George Orwell’s 1984 Meets Fast Food

George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, introduced the world to Newspeak...the perfect way to say nothing, while appearing to say something profound or important.

The other day, my wife went by the local Bojangles’ restaurant franchise to get a breakfast biscuit and drink, while on her way to help her parents.  She hadn’t finished the drink when she got back home, and it showed up on the kitchen counter, before it was used up and trashed.  Here is a picture of the “newspeak” message that was found on the back of the cup, with a message designed to comfort/satisfy the "greeniacs" who live among us:

Did you read the message on the cup carefully?  It’s more than a little nebulous, designed to comfort the end user/buyer and relieve any guilt of purchasing and using a product that isn’t "green."  Would this message work for you?  

I have a few questions.  What constitutes 92% degradation?  I can shred the cup in a few minutes (Max).  Is turning the cup from a molded form into vermiculite a 92% degradation?  

This is Corporate Bull Shit to try to appease "the Greeniacs."  With what passes as education today, it might just work....

However, let's have a little remedial education , to enlighten those who might not have thought this process all through.  With any process, there is waste involved.  This occurs in nature and in manufacturing.  In running an internal combustion engine, there is waste heat, rejected to the air around us, and waste exhaust gases.  

In nature, there is waste when nuts are grown, as the shells are not edible.  When we eat, our bodies produce waste excrement.  Waste by definition cannot be used.  In some cases, it's harmful.  In nature, most waste bio-degrades, and is eventually reused.  With manufactured goods, we try to make stuff that can bio degrade and return to nature.  Sometimes it doesn't work.

There are always trade-offs in life:  Opportunities are missed, and other paths are chosen.  In the case of disposable drink cups, the choices are Paper, Plastic or Stryofoam.  Paper is probably the most difficult to make, because of the weight of the paper stock and the "waxing" that is applied to the paper to make it waterproof.  But it biodegrades much more completely than styrofoam.  The trade offs are the insulation factor of the styrofoam as compared to paper stock.  Styrofoam keeps drinks hotter or colder than paper can.  It requires less ice in a cold drink in. order to keep it cold.  

That isn't saying that "recycled styrofoam" doesn't have a use.  Ground up Styrofoam is turned into Vermiculite and added to potting soil to keep it from packing and allowing air to get into the soil keeping microbes healthy in the soil.

Plastic is the least biodegradable option at this time.

As citizens of this planet, we're called to be good stewards of the resources that we live with.  It's foolish and short-sighted to have the attitude that "the next generation can figure out what they'll use.  We're going to use what we have now, and waste our resources.  It's considered unethical for parents to leave their children with less than what they had.

So, we make our choices in life.  The choice is yours:  McDonalds, who uses very little if any styrofoam in its packaging, or maybe Bojangles that uses styrofoam or even Dunkin' Donuts that uses plastic.  Choose wisely, but don't sweat the choice.

President Trump, the “Adult in the Room,” Cancels the Federal Grant for California High-Speed Rail

In my E-mail this morning, was this headline from the International Rail Journal Magazine:

Trump administration withdraws $US 1bn California high-speed grant

May 17, 2019
Written byKeith Barrow

CALIFORNIA is preparing to launch legal action against the US government after the Trump administration withdrew nearly $US 1bn in grant funding for the state’s high-speed rail programme.

So what did the State of California think would happen, with a Businessman and Builder, who’s made his living building construction projects, as President of the United States, when California decided to cancel its High Speed Rail project, for which a Federal Grant had already been issued?  

California applied for a Federal Grant to help pay for a High Speed Rail project from L. A. to San Francisco, during the Jerry Brown Gubernatorial Administration.  It was granted during the Obama Presidential Administration.  Once Gavin Newsome became Governor of the “Bear Republic,” he (correctly) decided that the State of California could not afford to pay to finish the project, with its projected costs spinning out of control, and announced its termination, leaving a partially constructed right-of-way in the Central Valley of California, from Merced to Bakersfield, going from “no where” to “no where.”  This violated the terms of the Federal Grant Contract, so the Trump Administration withdrew the grant, threatening to start collections on the amount of money already wasted on a project that that never met its goals, and likely will never host a railroad, to probably become an intrastate highway right-of-way(!).

