stick. 

To be sure, both Israel and the United States had at the time a long-term interest in the furtherance of the democratic form of government, so assuming a stance of enlightened self-interest would have avoided the noxious cloud of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the two bystanders, who still claimed to value representative democracy, held the furtherance of the form hostage to their hostility to an enemy. It can be said, in fact, that democratic governments that refuse an opportunity to permit a young and not yet stable democracy to strengthen are not themselves worthy of self-government, for they are not sufficiently mature, politically, in putting their respective partisan agendas first. 

Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed in retirement after the American Revolution that a self-governing citizenry must be educated and virtuous to sustain a viable republic. I submit that both formal education and virtue require and strengthen self-discipline, as well as foster maturity. To skip class and not study for tests, for example, flaunt self-discipline, whereas to follow the rigors of a course of study requires (and builds) self-discipline and thus maturity. The relationship between self-discipline and virtue is more widely understood. 

To the Israeli government, the sheer possibility of unity among the Palestinians translated into having a more formidable opponent in bargaining. Surely, however, more was at stake than jostling for strategic advantage. As it turned out, such a concern dominated at the expense of peace. Even the increasing dominance of Israel itself over the Palestinian Authority did not bring peace any closer.  

1. Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, “Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal,” The New York Times, April 28, 2011, p. A1.

2. Ibid.

Russian Meddling in the U.S. Election of 2016: Intrusiveness as Disrespect

Russian hackers compromised the voter databases in two counties in Florida. According to Gov. Ron DeSantis, “Two Florida counties experienced intrusion into the supervisor of election networks. . . . There was no manipulation . . . it did not affect voting or anything like that.”[1] I submit that intrusion is the operative word here, for even if voting tallies were not affected, the mentality behind intruding is itself sordid. In other words, the source of the unethical conduct does not just lie in the consequences, though they could admittedly be significant in the future.

The FBI “believed the intrusion into ‘at least one Florida county government’ was carried out by Russia’s military-intelligence service, which also hacked and dumped Democratic Party emails during the [2016] election.”[2] In other words, one government was intruding into rather than merely spying on another government. Had the Russian government intruded further by changing votes (or the number thereof), the result could have very significant, for Donald Trump won Florida’s 29 electoral votes for the U.S. presidency by edging out Hilary Clinton in the popular vote by a mere 100,000 votes, or about 1.2 percent.[3] Moreover, the credibility of reported election results could then have worsened due to the ongoing possibility that the work of Russian hackers might not be discoverable. In such event, it would not be in the interest of the U.S. Government to make such information (and even the possibility thereof) public.

Bad results or not, intruding into the inner workings of another government demonstrates a marked lack of respect for the latter and its people, including the form of government—in this case, democracy. Even if no sabotage has been incurred, the intrusion itself is a matter worthy of affecting the governments’ bilateral relations. In interpersonal relations, for instance, if one person does not respect another, the relationship itself is naturally affected. For one thing, the disrespect can turn mutual, and at the very least, mutual distrust can become salient. I contend that the disrespected person is ethically able to recalibrate the relationship itself to reflect the now-mutual disrespect and mistrust (for trust cannot exist among disrespect). Once the underlying reality of the relation is laid bare between the parties, the bargaining can explicitly reflect the extant condition of disrespect (and distrust). For example, the party that is more disrespected can legitimately give less as a cost of the unwarranted disrespect. Respect itself becomes a currency that has value because it can be tied to other things of value. Essentially, the more disrespected party can hold the disrespect up to the other party, in effect forcing that party to the realization that disrespect has negative consequences. There being negative consequences to the disrespect itself can itself be a respect-earning strategy. Fundamentally, a relationship can reach a more stable equilibrium only once the tilt in the relationship’s “game board” is made explicit and dealt with even in the making of particular deals. The tilt itself should not be allowed to become part of the status quo, which would happen if the intruded government does not make the intrusion itself a constant matter recalibrating the relationship.

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[1] Dustin Votz, “Russians Breached Voter Data in Two Florida Counties in 2016,” The Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2019.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Before Infiltrating American Democracy, the Kremlin Had Curtailed Democracy (and Federalism) in Russia

Officials in the Russian government may have ordered computer hackers to infiltrate the U.S. presidential election in 2016 not only in order to influence the outcome to be more favorable to Russia, but also because those officials did not respect federalism and democracy, which, after all, had been so weak in Russia.  

