The UN: Climate Change as a Health Emergency

Hitherto, climate change had been characterized primarily as a matter of science and political economy wherein the latter was lagging behind the former. As the ongoing accumulating of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans were finally having a significant impact on the planet and us in the mid-2020s, breaking the grip of the oil industry and the related consumer demand for fossil-fuel energy proved to be too much for the UN’s annual “COP” summits because any agreements at them were nonbinding on governments. So at the commencement of the COP31 summit on November 9, 2026, the UN’s Climate Change Executive Secretary adroitly shifted the characterization of climate change to one of health, and more specifically healthcare systems—something presumably more manageable. Unfortunately, the focus on health put symptoms and effects ahead of addressing the causes of global warming.

The full essay is at "The UN: Climate Change as a Health Emergency."

Freedom

Freedom is so often applied in the political and economic domains in terms of external freedom, such as in speech or action—things that a state can regulate, a boss can forbid, and a religious cleric can excoriate—that internal freedom is often overlooked. We live in a collectivist world of states, businesses, universities, and religious organizations so it is easy to overlook interior freedom. In viewing ourselves in terms of groups, we are subject to the artificial constraints of group-think. Individualism is often conflated with lawlessness and licentiousness. Rather than tread over the tired individualism versus collectivism dichotomy, however, the interior of the mind, and in particular the sort of freedom that is possible therein, can be distinguished and yet related to exterior freedom that tends to be characterized by the constraints presented by political, economic, cultural, and religious systems in which we live. I contend that expanding interior freedom can expand political freedom in a way that strengthens democracy rather than results in anarchy. 

The full essay is at "Freedom."