In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating—this despite all of our best efforts. Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture. What is it that we do not yet know? What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?[1]
The answers lie not with science, but with culture.
Climate activists are obsessed with greenhouse-gas emissions and concentrations. Since global climate disruption is an effect of greenhouse gases, and a disastrous one, this is understandable. But it is also a mistake.
Such is the fallacy of climate activism[2]: We insist that global warming is merely a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions. Since it is not, we fail to tell the truth to the public.
I think that there are two serious errors in our perspectives on greenhouse gases:
Global Warming as Symptom
The first error is our failure to understand that greenhouse gases are not a cause but a symptom, and addressing the symptom will do little but leave us with a devil’s sack full of many other symptoms, possibly somewhat less rapidly lethal but lethal nonetheless.
The root cause, the source of the symptoms, is 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations.[3] This should be no news flash, but the seductive promise of endless growth has grasped all of us civilized folk by the collective throat, led us to expand our population in numbers beyond all reason and to commit genocide of indigenous cultures and destruction of other life on Earth.
To be sure, global climate disruption is the No. 1 symptom. But if planetary warming were to vanish tomorrow, we would still be left with ample catastrophic potential to extinguish many life forms in fairly short order: deforestation; desertification; poisoning of soil, water, air; habitat destruction; overfishing and general decimation of oceans; nuclear waste, depleted uranium, and nuclear weaponry—to name just a few. (While these symptoms exist independently, many are intensified by global warming.)
We will not change course by addressing each of these as separate issues; we have to address root cultural cause.
Beyond Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The second error is our stubborn unwillingness to understand that the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions, as we have currently framed it, is over.
It is absolutely over and we have lost.
We have to say so.
There are three primary components of escalating greenhouse-gas concentrations that are out of our control:
Thirty-Year Lag
The first is that generally speaking the effects we are seeing today, as dire as they are, are the result of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in the range of only 330 parts per million (ppm), not the result of today’s concentrations of almost 390 ppm. This is primarily a consequence of the vast inertial mass of the oceans, which absorb temperature and carbon dioxide and create a roughly 30-year lag between greenhouse-gas emissions and their effects. We are currently seeing the effects of greenhouse gases emitted before 1980.
Just as the scientific community hadn’t realized how rapidly and extensively geophysical and biological systems would respond to increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations, we currently have only a rough idea of what that 60 ppm already emitted will mean, even if we stopped our emissions today. But we do know, with virtual certainty, that it will be full of unpleasant surprises.
Positive Feedback Loops
The second out-of-control component is positive (amplifying) feedback loops. The odd thing about positive feedbacks is that they are often ignored in assessing the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions. Our understanding of them is limited and our ability to insert them into an equation is rudimentary. Our inability to grasp them, however, in no way mitigates their effects, which are as real as worldwide violent weather.
It is now clear that several phenomena are self-sustaining, amplifying cycles; for example, melting ice and glaciers, melting tundra and other methane sources, and increasing ocean saturation with carbon dioxide, which leads to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These feedbacks will continue even if we reduce our human emissions to zero—and all of our squiggly lightbulbs, Priuses, wind turbines, Waxman-Markeys, and Copenhagens won’t make one bit of difference. Not that we shouldn’t stop all greenhouse-gas emissions immediately—of course we should—but that’s only a necessity, not nearly a sufficient response.
We need to find the courage to say so.
Non-Linearity
The third component is non-linearity, which means that the effects of rising temperature and atmospheric carbon concentrations may change suddenly and unpredictably. While we may assume linearity for natural phenomena because linearity is much easier to assess and to predict, many changes in nature are non-linear, often abruptly so. A common example is the behavior of water. The changes of state of water—solid, liquid, gas—happen abruptly. It freezes suddenly at 0°C, not at 1°, and it turns to steam at 100°, not at 99°. If we were to limit our experience of water to the range of 1° to 99°, we would never know of the existence of ice or steam.
This is where we stand in relationship to many aspects of the global climate. We don’t know where the tipping points—effectively the changes of state—are for such events as the irreversible melting of glaciers, release of trapped methane from tundras and seabeds, carbon saturation of the oceans. Difficult to pin down, tipping points may be long past, or just around the corner. As leading climatologist Jim Hansen has written, “Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades.”[4]
Evidence of non-linearity is strong, not only from the stunning acceleration of climate change in just the past couple of years, but from the wild behavior of the climate over millions of years, which sometimes changed dramatically within periods as short as a decade.
The most expert scientific investigators have been blindsided by the velocity and extent of recent developments, and the climate models have likewise proved far more conservative than nature itself. Given that scientists have underestimated impacts of even small changes in global temperature, it is understandably difficult to elicit an appropriate public and governmental response.
Beyond the Box
We climate activists have to tread on uncertain ground and rapidly move beyond our current unpleasant but comfortable parts-per-million box. Here are some things we need to say, over and over again, everywhere, in a thousand different ways:
Bitter climate truths are fundamentally bitter cultural truths. Endless growth is an impossibility in the physical world, always—but always—ending in overshot and collapse. Collapse: with a bang or a whimper, most likely both. We are already witnessing it, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way. Our version of life on earth has come to an end.
Moreover, there are no “free market” or “economic” solutions. And since corporations must have physically impossible endless growth in order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth. The only socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve.
We can’t bargain with the forces of nature, trading slightly less harmful trinkets for a fantasied reprieve. Geophysical processes care not one whit for our politics, our economics, our evening meals, our theologies, our love for our children, our plaintive cries of innocence and error.
