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βNew eraβ: Tusk celebrates exit polls suggesting opposition win in Poland
(www.aljazeera.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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May this signal a global turn around.
Nationalism is like strong licquor: only good in very small quantities.
Unfortunately it comes just after Slovaks put a pro-russian-imperalism mafia-friendly and democracy-averse corrupt nationalist in charge of the country - in coalition with a far-right party that is so unconcerned with disguising their fascism that they are only one swastika away from co-opting all the Nazi symbolism.
Also Italy put a Mussolini fan girl in power
A Mussolini fan who is weirdly fine with European integration, but a Mussolini fan nevertheless.
The extreme right has realised for a few years now that they can work together and dismantle the EU from the inside.
Which, if they managed, would be a rare achievement of European collective action.
Doesn't the EU have safeguards to twart down such "regimes"?
There's article 7, but it's deeply flawed, because it requires unanimity from the remaining members. So if 2 countries have authoritarian governments then they can protect each other. For the last few years it has mostly been Poland protecting the Hungarian government - by far the worst backsliding in democracy in the EU. Now Fico is going to Orban's best friend.
In practice this leaves removing funds from the EU budget as a way to punish governments that are against democracy and the rule of law, but that's not been very effective and feels a bit icky.
I agree, as that money is intended to go towards structural reforms, in the end line aimed at improving living standards but we all know that a good portion of it is lost to corruption, especially in such regimes.
Witholding such funds does feel like blackmail but it's the regimes holding the hostages and I do think dealing with crooks tends to produce poor results.
At this point, we can be happy one change has happened. Let's remain vigilant.
We're in an increasingly polarised world, not a turnaround. Many parties elect both extremists. This will only get worse with climate change exacerbating resource-depletion, economic downturn and migration.
This is going to garner me a lot of criticism but at this moment, although I recognize your points as valid and worthy of reflection, the more I think about it, the more I think we are being fed a tale of fear to keep us busy.
As it is, we already produce more than what we require. The population is on the brink of comencing a decline. And there are already scientists arguing for reduction of food production; as it is, aproximately 1/3 of all of it is wasted even before reaching the end of the chain.
We recycle more than ever and it is something we will only see mounting. Energy production is going to see a sharp turn in a very short term horizon.
Migration always existed but it is so tiresome to listen the "undeveloped" countries will "colonize" the "developed" counterparts. As if those countries are not trying to evolve as we speak.
I don't have a crystal ball but things seem more bleak than they truly are. Unforeseen events will cause drastic and fast change.
Wishful thinking. And I say that as someone who is not a pessimist by nature.
Population? Yes, the peak is coming, probably faster than imagined, but still in several more decades at the earliest.
Food production? No, there is not remotely enough land to feed everyone the meaty Western diet that the world's ballooning middle class wants. There is no squaring this particular circle. Something will have to give.
Energy? This one looks doable, but the tail-end of the fossil age is still going to wreak havoc with the climate. After all, the bulk of all historic emissions happened in the last 25 years.
Recycling? A red herring. Glass, metal and paper recycling was never an issue, because it makes sense economically. But it is straight-up uneconomical to recycle plastic, and always has been. The real issue is about how to stop it getting into the environment. This problem is not even slightly solved.
Migration? Gonna be an issue. Whatever your personal tolerance for it, most people see their nation-state as their family home, and will not take a home invasion lying down.
Very dangerous years and decades are ahead of us. It's not hopeless but we need to adjust expectations, roll our sleeves up, and not imagine that the best outcome will happen all by itself.
Food production is already well above what is needed to feed the entire population. The prodution volume is higher today than as ever been.
And if it wasn't for consecutive disastrous CAP agreements in the EU - and now I'm narrowing the scope - the overall food production in Europe alone would be much higher than it is today.
Narrowing the scope, in my country there is more land laid fallow and abandoned today than ever and growing each year, while modern culture techniques allow comparetively very small areas to produce more alone than huge areas in the past were ever able.
