[Vision2020] Fwd: Earth Policy news - Record Heat Wave in Europe Takes 35,000 Lives

[Dale Courtney]

> >Visionaries:
> 
> 
> This article may be of interest.
> 
> Rep. Tom Trail
> 
> >
> >RECORD HEAT WAVE IN EUROPE TAKES 35,000 LIVES Far Greater Losses May 
> >Lie Ahead http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update29.htm

Tom,

You may find this commentary of interest as well. It asks the question "what
back-woods country could have 15,000 people die due to heat wave *far* less
significant than anything Phoenix and Las Vegas experience yearly. 

Best,
Dale



>COMMENTARY from The Commonwealth Foundation
>
>
>French Fried by the Welfare State
>By Lawrence W. Reed
>
>"Heat Wave Toll Nearly 15,000" blared a recent headline. Must be some 
>far-off, little-known, God-forsaken corner of the planet nobody ever 
>heard of, I figured. Nope. It was France.
>
>Consider the enormity of what happened in August. When the sun came out 
>and the temperatures rose to something below what El Paso endures for 
>four months of every year, a staggering 14,802 mostly elderly people in 
>France died. The proportional equivalent in the United States, where a 
>hundred deaths from heat would provoke a congressional inquiry, would 
>be 72,000. That's a population the size of the city of Bethlehem, 
>Pennsylvania.
>
>How is it possible for a heat wave to wipe out 15,000 people in a 
>modern nation--a nation that takes great pride in having fashioned one 
>of the world's most extensive welfare "safety nets"?
>
>When the Soviets blamed endless food shortages on 75 years of bad 
>weather, honest people knew otherwise. Marx and Lenin were the 
>culprits, not Mother Nature. Communism and famine are virtual synonyms. 
>France now offers us proof that death and the welfare state can mean 
>the same thing too. Indeed, perhaps the welfare state was so named 
>because in reality, the bureaucracy does well while the rest of society
pays the fare.
>
>France has a costly network of publicly funded benefits that begin 
>flowing from the bosom of the national nanny at birth. When a woman has 
>her first child, she gets a check. Each successive child generates an 
>increase in her monthly allowance, courtesy of the taxpayers. When the 
>child retires six decades and a plethora of other handouts later, he 
>gets a generous state pension. The message each French citizen gets for 
>a lifetime is that government is there to take care of him. Human needs?
>That's the assignment of some department somewhere in Paris. So when 
>thousands of elderly were roasting in August, their friends and 
>relatives took a vacation. Why should they assume a responsibility that 
>the state has assumed for them?
>
>A hundred years ago the French economist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, wrote 
>that taxes above 12 percent of national income would be "exorbitant" 
>and destructive. Today, the French welfare state extracts around 45 
>percent of the nation's GDP. After Paris bludgeons its subjects with 
>one of the highest per-capita tax bills in Europe, there's not much 
>left for ordinary people to take care of their elderly even if they wanted
to.
>
>Americans have erected a welfare state as well, but not one so far 
>along that our penchant for rugged individualism, personal 
>responsibility, and strong families has vanished. Many Europeans see us 
>as heartless and uncaring because we don't expect Uncle Sam to coddle 
>us from cradle to grave. But because we still largely take care of 
>ourselves and of those around us, we don't drop dead by the tens of 
>thousands when the temperature goes up.
>
>If the French really want to learn from their awful experience this 
>summer, they don't need another government commission. They should take 
>heed of one of their own, albeit a Frenchman of long ago. When social 
>commentator Alexis de Tocqueville visited a young, bustling America in 
>the 1830s, he cited the vibrancy of civil society as one of this 
>country's greatest assets. He was amazed that Americans were constantly 
>forming "associations" to advance the arts, build libraries and 
>hospitals, and meet social needs of every kind. If something good 
>needed to be done, it rarely occurred to our forebears to expect 
>politicians and bureaucrats, who were distant in both space and spirit, 
>to do it for them. "Amongst the laws which rule human nature," wrote 
>Tocqueville in Democracy in America, "there is none which seems to be 
>more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized, 
>or to become more so, the art of associating together must grow and
improve..."
>
>More recently, Americans have been lectured to by certain haughty, 
>self-righteous French about one thing or another, and usually in 
>condescending tones. Well, when 15,000 of their countrymen are 
>abandoned and drop dead from a little heat, it's time the sanctimonious 
>ones (not to be confused with the many citizens of France who are 
>perfectly fine and friendly folks) sit back and listen to a lecture
themselves.
>
>How can France revive the attitudes and institutions that form the 
>foundation of a strong civil society--a society composed of children 
>who eventually do grow up to be independent, self-respecting adults?
>
>Certainly, the French can never do so by blindly embracing government 
>programs that crowd out private initiatives or by impugning the motives 
>of those who raise legitimate questions about those government programs.
>They cannot restore civil society if they have no confidence in 
>themselves and believe that government has a monopoly on compassion.
>They'll never get there if they overtax people's earnings and then, 
>like children who never learned their arithmetic, complain that people 
>can't afford to meet certain needs.
>
>For all people interested in the advancement and enrichment of culture, 
>these are crucial observations with far-reaching implications. The 
>French are high on "culture" but cultural progress should not be 
>defined as taking more and more of what other people have earned and 
>spending it on "good" things through a government bureaucracy. Genuine 
>cultural progress occurs when individuals solve problems without 
>resorting to politicians or the police and bureaucrats they employ.
>
>The French can advance civil society only when they get serious about 
>replacing government programs with private initiative, when discussion 
>gets beyond such infantile reasoning as, "If you want to cut government 
>subsidies, you must be in favor of starving the elderly." Civil society 
>in France will blossom when the French come to understand that "hiring"
>the expensive middleman of government is not the best way to "do good,"
>that it often breaks the connection between people in need and caring 
>people who want to help. They'll make progress when the "government is 
>the answer" cure is recognized for what it is--false charity, a copout, 
>and a simplistic non-answer that doesn't get the job done well, even 
>though it makes its advocates smug with self-righteous satisfaction.
>
>What happened in France this summer should be laid squarely at the 
>doorstep of the French welfare state and its horrid social pathologies.
>The wisdom of Henry David Thoreau comes to mind: "If I knew for certain 
>that a man was coming to my house to do me good, I would run for my 
>life."
>
># # #
>
>Lawrence W. Reed, born and raised in Beaver Falls, is president of the 
>Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute 
>in Midland, Michigan.  Justin Marshall, a Mackinac Center colleague, 
>assisted in the preparation of this commentary.  Reprinted with 
>permission by The Commonwealth Foundation.  For more information, visit 
>www.CommonwealthFoundation.org.
>