We can either try to plan the transition, even at this late hour, or the physical forces of the world will do it for us—indeed, they already are. As Alfred Crosby stated in his remarkable book, Ecological Imperialism, mother nature’s ministrations are never gentle.[5]
Telling the Truth
If we climate activists don’t tell the truth as well as we know it—which we have been loathe to do because we ourselves are frightened to speak the words—the public will not respond, notwithstanding all our protestations of urgency.
And contrary to current mainstream climate-activist opinion, contrary to all the pointless “focus groups,” contrary to the endless speculation on “correct framing,” the only way to tell the truth is to tell it. All of it, no matter how terrifying it may be.[6]
It is offensive and condescending for activists to assume that people can’t handle the truth without environmentalists finding a way to make it more palatable. The public is concerned, we vaguely know that something is desperately wrong, and we want to know more so we can try to figure out what to do. The response to An Inconvenient Truth, as tame as that film was in retrospect, should have made it clear that we want to know the truth.
And finally, denial requires a great deal of energy, is emotionally exhausting, fraught with conflict and confusion. Pretending we can save our current way of life derails us and sends us in directions that lead us astray. The sooner we embrace the truth, the sooner we can begin the real work.
Let’s just tell it.
Stating the Problem
After we tell the truth, then what can we do? Is it hopeless? Perhaps. But before we can have the slightest chance of meaningful action, having told the truth, we have to face the climate reality, fully and unflinchingly. If we base our planning on false premises—such as the oft-stated stutter that reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions will forestall “the worst effects of global warming”—we can only come up with false solutions. “Solutions” that will make us feel better as we tumble toward the end, but will make no ultimate difference whatsoever.
Furthermore, we can and must pose the problem without necessarily providing the “solutions.”[7] I can’t tell you how many climate activists have scolded me, “You can’t state a problem like that without providing some solutions.” If we accept that premise, all of scientific inquiry as well as many other kinds of problem-solving would come to a screeching halt. The whole point of stating a problem is to clarify questions, confusions, and unknowns, so that the problem statement can be mulled, chewed, and clarified to lead to some meaningful answers, even though the answers may seem to be out of reach.
Some of our most important thinking happens while developing the problem statement, and the better the problem statement the richer our responses. That’s why framing the global warming problem as greenhouse-gas concentrations has proved to be such a dead end.
Here is the problem statement as it is beginning to unfold for me. We are all a part of struggling to develop this thinking together:
We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we’ve ever faced. It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years—but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora’s Box tightly shut. We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.
We love our cars, our electricity, our iPods, our theme parks, our bananas, our Nikes, and our nukes, but we behave as if we understand nothing of the land and water and air that gives us life. It is past time to think and act differently.
If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably. Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn’t good and we’d better think it through very carefully.
Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic. We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand.[8]
Living sustainably means, in Derrick Jensen’s elegantly simple definition, that whatever we do, we can do it indefinitely.[9] We cannot use up anything more or faster than nature provides, we don’t poison the air, water, or soil, and we respect the web of life of which we are an intricate part. We are not separate from nature, or above it, or in any way qualified to supervise it.[10] The evidence is ample and overwhelming; all we have to do is be brave enough to look.
How do we survive in a world that will probably turn—is already turning, for many humans and non-humans alike—into a living hell? How do we even grow or gather food or find clean water or stay warm or cool while assaulted by biblical floods, storms, rising seas, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, and hail?
It is crystal clear that we cannot leave it to the technophiliacs. It is human technology coupled with our inability to comprehend, predict, and prevent unintended consequences that have brought us global catastrophe, culminating in climate disruption, in the first place. Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking—the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.[11]
All that being said, we needn’t discard all that we’ve learned, far from it.[12] But we must use our knowledge with great discretion, and lock much of it away as so much nuclear weaponry and waste.
Time is running very short, but the forgiveness of this little blue orb in a vast lonely universe will continue to astonish and nourish us—if we only give it the chance.
Our obligation as activists, the first step, the essence, is to part the cultural veil at long last, and to tell the truth.
—-
Endnotes:
[1] Many thanks to Richard Grossman, who posed that question fifteen years ago with respect to corporate domination of governance and culture when he founded the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). He understood that we must take the time to stop and penetrate beyond the obvious if we are to think outside of the cultural prescriptions that constrain our ability to act differently. Many thanks as well to Ross Gelbspan, a courageous and ground-breaking journalist, who early on investigated the forces driving the fossil fuel machine and has been sounding the alarm for almost two decades. See his excellent article, “Beyond the Point of No Return,” December 2007, which inspired many of the ideas in this piece.
[2] I would like to express deep gratitude to John A. Livingston, pioneer environmentalist, preservationist, teacher and writer. In 1981 he wrote “The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation,” which inspired the title of this piece. The fallacy that Livingston was referring to is well-described in the foreword by Graeme Gibson: “The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, as a statement of belief, is one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of John Livingston’s convictions. Had he entitled it ‘The Failure of Wildlife Conservation,’ we might have tried again—without having to think too much about it. But he didn’t. ... As a result of the word fallacy, we are confronted with an insistence that we rethink everything.” From The John A. Livingston Reader, McClelland & Stewart, 2007, pp. xiv-xv. So it is, with the fallacy of climate activism, that we must rethink everything.
[3] Endless (exponential) growth is an impossibility in a finite physical system (planet earth), and we have a wealth of examples of overshoot and collapse, non-human and human, all of which are fully predictable. Our cultural inability to grasp such an obvious reality is a primary obstacle to progress in addressing climate change and its root cause. Indigenous cultures tend to have much better understandings of these things. See Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend, “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” from Valuing The Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics, MIT Press, 1993, p. 267 ff. For a wide-ranging discussion of the demise of civilizations, see Jared Diamond, Collapse, Viking, 2005.
[4] James Hansen et al.(2007), “Climate change and trace gases,” Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 365: 1925–1954 (2007).
