Second Home Selector, or
“Hello, Palm Springs!”
That’s not just a map (above) of how much February, 2015 global temperatures departed from global averages the last 30 years.
If you live in Minnesota, it’s a 2nd home (or winter vacation) selector.
So, if your principal residence is in a purple area experiencing temps -5º below average (Minnesota qualifies), and you want to spend time someplace warm in winter, best to head where it’s pink or red.
Approach to Global Warming
Sorry to be so cynical on global warming.
However, I see it as arising from a big (and expanding) glitch in capitalism, that can now easily be fixed.
All it takes is two things: 1) computing power (which we have in unimaginable capacity today); and 2) political will (in much scarcer supply, unfortunately).
“Accounting for Earth”
The essence of the problem is what economists call “externalities”: the harmful environmental byproducts of things we buy or consume that are nowhere counted in G.D.P.
Two centuries ago, it was polluted rivers downstream from New England textile mills.
Today, it’s fouled air, soil, and water — and rising temp’s — almost everywhere in the world (February, 2015 included).
Supply and Demand 101
Textbook economics says that if you want less of something, increase its price.
So, if you want less air pollution caused by coal-fired electric plants, raise the price of electricity.
In truth, capturing previously unmeasurable, unquantifiable externalities in the price of our some of our most-important goods and services isn’t so much raising their price, as it is eliminating a heretofore undeserved and very well-concealed discount.
“Right pricing,” if you will (not to be confused with that much more noxious term, “right sizing“).
“Right Pricing” (Closing the Circle Sphere)
In the 1970’s, when the earth was ruled by a (very few) computing dinosaurs, acting like externalities didn’t exist might not have made much of a difference.
And, even if such willful ignorance was harmful, there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.
Today, we inhabit a post-dinosaur world of computing “birds” and “mammals.”**
Thanks to our vast, distributed (networked) computing power, we no longer have such constraints.
Meanwhile, as maps like the one above make clear, we could hardly have a more powerful incentive to tackle one of the two crucial issues confronting mankind in the 21st-century (Issue #2: integrating artificial intelligence into the economy — and the culture(s) at large).
See also, “Why They Call it ‘Gross’ Domestic Product”
**Nanotechnology is rapidly adding more categories.
