Polit­i­cal per­fidy, eco­nom­ic irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty and dis­agree­ment over accept­able social norms and speech have become so per­ni­cious that those who favour a sen­si­ble and civ­il mid­dle ground, need some help to stay sane in the hope of rea­son even­tu­al­ly pre­vail­ing. To that end, I offer this advice from the gold stan­dard of cri­sis man­age­ment, Win­ston Churchill: “Stay calm and K.B.O.”

Along with a few basics that have been for­got­ten or ignored, it’s cer­tain­ly wise guid­ance for those with the task and respon­si­bil­i­ty of reg­u­lat­ing threats to the world’s well-being to take on board.
Pres­i­dent Joe Biden took office as a sen­si­ble alter­na­tive to arguably the least sen­si­ble admin­is­tra­tion in U.S. his­to­ry. For starters, he put com­bat­ting cli­mate change back on the Wash­ing­ton pol­i­cy agenda.
Accord­ing to one of the most defin­i­tive reports ever pub­lished about cli­mate change, the Earth will pass the point of cat­a­stroph­ic warm­ing with­in ten years if nations don’t rapid­ly tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels.
In a move that makes senil­i­ty jokes about him seem more like a diag­no­sis,  Biden’s response was to bow to pres­sure from the fos­sil fuel indus­try and open a fed­er­al­ly-pro­tect­ed area in Alas­ka to oil drilling.
New oil fields take at least five years to become productive.
Accord­ing to Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy (IEA) Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Fatih Birol. “the world is set to add as much renew­able pow­er in the next 5 years as it did in the pre­vi­ous 20 years.”
The IEA also not­ed that “the glob­al ener­gy cri­sis has kicked them (renew­ables) into an extra­or­di­nary new phase of even faster growth “ which sure­ly makes it more eco­nom­ic to stay calm and heed what’s known as “Wright’s Law”. Pos­tu­lat­ed by Theodore Paul Wright, a U.S. aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer, it states that “ for every cumu­la­tive dou­bling of units pro­duced, costs will fall by a con­stant percentage.”
Anoth­er less-than-social­ly-respon­si­ble char­la­tan that needs to  be reined in for the com­mon good is bank­ing.
A mere fif­teen years after the last mon­e­tary cri­sis, anoth­er one looms, cour­tesy of a bank with mas­sive assets run by peo­ple who went all-in for bonds. The Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank (SVB) man­agers either nev­er knew or did not under­stand a basic tenet impart­ed to non-pro­fes­sion­al investors: “The first rule of build­ing a port­fo­lio is to allo­cate your invest­ment between dif­fer­ent assets…Prudent asset allo­ca­tion can be crit­i­cal in insu­lat­ing your port­fo­lio from a down­turn in a par­tic­u­lar asset or market.”

                          ANOTHER WAY NOT TO INVEST

And then there are the peo­ple who rely on dona­tions to make the world a bet­ter place by eas­ing hunger.
In a move that earned cries of deri­sion and a head­line “Beyond Par­o­dy”, an “updat­ed” ver­sion of the inter­na­tion­al char­i­ty Oxfam’s “Inclu­sive Lan­guage Guide” apol­o­gis­es for being “guilty of ‘white sav­iour’ nar­ra­tives”.
By “learn­ing from decolo­nial activists to change that”, Oxfam will appar­ent­ly improve in its efforts to help build “a rad­i­cal­ly bet­ter future based on a sur­vivor-cen­tred, inter­sec­tion­al, anti-racist and fem­i­nist vision of equality.”
And in case that’s not enough, Oxfam also all but begs for­give­ness for con­cen­trat­ing on Eng­lish terms, to whit: “…we also under­stand that the dom­i­nance of Eng­lish is itself one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of work­ing and shift power.”
Con­sid­er­ing that accord­ing to the lan­guage spe­cial­ists Berlitz: “Eng­lish  is the most-spo­ken lan­guage in the world includ­ing native and non-native speak­ers….It is the default lan­guage in inter­na­tion­al busi­ness, tourism, tech­nol­o­gy, and much more”, call­ing such an idea from an inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tion absurd is being charitable.
What lan­guage oth­er than Eng­lish could Oxfam have effec­tive­ly used to work with more than 4,100 part­ner organ­i­sa­tions and oth­ers in 87 coun­tries “to bring last­ing solu­tions to the injus­tice of pover­ty”,  and “reached more than 25-mil­lion peo­ple world­wide last year”?
The guide’s author, Helen Wishart, is “Inter­sec­tion­al Fem­i­nist Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead at Oxfam GB”. One has to won­der how many peo­ple who actu­al­ly car­ry out OXFAM’s fine work on the ground could be fund­ed by elim­i­nat­ing that gib­ber­ish job.
Or how many donors will be per­suad­ed that their mon­ey could be put to bet­ter pur­pose by organ­i­sa­tions that will spend it solv­ing life and death prob­lems rather than pan­der­ing to invent­ed ones.
OXFAM might also con­sid­er ask­ing those in need whether it mat­ters if help comes with or with­out “inclu­sive language”.
I sus­pect the replies would be along the lines of “how much of my family’s dai­ly nutri­tion needs will be pro­vid­ed by eat­ing the guide?”.
In the mean­time, both they and we who are being dri­ven to despair by peo­ple who could make a dif­fer­ence focus­ing instead on their own nar­row agen­das,  K .B.O.is the best option.
For those who don’t know, the ini­tials are Churchill’s polite soci­ety form of his dic­tum for con­fronting seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able odds:  “Keep Bug­ger­ing On.”

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