Marco Fante wrote this on the blog overnight. I thought it worth sharing in full. It shows just how radical the Green New Deal really is:
Here's some Green New Deal data and it concerns the uptake of electric cars:
https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/
https://www.caradvice.com.au/648088/volkswagen-orders-64-billion-li-ion-batteries/
That may not seem immediately relevant to some people. I would suggest that it is because the projected uptake appears to be rapid and, that fact notwithstanding, it may even be underestimated. So those cars are going to need supporting infrastructure for refuelling and for additional clean power generation. Some of that will be down to private business but a lot of it will be government and the private business component will need govt. regulation and support.
The part that most people don't think about will be the dismantling and retirement of obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure which will be huge. Transition planning for affected workers and towns is just the tip of the iceberg. On that note there is something else that will be huge that no one discusses and that is the broader (global) economic disruption that comes with the retirement of the fossil fuel economy. I know that particular disruption is a necessary thing and will ultimately be a very good thing as well — but it cannot be underestimated.
To begin with a demonstrative example, consider the case of ‘Petrodollars'. In 1973 (or thereabouts) when the Nixon administration abandoned the Gold Standard the Bretton Woods accord fell to bits and the world shifted to fiat currency, a new world economic order emerged — the one that is still with us. But the Americans in 1973 were left in a bind. The sudden absence of gold-backed US dollars left a vacuum.
To retain the supremacy of the US dollar (as a reserve currency in world trade) the US did a deal with the Saudi Kingdom whereby the US would provide them with military protection and the Saudis would demand that all of the oil they exported was paid for in US dollars. As number one oil exporter and OPEC leader, the Saudis had the power to do that and the remaining OPEC members followed suit. That's a simplified explanation but it explains a diplomatic deal, the Petrodollar deal, that has underpinned global economic relations, the power and value of America's fiat currency, the myriad of fiat currencies that are pegged to it (Asian mostly), as well as the currencies of all those that trade with the US and that trade with the pegging countries, all up — everyone.
My point is that the global oil trade has, to very large extent, underpinned the relative values and the relationship between the world's fiat currencies. It has also underpinned the economic power of the US in various ways including the fact that many nations buy US govt. bonds to hold as reserves.
So! What happens to that system when virtually nobody is buying or refining crude oil anymore and everybody is driving electric vehicles?
Furthermore, what happens to all those countries that rely on oil exports, and the all the strategic and military relationships that existed in order to ‘secure' oil supply chains, and for that matter the whole Middle East proxy war balance of power?
Have you ever wondered what was really driving that army of climate denial idiots and their science-hating nonsense? Now you know (if you didn't already).
And there's more besides — as net oil-importing nations (most of us) gradually cease importing, almost entirely, the balance of trade relationship between nations (net importers and exporters in particular) shifts significantly as do currency values and our attitude toward currency values. One of the things that defines current preferences for a stronger currency is the fact that it makes petrol cheaper (or should do). Absent of oil imports one major strategic and economic dependency, perhaps the main one, is gone. This shift has already started in the global thermal coal trade.
So, more broadly, a Green New Deal is about more than environment, technology and one part of the domestic economy. It also represents the birth of a new world order and the death of an old one. That's something that needs to be discussed — and managed.
http://dailyreckoning.com/u-s-saudi-relations-cracking-petrodollar/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story-behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/16/iraq.iraqtimeline
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One might just be more explicit on the economic and so political linkage between the oil industry and the military-industrial complex. If petrodollars dry up, then that cycle of trade ceases.
Time perhaps to dust off those studies from the early 1970s on conversion of military-facing industries to civilian facing ones?
Good point Dave,
As the geopolitics of the oil trade exits much of the current raison d’etre for war goes with it. Mind you there is that school of thought which quite reasonably suggests the greater purpose of the military industrial complex, and military expansion generally, is to use up excess industrial capacity (unemployed capital and labour).
Trump virtually and inadvertently states this out loud. The great economist, Michal Kalecki observed that this was a large part of the rationale of Fascism and Nazism in the 1930’s. He covers that subject in this wonderful essay from 1942:
https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf (‘The poilitical aspects of full employment’).
Perhaps a Green New Deal can utilise the excess capacity instead.
I hope so
Marco Fante says:
…..” the greater purpose of the military industrial complex, and military expansion generally, is to use up excess industrial capacity (unemployed capital and labour)….”
