The View from Right Field

Break

I have some other stuff to do.  I'll be back about the Ides of March. 

“Getting mad at oil majors will not solve climate crisis”

This is a letter to the editor published in the Financial Times on today under the heading quoted above: 

“The title of your Big Read on energy ‘Big Oil: still profits before planet’ (February 11) was misleading.¹  Regardless of what environmentalists and elites may think, it is not the job of oil companies to solve climate change.

Climate change requires more than world leaders agreeing to a set of lofty ideals in Paris and then having businesses do all of the work for them.  It requires leaders to actually convince people that governments need to pass laws and adopt regulations to cut emissions.  Climate change isn’t going to be solved by getting mad at oil companies.  It’s going to be solved by adopting a carbon tax that will put the real cost of carbon emissions in the price of products.  Or establishing an emissions trading system, with a decreasing cap on total annual emissions, that guarantees emissions will be cut.

An Operation Warp Speed for Weapons and Ammunition?

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, while in Brussels earlier this week, that the West hopes better training will help Ukrainian forces to use less ammunition and artillery in defending against Russia’s attacks.  Russia is already using up to four times as many artillery shells as Ukraine, but somehow we think better training is the answer for Ukraine.¹  This is silly.  Better training is always good, but why can’t we get ammunition and artillery to Ukraine? 

It has been obvious since May or June of last year, if not before, that Ukraine needed ammunition and lots of it.  If we didn’t have enough, why weren’t we entering into contracts with suppliers last summer, so they could open plants, buy machinery, and hire workers to produce more ammunition?  If President Biden didn’t realize it, why didn’t the Pentagon tell him?

Helping Ukraine. Defending Taiwan. Talk Is Cheap. Actually Doing It Costs Money.

If you support Ukraine in its war with Russia, if you think the United States needs to defend Taiwan’s right to choose if it unites with China, then you need to support more money for defense.  The Russian attack on Ukraine is a new kind of war.  Actually, it’s not a new kind of war, but it is a kind of war that we have not seen for a long time.  It is a war of attrition, which means it is a war of weapons, supplies, and ammunition.

We are rapidly using up our inventories of all kinds of weapons and supplies in supporting Ukraine.  If we are going to continue to support Ukraine, we are going to need more of these things.  Right away.  And if we support the right of Taiwan to decide its own fate, we need to get supplies of these things to them – right away.  Plus, we need to replenish our own supplies because who knows where else trouble might arise.  There are countries and groups that might think now is a good time to take advantage.

Chicago Is Electing a Mayor - And It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

The headline on Sunday’s Chicago Tribune read: “Pension debt, property taxes and budget holes: Huge financial problems await next Chicago mayor, whoever wins.”  My question is: How is that different than the situation that faced Mayor Lightfoot when she was elected four years ago – or her predecessor when he was first elected twelve years ago. 

For that matter, does anybody think this headline won’t still be true when Chicago votes for mayor in 2027?  After all, when it comes to finances in Chicago, and Illinois, for that matter, it’s always, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra (or not), “Déjà vu all over again.”

Secret Documents. First Trump. Then Biden and Pence. Who’s Next?

Donald Trump kept confidential/secret documents from when he was president.  Joe Biden kept the same kind of documents from when he was vice president.  And so did Mike Pence.  (Not surprisingly, former President Trump was the most obstreperous about it, but that is true for pretty much everything.)

What I’m wondering is when we’re going to check on Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale.  For that matter, why should the fact that George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, and Spiro Agnew are dead make a difference?  Shouldn’t their papers/libraries/museums be checked, too?  (Well, I don’t suppose former Vice President Agnew has a library or museum.)

Other than obstreperousness and sloppiness, it might be interesting to figure out just how different former President Trump is on this issue.

Tanks for Ukraine. A Day Late and a Dollar Short Again? But It Could be Worse.

Ukraine is, at last, getting some tanks.  But consider how long it took for everybody to agree, and it’s going to what even longer for them to finally get delivered.  How much more could Ukraine have accomplished if they had gotten the tanks earlier.  But then, that seems to have been the story all along.  We’re always giving Ukraine weapons three or four months (or longer) after we should have.  We seem to be giving enough weapons to Ukraine so they can stop Russia from winning, but we never give them enough to actually get this war over with. 

There are lots of reasons people give for not giving Ukraine more weapons (and capabilities).  I’ll address two of them.  The first is that Vladimir Putin might escalate to nuclear weapons.  If that is the determining factor, then maybe we ought to stop giving any weapons to Ukraine, because otherwise we are just fighting to the last Ukrainian, without ever giving them a chance to win.  Is that fair?