Full disclosure:  I’m a railfan.  I like trains.  High-Speed Rail in California, connecting San Diego, Anaheim and Los Angeles with San Francisco and Sacramento would have been “cool,” and possibly even been the “seed” to extend High Speed Rail over the Siskiyou to Portland, Salem, Tacoma, Seattle and to the Canadian border near Vancouver, British Columbia.

HOWEVER, even as a railfan, I understood this project was doomed from the “planning stages,” simply because the California HSR had decided to try another route out of the Los Angeles Basin, instead of the tried and true route over the Tehachapi Pass (building a parallel line to the current Union Pacific/Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad line that’s been around for over 100+ years).  They were going to build a new route with la 16-mile tunnel, through the Coast (Mountain) Range and across the San Andreas Fault. Additionally, California NEVER managed the project.  Even today, the project does not yet have a route selected over the Pacheco Pass that would once again cross the Coastal (Mountain) Range and the San Andreas Fault a second time, in order to enter the (San Francisco) Bay Area through Gilroy, San José, and Millbrae into San Francisco.  And I consider the fault of this financial debacle to be laid directly at the feet of the Obama Administration, at the very least, for not to requiring AMTRAK to administer and lead the project to control the money that was spent.

The cynical tax payer that I am says “enough!”  With the American economy about to go into the toilet because of unrestrained spending, and with Social Security running out of money in the near future, we don't need to squander precious funds.

I look forward to California challenging the Federal Government in court over the termination of the grant.  Maybe California should have Silicon Valley corporations fund the completion of the project, even if it means changing the scope of the project and going to Elon Musk’s Boring Company and turning it into the world's first “Hyper-Loop” project.

Guest Post=> Selwyn Duke=> The American Thinker=> Taming the Bench: MAGA Means Ending Judicial Precedent

May 17, 2019

Taming the Bench: MAGA Means Ending Judicial Precedent

By Selwyn Duke

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.” So said Anglo-Irish essayist Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Unfortunately, something has changed almost three centuries later:
The decisions have perhaps become even more iniquitous.

Swift was rightly mocking the notion of “judicial precedent.” Yet it’s even more preposterous in our time and place, for at least 18th-century British judges didn’t have a constitution to violate. How is the principle even remotely defensible, however, in a nation with our Constitution, the “supreme law of the land”?
One justice who apparently understands this is Clarence Thomas, who just wrote the majority opinion in a recent decision (Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt) overturning a 1979 precedent. He was the ideal candidate for the task, as it has been noted that he’s not a “Court conservative” as much as an originalist. A conservative, after all, would hew to the status quo, which here means honoring precedent. In contrast, as SCOTUSblog pointed out in 2007, Thomas “believes that precedent qua precedent concerning constitutional law has no value at all; he does not give stare decisis  [the notion that judicial decisions should not be undone] any weight.” 
This is why I’ve long said that Thomas is by far the best SCOTUS justice of recent decades (yes, that includes Scalia). Moreover, it’s certainly right to distinguish between Thomas’ originalism and being merely a “Court conservative,” which more and more is seeming akin to a court jester.


Why this is so was encapsulated well by British philosopher G.K. Chesterton when he wrote, “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.”

Stare decisis’ folly should be obvious. In what other field would anyone assert that once a decision is made, it stays made? Since it’s a statistical certainty that not all decisions will be good ones, this standard only ensures the permanency of error.
Yet to fully grasp stare decisis’ outrageousness, an analogy is useful. Chief Justice John Roberts once correctly said that a judge’s role is only to call “balls and strikes” (this was before he decided that a ball could be a strike when striking a blow for statism). Expanding on this, judges are in fact like baseball umpires, whereas the players are akin to the people, the sport’s ruling body is a sort of legislature and the rulebook is essentially its constitution.
Now, it goes without saying that if an umpire “ruled” contrary to the rulebook -- let’s say, refusing to call a player out after three strikes because he believed they were too few -- we wouldn’t flatter his falsity and legitimize his legerdemain by calling him a “pragmatist” with a “living document” philosophy. We’d recognize him as a bad umpire derelict in his duty, and he’d be fired.
To the point, however, what would you say about someone who not only accepted his judgment, but viewed it as unchangeable “precedent”?
This notion is just as ridiculous when applied to judges -- only far more dangerous. It should in fact disqualify someone from the bench, for justices take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

They do not take an oath to uphold other judges.

