Friday, May 11, 2007

Power plan dooms world's poor

This is something we will have to be very aware of as we negotiate our way forward.

Some of my friends on the right use the soundbite "wealth makes health".

A look at the history of the last couple hundred years shows a correlation between income and wealth on the one hand and longevity and quality of life on the other.

As always correlation does not always imply causation but in this case it seems the way to bet.

From Wikipedia--"Correlation does not imply causation is a phrase used in the sciences and statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not imply there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two. Its converse, correlation implies causation, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are prematurely claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship. It is also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "with this, therefore because of this") and false cause.

HT: Damon Runyon for one of the clearest eyed statements ever on the human condition:

"The race is not always to the swft nor the battle to the strong but that's the way to bet"

Runyon was one of my heros growing up, even today his grasp of the psychology and zeitgeist give the clearest window into a part of New York society (note small "s")in the 20's and 30's.
Not bad for a "writer and newspaperman"

I apologize for the meandering, back to the story.

Two people who would never be thought of as right-wing, Tim Flannery, Australian "Man of the Year" and James Lovelock ("The revenge of Gaia") are referenced:

"In his bestseller The Weather Makers, scientist/conservationist Tim Flannery discusses in a chapter titled "2084: The Carbon Dictatorship?" the possibility of an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control (ECTC) one day zeroing in on the major cause of man-made global warming -- "the total number of people on the planet."

James Lovelock, a founder of the global green movement, criticizes selfish, ill-informed, affluent environmental radicals in his book, The Revenge of Gaia, for condemning millions of people living in the developing world to death from malaria because of their overly hysterical campaign against the pesticide DDT.

From the Edmonton Sun