All posts by Ray Grigg

History

The Quadra Project: Edo Japan

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Maybe Edo Japan is an echo of our better past and can be a model for our better future. It was a period in Japanese history began with the consolidation of power by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603 and lasted until 1867, an ending that came as a result of the destabilizing effects of American and European traders who forced an isolated and sustainable Japan into the world of 19th century commerce and values.

The beginning of the Edo Period, as the Tokugawa Shogunate is known, brought to an end a century of political and military struggle among feudal lords (daimyo) that had left Japan in economic, social and environmental chaos. Internal warfare had created massive poverty as well as social disorder, and badly managed resources in the past had so damaged the natural ecology that it was unable to support the population of 12 million Japanese. By the end of the Edo Period, however, wars were long gone, Japan was comfortably providing for a population of 30 million, employment had established a meaningful place for everyone in the Japanese society, and the environmental problems had been corrected. So, what happened during the 264 years of the Edo Period?

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Environment

Quadra Project: Habituation

When people tell lies infrequently, their bodies register a physiological response. Blood pressure rises and heart rates go up, as do stress hormones. Parts of the body exhibit increased perspiration. But tell lies frequently, and these symptoms begin to decrease. Something comparable happens to people who are the victims of lying. At first they are shocked and offended. But, if they are subjected to frequent lies, the reaction begins to subside.

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Cost of Climate Change, Transportation

Quadra Project: The Panama Canal

The Panama Canal and the Suez Canal are both magnificent feats of engineering that allow marine shipping to move east and west across the mid-latitudes without having to make the long journey around the continents of South America and Africa, respectively. The Suez is mostly a big ditch that was dredged in the sand to connect the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. No locks are required because the two seas are at the same elevation. Building the Panama Canal, however, was a much more complicated engineering problem, solved with remarkable ingenuity.

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Environment

Old Habits – The Quadra Project

Some old habits are difficult to break. Since the global pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, 30 years of half-hearted trying has not stopped them from going up rather than down. The result is exactly as scientific modelling has predicted—global temperatures are rising. The year 2023 was the hottest in about 125,000 years after temperature records were recorded for consecutive months from June to December of 2023, and then for January and February of 2024. The final calculations for 2023 indicate that we have reached 1.32°C above the pre-industrial temperature, exceeding the 2019 record by 0.4°C. Yes, it’s a warmer El Niño year, but that only accounts for 0.2°C of the 1.32°C. New 2024 calculations indicate we have reached 1.48°C above historical levels.

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project – A Moral Dilemma

We don’t usually consider the moral implications of our carbon dioxide emissions, but an article in The Economist (December 23, 2023) presents this issue in the bluntest of terms. How many people are dying as a result of our personal contribution to the global warming crisis?

The mathematics to calculate this are not complicated. Consider the per capita emissions of each country in the world, count the number of people globally who die as a direct consequence of climate change, and it’s possible to determine the responsibility that each person has for the death of others.

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