Thursday links:

Praying for Liberals (Wash Post)

Plan Outlines Removal of Four Dams on Klamath River (NYT)

E.P.A. Moves to Curtail Greenhouse Gas Emissions (NYT)

Below, Larry Ellison’s take on “Cloud Computing” at recent conference:

Below, from Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed @ www.kedrosky.com:

Let’s turn things around: Given peak oil, burbling trade skirmishes, debt immolation, a collapsing dollar, environmental degradation, a decline in U.S. standard of living, ballooning population, etc., … what are some non-trivial reasons to be optimistic about how this moment in economic/human history turns out?

I’m serious. Even if you don’t believe it — and NY Magazine recently labeled me a “doom enthusiast”, so I admittedly skew bearish — try to make an optimist’s arguments better than they can.

Here are some examples:

* As the developing world reaches first-world levels of per-capita wealth we will see more wealth creation – and profits — in the next two decades than in prior hundred years
* The forced transition to a post-carbon economy blows a hole in models of environmental degradation, as well as creating new opportunities
* Capital markets have shed more risk at a faster pace than at any time in recent history, setting them up to fund much more new growth than anyone expects
* Ideas are more fecund than even, with a network-driven accelerated pace of innovation and invention, much of which is focused on today’s most important problems, like energy, the environment, etc.
* Human health and lifespan continues to improve, making people more productive for longer periods than ever.
* Global population will plateau over the next decade and then begin to decline world-wide.
* Even if subprime nearly blew up the world, we have democratized credit, which means many people will be able to invest in and create products/services that they otherwise would not.