The Lost Catholic Church

After the American Century

Many have rightly derided the Catholic Church in recent days after it called the ordination of women as priests a grave sin - in a statement that was otherwise devoted to child abuse!  I am not going to waste time attacking the church, as many others have pointed out its moral obtuseness, obstructionism, and apparent inability to clean its own house. The clergy's scandalous treatment of many young children and its defense of the perpetrators speak all too well for themselves.

But think of the Catholic Church we do not have. The world desperately needs moral leadership on a host of issues, but the Pope is rapidly losing all credibility. In an age of militant fundamentalism, both in Islam and in Christianity, wouldn't it be wonderful to have an enlightened Catholic Church that had a powerful voice on such issues as global warming and environment, women's rights, or non-violent conflict resolution?

The tragedy of this Pope and of the Catholic Church is that they are rapidly becoming powerless to affect the great issues of our time. When the Church is in the news the story seems always to be about the abuse of children, opposition to equality for women, and conflicts with local authorities that the Church has obstructed in criminal investigations.

The Church is now most talked about for what it is against, not what it is for. Six decades ago, Pope  John XXIII convened Vatican II and moved the Church toward ecumenical understanding. His church was dynamic and people around the world, Catholic or not, listened to him. The current Pope will be remembered as a failure who defended indefensible acts and obstructed change.

Obama After 18 Months

After the American Century

It has only been eighteen months since George Bush left the White House, but already the American public seems to be suffering from amnesia. The American economy is not recovering quickly from its near collapse under Bush, and this weakness is nevertheless laid at Obama’s door. His popularity has fallen below 50% for some time now. The great bank bailout has been reasonably successful, with much of the money being paid back, yet many Americans talk about the bailout as though it was not a loan but a permanent part of the national debt. The re-regulation of Wall Street has gone through Congress, yet Republicans proclaim that Obama has now hobbled the capitalist horse. (For a reality check, consider the Canadian banks which did not need a bailout because they were restrained by sensible legislation.)

And then there is the endlessly repeated, and endlessly stupid, claim that the health care bill is socialistic. This would be silly if so many did not believe it. If Obama really had created a socialistic health care system then (1) he would have  given free medical care to all citizens and permanent residents, in exchange for higher taxes, (2) he would have put all doctors and nurses in public hospitals on the government payroll, and (3) prescription medicine would be free or heavily subsidized.  This is pretty much what the health care system looks like in Denmark, England, or Germany. But the Obama plan did not do any of these things. It made health care available to all, in exchange for payment to private insurers. It left hospitals under the same management as before, and so forth. The Obama plan is an improvement, but it is not much like a European plan.

My American readers might recall that they do have socialistic elements in their government, notably the fire departments which are paid for by everyone and put out all fires regardless of where they are or whose property it is. The theory seems to be that minimizing conflagrations is a good thing for the neighborhood. Free public libraries are also rather socialistic, though this did not stop that famous capitalist Andrew Carnegie from building quite a few of them. Then there are those terribly socialistic institutions, the free public schools, and so on.

Today’s column clearly has only that most general of subjects, the instability of American public opinion, which so often is based not on logic but pavlovian  responses to key words and silly phrases. The circus entrepreneur P. T. Barnum  once said that no one ever went broke because he underestimated the American public. By November all too many Americans will be convinced that not Bush but Obama undermined the economy by over-spending the budget, letting the banks get out of control, and imposing a “socialistic health” care system. But it was Bush who cut taxes, especially for the wealthy and then overspent the budget by billions in the unfinanced wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was the Bush Administration that failed to keep a watchful eye on the banks and Wall Street, until the economy was near collapse before the 2008 election even took place.

In American political culture, eighteen months is a long time, and some seem to have trouble seeing cause and effect, or separating substance form allegation. It is not easy to be President in the best of times, and far harder than in the present. On the whole, Obama has done a good job. But Americans are an impatient people, and in the off year elections the party that lost the last time usually makes at least a partial comeback. We shall see. 

Who is to Blame? Making Sense of The Gulf Oil Disaster

After the American Century

I gave an interview to the New Orleans Times Picayune a few days ago. The reporter was rightly interested in the American tendency to believe that all problems have technological solutions. If oil drilling technology created an underground gusher of oil, surely some other technology ought to be able to stop it. And if the solution was not found quickly, then it must be someone's fault. Lately the media has been debating whether it is the President's fault.

Karl Rove - surely the least trustworthy man in American politics - has made the argument that the oil leak is "Obama's Katrina" -  one of the most idiotic arguments ever. But logic has never been the strong point in American politics, and perhaps not in the education of journalists either. So let us do a comparison of Katrina and the oil leak, and see how well they compare.