The irony (or stupidity) of this is that in real terms it is all overhead cost. We justify it by calling it ‘defence’ spending, but that really is entirely an overhead cost. Better international relations would preclude much of the perceived need for that.
The apparent profit in aggressive military activity is entirely zero sum. Actually worse than zero return given control of resources is merely changing ownership, (raiding the next door tribe’s harvest) no new production is created and there is almost invariably great destruction of what already exists.
There is little or no real economic benefit in any military spending. It is simply a waste of resources, both material and in terms of human labour and life. In principle we have not advanced one iota since the Stone Age, though the technology of destruction and death has come on in leaps and bounds. The underlying philosophy is exactly the same.
Yes Andy,
You are absolutely on the right track there. There is an irony in this and at the heart of it is the fact that the presence of excess capacity should not be a problem. The fact that the capital and labour we have is capable of producing more than we want or need should be considered a great success.
Ultimately that is why Capitalism as we know it will eventually fail and pass into history (as feudalism did before it) because it turns its success into a crisis – always.
At this point some would say: “but no Sir, excess capacity is relative to current demand which isn’t a sum measure of wants and needs. Current demand is merely a reflection of what most people can afford. Improve the equality of wealth and income then demand will rise and that will require more capacity.” To which I would say: “great! lets reduce inequality instead of building more armaments”
We could do that that (and should) but eventually, with per capita growth and increased productivity, the excess capacity would emerge again, returns on capital would fall, unemployment would re-emerge and the success would become a crisis, again. The “free market” doesn’t solve this problem, it creates it to begin with and then just makes it worse.
Falling returns on industrial capital is one of the reasons that financialisation (turning to fin. market speculation and away from the real economy) and rent-seeking (capturing existing wealth rather than creating new wealth) took hold with neo-liberalism. The returns were better but that the whole thing rests on a sequence of bubble markets and Ponzi finance. Not sustainable in 1920’s and not now.
Needless to say the excess capacity should be put to good use in building a better, fairer world, and any excess that’s left after that should result in reduced working hours so that everyone has more leisure rather than having some on 40-odd hours a week while others have no work at all . If all this fabulous technology doesn’t result in more leisure and wider prosperity then what good is it?
That realisation underpins some of the emerging new ideas like UBI, Job Guarantee and – the Green New Deal! Those things are signs of considerable improvement. Several years ago virtually no one had heard of them.
Keynes had an alternative scheme for the international balance of payments to the one we were forced to agree with at Bretton Woods. It involved the creation of “bancor’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor
Does it still have anything to offer?
Yes, in a word
The world would have been vastly better for it, in my opinion
ALthough Dexter Whit may have been correct to think the USA might not have been
Some excellent points here.
I always say that a priority of any responsible national government should be to make their country, as far as possible, self-sufficient in energy.
Given that energy resources are sourced from the commons, the ownership should be by the commons. The investment pays for itself many times over.
The UK is rich in offshore wind and could do more in terms of storage (e.g. pumped storage to cover times when wind is weak). Together with solar and tidal could be carbon neutral and self-sufficient by 2030 if we had the political will to do it.
This has to be at the core of the GND
One of the best, if not the best, book on alternative energy sources is Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air by the late David McKay. His national audit was a tour de force and his early death deprived us of a great thinker. I have a copy of this book but I believe it can still be obtained as a free download.
Charles Adams says:
“I always say that a priority of any responsible national government should be to make their country, as far as possible, self-sufficient in energy.”
Agreed. It ranks alongside food security, and whilst humans remain avaricious, defence. Given our present reliance on electric powered communication systems energy security has gone up a significant notch in recent decades.
Wind, “Together with solar and tidal could be carbon neutral and self-sufficient by 2030 if we had the political will to do it.”
Indeed, we have the technology. We have additional technologies of geothermal energy supplies largely untapped, and can also recycle much of the additional warmth now contained in sea water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWgkl7W9xU0&t=607s
Grid scale ‘battery’ storage is the piece of the puzzle which seems to be lagging behind. Pumped water is very expensive to set up. Chemical batteries are a dead end (anyone with cordless power tools, or mobile phones, or who has ever had a torch knows the limitations of chemical batteries.) Liquid Air Storage systems look very promising and don’t require problematic exotic mineral elements nor speculative yet to be devised technology.