[5] Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 92. The actual quote, referring to population, is, “Mother nature always comes to the rescue of a society stricken with the problems of overpopulation, and her ministrations are never gentle.”
[6] A word here about the skeptics, with whom we are also obsessed: Forget about them. They may appear to have control of the public discussion, but they are babbling into the abyss. Our enemy is us. By our own unwillingness to face the profound implications of climate change—that we have to reject civilization as currently conceived and come up with something completely different—we are doing far more damage to the cause of preserving life on earth than the deniers could ever do.
[7] “One of the more peculiar traits of our society is its assumption—its insistence—on solutions. Just as there are reasons for all things, so there are solutions for all things. Always there are ultimate answers; there is no problem that is not amenable to logical reduction. This, as we have seen earlier, in spite of such bewildering enterprises as ecology. I have no ‘solution’ to the wildlife preservation problem [read ‘global warming problem’]. There may not be one. But given the somewhat shaky assumption that one exists, I sense that I can at least feel the direction.” John A. Livingston, The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 151.
[8] Our culturally skewed and defensive view of pre-hierarchical societies, seeing only lives that were “nasty, brutish and short” struggling to survive in “nature, red in tooth and claw,” has distorted earlier human experience beyond recognition. See, for example, Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade, Harper & Rowe, 1987; and Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Tavistock Publications, Ltd. (London), 1974.
[9] Jensen is one of our most passionate and incisive cultural critics and environmental writers. His words are, “For an action to be sustainable, you must be able to perform it indefinitely. This means that the action must either help or at the very least not materially harm the landbase. If an action materially harms the landbase, it cannot be performed indefinitely ...” From Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, What We Leave Behind, p. 56.
[10] Although, as I indicate in footnote 12 in a brief discussion of holistic management of grasslands, we can and must repair enough of the damage so that the infinitely complex self-organizing systems of nature—the systems that gave life to all living creatures—can begin anew.
[11] For example, consider hare-brained schemes from very smart scientists, some of whom know that the schemes are hare-brained but in their desperation see no other way. A recent article in Rolling Stone, “Can Dr. Evil Save The World?,” has an interesting overview of the geo-engineering debate. The bottom line seems to be that we currently are able to do and think anything except changing the way we live, and risking the existence of life on earth is simply a chance we have to take (although 100 percent odds of failure is hardly a bet one should want to take, assuming there are any rational moments left). See also Ross Gelbspan’s article, “Beyond the Point of No Return,” footnote 1.
[12] Glimmers of hope lie in the remarkable restorative powers of the earth. One such phenomenon is ancient pre-history but new to us. That is the relationship between grazers and grasslands. Whereas conventional grasslands management destroys soils and diversity, nature’s way sequesters vast amounts of carbon in soils, with photosynthesizing plants as intermediators along with fungi, micro-organisms, insects, animals and birds—and creates productive and healthy land that, unlike forests, can bind carbon for thousands of years. We have the potential to remove gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gas concentrations by many parts per million with proper land management. Beyond grasslands, the planet’s power of regeneration, despite our assaults, remains extraordinary. See the Holistic Management International website.
Another example is the dramatic restoration of denuded rainforest in Borneo after only six years: “Planting finishes this year [2008], but already [Willie] Smits [the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting] and his team from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is ‘mature’, with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5°C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orangutans. ‘If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me. ... The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,’ says Smits, who has written a book about the project.”
We have met the deniers, and they are us
Comments
View as Flat
Royal Enfield Posted 11:00 pm
23 Aug 2009
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alexd Posted 5:32 am
24 Aug 2009
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Socius Posted 6:21 am
24 Aug 2009
No. I submit that it is about nothing more than our desire to perpetuate the myth of endless growth.You are so very right to call climate change what it really is: a symptom of a much greater problem. We must come to terms with the fact that humanity is a part of nature rather than a consumer thereof. Our current growth paradigm willfully ignores this fact, choosing short term "wealth" over long term prosperity. Real wealth has not been created. Real wealth is something you can pass down to your children and grandchildren. We have figured out a way to live off the wealth of future generations by consuming resources which will not be available to them.In other words, we have chosen to treat the Earth like a cookie jar, and our grandchildren will want to know what happened to all the chocolate chips.
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Rip Van Winkle Posted 8:09 am
24 Aug 2009
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:40 am
24 Aug 2009
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kkloor Posted 9:15 am
24 Aug 2009
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anthonares Posted 9:46 am
24 Aug 2009
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Tom Twigg Posted 10:12 am
24 Aug 2009
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rpauli Posted 10:26 am
24 Aug 2009
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bburtis Posted 10:31 am
24 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 10:40 am
24 Aug 2009
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KimC Posted 11:42 am
24 Aug 2009
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David Roberts Posted 12:08 pm
24 Aug 2009
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Tom Twigg Posted 6:47 pm
24 Aug 2009
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TokyoTom Posted 10:32 am
26 Aug 2009
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morganovich Posted 12:18 pm
24 Aug 2009
that they need to die for your vision? that's going to be a tough sell. how are you going to like dying of preventable disease? are you anxious to get out life expectancy down to 36 again?it is a simple fact of economics that environment is a luxury good. rich people choose it. poor people don't. consider which countries are clean and which are not. why do you think this is? london used to have a pollution level that makes Beijing today looks like Tahiti. it stopped when they got rich. china is now getting rich enough to start (and i do say start, not be utterly committed to) a cleaner environment.the best thing we can do for the environment is help develpoing countries get rich, not drive them back into antedeluvain poverty. north american and europe are cleaner then 50 years ago by virtually any mertic. water is better, soil less tainted , forests are increasing in size. this is what rich countries do. making us all act like poor countries will just make everyone's environment worse and cause a massive human die off. and enough with the AGW scare. it was warmer in the medieval period than now by around .7 degrees C and warmer still during the roman period. 90% of all the peer reviewed studies say so. read plimer's book. read this website: http://www.co2science.org . are you going to tell me that all these hundreds of studies are wrong? only mann's utterly discredited hockey stick and the laughinstock IPPC that promoted it don't beleive in a MWP. ask any geoligist or paleoclimatologist. warm climate causes prosperity. a cold earth causes terrible die offs anf famine. you are really barking up the wrong tree, especially if you think a system like earth's climate could be dominated by positive feedbacks and somehow, never have run away before. positive feedbacks are VERY rare in nature. there is no way our climate is dominated by them. CO2 levels have been 25 times this high before. climate did not run away. we slipped into an ice age with 10 times this much CO2. we're in an ice age now. earth is very cold. in the last 500 million years (the length for which multi-cellular life has been on earth) current climate sits within the coldest 10%. warming is not what we need to worry about, it's when this current deglaciation ends and we get ice sheets down to the tropics again. THAT will be bad news. a little warmth is nothing to get fussed about. most of humanity's civilized age took place in temperatures much warmer than these. the holocene climate optimum was over 2 degrees warmer, lasted for 2000 years, and all the polar bears were fine. so were all the people. that's when we invented agriculture.if you have "little cabin in the woods" fantasies, great, induldge them to your hearts content, but don't go trying to kill half the world by making them play along just so you can have some lebensraum.