Live stock is also becoming more and more expensive to raise and the conditions to do so are becoming harder to achieve due to climate change. Traditional live small live stock live pidgeons, rabbits and other small and easy to keep animals have been pushed away in detriment of cows, again, in the EU, due to disastrous Common Agriculture Pacts, that actively subsidized cattle ranching in countries like Portugal and Spain, to allow France to produce cereals and other open field crops unrivaled.
But I can't agree the middle class is ballooning. Considering the current state of the global economy, it is in fact going through a hard pinch and shrinkage.
Recycling is not a red herring. The global production of plastics is a pain and largely a disaster to manage at end of chain but, again, because there is no guts for it. Every single small change to ban a specific single use plastic is met with great distrust, on the first line usually common citizens.
Unrecyclable plastics and other materials should be incinerated using pyrolitic combustion facilities for energy production instead of being buried in landfills. Recycling is already less expensive to do than extracting raw materials and it will keep developing. There is no other way.
I wholeheartedly agree things will get worse before they get better but I will insist it is not as bad as we are made to think and this is not in any degree denial of climate change nor any other problems.
On bread? Sure. "Food" is an almost meaningless term. With current technology there is nowhere near enough land to feed the world's population with what they all want: a lot of meat and dairy. I cannot help but be pessimistic on this one. Diet is such a core part of culture, people refuse to compromise on it, and no, the current technology is nowhere near offering an alternative at scale. And this is before even mentioning the animal-welfare disaster of contemporary factory farming.
Agreed that Europe's ag policy is disastrously counterproductive. But, respectfully, I still think you are seriously underestimating the challenge of feeding 9 billion people on meat, even excluding cows (which unfortunately a lot of people will continue to want). Most of the world's people will soon be living in overcrowded cities and demanding beef and pork wrapped in plastic. I'm having trouble seeing the home-raising of rabbits and pigeons at scale, although it's certainly a nice idea.
I also thought it sounded cool when I learned about it. Plastic: gone! But it's completely unproven at scale and almost nobody is doing it. When's the breakthrough coming? And besides, even at scale this would be just another form of carbon pollution. Oil with with an energy-intensive plastic intermediate stage. Right now, it is simple more expensive than turning oil into new plastic.
Incorrect for plastic, see above. Correct for other materials.
Sure, you seem like a rational person. Excessively optimistic IMO, but I agree that pessimism should be kept in check because it can be corrosive. There's always hope for making things better than they might otherwise be.
If I manage to find again the thesis I read, I'll forward it to you.
Essentially, on a global scale, any food item is produced on a large enough scale to accomodate large waste of resources, including meat. Money is being thrown out to produce that is lost in chain of value. The criticism towards unrealistic standards set by governments is brutal. The call is for cutting back on production, by slowly cutting back on subsidizing. There is a very poor management of resources at play.
I'll give a simple example from my country: we routinely pay heavy fines for exceeding milk production quotas, in large part because most of that milk comes from one region ideal for livestock but little else. Grass grows plentiful but standard crops produce poorly due to salty winds.
Meanwhile, other countries try to raise their domestic production, regardless of proper conditions for it. In a simple world, we would produce to supply those countries because we have surplus we cannot consume (regardless how much cheese we make). The end result? Producers are downsizing herds and even throwing away milk, as they are barred from even giving it away, when they can't sell any more. How ridiculous is this?
Raising pidgeons and rabbits (and guinea pigs, if people are not squeamish) is feasible on a very small scale. Again, another habit lost in the aftermath of the second war.
Pyrolitic inceneration is a thing and I worked with an engineer that tried to sell one plant to Angola, for thermal use of used tyres and urban residues. One very interesting feature was a special oxygen forced fed high temperature chamber to melt metals for easier separation. It was obviously expensive to build but it could remove a lot of waste from landfills. The downfall of the project: radical environmental groups.
Again, I'll end with my costumary: things are bad but not as bad as we are forced to think.