But as you say, it is the political will which is absent to develop these solutions. We have a government at present which has been hostile to solar installation and development, and is intent on pursuing Fracking to obtain yet more of the problem fossil fuels we should be looking to phase out of our energy supplies.
Daft, I call it.
Andy says:
“Grid scale ‘battery’ storage is the piece of the puzzle which seems to be lagging behind.”
Its getting there, fast:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-06/tesla-battery-outperforms-coal-and-gas/9625726
https://utilitymagazine.com.au/looking-beyond-lithium-ion-in-energy-storage/
Marco’s post chimes with much that I have read about oil in the post- WWII period.
With so much tied up in the ‘petro-environment’ we could be looking at a lot denial.
And our reaction to the dawning truth?
We talk of manufacturing as many batteries as there are cars. Where and how are we going to resource the materials for all these batteries? We still act as if our resources are infinite. We still see the motor vehicle as the pinnacle of the expression of hyper-individualism.
There’s hardly anything that I can see talking about public transport and the infrastructure needed to improve that and get people about. It makes our decision to get rid of trolley buses and trams and close down railways that could have been made into light rail services look even more stupid. Such short sightedness.
‘The great car economy’ eh Maggie? Thanks for nothing.
It’s a mess. Roll on the Green New Deal.
I agree that we need to think public transport
Written whilst on a train to Norwich…..
“I agree that we need to think public transport”
I think we really do. I think we need to RE-think public transport particularly in terms of how it falls short of the selfish advantage/convenience of travelling in our own individual vehicles.
Two factors stand out. The problem of carrying our luggage.
And the biggy: the first and last mile. Though in reality for most of the population it is considerably more than one mile to the nearest mass transport, long distance embarkation point.
A third factor is perhaps also important and that is privacy while travelling, as an individual or group.
That last mile is key
Once we walked it
Now we won’t
One thing that struck me whilst on holiday in Germany last year was how much room there was on their trains for luggage. Like much of the European system the Berne Gauge means roomier accommodation for passengers and more room for luggage and bikes.
People were putting their suitcases above their seats on DB. Here, there’s no chance of that on the Pendolino and Voyager cigar boxes that pretend to be trains.
My view is that we should invest in an upgrade to the Berne Gauge nationwide. We may even be able to get better double deck trains and increase carrying capacity.
If only we still had the old Great Central – which was built to Berne gauge and was shut in 1966 in an act of vandalism
Hi PSR,
Regarding your question:
Q. ” Where and how are we going to resource the materials for all these batteries?”
A. For the meantime mining lithium in Bolivia and cobalt in Africa , apparently:
https://www.reuters.com/article/bolivia-lithium/bolivia-to-pick-new-junior-partner-on-lithium-in-coming-weeks-official-idUSL2N1WL0CK
And beyond that there are apparently a range of new options being developed that are more socially and environmentally friendly:
https://physicsworld.com/a/beyond-the-lithium-ion-battery/
https://utilitymagazine.com.au/looking-beyond-lithium-ion-in-energy-storage/
The problem seems really to be with the Cobalt required by the batteries where there are notable problems, not least if we all go battery there is unlikely to be enough of it in the world:
http://www.progressivepulse.org/politics/electric-cars-not-so-fast
For transport, it seems to me (whatever Grayling says) we need to concentrate on electric rail.
Peter,
I’ve provided 3 links there, 2 of them (Physics World & Utility magazine) discuss the current development of new, superior battery systems that don’t involve cobalt.
As an electric car owner I am conscious that it not necessarily environmentally friendly. Where does the electricity come from? Oil, gas, nuke coal? Well, we have pv panels. Where do the minerals for the batteries come from and at what cost to the environment, the miners and the exploited countries? What about disposal? We already send toxic material abroad for small children to disassemble.
It’s the hydrogen economy, stupid!! More investment in it and more in renewable electricity to create the hydrogen. Much cleaner if can be done. Yes, I know there are problems but they can be overcome, if we have the political will. But will the oil billionaires let us?
Best regard hydrogen as an energy-storage technology. The cleanest source of hydrogen is electrolysis — and in that we’re re-supplying the energy that was released when hydrogen burned with oxygen to create the water in the first place. As always, that energy has to come from somewhere.