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Spence Posted 1:06 pm
24 Aug 2009
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morganovich Posted 3:25 pm
24 Aug 2009
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Andrew Gunther Posted 9:25 am
25 Aug 2009
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A Spencer Posted 3:18 pm
25 Aug 2009
a tipping point of wealth, and become more environmentally concerned.
you cannot ram "environment" down the throats of poor people. they
just don't have the ability to care. only wealth will incent
environmental stewardship." It simply is not a matter of incentives, or of whether or not people care. The backlash of global climate destabilization will likely make all of those concerns irrelevant. His point is cogent and well thought-out: the changes are happening whether we are politically concerned about stopping them or not. The destabilization of climate will likely lead to catastrophic consequences, and telling people the truth, as the original poster writes, is the same as recognizing that if and when the fallout occurs, a lot of people will be snuffed out. It's the survivors who will be forced to adapt, or join those unfortunate enough to pay for our cultural mistakes.
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ArtesiaWY Posted 1:23 pm
27 Aug 2009
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greenpeacetempe Posted 12:21 pm
24 Aug 2009
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ecceman Posted 1:00 pm
24 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 1:18 pm
24 Aug 2009
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neosapiens Posted 1:20 pm
24 Aug 2009
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Bobbie Stacey Posted 7:06 am
30 Aug 2009
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bburtis Posted 1:30 pm
24 Aug 2009
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Tom Twigg Posted 1:36 pm
24 Aug 2009
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Chris Pratt Posted 2:22 pm
24 Aug 2009
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neosapiens Posted 2:23 pm
24 Aug 2009
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ecologicalhope Posted 2:23 pm
24 Aug 2009
I also remind people that hope is not the same thing as optimism. I also remind people that if hope is the belief that we can go on as we are with a little recycling and some alternative energy sources thrown in, then there is no hope. Hope resides in getting the true nature of the crisis and then learning how to live differently on the planet in a way that can get us through. We can do this, but not if we insist that we don't have to give up a lot of what we love about our lifestyles here in the affluent west.The planet's biological and chemical makeup is already altered. It's up to us to figure out how to proceed in the face of that reality. Political work, yes. Also cultural work, educational work, creative projects of all kinds. We are not starting from scratch here; we are already, many of us, deeply into this creative and difficult endeavor.
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Andrée Zaleska Posted 2:29 pm
24 Aug 2009
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L25kin Posted 2:30 pm
24 Aug 2009
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rk.baird Posted 6:59 pm
24 Aug 2009
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T Worstall Posted 3:48 am
25 Aug 2009
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GreenCanoe Posted 4:08 am
25 Aug 2009
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Socius Posted 5:13 am
25 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 5:29 am
25 Aug 2009
influx of energy into the earth each and every moment of every day. We
also expect that influx to continue for the next 4 billion years or so.
If you (carefully now!) look up into the sky during the day you will
see the source of that energy: we generally call it 'The Sun.'"Yes. But solar energy, of course, is not the same as material. The earth is a closed loop system when it comes to the most vital resource to earth based life, water. As well, while many resources such as soil, and most minerals are renewable, the rate of renewal is such as to be insignificant in a human, or even generational,life span. But even soil and minerals are renewabale only in a closed loop system, that is, what comes out goes back in--ashes to ashes, as it were. But we know that isn't true. We know, to the contrary, that in industrial and post-industrial economies, what is removed from nature is seldom returned and is, most often, made entirely toxic.The second argument of our believer is even better. To what, one might ask our believer, is "value" being added if not the resources of a finite planet? Is value being added to thin air? Certainly it might appear so to an executive of Goldman Sachs. Still, what would be the "economic growth" measured if the "value" added was not consumed?He and his co-relgioniats tend to look at economic theory separate and apart from economic reality. The economic reality is that our capitalist consumer economy is fully based on the model of infinite growth of the consumption of a finite planet.If our believer is open to questioning the tenets of his faith, I woud suggest a conversation with a bluefin tuna.
