Apple's Steve Jobs counseled graduates to "stay hungry, stay foolish."

San Francisco CA

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SEBASTOPOL, CALIF.--A Ponzi scheme is a simple fraud. Each generation of investors is paid out by the next generation of investors. Eventually this system collapses, because the new generation of investors can't cover the transaction of the previous generation. That sounds very much to me like the climate change situation we have right now. In a famous 2005 commencement speech, Apple's Steve Jobs counseled graduates to "stay hungry, stay foolish." He was quoting Stewart Brand, a man who has been called "the intellectual Johnny Appleseed of the counterculture" and the subject of the new documentary We Are As Gods. The Difference Between Long Now Foundation Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes Ponzi schemes are fraudulent investments. The participants believe they are putting their money to work in a real investment. Pyramid schemes are fraudulent multi-level marketing businesses. Participants understand that they must recruit new members to make money. Those at the top levels of the pyramid make money from the new recruits at lower levels. Sadly, those at the lower pyramid levels never find enough new recruits to make money. They find they have wasted much time and money once the pyramid collapses Stew Brand a multimillionaire fraud Climate Activist. This channel Long Now Foundation are the Bernie Madoff of FAUX climate activism. Madoff investment scandal was a major case of stock and securities fraud and point just to say how disingenuous this woman is and how much disdain she deserves as a propagandist liar and a filthy person. She is a con artist milking the people as it were Cows for Cash. A typical Evangelistic Charlatan Money Grubber Liar that Corporate Swine. Every generation so far has expected the next generation to absorb its carbon investment into the atmosphere. Speaking not just as a scientist but as a new father, I'd wager that the next generation--my son's generation--faces a Madoff-like moment when the system collapses, the environment collapses, and very likely we'll have a whole load of civil unrest and other nasty consequences. Funny enough, we understand the global climate system better than we understand financial markets. We can see this eco-Madoff moment coming, but it doesn't look like we are willing to take measures to ward it off. Much like Madoff's investors, we're soothed by numbers backed by scanty auditing and happy to soak up the "benefits" of continuing our CO2 heavy lifestyle. We're not eager to pay the cost of say, additional regulation or restrictions that might rein in the excesses and stop this Ponzi scheme from running amuck. So here's the idea I will give my son for dealing with this situation: intergenerational extortion. We have other intergenerational systems that are handy examples in his tool kit of solutions, starting with our health care and Social Security systems. In those cases, every generation that comes along forks over taxes to pay for the previous generation's end-of-life health care and Social Security benefits in exchange for the generation raising us. It's hardly a perfect system. It faces its own set of challenges in scaling and not turning into a Ponzi scheme. But still, it's an example. Gwyneth Cravens has taken heat for some unfortunate misstatements. In 2007 she assured a WIRED magazine reporter: “If a reactor doesn’t have enough water, it will shut itself down.” In Pandora’s Promise, Cravens boasts: “There hasn’t been one death from nuclear power in the US.” Wrong again. As I note in my book, Nuclear Roulette, eight workers have died in three different explosions at a single US facility – the Surry nuclear plant in Virginia. By focusing narrowly on fatalities, Pandora’s Promise avoids the larger issue of measurable increases in thyroid and other cancers affecting people exposed to tritium leaking from nuclear facilities. My advice to him will be something like this: "Son, you should refuse to pay into my health care system. You should refuse to pay into my Social Security system. Encourage the rest of your generation to refuse to pay into the benefits systems of their parents and previous generations." I will then go on to say "Unless you can convince us, the Madoff generation, to immediately heed your demands on climate change action. You shouldn't be expected to support our future if we are not supporting yours." Who, exactly, is the "Madoff generation"? It begins with the boomers, of course, they are blamed for everything else, so we ought not leave them out of this one. The boomers' kids, however, are the bulk of the curve. I doubt that when the Boomers began putting their CO2 deposits into what I'll call the "Ponzi Climate Engineering Fund" they realized it wouldn't quite work out. But at least for now, they are perched at the top of most of the world's policymaking and industrial-decision making constructs. So they're prime candidates to extort. But I'd encourage my son not to leave out any other generation, up through Generation X and even including me, his own dear Dad. Of course, my son won't be able to vote for another 18 years. I'm not sure we can keep up the Ponzi scheme quite that long. So I should be counseling the upcoming crop of 18-year-olds to implement this plan immediately. I suspect it will be pretty easy to convince them. Here's the pitch: "You know those adults who don't let you stay out late, don't let you see certain movies, don't let you vote--and don't install enough solar cells and wind turbines? Well, you hold something in your hands that scares the willies out of them: their own self-interested future. Next time they refuse you a reasonable request, like a beer on your 18th birthday, the keys to the Prius, or a regulated carbon market, on the grounds that it's irresponsible, simply reply: 'Then I won't cover your health care costs and you can rot in your rusty wheelchair with no dentures to speak of.'" Of course, if you're 18 or under, you probably know what you have to do: form a pre-voting voting block. Vote with intergenerational extortion. After all, that's what your parents and grandparents are doing. Give them a simple suggestion about the right thing to do--invest more wisely in your future, or you won't invest anything in theirs. Otherwise, you're likely to wind up inheriting little but eco-Madoff securities with phony values (and inheritance tax, to boot). If you're over 18, you might not want to leave this page open on your browser. But oops, too