Graham Hewitt says:
“As an electric car owner I am conscious that it not necessarily environmentally friendly. Where does the electricity come from? ”
You’ll like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWgkl7W9xU0&t=607s
One session I used to run was to look at ‘work motivation’ in “Robot Heaven”. The idea was to expose current ideological ‘understandings’ of work and money, though it had application in organisational change. MMT and a green projects economy is almost as startling as Robot Heaven in what it challenges in today’s soaked-up ideology. The protection racket of the USD is just one. Mitchell (not Bill) argued in ‘Carbon Democracy’ that control of oil markets had been bent since early days of kerosene replacing whale oil. If we could go green tomorrow in the West supplies could easily go East to a potentially far bigger market in the circle bounding China, India and Indonesia. What could stop this in the absence of US power and in the realisation governments can spend on catch-up technology involving oil, assuming green power doesn’t come cheap? Long story involved, but I’ve long thought going green has to be global and involves a huge change in power relations not cured by viable fusion, solar, wind and sea. This is more than perma-gardening and more than empire changes that litter history. It’s tough stuff that challenges the way we relate and blinkered views on current success. Our own populism is in deeper than we know, including ways in which society disables most people on the alter of meritocracy and the pretence of liberalism behind economic myth and military control. I don’t say this to posture. The situation is similar to simplistic ‘ban the bomb’ chatter that discounts leaving it in other hands. The ‘enemy’ is everywhere from poisonous religions (breed, breed etc.) lack of democracy in its dreamy sense (only 5%) to the love of money. I’d like radical change, but for now I want to know how we could police green in the current global legal environment.
I appreciate you asking questions I cannot answer
And haven’t even thought that I need to address
Interesting comment archytas, but I don’t concur with this bit:
“What could stop this in the absence of US power and in the realisation governments can spend on catch-up technology involving oil, assuming green power doesn’t come cheap?”
They way things are going presently it is cheapness (not virtue) that is driving the uptake of clean technologies. Renewable costs are falling rapidly and the other attraction of them for developing nations is the absence of ongoing variable costs – or to avoid the geek speak – sun, wind and water are local and free. No more reliance on imported coal, oil and and gas. What’s more many developing nations and regions will have the infrastructure benefits of being able to leap-frog into new era technologies and avoid massive, sunk-cost investment in the kind of outdated, centralised grid infrastructure that we are presently lumbered with.
No one is going to want to throw all their hard-earned resources into an obsolete development path and end up being stuck with it.
That said there IS a problem with global green policing (to paraphrase your term) and it is in the oceans and on the land – issues with waste pollution and the conservation of forests and biodiversity. The Pacific is a case in point. Its interesting that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or ‘trash vortex’) doesn’t have a parallel in the Atlantic. Then there is the Japanese and their whaling, the list goes on. Perhaps the Paris Accords have given us a lead on how to create a global institution that can deal with all of these issues comprehensively (?)
Marco Fante says:
” The Pacific is a case in point. Its interesting that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or ‘trash vortex’) doesn’t have a parallel in the Atlantic. ”
I think there are trash patches in both North and South Atlantic. Google ‘Atlantic Gyre’ if you wish to be depressed.
Archytas , re. this:
” If we could go green tomorrow in the West supplies could easily go East to a potentially far bigger market in the circle bounding China, India and Indonesia. What could stop this in the absence of US power and in the realisation governments can spend on catch-up technology involving oil, assuming green power doesn’t come cheap? ”
Cheapness is the main thing driving the uptake of clean technologies at the moment, virtue comes second. Renewable costs are falling rapidy and their long term attraction is that they don’t involve variable costs – meaning that the sun and wind are local and free – no need to keep importing coal and gas. That is attractive to developing nations that can leap frog into new era technologies. They are certainly not going pour all their efforts into the sunk costs of obsolete, centralised grid development and be stuck with it for decades.
If you are concerned about global green policing (to paraphrase your term) then it is conservation, biodiversity and polluted oceans that are the prime remaining concerns. Perhaps the Paris accords have set an example of how those issues can be resolved (?).
@ archytas
“going green has to be global”
On the nail!
So where’s the strategy in going Brexit isolationist?
Schofield asks:
“So where’s the strategy in going Brexit isolationist?”
Where is the strategy in Brexit at all ? I see no potential for benefit.