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cyberfarer Posted 5:54 am
25 Aug 2009
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slimbach Posted 7:06 am
25 Aug 2009
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T Worstall Posted 9:09 am
25 Aug 2009
economies, what is removed from nature is seldom returned and is, most
often, made entirely toxic." You can recycle absolutely anything if you apply enough energy to it. Which we're not short of because of that Sun up there. "Is value being added to thin air?" Could be.Do you value clear air? The way that the air in the cities of industrial countries is now far cleaner than it was only a few decades ago? Good, we have, by making the air cleaner added value to thin air.That wasn't too difficult now, was it?"Still, what would be the "economic growth" measured if the "value" added was not consumed?"Value in this sense is determined by what consumers themselves value. If they do not consume it then it had no value and thus none was added.Sorry to have to break this to you but economists have been thinking very hard about these things for a couple of centuries now. You've not going to find the one fatal flaw simply by trying to start again from basic principles.About the bluefin tuna: Garrett Hardin got the answer with his Tragedy of the Commons point. Something which is entirely central to modern day economics. Yes, we do know how to solve that problem. In fact, economists already know how to deal with most of the prolems you deep green types keep raising: it's just that you won't listen or learn.
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Jeremiah Posted 9:12 am
25 Aug 2009
since corporations must have physically impossible endless growth in
order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth. The only
socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve."Nonsense like this encourages me to discount everything else Sacks says. There are many corporations (i.e. firms) throughout the world that have been around for years without growing. They aren't the ones you have in your 401k because you wouldn't be happy with their financial results. They tend to be family owned, responsible, and earn enough to support their employees and the family owners. They are connected with their communitites.If Sacks meant "socially irresponsible large corporations" he should have said so. He might have found a few supporters in the billions of people who know that capitalism works better than anything else.If human-kind has managed to evolve from rooting in the jungles to flying to the moon, I dare say more technically creative people will be able to find ways to evolve in changed climatic conditions. Just like they have in the past. Cheer up!
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LoieH Posted 9:30 am
25 Aug 2009
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}I have little patience for Adam's argument -- tell the truth -- because it's an
oversimplification of the complexity of interpersonal communication and doesn't
even attempt to address political strategy. I agree with
his analysis of the problem -- humanity has likely overshot the Earth's carrying
capacity and will likely experience massive loss of life over the next century,
but I think he unestimates the flexibility of human civilization, esp
capitalism. Even Lovelock, the grand pessimist, predicts that billions of people
will survive the climate crisis. Among the survivors will be some of the
wealthiest, most resourceful, and most technologically savvy. I think our job as
climate activists is to democratize survivability and reduce species loss through emission
reduction and aggressive adaptation (including but not limited to the Transition initiatives). Most
importantly, we have to increase the numbers of people who understand what's
going on. To do that we have to go back to the fundamentals of interpersonal
communication: the other person will hear your message only if they are
listening and receptive and have the prerequisite knowledge to understand you and have trust in you as a source of valuable info. At this time and place, that means starting with how people can save money when
they save energy. Many of those who are not receptive to messages about climate
change are receptive to messages about saving money. Tying those messages together isn't
hard once you've got their attention. Our 10/24 event will be a community energy fair with lots of freebies and it will tie in to 350
through a progression of speakers and workshops.
I
had an interesting conversation along similar lines yesterday with two ACORN members
who are on our 10/24 organizing committee -- how prominantly to figure 350 in
the flyer, etc. We ended up deciding to continue to emphasize saving money,
while changing it to be a 2-sided flyer so we could explain in detail about the dire state of the climate and the international negotiations to replace Kyoto with something more or less in accordance with the urgency and scope of the problem.
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ecologicalhope Posted 9:41 am
25 Aug 2009
Fossil fuels are a perfect example. Within the earth a great amount of useful energy is stored, but when burned it becomes useless, and worse, often toxic. The Second Law shows that energy can be degraded, used up, in that sense, no longer available. Fossil fuels are stored solar energy over millions of years. When used up, what is left is degraded and no longer useful, but the waste remains, carbon dioxide being just one example of that. We can't use it, it just remains in our atmosphere until one day, centuries from now, it will dissipate -- if we stop putting more into it. In the meantime, it will continue to cause the planet to heat up.Capitalism is not free of the first and second laws. In fact, it has accelerated the process of energy degradation and waste. Financial capitalism, investment no longer attached to anything that is produced, is more and more the generator of wealth accumulation and concentration. It is fake wealth, as we have just witnessed over the past year.All the polemics in the world cannot shield us from this process. Right now, we are living grossly out of the energy/exergy balance of the planet. If we continue on, the consequences will become increasingly grave. The earth will strive for a new balance, which may or may not include the human species. If we can figure out, and quickly, how to get human civilization back into balance with the first and second laws, we can get ourselves through this.I have started explaining this when talking to groups and was surprised at the positive energy it unleashed. It's a way people can 'get it,' and then begin to talk about what we need to do to live in balance. It gets us out of opinion and argument into science they can understand. It implies certain practical things that can and must be done. It is KNOWLEDGE, which makes the whole thing less scary and they feel much more empowered, rather than helpless.
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swan Posted 9:46 am
25 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 9:51 am
25 Aug 2009
If they do not consume it then it had no value and thus none was added."So, according to the believers, yes, value is only added when resources are consumed. Thank you for the backhanded admission."Sorry to have to break this to you but economists have been thinking
very hard about these things for a couple of centuries now."Agreed. And what is the result of 200 years of rule by The Church? Peak oil, water scarcity, over population, climate change, ocean acidification, collapse of the fisheries, dead coral reefs, runaway extinction, deforestation, toxic breast milk, and war. Good work. You must be very proud." Yes, we do know how to solve that problem"The Church has the Truth! So why haven't you solved them? Why after 30 years of neo-liberal economics, the ascendency of the free market, and the worshiping of ecomomics as religion, has The Church not solved the problem (in fact, only accelerated the decline)?Because something like modern economic thought is conventional, does not make it wisdom. By the way, the tragedy of the commons was allowing The Church to have raped and pillaged it to the extent that it has.Jeremiah: " There are many corporations (i.e. firms) throughout the world that have been around for years without growing."Name one. I'm sure The Believer, above, would be interested in knowing also.
