Wealth Inequality

The Congressional Research Service released a report on the distribution of wealth in the United States.  One of the most glaring statistics is the fact that the poorer half of American households have just 1.1% of the country's wealth.  The report indicates that share had generally been around 3% until the recent financial crisis.  Meanwhile, the top one tenth of households have 74.5% of the wealth.

Another way to see the skewed distribution is by comparing the mean amount of wealth to the median level of wealth.  If everyone were given an equal share (the mean), each household would have $498,800.  But the dividing point between the poorer half and richer half (the median) is $77,380.  The mean is that much larger because relatively few very rich people skew the calculation.  And the ratio between the mean and median is the highest in the 21 years covered by the report.

Three Numbers

Bill McKibben explains a concise way to understand the climate crisis using three numbers:

2 degrees Celsius is the maximum amount of warming that most countries have agreed is necessary to prevent catastrophic change.  Since 0.8 degrees of warming have already happened and another 0.8 degrees are on the way with current carbon dioxide emissions, there's not much room to work with.  And there are climate scientists who think a 2 degree limit won't save us.

565 gigatons is the estimate for the amount of carbon dioxide that can be released by 2050 and stay within the 2 degree limit.  Unfortunately, emissions have been increasing by about three percent per year and we would use up our carbon "budget" in about sixteen years.

2795 gigatons is the estimate for the amount of carbon dioxide that would be released from burning all the existing fossil fuel reserves.  This is far beyond the carbon budget even as the search is made for more fossil fuel supplies.

McKibben tries to remain optimistic and suggests that a moral case can be made against the energy corporations.  They are the enemy needed to energize the environmental movement.  But those fossil fuel reserves are worth $27 trillion.  And it's this fourth number that explains all you need to know about our fate.

Update (July 30):  Nicholas Arguimbau has a response to McKibben.

Update (December 27):  Rebecca Solnit declares 2013 to be Year Zero in the battle against climate change.

Update (October 28, 2013):  A study from the University of Oxford estimates that the carbon budget would be exceeded in about 27 years.

Update (December 23, 2013):  Sean McElwee and Lew Daly explain the carbon bubble.  If world governments do adhere to a carbon budget, carbon assets face a $20 trillion devaluation.

Update (December 24, 2013):  Annie Leonard explains the problems with "cap and trade".

Update (December 6, 2014):  A reminder that the world has already used 65 percent of our carbon budget.

Update (September 16, 2015):  Burning through all the world's fossil fuels would melt of the ice on Earth and bring a sea level rise of 200 feet. But disaster would occur well before that happens.

Unique Planet

Alone in the Universe is John Gribbin's argument for why ours is the only technological civilization in the universe (well, galaxy anyway).  The book is more or less an expansion on the famous Drake equation which has been used to estimate the number of civilizations in the galaxy. Estimates have historically ranged from a few hundred to several million.

Gribbin goes into great detail with a lot of science about galaxy and planet formation, the history of the earth and the evolution of life.  I had been aware of habitable zones around stars due to the need for liquid water for life to develop, but I hadn't realized that galaxies also have those zones--regions where sufficient amounts of metals exist due to previous generations of stars fusing the heavier elements before the stars exploded.

The details build up--each one slicing away at the likelihood of us being here:  earth-like planets are rare, it's unusual for stars to form singly, our moon is unusually large compared to the planet, the tilt of the earth was from the collision that formed the moon, the moon stabilizes the earth's rotation, the tilt gives us seasons, our large metal core gives us a magnetic field, the thinness of the crust gives us plate tectonics, climate changes prompted and accelerated the evolution of our species.  The extent of uniqueness is staggering.

And if all that isn't enough, Gribbin ends with a discovery from about two and a half years ago I hadn't been aware of--an orange dwarf star called Gliese 710 is on a collision course with the solar system.  Sure, it will take about 1.4 million years and will likely pass through the outer regions of the solar system (Oort Cloud).  But it turns out that the sun typically has a "close" approach with another star about every two million years.  And the Oort Cloud is where comets come from.  If Gliese 710 also has its own cluster of comets, the near pass could send a bombardment of objects toward the earth.  Large impacts have caused mass extinctions before; future impacts could destroy civilization (if any then still exist) or even destroy all of life.

It's strange to consider how contingent our presence is on being at the right place at the right time.  I can't help but believe that simple life exists in many places.  Of course, we don't know for sure.  To be truly alone flies in the face of a lot of science fiction.  Our human history is full of great achievement but also great disappointment--surely this can't be all the universe (or galaxy) has to offer?

Climate change split our ancestors into two groups--one stayed in the trees and one learned to live on the grasslands.  Gribbin mentions that all humans on earth are descended from a group of only one thousand individuals.  Is the intelligence we ascribe to ourselves merely a freak occurrence, a lethal mutation?  Anthropogenic climate change tests the limits of that intelligence. We have the technology, but not the political smarts to solve the problem.  Obviously, Gliese 710 is the least of our concerns.  Perhaps we would have been better off staying in the trees.

Update (August 21):  BBC has an interactive version of Drake's equation.

Update (January 7, 2013):  Perhaps Earth-like planets are not so rare, but most orbit stars much different from ours.

Update (July 30, 2013):  A study from the University of Victoria finds that the habitable zones around stars are narrower than previously assumed.

Update (November 4, 2013):  Based on a survey of 42,000 stars by the Kepler Space Telescope, there may be as many as 4.4 billion Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars in the Milky Way.  Still unknown is the probability of any planet for supporting life.  MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager points out that "Earth-sized" doesn't mean "Earth-like".  And Washington Post commenter 'wolfeja' lists several other factors relevant to life on Earth such as a molten iron core, gas giants in the solar system, a moon, active tectonic plates, chemical composition, and an axis tilt.  The same sort of factors discussed by Gribbin.