BTW thanks for posting that Richard.
The discussion has to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any.
Thank you!
Thanks Marco – we are no doubt on the same side. i was an actual cop as a young man, though mean the term ‘policing’ as metaphor. I like the leapfrogging and don’t know enough about the technology to do other than accept your view and read more of it. The big idea for me is to eliminate the precarity of humans and other species. I’m a scientist by training and found teaching university economics perplexing as (beyond essentially simple sums) it doesn’t work without excluding its essential subject data. Nearly all business teaching is a very restricted politics in disguise. Over-simplifying to the extreme I think going green cuts across most of establishment-managerial values of control and that these values are highly irrational behind a shield of bureaucracy. We are going to meet their grasping “staying ahead” mentality (already do when they accuse us of being redistributive commies in disguise and such). Transition will have its pitfalls. A map of known ones will help.
Hi Archytas,
This article is a good place to start reading up (do see the charts at least):
“The cost of producing solar power is rapidly declining: it now costs $US50 to produce one megawatt-hour of solar power, according to a new analysis. Coal, on the other hand, costs $US102 per megawatt-hour to produce. This recent change could be a sign that the world is on the verge of an energy revolution.”
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/solar-power-cost-decrease-2018-5
It won’t happen. Not because going green is anything other than a good idea but the means of financing it has no credibility beyond boards of this nature. The economics is sketched out but no detail is every provided. As a result the assumptions will never be trusted.
I hope you have a tasty hat to eat
I think you get a false set of perspective by the people you mix with and communicate with. Step outside that small circle and you will understand what I mean.
I mix very widely
I know what we are up against
I also know how the world can be changed
It starts with good ideas
And few people ever think they are when first suggested
Which is why I am confident change will happen and you are wrong
Geni says:
“I think you get a false set of perspective by the people you mix with and communicate with.”
Touche. (?)
“I also know how the world can be changed
It starts with good ideas”
People don’t have good ideas. Good ideas have people. (Carl Jung. I think) 🙂
Geni,
What the…..?
Orsted (Danish company – 50.1% owned by danish gov) largest global off-shore wind operator and developer. It ss in the process of raising $30bn in bonds. Admittedly not GND – which would accelerate such developments – but the point is that significant amounts of new money are moving into green investment – the laggards tend to be governments (exception to this – apparently – Denmark).
Mike
I agree – and know
I have followed this trend for some time
Richard
Hi Geni. I don’t want to make assumptions about which sector you work in, or what your existing knowledge is on the science of green energies, but I can tell you from a point of view taken from within the world of scientific (esp. photovoltaics research) that your comment seems somewhat off the mark.
Some of the most rapidly improving technologies are photovoltaics. And we are finally seeing considerable improvement in electrical energy storage, also moving away from the use of rare earth metals.
If you want detail, there are plenty of academic papers available. Solution processed perovskites would be my suggestion for a starting point – a young field but already not far from competing with the best silicon PV tech has to offer and at a fraction of the cost. If paywalls are an issue, check out sci-hub. That should get you access to most important material.
The cost equations have clearly moved in green favour in the last 10 years. The Lazard report could do with saying more on storage possibilities. New non-rare-earth storage is working in the labs now, as are solar cells that work much more efficiently in low light. We also need something clearer on the systems of greening. This is done in principle – we can probably write-off such as afforestation of the Sahara by looking at the whole system – and we should be looking, say, at green production sources running at low consumption times doing atmospheric carbon extraction, including running ‘petrol from air plants’ to compete with any need for further fossil fuel extraction. Wider than any technical system we have to do something in respect of redeployment of labour, another area of the brown economy that works poorly or not at all (death in some cases like after floods recede in South Asia).
My view is going green means an existential change. Morally, we can no longer operate as cogs in wheels of the kinds of empires we have had and our biological condition will need attention. Our knowledge of this is generally poor, over-assumes individual rationality, denies that individuals are already collectives and influence from our second brains (our enteric nervous system is the size of a cat brain). All our cultures are pre-modern too, not just in terms of residual religion. None of this really gets in the way of green being good sense – though current resistance to good sense needs explication. Some of this resistance is so foul we need to raise it. One alternative, for instance, proposed in the 60’s by CIA chief James Angleton involved living in deep pits to survive mass, genocidal wars in greater numbers than the enemy. This has all the brain-power of bacteria going into survivalist spore-mode. This extreme was built and sites have been revealed as they weren’t deep enough. One might add here that the West has given away its manufacturing advantage for long conventional wars. Good riddance one hopes, but we are still electing dire people like Trump, May, Macron and Eastern European caricatures out of a Steve Bell cartoon.