Imagine the reaction if we applied this stare decisis philosophy to President Trump’s determinations. Imagine we said that not only can he “change” the law on the basis that it’s “living,” but that his decisions should then be binding on all future presidents. How would that go over?
No, the analogy isn’t invalid because he’s not a black-robed lawyer. All these officeholders take an oath to uphold the Constitution -- and none of them are supposed to be above that supreme law of the land.
Many want to be, though. Power is an aphrodisiac, and this brings us to why judges’ love affair with precedent reflects nothing noble. As Thomas Jefferson explained in an 1820 letter in which he warned about judicial supremacy, “Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps.”
This was perhaps reflected in liberal Justice Stephen Breyer’s reaction to the recently overturned precedent. “Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the court will overrule next,” he complained. A good justice would be concerned only with what unconstitutional precedent would not be overturned next.
But why is Breyer upset? Is it because he wants to maintain the power of his corps and its privilege of being above the law?
Stare decisis is just a euphemistic way of saying that judges’ decisions -- “precedent” -- should take precedence over the Constitution. This perverts our system. It undermines the republic. We’re supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Constitution reflects the people’s will in that it was ratified by the states and because Americans tacitly approve it to this day it by allowing it to stand; after all, they can amend it through their representatives.
Yet when judges place their own opinions above the Constitution, such as when elevating precedent, they establish themselves as an oligarchy. We then don’t have the rule of law but the rule of lawyers, a government of, by and for those who’ve arrogated to themselves the power and privilege to manipulate the law according to their own will.
Note, too, that hard and fast respect for precedent actually has no precedent, as our history’s more than 100 overturned SCOTUS decisions attest. So why do leftists now act as if it’s sacrosanct?
Because after more than a century of moving the courts “left,” there’s now a large body of unconstitutional, leftist precedents that serve their agenda. Stare decisis is not for these people principle but ploy, a convenient value of the moment.
Thus, when going through the Senate confirmation process, the norm now is for more “conservative” judges to be asked if they’ll abide by certain precedents (i.e., Roe v. Wade). Translated, this is a demand to conserve yesterday’s progressives’ mistakes.
In reality, judicial nominees should be asked if they’ll respect precedent — and then be roundly rejected upon answering yes. For we can’t MAGA unless we MAJJA: Make American Judges Judges Again. For tolerating oligarchs in black robes ensures a dark future.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.” So said Anglo-Irish essayist Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Unfortunately, something has changed almost three centuries later:
The decisions have perhaps become even more iniquitous.
Swift was rightly mocking the notion of “judicial precedent.” Yet it’s even more preposterous in our time and place, for at least 18th-century British judges didn’t have a constitution to violate. How is the principle even remotely defensible, however, in a nation with our Constitution, the “supreme law of the land”?
One justice who apparently understands this is Clarence Thomas, who just wrote the majority opinion in a recent decision (Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt) overturning a 1979 precedent. He was the ideal candidate for the task, as it has been noted that he’s not a “Court conservative” as much as an originalist. A conservative, after all, would hew to the status quo, which here means honoring precedent. In contrast, as SCOTUSblog pointed out in 2007, Thomas “believes that precedent qua precedent concerning constitutional law has no value at all; he does not give stare decisis  [the notion that judicial decisions should not be undone] any weight.” 
This is why I’ve long said that Thomas is by far the best SCOTUS justice of recent decades (yes, that includes Scalia). Moreover, it’s certainly right to distinguish between Thomas’ originalism and being merely a “Court conservative,” which more and more is seeming akin to a court jester.
Why this is so was encapsulated well by British philosopher G.K. Chesterton when he wrote, “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.”
Stare decisis’ folly should be obvious. In what other field would anyone assert that once a decision is made, it stays made? Since it’s a statistical certainty that not all decisions will be good ones, this standard only ensures the permanency of error.
Yet to fully grasp stare decisis’ outrageousness, an analogy is useful. Chief Justice John Roberts once correctly said that a judge’s role is only to call “balls and strikes” (this was before he decided that a ball could be a strike when striking a blow for statism). Expanding on this, judges are in fact like baseball umpires, whereas the players are akin to the people, the sport’s ruling body is a sort of legislature and the rulebook is essentially its constitution.
Now, it goes without saying that if an umpire “ruled” contrary to the rulebook -- let’s say, refusing to call a player out after three strikes because he believed they were too few -- we wouldn’t flatter his falsity and legitimize his legerdemain by calling him a “pragmatist” with a “living document” philosophy. We’d recognize him as a bad umpire derelict in his duty, and he’d be fired.
To the point, however, what would you say about someone who not only accepted his judgment, but viewed it as unchangeable “precedent”?
This notion is just as ridiculous when applied to judges -- only far more dangerous. It should in fact disqualify someone from the bench, for justices take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