 
For instance, when it looked like Igor Morozov, an insurgent candidate from within the local nomenklatura in Ryazan, might beat the Kremlin-appointed incumbent governor in 2012, the Kremlin summoned Morozov and the next day he announced that he was dropping out of the race. He would be appointed a senator instead. His campaign, he explained, had created the “threat of a split in society.”[1] In actuality, the success of his candidacy was undermining the federal government’s control of the governorship races and Putin's United Russia Party. Federalism, it would seem, was a facade, and thus easy to disrespect.

 Igor Morozov, campaigning before the Kremlin intervened.  Kommersant.

Sergei Salnikov, the deputy secretary of the United Russia Party in Ryazan, had crossed party lines to back Morozov. Salnikov pointed to weakening of democracy should the Kremlin be able to install the next governor. It’s “as if you have simply been raped,” he said.[2] Democracy was being raped, and it was so weak all it could do was take it. How can such a thing be worthy of respect in a one-party dictatorship? 

To be sure, Putin would not have likened his “presidential filter” of candidates to raping. The filter itself contained a structural conflict of interest because a candidate for governor had to secure the endorsement of 10 percent of the republic’s lawmakers, who were heavily dependent on the sitting governors. Incumbents could thus see to it that “paper tigers” were put up as the opposing candidate such that in actuality no real competition existed. 

From the stand point of federalism, a conflict of interest existed in the Kremlin’s “filter” for “criminality.” For the Kremlin to filter candidates for the highest office in a republic's election has rendered the “state level” as subordinate to the federal government. A trajectory can thus be drawn toward political consolidation and away from federalism, including its checks and balances.

Therefore, the Russian political elite has been able not only to enrich, but also ensconce, itself at the expense of democracy and federalism. The latter, in fact, is ideally suited to the inherent diversity between republics in an empire. Neither democracy nor federalism has been strong enough, even in terms of being popularly valued, for the dictatorial tradition of the Czars and Soviets to collapse along with the U.S.S.R. Similarly, the Arab Spring showed the world, and Russia, that even when popular passion lies with democracy, an authoritarian tradition can still be stronger. 

Viewing democracy (and federalism, which is also relevant in U.S. presidential elections) as weak, as well as inherently inferior in terms of power to one-party rule, the Russian officials who ordered the manipulation of the American electorate likely saw themselves as tinkering with an inferior breed, or at least political system. As much as democracy is valued at least in principle in the United States, the form of government can be disvalued elsewhere, particularly where dictatorship has been the norm. Even Plato and Aristotle theorize strong (demos) and weak (mob rule) manifestations of democracy, yet those philosophers also wrote of a weak form of dictatorship: the tyrant, who can be expected to disrespect democracy for its (ideally) decentralization of power. A tyrant would naturally view himself as a bird of prey seizing on disbursed individuals who together form a people, the popular sovereign, in a democracy. Yet as Nietzsche theorized, a bird of prey who resorts to manipulation and other forms of domination is actually weak rather than strong, for were such a creature strong, it would have no need of subterranean means of increasing its power over others. 

1. Ellen Barry, “Not in Script For Kremlin: A Real Race For Governor,” The New York Times, September 28, 2012.
2. Ibid.

Savage Beatings in a Government's Toolkit: A Case of Pathology Writ Large

The psychology of someone acting on behalf of or in line with a government in beating another person who has not done or said anything personally against the beater is perplexing. The transmission of anger towards what a group stands for onto a particular human being who may be just walking has not been uncommon in human rights lore; even so, the component of strong emotion in the beating itself is bizarre; it may evince a pathology affecting some people when they think about, or engage in, the political domain. So considering violence against the nonviolent as a government tool that depends on the pathology is also problematic.

To attend the funeral in December, 2009 of Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was the 87 year-old spiritual leader of the Iranian reformist movement, and therefore a dissident leader to the Iranian Government, mourners poured out in thousands into the streets leading to the mosque. However, anti-riot police and plainclothes pro-government Basij militiamen had blocked the area. Parlemannews reported at the time that the Basij beat people, including women, and used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowds. One witness told a reporter,  ”Tens of thousands gathered outside for the memorial but were savagely attacked by security forces and the Basijis.” That witness also said baton-wielding riot police clubbed people on the head and shoulders, and kicked men and women alike, injuring dozens.  “I saw at least two people with blood pouring down their face after being beaten by the Basijis,” he said.[1]

Attending a rally by U.S. presidential candidate Don Trump in 2016, I was stunned while watching a muscular military man stomp on a protester even though she had done nothing to that man in particular, such as shout or spit at him. Why such anger in the stomping, I wondered at the time. It was as if the man's trigger had malfunctioned. To be mad at a message of protest is not in itself to be angry at other persons at an interpersonal level.  