A virtuous circle of successful green projects and new money could well bring an attitude shift – it’s this I suspect is already being resisted in default power thinking because they know there is less place for their personal wealth, power and sunk-cost faith-thinking. This is widely spread across society by slogans about jawbs-groaf and even ‘respectability’. It is respectable for the UK to import nurses and doctors from places in urgent need of them. We hardly hear that end of the economic migrant ‘debate’. I am pessimistic on argument (we hardly know as a species what it is) and optimistic on technology, especially since Marco got me to update!
Re your least point on migration, mu friend Colin Hiners has raised it for years and been vilified by the soft – to which he belongs – for it
“vilified by the soft -” The soft-headed I assume.
Just yesterday I was just thinking about the Colin Hines article that you posted on this site a few months ago. I mentioned it to someone but didn’t have a copy or a link for it. If you have that link handy, Richard, I’d love to read the article again and pass it on if that’s OK.
Was it this?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/01/12/progressive-protectionism-a-new-book-by-colin-hines/
Or this? https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/11/10/the-case-for-controlling-migration-a-new-paper-from-jonathon-porritt-and-colin-hines/
It was the 2nd link (Colin Hines) but thanks for both. His perspective is one that will continue to grow into the future.
The consequence of the physics of global warming is mass extinction. All mass extinctions are driven by extreme environmental stress.
In every previous mass extinction, the largest animals, who command the most resource (or environmental services) have always disappeared. It is obvious why: the reduction in available resource means the requirement for such a proportion of resource is not sustainable and so passing on DNA to the next generation (= reproduction) ceases.
Economics, is a human construct and has only a basis in how a human society is organised, it has no basis in the Natural Sciences.
It is the Natural Sciences that determine whether Homo sapiens goes extinct sooner or later, not economics.
Note: much cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, largely in Virunga National Park, and one of the major drivers of the murder of mountain gorillas.
We have some obvious partial solutions, which are easy to implement at the tech level:
Public transport and the enabling of pedestrian, cycling (and scooters etc.) over the car.
90% reduction in meat consumption to reduce CH4 emissions.
Politically, I don’t see many countries going anywhere near this, as their political and social cultures are averse to anything in the public domain, and they seem happy to wallow in public squalor, in favour of a degree of private splendour.
Dave Fernig says:
“The consequence of the physics of global warming is mass extinction. All mass extinctions are driven by extreme environmental stress.” Yep. And we’re managing mass extinctions before the climate effect is even biting.
“In every previous mass extinction, the largest animals, who command the most resource (or environmental services) have always disappeared.”
On a more local scale it was the big POWs who died first in the extreme conditions of the Soviet Union camps in the the Great Patriotic War. When times are hard the bigger players always fall first.
Dave Fernig says:
“It is the Natural Sciences that determine whether Homo sapiens goes extinct sooner or later, not economics.”
I’ve found myself coming back to this assertion and I’m uncomfortable with it. Not because I would like to claim the supremacy of economics over natural sciences, but because on a day to day basis economics governs how people behave in the short term.
Short term economic strategies are what is threatening the natural world. For example, in the short term, if we want to produce maximum energy output we would continue to burn coal and oil, but we know we can’t keep doing this. We’ve always known we were going to exhaust the (finite, if indefinite) fossil fuel resources, but we now discover that we are going to have global, climate-induced chaos long before we reach resource depletion.
It will be economic factors that control our fate. Simple failure to manage money (our own creation) stands most likely to destroy us. Unless it is only the wealthy and powerful 1% who are destined to survive, they will need their servant class because the 1% does not do practical work, but robots will do much of the ‘heavy lifting’.
I think. I think that is possible, though probably not stable nor sustainable for long.
“Have you ever wondered what was really driving that army of climate denial idiots and their science-hating nonsense? ”
Chomsky has written and spoken extensively about this.
Climate denying Republicans, and some Democrats, are no fools. Most don’t believe in what they preach, they concentrate on making others believe so they can keep building their empire.
