Current Events, February 2025

While I did not read much from books that directly regarded politics, philosophy, or international relations, the study of insurance brought a different perspective to understanding the climate crisis and war. The climate crisis, war, civil resistance, and repeating patterns, all have costs and benefits.

First, the climate crisis is expected to increase costs from weather events in the United States and internationally, at this time, according to an internet search, the losses from weather events is of the same order of magnitude to costs from smoking cigarettes in the United States. Damage and harm from weather events is expected to increase in the future, and policies or technology might decrease harm from future weather events. The political values of places that profit from the export of carbon-based fuels sometimes conflict with the historical political values of the United States, so political values-based reasons might exist to move from carbon-based fuels. If the total costs and benefits of carbon-based energy or renewable energy are known or unknown, present regulations or changing regulations might have unintended consequences. Hopefully, policies and regulations decrease physical harm, mental harm, and increase longevity.

Second, war costs money, despite that health and life insurance policies sometimes exclude claims caused from war. Causes of the costs of war include building the weapons used in war, and then there is the cost to use the weapons, including harm to people and damage to property, and then insurance claims related to health, disability, life, and property. Countries with more people participating in insurance markets seem to have fewer wars or political conflicts. Maybe war increases the direct cost of insurance claims regarding health, disability, life, and property in countries with more insurance policy owners, and also increases the indirect cost if insurance coverage decreases and therefore the amount of paid insurance premiums decrease from war or conflict. The direct or indirect costs of war from insurance might decrease the probability of conflict. Even though war costs money, including money spent directly on weapons and insurance claims related to harm and damage from war, or indirect costs from unpaid insurance premiums, costs also exist from not preparing for war. For example, the United States significantly decreased military spending after World War II and again decreased military spending after the Cold War. Despite these attempts to decrease military spending, war and conflict eventually caused increases of military spending again.

Third, at times, political change is attributed to peaceful and non-violent civil resistance. However, at times, political change is not attributed to civil resistance. Since governments have immunity for the use of force, use of force towards governments might be unlikely to achieve political goals. For example, governments might use force against peaceful and non-violent protestors or if violence is attributed to otherwise peaceful and non-violent protestors, then governments might justify force. Science and technology used for war or conflict often increase risk and harm. The invention of the machine gun, and the use of technology during the Holocaust, are two examples of increases in technology that can be used to cause harm. The Second World War ended when two atomic bombs detonated, one over each of two different cities, resulting in the death and injury of thousands of people. While simple or abstract descriptions of war minimize the perception of harm from war, the death or injury of each person represents the loss of the representation of that person’s world. The end of World War Two was approximately eighty years ago. Presumably, technology or science that can be used to help or hurt have only become more dangerous since then. While governments with elections have the consent of some of the governed, with the likely increase in dangers of technology from eighty years ago, maybe risks exist of elections changing policies related to dangerous technology. Also a risk exists of science or technology being used for harmful goals.

To conclude, though political, economic, or other patterns sometimes occur through time, that knowledge usually increases and that knowledge can be used to harm creates risks from repeating patterns. Noticing patterns can prevent future harm. The climate crisis, war, civil resistance, and repeating patterns, all have costs and benefits.