Katrina was a hurricane, and the last time I checked that makes it a natural phenomena, of the sort known often to hit Louisiana. The federal government had spent years making plans and building defenses to protect New Orleans against a category 4 or 5 hurricane. However, the Bush Administration cut back funds to improve the levees around New Orleans, and George W. Bush specifically appointed a political hack as chief administrator to deal with such crises. The entire world knew that Hurricane Katrina was headed for the Louisiana coast, and the failure of the local, state, and federal authorities were many, both before and during the disaster. People died because of their incompetence, not least in the evacuation of the city.

A deep-water oil drilling disaster is a man-made phenomena. Moreover, no one saw it coming on a radar screen for days beforehand, as was the case with Hurricane Katrina. The explosion, fire, and oil leak resulted from the failure of a new kind of oil drilling, and unlike a hurricane, the specific accident was not foreseeable days in advance. The permit to do this kind of drilling came from the Bush-Cheney government, and it is worth noting that both Bush and Cheney worked as executives in the oil industry before coming to Washington. 

In contrast to a hurricane which is beyond human control, oil drilling is a human activity, in this case run by British Petroleum or BP. They were responsible for building the platform, and drilling from a point that was about one mile down in the ocean. BP was present at the site before, during and after the accident and "leak", so one might think that BP and more generally the oil industry, is to blame. People died because of BP's incompetence, but no one died because of anything Obama has done in this matter. 

Moreover, the oil industry gave the federal government assurances that deep water oil wells would be safe. Perhaps they lied, perhaps they are just incompetent, but one thing is certain: the oil industry was a whole was not ready to deal with the disaster. They failed to make contingency plans. They failed, in effect, to construct the protections, the levees if you will, that were needed. The oil industry was not prepared to defend the shoreline or the fishing industry against a massive oil spill. The oil industry decided, as it usually does, to put profits first.

And speaking of profits, BP had a profit of more than $4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, and it made even more in the first quarter of 2010, a rather tidy $6.1. That is more than $10 billion in the last six months. Why is BP making so much money? The price of crude oil has almost doubled in the last year, but the cost of extraction has actually gone down slightly, (see CBS news). BP, which is not even the largest or most profitably oil company, could have afforded to make contingency plans. Exxon made a profit of $45 billion in 2008 and continues to rack up big profits. If such companies cared about more than the bottom line they would have jointly funded a permanent task force  that is always ready to deal with oil leaks and spills. The oil industry could have been prepared. Instead, they just kept drilling and hoped to pass on the bill, and the responsibility, to someone else.

Yet even had they prepared, and this was my point when speaking with the Times Picayune, Americans tend to think that there is a technological fix. Not all problems can be quickly solved, and not all powerful natural phenomena can be stopped. Human beings might be able to provoke a volcanic eruption, but we cannot stop one.  BP opened a hole that let the oil escape into the Gulf of Mexico. Plugging that hole is harder than drilling it in the first place. Tampering with powerful natural forces can get us in over our heads, and Americans need to understand that  smart technology may not always be immediately available to get them out of trouble.

So, blame the oil companies for not being prepared, for not investing very much of their enormous profits in accident prevention or oil leak protection. Blame the Bush-Cheney oil-friendly administration for allowing this kind of drilling in the first place, and for not assuring that the safeguards were adequate. But do not imagine that just because human beings can create a problem, we can always create a solution. As our technologies grow more powerful, the responsibility to use them carefully increases exponentially.

If you want to read more along these lines, most libraries have a copy of my Technology Matters (MIT Press, 2006).

After I wrote this blog, BP admitted that it did not have adequate technical know-how to deal with the problem they had created.

The Handy War Handbook

After the American Century

There was a strange moment on the Danish national news yesterday. A journalist was interviewing someone about Danish troops fighting in Afghanistan, and the question under discussion was serious: when was it permitted to kill enermy soldiers and when not. I am not going to address this question here, because I want to focus on the journalist's excitement when hearing that there was a handbook spelling out the rules of slaughter. Immediately the issue became whether these solders were carrying the rules around with them or not. It was quite evident that the journalist believed it essential that these young men have that book at all times. 

Imagine. You are a soldier, in a firefight, a matter of life or death. Then, in the best Monty Python tradition, you realize that there is a question in your mind as to whether it is OK to heave a grenade into yonder ditch. Perhaps one should go look in there first? Could be a little dangerous. Wait, a happy thought. I can consult my trusty handbook, which weighs only a kilo or so. It is a pleasure to haul it around  to consult in just these situations. So, put down the rifle, open the backpack, get out the handbook, consult the index, and find the proper instructions. Meanwhile,  the enemy, including anyone in that ditch, will respectfully maintain a ceasefire until there has been time to read the appropriate passages.

In that journalistic moment, the almost religious Danish belief in bureaucratic rules was blindingly, maddening manifest. For the discussion did turn to whether the soldiers were all issued such a handbook, whether they carried it with them at all times, as clearly they should, etc. etc.  Clearly the rulebook was the crucial point, the nub of the matter.

I am not presuming to judge what the Danish soldiers were doing or not doing. But wasn't the journalist at that moment an idiot?