Its not really about ‘building’ an empire but trying to maintain a declining empire for as long as possible. At any rate their efforts have turned out to be an historically futile embarrassment as the scientists have got their revenge – by creating renewable energy that is now cheaper than coal or oil.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/solar-power-cost-decrease-2018-5
I was just reading ‘Geni’ and her/his/its contribution.
Isn’t it wonderful how some people read bad motives into the most positive of things?
But what is worse is the unwillingness to try something new and then talk about it rather than poo-poo it as has happened here.
Why are some all too willing to argue the theory without arguing the practice?
I found much his/her contribution to be incomprehensible which, in their case, was an advantage.
We lack institutions of ‘good sense’. Gramsci used this term, but we could do with some new definitions of it. Democracy as we have it clearly is not an institution of good sense. Think of the now common mathematical modelling of plant (and crop) growth in biology – review here – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963593/
We go deeper than this into information exchange and communication systems and even into mistakes in nature in such as photosynthesis (with hopes to make it 40% more efficient). Old papers and experiments are crunched through databases to find what was missed as “noise” and to investigate (with new experiments) a redefinition of noise as stochastic fluctuation finding nature has such as predators using “noise systems” to identify prey.
Climate science runs on similar lines of complex system modelling. Meanwhile, politics in many respects (and public reasoning) is two thousand years behind. Education hasn’t helped much.` Getting people up to speed and capable of understanding complex systems even of the rhetoric used to control them seems a much more distant possibility than 40% more efficient plants.
Green and money other than bank loans (we often forget the vulture interest rates are set to assume some failures) I take as good sense. Plato had good sense on women as an equal resource with men – we needed 2000 years to realise that one in part (remember Plato was only speaking for toffs and proto-toffs much as our public debate quickly leaves many aside by selection of talk on grammar schools and university).
Where are the good sense institutions on green and positive money use? Richard and Marco have nudged me to look at some things differently – so even in this and not wanting to make either person into an institution, there are proto-institutions on the net. Others here help with the institution of hope. I know some of us discuss such as the third world end of migration here as Richard points out – but it doesn’t even figure in my count of public discourse. May is on television lying on the NHS and Care as I type.
Many of our existing institutions rely on being able to abuse the planet and our money system. Their discourse evades complex systems modelling – though mystifying through rhetoric and postmodern text engines flourish. We have forgotten the Sophists were ‘ripping yarn’ entertainment. Green QE is not too unlike Popper’s small-scale social engineering or Veblen on engineers having more good sense than financiers. Good sense is as lost in our climate of media-mediated demagoguery as climate science is in mass appreciation. The pessimism in this is caused by our general inability to accept things are going wildly wrong and fatalism on our ability to change. In psychological terms we’ve been conned – a condition we can barely admit with the rub that this admission is needed for the cure. Understanding of the human condition from science has no public discourse institutional base. Watch the Parliament Channel and punditry in the run up to next week’s already delayed vote. It’ll be dross before it dawns that trivia is the way in this institution, which won’t be putting issues of green QE to we the people and instead Brexit posturing. 90% of our political experts won’t even know what it is, let alone how to model plant and crop growth and didn’t even know how money is created in a poll. How do we speak truth to ignorant power and the ignorant masses – leaving aside hideous propaganda recommendations you will see in constant use in Parliament? It’s tough but not impossible.
We may succeed through ‘cheapness’ in brown economic terms.- but again known oil reserves in the past were actually prevented from coming on stream to keep up the price of kerosene. Green looks on the brink of removing energy scarcity from billions – a big hit at those creating scarcity as a means of power. Positive money will need positive institutions if it is to be more than another pilot project. In the first place, I want to see it possible to make realistically negative arguments on the status quo that are not a barrier to new ways of doing things as “too difficult” or “Utopian”. Much as Marco informs on green technologies we might look into new argument technologies we can all use instead of the education that leaves 95% of us unable to understand the paper I’ve linked to here. Watching Parliament to do content analysis with my education seems only to equip me for a role passing the match to that well-known Yorkshireman Guy Fawkes.
It is the failure to comprehend almost any aspect of complexity that is leaving us sleep-walking to Brexit right now…
We can do better
The difficulty is that is anything massive access to media that confirms reversion to an incorrect norm rather than mean makes that harder, and not easier