While a government could be justified in responding to violence with violence, to use violence where there is none in opposition suggests that violence is a tool in the government’s toolkit for changing behavior or political positions. This tool depends on the existence of the pathology at an interpersonal level.  It depends on people who view other people as being less than human—even as a kin to dogs—on account of having different opinions and even principles.  

The philosopher Kant wrote in the eighteenth century that the rational nature is of such value that anyone (or anything) having it should not be treated as merely a means, but also as an end in itself. To reduce a rational nature to an object to be savagely attacked is therefore unethical. This applies both to governments (and the officials thereof) and to the individuals who attack other individuals on behalf of governments. 

Besides this Kantian ethical analysis, it strikes me as odd to classify “savage beating” at a governmental tool alongside fiscal policy, treaties, and monetary policy. This represents a category mistake concerning just what it is to be a government tool.  To be sure, any government is ultimately founded on the lethal use of force applied to individuals. Even so, the assumption that violence against nonviolent individuals or groups is a government tool can be questioned as faulty. Alternatively, it could be assumed that violence only fits against violence. 

1. Associated Press, "Iran Police in Fierce Clashes with Cleric Mourners," Foxnews.com, December 23, 2009. 

As U.S. President, Was Obama Really Anti-Israel?

In a poll in 2011, only 22% of Jewish voters in the U.S. said they approved of President Obama’s handling of Israel. Dan Senor pointed to the erosion of Obama’s Jewish fund-raising as another sign that the president was losing Jewish support in the United States. A poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Obama in 2008, only 64% had already donated or planned to donate to his re-election campaign of 2012. While a politician would undoubtedly try to placate and mollify the unsatisfied electorate, a statesman acting in the American interest might conclude that those voters were wrong in their assessment that the president’s policy was “anti-Israel.”

In February 2008, Barak Obama had said, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel.” In July 2009, the president reportedly told Jewish leaders at the White House that he sought to put daylight between the U.S. and the state of Israel. In the same meeting, he said that Israel needed “to engage in serious self-reflection.” These comments were hardly anti-Israel, yet they were taken as such.

In fact, when the Palestinian foreign minister was insisting in 2011 that Palestine would apply for membership in the U.N., the American administration was threatening a veto should the application go through the Security Council. According to Ethan Bronner, “The United States has said it will use its veto there because it believes that the only way to Palestinian statehood is through direct negotiations with Israel.” The Palestinians could go through the General Assembly, but they would only get a nonmember state status. That would save the U.S. criticism from the Arab world after exercising the veto.

That the Obama administration would veto a Palestinian membership in the U.N. should have been sufficient indication to American pro-Israel voters that Obama was not “anti-Israel.” In fact, the veto threat told the world that the U.S. was still firmly in Israel’s corner, which, by the way, prevented the U.S. from being able to take on an “honest broker” role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Given that Israel continued building settlements after the U.S. indicated that it did not support it, the American administration’s veto threat looked very pro-Israel. From an American perspective, the threat could even be viewed as too pro-Israel, hence Obama's desire to distinguish America's interest from that of Israel. This hardly connotes being anti-Israel.

Obama may have not gone far enough; perhaps he was generally too pro-status quo from not being willing to seriously challenge the sacred cows, including the Israeli lobby and that of Wall Street, in spite of his campaign slogan of "Real Change." After Obama's presidency, very little discussion has taken place on whether Obama as president even proposed anything that could be reckoned as real change rather than incremental reform in the interests of the powers behind the throne (i.e., large political campaign donations). 
It could be that more tough love from the U.S. toward Israel rather than a veto-threat could have pushed the peace talks ahead because the rightful points of both sides would have been given validity. Also, rather than having done nothing as Israel continued its settlements’ construction, the Obama administration could have withheld aid pending a cease in the construction, or even a final peace agreement. Israel would have had a real incentive to negotiate even though from a position of strength relative to Palestine. The millions of dollars for Israel could even have been paid to the Palestinians until such time as a peace deal was concluded.

Taking up more of an impartial position, the E.U. was considering a pledge to support Palestinian statehood at the U.N. after one year’s time, assuming the Palestinians immediately resumed direct negotiations with Israel. The E.U. would support Palestinian statehood if no peace deal were achieved. However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would hardly have agreed with her E.U. counterpart, Catherine Ashton, on such a plan. Clinton could hardly be said to have been part of an anti-Israel administration. 

Even if President Obama was regarded as anti-Israel by some American Jews, he could have used his first term to run the end-game for peace by pressuring Israel rather than acquiescing in order to get re-elected by appeasing voters already mistaken on his stance being anti-Israel. Of course, ending the game with a peace deal—difficult if not impossible when holding to the status quo—would have done more for the president’s re-election bid than trying to appease skeptical American Jewish voters by threatening a veto at the U.N. The best means of re-election can be quite ironic, while the political path of least resistance can actually be the least successful politically.

