Welcome to Dystopia

Over the past six months, the world has edged closer to nuclear war than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Doomsday Clock is ticking toward midnight. The global power balance has been dramatically reshuffled, and the potential for disastrous miscalculation hasn't been so high in 80 years. The match and fuse for this is instability — an exaggerated sense of U.S. weakness and lack of capability and resolve — that could lead to huge, aggressive military miscalculations and mistakes by our enemies. The Biden administration has set the table for such a catastrophe.

The timing could not be more dangerous. China has changed strategic direction and has been building its nuclear stockpile and delivery systems. China also has continued to develop hypersonic weapons, including stand-off “carrier killers,” space weapons and cyber capabilities to blind opponents’ strategic and conventional systems. Russia has been advertising (mostly for domestic consumption, but nonetheless worrying) its “unstoppable” delivery systems, and has a very capable nuclear stockpile and military. Iran will continue to move forward with building nuclear weapons. Pakistan and India both have significant nuclear capability in an increasingly unstable part of the world. Nuclear-armed North Korea is again assuming a more belligerent posture. Israel has a full nuclear triad (land, air, subs) to respond to existential aggression. The U.K. and France have significant nuclear deterrents. The world is a powder keg.

The danger lies in the growing global perception of weakness and incompetence in the Biden administration, combined with claims of the politicized weakening of the FBI, CIA, State Department and Defense Department. This has crystallized in Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s unsure Anchorage meeting with the Chinese, Biden’s wooden Geneva summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the colossal failure of the Afghan withdrawal, which may devolve into a humiliating hostage crisis for America, and the budget- and inflation-based defunding of Defense. In addition, the fully-politicized Intelligence and Armed Services Committees on Capitol Hill add to the danger. Our enemies may decide that now is the time to move.

Here we discuss how personal carbon allowances (PCAs) could play a role in achieving ambitious climate mitigation targets. We argue that recent advances in AI for sustainable development, together with the need for a low-carbon recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, open a new window of opportunity for PCAs.

ALSO, how did thousands of Haitians get from Haiti to Mexico? Poor Haitians don't own boats or airplanes. The Mexican government has to be complicit to even allow them into Mexico... so send them back to Mexico.