Cyreenik Says
Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old Swedish girl, is gaining high profile as a climate change warning advocate. This is follows a pattern that is common in religions: having high-profile child prodigies. It is another sign that climate change is transforming into a popular religion for the 2020's. The good news is this is providing a Big Vision -- lots of people can get behind a cause and that reduces community acrimony. The hazard is that feel-good solutions will be chosen instead of cost effective solutions. One current example of this happening is spending tons and tons on wind and solar but only a trickle on nuclear.
Related to this, I have a saying, "Efficiency is green, effectiveness is even greener". Being efficient means using less resources, being effective means using those resources wisely and getting more accomplished. This means both are helping combat climate change.
Syria is now following a classic proxy war pattern: the fighting there is winding down because the proxy players are moving on -- they are finding other projects that are now more interesting and attention consuming. That is the good news. The bad news is that it is going to take a lot more attention of a different sort for Syria to heal again, and, so far, that kind of attention is not developing.
This 5 Sep 19 Economist article, Assad’s hollow victory Syria will poison the region for years to come, talks about Syria's current state of being in the aftermath of the proxy war, and how miserable the place still is.
A converse example is the Houthi rebels in Yemen. They are doing their best to keep proxies interested in the conflict. They do this by periodically launching drone attacks at high-profile targets in Saudi Arabia and also by claiming responsibility when others nearby do so.
There are smooth divorces, there are messy divorces, and there are memorably messy divorces. Brexit has moved into this last category big time!
The magnitude of mess has certainly surprised me. I was expecting a non-event comparable to the Hong Kong Turnover in 1997. Instead we are having an event that is shaking up the whole British constitutional system.
What this means is that how this will finally play out is quite uncertain, both in the short and long terms. I'm still predicting a "hangover" within the next six months but the magnitude is uncertain and the long term effects are also uncertain.
All-in-all, quite a surprise.
This 5 Sep 19 Economist article, British politics goes into the upside down by Bagehot, talks about how unhinged British politics is getting.
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