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Rmoen Posted 12:50 pm
25 Aug 2009
Does CO2 'drive' global warming or does CO2 merely 'contribute' to global warming?
If 'drives' is correct, America and the rest of the world must quickly restructure our energy infrastructure to reduce CO2 emissions. But if CO2 merely 'contributes' to global warming, we need to rethink our response to global warming/climate change. If Mother Nature actually drives climate, then we should not move precipitously to burden our economy with carbon taxes and alternative-energy subsidies. I, for one, do not want to pay a dollar or two more per gallon or see the blight of wind mills because of faulty science.
Sadly, the United States has out-sourced our scientific opinion on global warming to the United Nations. ...an organization more concerned about political influence and funding than conducting good science.
It's crystal clear. The United States needs our own objective, transparent climate commission to think-through global warming. We need the advice of a 'Climate Truth Commission' before we burden our economy with expensive energy. Both sides of the man-made global warming issue should welcome such an approach. ...since each is so darn sure of its facts.
-- Robert Moen, http://www.energyplanUSA.com
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Andrew Gunther Posted 1:23 pm
25 Aug 2009
The cost of implementing the Waxman-Markey bill has been estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be about a postage stamp per day per household, and this does not include the environmental benefits from implementation. The cost of doing nothing will be much greater, be borne by those alive in coming decades, but can only be avoided by action now.
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Rmoen Posted 2:56 pm
25 Aug 2009
By the way, 1) 60 prominent German scientists recently declared their dissent AWG in an Open Letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel; 2) Eighty members and former members have called on the American Physical Society (APS), the nation's leading physics organization, to revise its pro-AGW position; and 3) IPCC lead author Dr. Richard S. Lindzen is very critical of the IPCC process and conclusions. There are many other solid examples AGW dissent.
I stand by my post: we need an Amercan Climate Truth Commission to determine if CO2 drives global warming or merely contributes to it.-- Robert Moen, http://www.energyplanUSA.comPS It is disengenuous to say cap-and-trade will only cost a postage stamp a day, when we both know many people back the legislation because they think it will make energy more expensive and thus reduce demand for energy. Plus, traders of carbon credits stand to make billions--which will be added to our cost of energy. American needs clean, cheap energy not clean, expensive energy.
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ecologicalhope Posted 1:51 pm
25 Aug 2009
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Rmoen Posted 3:11 pm
25 Aug 2009
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A Spencer Posted 4:40 pm
25 Aug 2009
Of course, there is a possibility that the true outcome will be a shade of grey, that the future will fall somewhere in between these two extremes. I do think, however, that this is a productive way of examining the risks.So, which side you choose in the debate over CO2 becomes somewhat irrelevant. You simply need to ask, "is it a more acceptable risk to jeopardize the world's economies, or to jeopardize not only those economies, but our very ability to sustain human life?" Thus, we can make the right choice -- for a carbon-free energy system, for a complete overhaul toward lessening the human impact on the planet -- regardless of whether we know which scenario is correct. We cannot predict the future, and we are only scratching the surface of understanding the complexities of the world's various processes (geologic, climatic, biological, chemical, etc.).For me, I am not willing to go "all in" on the idea that we can go about business as usual, that we don't have to change one single thing about the way we live, about the way we think about how we live, and about how we interact with the world around us. For me, I'll keep fighting the good fight, the TRUE Green fight that goes well beyond recycling and compact fluorescents, and advocate that every person examine their own lives and make personal choices that are more likely to be a benefit for all inviolved -- that is, every other person living on the planet. I have chosen to advocate the lesser of two great risks, and have chosen to fight people just like you. Sacks' article is just one attempt, and a valiant one at that, to convey a very simple message: the culture of being human, or what we have always understood as human, is just not going to work anymore.
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Rmoen Posted 5:35 pm
25 Aug 2009
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A Spencer Posted 6:45 pm
25 Aug 2009
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A Spencer Posted 6:46 pm
25 Aug 2009
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ecologicalhope Posted 4:51 pm
25 Aug 2009
Read the new report, "Impacts of Climate Change on the U.S." Debating the IPCC is like debating the 'government takeover of health care.' Wrong debate, off the point, a distraction, and the result could be the continued descent towards disaster.Global warming is only a symptom in any case of the more fundamental problem -- that homo sapiens sapiens is living wrongly on the planet, and unless this species gets over its hubristic ways, we will pay a high price for this. We are embedded in nature and therefore subject to all its forces, including the ones we have unbalanced with the industrial age, technological prowess, and the arrogance to believe that we can control the whole blessed thing to our benefit.
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Rmoen Posted 5:32 pm
25 Aug 2009
http://energyplanusa.com/modeling_problems_energy_plan.htm After reading the scientists own words do you think we should restructure our energy economy based upon computer models?
With respect to your comment, "We are embedded in nature and therefore subject to all its forces,
including the ones we have unbalanced with the industrial age,
technological prowess, and the arrogance to believe that we can control
the whole blessed thing to our benefit." I agree. We think we are much smarter than we really are. How are we so sure that this is the first time in hundreds of global warming events that it is not driven by nature?