Update (April 4, 2014):  The Cassini spacecraft has confirmed the presence of liquid water between the rocky core and the surface ice of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Update (August 20, 2014):  A complete ecosystem of microbes is discovered under the Antarctic ice sheet.

Update (August 27, 2014):  Caleb Scharf, author of The Copernicus Complex, points out that just because an improbable series of events lead to humans on Earth doesn't mean there aren't other paths that could lead to similar outcomes on other planets.

Update (January 5, 2015):  A study by Coryn Bailer-Jones of The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy identifies a second dwarf star called Hip 86505 that could reach the edge of the solar system within one-quarter to half million years.

Update (March 18, 2015):  A study projects that billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy have one to three planets in their habitable zones.

Update (April 25, 2015):  A survey of 100,000 nearby galaxies lead by The Pennsylvania State University concluded that there were no signs of advanced civilizations.  At least according to our assumptions about how advanced civilizations would collect energy.

Update (July 23, 2015):  NASA announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet so far. Kepler-452b is 1400 light-years away, is 60 percent larger is diameter, and orbits a similar star to our Sun within that star's habitable zone.

Update (October 23, 2015):  Is it possible that most potentially Earth-like planets haven't been formed yet?

Update (January 22, 2016):  A paper by Aditya Chopra and Charley Lineweaver from the Australian National University hypothesizes that life on most planets goes extinct very quickly. Early life forms need to evolve fast enough to be able to regulate the planet's temperature. Lineweaver:

The mystery of why we haven’t yet found signs of aliens may have less to do with the likelihood of the origin of life or intelligence and have more to do with the rarity of the rapid emergence of biological regulation of feedback cycles on planetary surfaces.

Update (May 1, 2016):  A paper by Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan modifies the Drake equation and places a lower bound on the probability that humans are unique in the Universe. They argue that other technological civilizations are likely to have evolved before us, but are also probably extinct.

Update (August 2, 2016):  Low mass stars are much more common and a hypothesis suggests that if they can support life, it may be too early for sentient organisms to have evolved.

Update (July 16, 2017):  If there were no earthquakes, life would not be possible. Earthquakes are caused by circulating magma. The iron in moving magma generates a magnetic field. The magnetic field protects the atmosphere from being blown away by solar wind. Atmospheric pressure prevents the oceans from boiling away. Also, fault lines where earthquakes occur are areas where resources are brought to the surface. Mineral rich soil and water made civilization possible.

Update (February 18, 2019):  Joe Scott discusses the Rare Earth Hypothesis.

Update (October 14, 2019):  In an interview with Keith Spencer, Erik Asphaug discusses the possibility that life on Earth would not exist without the moon.

Update (December 23, 2020):  A radio signal from Proxima Centauri was detected in the spring of 2019. 

The researchers studying the wave emission have not yet been able to identify any Earthly origin, whether a satellite in orbit or something on the ground. As a result, scientists at the Breakthrough Listen project — an organization based at the University of California, Berkeley that searches for radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrial life forms in the universe — believe that the radio signal could originate from extraterrestrial intelligent life.

Income, Wealth and Economic Mobility

Andrew Leonard writes about three reports that document growing inequality in the US.  While income has grown for all classes, wealth has not.  Mobility displays a phenomenon called "stickiness at the ends".  Those raised at the bottom or the top tend to remain there as adults.

Update (January 13, 2013):  Lynn Stuart Parramore reflects on the British class system as portrayed in the documentary "56 Up" (and the rest of the "Up" series).  While many Americans continue to believe in the Dream, the fact is that the United States is among the lowest for mobility for developed countries.

Update (February 17, 2013):  Joseph Stiglitz writes about the myth of equal opportunity.

Update (July 22, 2013):  A study out of Harvard University and the University of California Berkeley shows how mobility varies geographically in the United States.

Another post includes a map from the New York Times which has further explanation.

Update (July 26, 2013):  More about the mobility study above:  a look at race and "economic segregation", and a discussion on downward mobility for middle-class children.

Update (July 29, 2013):  Paul Krugman writes about about the impact of urban sprawl on mobility.

Update (March 10, 2014):  Denver writer Lisa Wirthman gives a Colorado perspective on inequality.

Update (March 8, 2015):  Sean McElwee examines the evidence for a lack of social mobility in the United States.  The vast majority of people face, often brief, periods of economic insecurity.

Record Heat

In the Pacific Northwest, it's our turn to suffer through 100+ temperatures much of the rest of the country has already experienced.  And NOAA has released a report indicating that the US has just gone through the hottest 12 months and hottest half year on record.

Economics for the 99%

Americans want a more equitable distribution of wealth even as they underestimate the extent of inequality:

The Center for Popular Economics has a booklet (also free pdf) produced as a resource for the Occupy movement.  It provides an analysis of the economy from a socialist point of view.

Update (March 3, 2013):  View a related video at this post.

Inequality Hurts the Economy

For every dollar a consumer spends, more than ever goes to corporate profit and less than ever goes to wages.  A company earns more profit by paying workers less or by hiring fewer people. But those wages turn into revenue for other companies.

In short, our current system and philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.

Update (November 27, 2014):  In a paper for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Barry Cynamon and Steven Fazzari argue that the bottom 95 percent have lost income share since 1980 and used debt to maintain consumption.  When borrowing got tighter in the Great Recession, demand dropped and has lead to a sluggish recovery.