Voters who thought they saw an “anti-Israel” policy in spite of the veto threat were, I submit, wrong; they were over-sensitive to any “daylight” and too used to getting everything they wanted, policy-wise. Appeasing such voters was not in America’s interest. Given the benefit to Israel from a peace deal, the appeasement was not in Israel’s interest either. So it can justifiably be asked whether those voters accusing Obama of being anti-Israel were actually anti-Israel in terms of long term consequences. 

Sources:

Dan Senor, “Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote,” The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2011. 

Ethan Bronner, “Palestinians Resist Appeals to Halt U.N. Statehood Bid,” The New York Times, September 16, 2011. 

Jay Solomon, “Palestinians Firm on State Vote,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2011. 

Increasing Rates of Acceleration of Ice-Melt: Difficult for Humans to Grasp

The findings of two studies published in January, 2019 indicate that Antarctic’s ice had been melting “at an alarming rate” since 1979.[1]  The rate of melting looked at precisely tells part of the story of why people in general were even in the year before 2020 still catching up in realizing the full extent to which climate change was going on. The key here is the concept of acceleration. The rate of ice loss has not been consistent in that ice disappeared faster in each successive decade.

Specifically, ice loss in Antarctica increased from 40 gigatons (a gigaton is one billion tons) per year from 1979-90 to 252 gigatons per year from 2009-17. That’s a six-fold increase in the rate of acceleration. In fact, the melt-rate accelerated most in the most latter decade. The last two decades saw a melt-rate up 280% compared to the first two decades. This change in the rate of change is extremely difficult to grasp; it is like trying to watch for changes in the rate of acceleration in your car. Paired with this greater difficulty is the fact that the problem is not getting worse at a constant rate; rather, the getting-worse is itself accelerating. The change occurring during the studies’ time-frame of four decades was also difficult to notice because it was being caused by deep relatively warm water hitting the bottom of the glaciers in east Antarctica; the ice-changed-to-water was going on below.[2]  

Whereas the Arctic’s ice is over water, the Antarctic’s ice is generally over land so the additional water raises sea levels more. Yet that won’t stop that water from raising the Atlantic Ocean off Miami in Florida, and sooner rather than later taking up about a third of the present peninsula. Given the very significant population in southeast Florida, that the land there would more likely be underwater sooner than anticipated increases the changes of emergency situations, such as mass relocations. In other words, the studies imply that we as a species could be caught off-guard both from not having kept up on the accelerating rates and the effects of those rates in bringing climate change sooner than would be the case had the rates been constant across the decades. A feedback-loop could develop whereby increasing rates trigger changes that in turn increase the rates even more than otherwise. The situation could at that point be out of humanity’s hands, yet the insufficient action while it can still make a difference has been caused in part because an increasing rate of change is difficult for humans to grasp, let alone see.

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1, Brandon Miller, “Antarctica Ice Melt Has Accelerated by 280% in the Last Four Decades,” cnn.com, January 14, 2109. On holes in a glacier in Antartica, see Sheena McKinsey, "Gigantic Hole Two-Thirds the Size of Manhattan Discovered in Antartic Glacier," CNN.com (accessed January 31, 2019).

2. Eric Rignot et al, “Four Decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance from 1979-2017,” PNAS, January 14, 2019.