They do not take an oath to uphold other judges.

Imagine the reaction if we applied this stare decisis philosophy to President Trump’s determinations. Imagine we said that not only can he “change” the law on the basis that it’s “living,” but that his decisions should then be binding on all future presidents. How would that go over?
No, the analogy isn’t invalid because he’s not a black-robed lawyer. All these officeholders take an oath to uphold the Constitution -- and none of them are supposed to be above that supreme law of the land.
Many want to be, though. Power is an aphrodisiac, and this brings us to why judges’ love affair with precedent reflects nothing noble. As Thomas Jefferson explained in an 1820 letter in which he warned about judicial supremacy, “Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps.”
This was perhaps reflected in liberal Justice Stephen Breyer’s reaction to the recently overturned precedent. “Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the court will overrule next,” he complained. A good justice would be concerned only with what unconstitutional precedent would not be overturned next.
But why is Breyer upset? Is it because he wants to maintain the power of his corps and its privilege of being above the law?
Stare decisis is just a euphemistic way of saying that judges’ decisions -- “precedent” -- should take precedence over the Constitution. This perverts our system. It undermines the republic. We’re supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Constitution reflects the people’s will in that it was ratified by the states and because Americans tacitly approve it to this day it by allowing it to stand; after all, they can amend it through their representatives.
Yet when judges place their own opinions above the Constitution, such as when elevating precedent, they establish themselves as an oligarchy. We then don’t have the rule of law but the rule of lawyers, a government of, by and for those who’ve arrogated to themselves the power and privilege to manipulate the law according to their own will.
Note, too, that hard and fast respect for precedent actually has no precedent, as our history’s more than 100 overturned SCOTUS decisions attest. So why do leftists now act as if it’s sacrosanct?
Because after more than a century of moving the courts “left,” there’s now a large body of unconstitutional, leftist precedents that serve their agenda. Stare decisis is not for these people principle but ploy, a convenient value of the moment.
Thus, when going through the Senate confirmation process, the norm now is for more “conservative” judges to be asked if they’ll abide by certain precedents (i.e., Roe v. Wade). Translated, this is a demand to conserve yesterday’s progressives’ mistakes.
In reality, judicial nominees should be asked if they’ll respect precedent — and then be roundly rejected upon answering yes. For we can’t MAGA unless we MAJJA: Make American Judges Judges Again. For tolerating oligarchs in black robes ensures a dark future.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/taming_the_bench_maga_means_ending_judicial_precedent.html#ixzz5olL0vnAF
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Earth Day Guest Blog Post: John Miltimore=> The Foundation for Economic Education=> EARTH DAY Post=> What Dr. Ian Malcolm Understood about Our Planet That Almost Everyone Else Doesn't

Today's Blogpost is special, because of Earth Day, a created Holiday that celebrates the Gaia Worship Cult.  

Once upon a time, many years ago, before we, as a culture, lost our minds, there was Stewardship.  It is a concept of using the resources that we have available in the best possible way, taking ALL resources, including time and money, into consideration.  Conservation was a key part of that concept.  Farmers were called upon to be good stewards.  Those who didn't and abused the land by planting the same plants in the same locations over and over again, or went broke, because they failed to be stewards of the money they had, or both.  Now, it's no longer taught.  