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David Roberts Posted 12:08 am
26 Aug 2009
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LogicRules Posted 7:25 pm
25 Aug 2009
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Cheetah Posted 1:28 am
26 Aug 2009
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A Spencer Posted 7:40 am
26 Aug 2009
collective response to middle or long term problems or to ones that
start to really show far away from our little patch."As far as I can tell, the tendency for Americans to not be able or willing to mobilize themselves to make real changes is a relatively recent phenomenon. For example, in December, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt started the mobilization of America for WWII. Within 6 months, Detroit had been completely retooled (we were not building cars AT ALL during this time). Within 6 months it shifted to the manufacture of tanks, planes, weapons, artillery, etc. On the whole, starting in December of 1941, it took the United States about 3 years and 8 months to mobilize, fight major wars in both the Pacific and against fascist Germany and Italy, and begin to demobilize. 3 years and 8 months from start to finish to address what was the greatest threat to our lives at that time. 3 YEARS, 8 MONTHS.Another example. President J.F. Kennedy announced on May 25, 1961, 4 months after taking office, that we would put a man on the moon. People thought this couldn't be done. But in July of 1969, about 8 years later, America sent Apollo 11 on its historic mission, and we all know how that turned out.My point is that the current threat is not being perceived with the same severity as a Hitler or a Mussolini or a Hirohito. The prosperity following WWII made something change. I was born in 1981 so I didn't live through all this, and have to rely on what I know of history and my own research. But the prevailing American culture -- the consumer culture -- is perhaps the greatest impediment to mobilizing our people, and from what I can tell people are so entranced by the lure of cheap consumer goods that they will go to great ends to defend that system. If I try to talk to my peers about issues like global warming, I get a sea of glazed eyes and apathetic looks. Something more fundamental needs to change in our culture, and I think that is what Sacks is getting at, and is what more and more people are coming to realize and accept.
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T Worstall Posted 3:23 am
26 Aug 2009
years of neo-liberal economics, the ascendency of the free market, and
the worshiping of ecomomics as religion, has The Church not solved the
problem (in fact, only accelerated the decline)?"Possibly because some fools refuse to listen? Oh, and if people want to talk about the IPCC then might I suggest having a look at the SRES? Those are the economic models upon which the entire IPCC process is built. Absent greenhouse gas emissions (yes, sorry, I do agree that's a problem, no, I'm not a climate change denier) you'll see that there are no other long term problems. Oh, and the global economy will grow between 5 and 11 times between 1990 and 2100. Your wittering about other problems is entirely refuted by the very report you use to prove climate change.
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cyberfarer Posted 5:11 am
26 Aug 2009
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ecologicalhope Posted 8:17 am
26 Aug 2009
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ecceman Posted 9:22 am
26 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 10:58 am
26 Aug 2009
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Ozman Posted 11:03 am
26 Aug 2009
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TokyoTom Posted 9:38 pm
26 Aug 2009
world has managed to create many environmental problems, but we`ve largely cleaned up our own messes, haven`t we? While it by no means excuses our own faults, far worse environmental problems have been created and are still stewing in Russia and other state-directed economies, and it`s no coincidence that the vast pollution being created in China and India are tied to governement-owned enterprise and an inability of injured people to sue for damages or to stop harmful activities. And the great waves of extinctions created as man spread around the globe tens of thousands of years ago can hardly be laid at the foot of either the Western world or of private property rights (nor can the collapse of earlier civilizations).The "tragedy of the commons" is NOT a "simplistic market morality", but a description of cooperation problems and incentives relating to shared. open-access resources. The tragedy of the commons and problems of cooperation - and theft - are not even limited to mankind, but permeate nature. This perceptive article by Bruce Yandle touches on competition in nature, and links the ascendance of man to our evolution of relatively enhanced cooperation: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-commons-tragedy-or-triumph/The "tragedy of the commons" paradigm is useful to analyze, but the paradigm doesn`t "seek to moderate" anything, and is just as useful in looking at the ways Western nations still contribute to environmental problems around the world (as I point out here: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/09/28/too-many-or-too-few-people-does-the-market-provide-an-answer.aspx ) as it is in examining:- environmental devastation in Haiti (which has little or no property rights, and vast free-for-all "government" holdings),- deforestation in Indonesia and the Amazon: ttp://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/05/24/capitalism-the-destructive-exploitation-of-the-amazon-and-the-tragedy-of-the-government-owned-commons.aspx,- pollution in China: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=china, and- crashing fisheries around the world as a result of government of marine resources (producing free-for-alls and fleet subsidies) and a free-for-all for other unowned or unprotected resources: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=fish.On fish, you might note what the organization Defying Ocean's End (cofounded by Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy,
Natural Resources Defense Council, The Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife
Conservation Society, The World Conservation Union, and World Wildlife
Fund) recently said:
http://www.defyingoceansend.org...
"Overfishing,
high bycatch rates, the use of gear types that damage habitat (like
trawls and dredges), and the large subsidies supporting fisheries
(totally over $15 billion per year) are all symptoms of an underlying
problem. In most fisheries that are exhibiting declines in
landings and revenues, overfishing, bycatch, and habitat damage,
actions that result in the symptoms are actually rational given the way
the fisheries are managed. In these fisheries, secure privileges to
catch certain amounts of fish are not specified, so naturally
individual fishermen compete to maximize their individual shares of the
catch. No incentives for conservation exist in this situation, because
every fish conserved can be caught by another fisherman. The
competition to maximize catch often results in a fishery "arms race",
resulting in the purchase of multiple vessels, the use of powerful
engines and large vessels, and the use of highly efficient gear like
trawls."Most of the solutions that have been implemented or proposed to fix the world's fisheries center on command-and-control
measures: regulators or courts telling fishermen how to fish through
the imposition of controls on effort (e.g., fishing vessel length,
engine horsepower, gear restrictions, etc.). Prescriptions like these
work against strong economic incentives for maximizing catch, which are
not addressed by such measures, and are of course usually resisted by
fishermen. Often, prescriptions create incentives for "work-arounds"
and set up a cat-and-mouse game between fishermen and regulators - for example, if regulators impose a restriction on vessel size,
fishermen may purchase two vessels to maintain high catch levels.