Hidden Warnings of Climate Change: A Paralyzed Species Looks On

Global warming has been so difficult to slow down through political means at least in part due to the fact that most of the action has been going on in the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding permafrost land (which, it turns out, is not so permanently frozen after all, so methane is leaving that ground for the atmosphere). All this is far from almost all of the world’s population, so social consciousness has not been changed nearly enough for demands by voters that governments act in enforceable ways, globally. In short, what has been occurring in that far Northern region has both dwarfed consciousness of the impact of human-released carbon/methane.  The proverbial canary in the coal mine has been hidden from view for all but a few (e.g., scientists). The implications are truly astonishing.
According to Alan Buis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in 2013, “Climate change is already happening in the Arctic, faster than its ecosystems can adapt. Looking at the Arctic is like looking at the canary in the coal mine for the entire Earth system.”[1] In general terms, if the pace of global warming outstrips the ability of the ecosystem sustaining the human race to adapt, the species can be expected to suffer with inadequate prior notice. The planet's climate may get warmer too fast to allow us to adjust, for instance, in terms of such essentials as food and water. Hotter summers may be just part of the challenge. Lest it be forgotten, the more complex the organism, the less adaptable it is to external change. In addition to the biology of complexity, the motive of greed makes us even less adaptive when the costs are up-front and the benefits totally or even mostly in the future. 
So what is it that was going on up North that had Alan Buis so concerned in 2013? In his article, he points out that over “hundreds of millennia [that’s a very long time], Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon [because dead plants and animals do not decompose in the top soil]—an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it (a petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons).”[2]  This amount of carbon is significant for two reasons. 
First, the carbon is in the soil that is likely to thaw. Once thawed, that soil, which has been warming even faster than the Arctic air, releases carbon into the atmosphere.  Second, the 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams dwarfs “the 350 petagrams of carbon that have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850.”[3] If you are reading this essay while eating in a restaurant, this is when you flag down your server and calmly say, “Check please!” so you can get your affairs in order.
In the frozen soil that covers 9 million square miles, melting would also emit “massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere,” according to Terrell Johnson of weather.com.[4] He adds that methane is “much more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, with more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2 over a 100-year period.”[5] Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Erasmus University in the E.U. have predicted tremendous economic costs as a consequence of the expected release of a 50-gigatonne reservoir of methane in thawing permafrost under the East Siberian Sea.[6]. That is by no means all of the permafrost up North.
According to Buis, climate models at least as of June 2013 had not yet adequately incorporated the impact of carbon and methane that could be released into the atmosphere from the “permafrost” soils, which, by the way, had warmed as much as 2.7 to 4.5 degrees F (1.5 to 2.5 degrees C) in 30 years.[7] Regardless of the decade, we could have absolutely no idea where the Earth’s climate would be headed—and thus whether our species would even survive.
Although humans beings have not been holding blow-torches to the frozen tundra as if playing some sick joke on nature in the middle of the night, the vast majority—98 percent—of climatologists agreed in 2013 that the “human contribution” had been a significant factor in the carbon dioxide having reached the 400 ppm (parts per million) benchmark for what Johnson calls “a new danger zone."[8]
We as a species may have inadvertently helped light the fuse on a process even more significant than carbon in impacting global warming. To be sure, at the time, it was difficult to ascertain how much or even whether that methane-process would be mitigated or reduced in its extent should reducing our burning of fossil fuels mean that the Arctic air would not warm up quite so much as would otherwise be the case. Nevertheless, the sheer magnitude of the carbon and methane still caught in the frozen soil and the gigantic effect those gases would have if released into the atmosphere suggest that it is in our own best interest as a species to do what we can to reduce the amount of additional warming of the Arctic air as much as possible.
Making the matter more confusing, the warming at the Arctic has been more than at the equator. The slope between cold and warm air between the two areas fuels the Arctic jet-stream, or "the Polar Vortex." Less energy means the circling river of air around the Arctic is loosens and thus can belch Arctic air southward. Think of that high river of air as like a wobbly rubber-band. The wobbles send more Arctic air further south, the last week of January, 2019 being but one instance. Together, the instances give the false impression that global warming is not occurring. "We had a really cold winter last year," a man in Chicago, Illinois or Berlin, Germany, might say. He might conclude that global warming is a hoax, then he might vote. Hence Jefferson and Adams agreed that a viable republic (and we might generalize to world) requires an educated and virtuous citizenry. 

For all our amazing accomplishments technologically beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, the human race has shown itself to be remarkably blind concerning not only its own footprint, but also what might be unleashed in nature itself as a result of our thrashing about. In the film Avatar, Neytiri chastises Jake Sully, saying “You are like a baby. Making noise, don’t know what to do,” on account of his ignorance on how to conduct himself in the forest. The irony is astounding in that we humans have been able to get to the moon, and yet we are so ignorant—arrogant even—regarding how we are impacting our climate and ecosystems, both of which we rely on for our very survival as a species. In all likelihood, the sheer clumsiness in our corporate footprint and the astounding arrogance in our socialite swagger will be outstripped sooner than we suppose by the subtle yet enduring ways of nature. For all our power and money, for all our numbers across many lands, we are indeed a small species that presumes itself to be great.

[1] Alan Buis, “Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?” NASA News and Features, June 10, 2013. Accessed July 16, 2013.
[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Terrell Johnson, “Beneath the Arctic, a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirs,” weather.com, July 15, 2013.  Accessed July 16, 2013.
[5] Ibid.

[6] Nina Chestney, "Arctic Methane Release Due to Climate Change Could Cost Global Economy $60 Trillion, Study Reports," Reuters, July 24, 2013.

[7] Buis, “Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?”
[8] Terrell Johnson, “Beneath the Arctic, a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirs.”