Then in the 1960s, we saw some massive industrial pollution.  Love Canal became a rallying cry to get the Federal Government into the regulation of Pollution.  President Richard Nixon instituted the Environmental Protection Agency.  It was the backlash to the excesses of industrial pollution, that had gotten out of hand.  Exhaust pollution standards were established.  Then it got too onerous.  There were regulations on everything.  We bought into the peak oil theory, and limited resources, so the EPA established Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements.  People couldn't just purchase the car they wanted:  The Government started to make enough regulations to where these were mandates and "Economic Taxes" that the Vehicle Buyer would have to pay, disguised in the vehicle cost.

Instead we're teaching "Environmentalism," and "Going Green."  And everyone seems to worry about "killing the planet."

******************************

What Dr. Ian Malcolm Understood about Our Planet That Almost Everyone Else Doesn't

Humans will strut and fret our hour upon the stage, then be heard no more. 

Jurassic Park is a great popcorn movie, one I recently rewatched with my children who, to my surprise, weren’t the least bit frightened.

The story comes from the mind of the late Michael Crichton and contains wonderful themes about unpredictability, hubris, unintended consequences, and the dangers of central planning.

Though he never practiced medicine, Crichton attended Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1969.

Many FEE readers likely already knew this. (Tyler Curtis wrote a fine article on it a couple of years ago in which he explained that Jurassic Park is a microcosm of socialism.) But I had been unaware of these themes until I read Crichton’s book last year after buying a paperback at a garage sale for 50 cents.

As is usually the case, Jurassic Park the novel is superior to the film. Crichton, one quickly sees, was not just a wonderful storyteller; he also possessed an extraordinary scientific mind.

The Science Behind Crichton's Stories 

Though he never practiced medicine, Crichton attended Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1969. By his third year, after publishing several novels under the pen name John Lange, he decided he wanted to write full-time. But medical school was not a waste. Many of his technothrillers, including Jurassic Park, contain elements of biotechnology he no doubt learned while studying at Harvard.

Crichton, who died of lymphoma in 2008, was first and foremost a storyteller. But there is a theme that runs through much of his creative work (which included The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, and Sphere), and it’s this: humans, like Dr. Frankenstein, will struggle to control the miracles (and monsters) they create.

Malcolm’s warning to Hammond about meddling in powers he doesn’t understand is clear enough.

Of course, anyone who has seen Jurassic Park is familiar with this theme, which is depicted most memorably in a soliloquy from Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum).

“The lack of humility before nature being displayed here staggers me,” Malcolm says, after getting a glimpse of the Jurassic world John Hammond has created. "Don’t you see the danger, John, inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the world has ever seen, but you wield it like a kid who’s found his dad’s gun.”

The “dad’s gun” line is a clumsy metaphor that doesn’t appear in Crichton's novel (I’m guessing it comes from David Koepp, who co-wrote the screenplay with Crichton), but Malcolm’s warning to Hammond about meddling in powers he doesn’t understand is clear enough.

As great as Goldblum’s Malcolm is, he’s less interesting than the Ian Malcolm in the novel. Watching the movie, it’s easy to see Ian Malcolm as an environmentalist fretting about Hammond upsetting the planet’s delicate ecosystem.

“What is so great about discovery? It is a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world,” Malcolm says.

This, frankly, is a Hollywood version of Ian Malcolm. While he does imply that discovery is a penetrative act, he forcefully rejects the idea that humans can damage the planet in any meaningful way. In fact, it’s John Hammond who is concerned about the ability of humans to harm our world—and Malcolm scorns him for it.

Destroying the World

Read the following exchange, which takes place after Hammond expresses relief that “disaster is averted” because dinosaurs will not be able to escape the island.

“What disaster is that?” Malcolm said, sighing.

“Well, Hammond said, “they didn’t get free and overrun the world.”

Malcolm sat up on one elbow. “You were worried about that?”

"Surely that's what was at stake," Hammond said. "These animals, lacking predators, might get out and destroy the planet."

"You egomaniacal idiot," Malcolm said, in fury. "Do you have any idea what you are talking about? You think you can destroy the planet? My, what intoxicating power you must have." Malcolm sank back on the bed. "You can't destroy this planet. You can't even come close."

"Most people believe," Hammond said stiffly, "that the planet is in jeopardy."

"Well, it's not," Malcolm said.

Hammond replies that “all the experts”—note the word experts—“agree that our planet is in trouble.” It’s here where we see what Malcolm (and likely Crichton) thinks about “all the experts” who say Earth is in peril because of humans.

Malcolm sighed. "Let me tell you about our planet," he said. "Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals—the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years.

"Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving . . . Endless constant and violent change . . . Even today, the greatest geographical feature on the planet comes from two great continents colliding, buckling to make the Himalayan mountain range over millions of years. The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us."

Hammond, the arrogant planner, refuses to budge. "What if there was a radiation leak?" he asks.

"Suppose there was," Malcolm said. "Let's say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere—under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly.

Only we," Malcolm said, "think it wouldn't."

Hammond, unconvinced, brings up the receding ozone layer.

"Well, if the ozone layer gets thinner–"

"There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what?"

"Well. It'll cause skin cancer."

Malcolm shook his head. "Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation."

"And many others will die out," Hammond said.

Malcolm sighed. "You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don't you know about oxygen?"

"I know it's necessary for life."

"It is now, " Malcolm said. "But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It's a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells—say, around three billion years ago—it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly—five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!”

Hammond, in irritation, concedes. But we see he doesn’t understand what Malcolm is trying to show him.

"So what is your point? That modern pollutants will be incorporated, too?"

"No," Malcolm said. "My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn't have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines. . . . It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."

“And we very well might be gone," Hammond said, huffing.

"Yes," Malcolm said. "We might."

Malcolm is saying the very concept of humans “destroying the planet” is both absurd and arrogant. Can we ruin it by poor stewardship and render it a less beautiful and less hospitable place? Of course. But that’s a different thing.

"So what are you saying? We shouldn't care about the environment?"

"No, of course not."

"Then what?"

Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. "Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."

The Lesson

The exchange between Hammond and Malcolm is entertaining, but its ultimate message was not immediately apparent to me. Reflecting on it now, I think it’s clear. Malcolm is saying that humans don’t have the power to destroy the planet. It’s the fact that we think we can destroy the planet that represents the true danger.

Malcolm, for all his brilliance, is quite humble. Unlike Hammond, he has no wish to bend nature to his will or illusions of grandeur. 

As F.A. Hayek said, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Humans, he is saying, will strut and fret our hour upon the stage, then be heard no more. He puts man in his proper place in the universe. 

Humility does not come easy for humans. We are Babel-builders by nature, and the 20th century showed its costs. 

The great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek once said, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

It’s a lesson Ian Malcolm learned, but John Hammond did not. And it’s a lesson we’d all do well to remember today.

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Times. 

Reach him at jmiltimore@FEE.org.

A Note on ALL Project GEZROKET Posts

As I'm making plans and working on upgrading the GEZROKET, I've decided to move the posts documenting what I'm doing/have done to the car to its own Blog.  I've moved the existing posts to GEZROKET.blogspot.com and hope to get on with regular posts about turning the car into a modern Grand Touring Car.

It shouldn't be too hard, as Oldsmobile made it's own "Touring Sedan" models from the late 1980s into 1993 on both its Eighty-Eight and Ninety-Eight cars and chassis. These had the excellent FE3 Suspension, with higher rate coil springs on all 4 corners and larger diameter front and rear anti-sway bars.

Here's a 1991 Motorweek episode featuring the sister car to my Ninety-Eight Regency Elite, a 1991 Oldsmobile Touring Sedan.

Mine, being a Regency Elite II, luxury sedan is a little different.  First, it's White, with the Regency Elite Chrome Grille.  Second, it has an Adriatic Blue Leather Bench Seat Interior with a Digital Dash Cluster.   Finally, it came with 15" Alloy Wheels and the Comfort Ride FE1 suspension.

In its "As Purchased Condition,"  the GEZROKET, a 1996 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight with 15" Factory Alloy Wheels.  The rear spoiler looks to be from an Olds Toronado Troféo Sport Coupe.  Mrs Blaney had her son, R. Blaney, install it on the car.

So join me over at http://gezroket.blogspot.com/ as I continue the journey to make this big luxury car a pleasure to drive.