"As
in most natural resource problems, more effective solutions will
address the fundamental drivers of unsustainable fisheries. In this
case, the key necessary reform will be to designate secure catch
privileges." You say: "The rate of exploitation and the decline
of resources, water, energy, fisheries, soil, minerals, etc., all
occured under a free market, private property paradigm." This is clearly demonstrably wrong, and draws entirely the wrong lessons. While private property is certainly no panacea, neither are they what is wrong. Very often, is is governments that have been and are wrong, though there is certainly some learning going on. While Garrett Hardin`s "The Tragedy of the Commons" certainly represents a
hypothetical situation, it is actually a very pwoerful analytical tool for understanding and fashioning solutins to countless "real life" problems. See Elinor Ostrom et al., Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges, Science, 04/09/99 http://conservationcommons.org/media/document/docu-wyycyz.pdf"In real life,
corporations own, or vie to own, resources or access to them for the
purpose of extraction and profit and they seek to maximize profits
through economies of scale, that is industrial extraction methods,
drift netting, blowing up mountains, tossing mining waste into clear,
pristine lakes."What you describe here is a conflict between preferences over how resources are used. Do you prefer a free-for-all, or a situation where those who use a resource can protect it, negotiate with others who wish to see other values preserved, and who are responsible for negative consequences caused to others (not always a part of some property rights systems), or perhaps a situation where governments make all resource exploitation decisions?""The money is in the resource and when the resource is
exhausted they will move on to the next one."The money is never in the "resource", but in the ways that people can use it or otherwise value it (and of course people also value pristine environments).
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Brad Arnold Posted 10:35 pm
26 Aug 2009
The Greens' resistance to geo-engineering sits very uncomfortably with its message that the planet is screwed and we're all going to die. It suggests that Environmentalism has less to do with saving the planet than it does with reining in human aspirations. It suggests that they don't actually believe their own press releases, and that they know the situation is not as dire as they would like the rest of us to think it is. And that Environmentalists are cutting off their noses to spite their faces - "we'll save the planet our way or not at all." It suggests that Environmentalists regard science and engineering as the cause of problems, and not the solution. --Climate Resistance, 24 March 2008 Recently some have begun to advocate engineered climate selection as a fallback or insurance policy, in case their preferred regulatory decarbonization approach does not solve the problem or an unforeseen event occurs that requires a rapid response. A more prudent and efficient strategy would appear to be to implement engieneered climate selection first and then see what further needs to be done. --Alan Carlin, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, June 2007
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A Spencer Posted 11:00 pm
26 Aug 2009
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A Spencer Posted 6:15 am
27 Aug 2009
"geoengineering comes in many flavors--aerosols in the stratosphere, a
fertilized ocean to encourage plankton growth and hence co2 absorption,
giant mirrors in space. they all seem both expensive and fraught with
potential risk, and we used to dismiss them all as crazy. they still
are, but the planet is in such tough shape (from our ongoing co2
geogengineering project) that serious scientists are spending more time
thinking aobut them, at least as a backup project. but in any event,
they require that we also stop pouring more carbon into the atmosphere."
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T Worstall Posted 1:27 am
27 Aug 2009
like Canada's tar sands, it is removed for good or until such time as
someone can determine a way to return it (they are losing sleep over
it, I hear)." Water is not removed from the hydrological process. As and when it evaporates then it turns into clouds and falls as rain, that is the very hydrological process. "I'm sorry, but the "tragedy of the commons" is utter B.S. The Western
world has pursued a course of private property and has managed to leave
ecological catastrophe in its wake." TokyoTom makes most of the points I would wish to make. Except for this one: you clearly do not understand what Hardin was saying about the tragedy of the commons. For example, he made very clear that there are two possible solutions to the degradation of an open access resource. We can have social (socialist) regulations and limitations or we can have private (capitalist) property solutions. Those are his descriptions BTW. Which works best depends upon the society and the resource. He emphatically did NOT say that pricvate property sultions were the only ones possible. And nor does any economist say that private property solutions are the only ones either possible or desirable. Try reading some Ronald Coase on transaction costs to see why.
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TokyoTom Posted 6:03 am
27 Aug 2009
resources used by many individuals in common, such as fisheries,
groundwater basins, and irrigation systems. Such resources have long
been subject to overexploitation and misuse by individuals acting in
their own best interests. Conventional solutions typically involve
either centralized governmental regulation or privatization of the
resource. But, according to Ostrom, there is a third approach to
resolving the problem of the commons: the design of durable cooperative
institutions that are organized and governed by the resource users
themselves. "The central question in this
study," she writes, "is how a group of principals who are in an
interdependent situation can organize and govern themselves to obtain
continuing joint benefits when all face temptations to free-ride,
shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically." The
heart of this study is an in-depth analysis of several long-standing
and viable common property regimes, including Swiss grazing pastures,
Japanese forests, and irrigation systems in Spain and the Philippines.
Although Ostrom insists that each of these situations must be evaluated
on its own terms, she delineates a set of eight "design principles"
common to each of the cases. These include clearly defined boundaries,
monitors who are either resource users or accountable to them,
graduated sanctions, and mechanisms dominated by the users themselves
to resolve conflicts and to alter the rules. The challenge, she
observes, is to foster contingent self-commitment among the members .... Throughout the book, she stresses the dangers of overly
generalized theories of collective action, particularly when used
"metaphorically" as the foundation for public policy. The three
dominant models — the tragedy of the commons, the prisoners's dilemma,
and the logic of collective action — are all inadequate, she says, for
they are based on the free-rider problem where individual, rational,
resource users act against the best interest of the users collectively.
These models are not necessarily wrong, Ostrom states, rather the
conditions under which they hold are very particular. They apply only
when the many, independently acting individuals involved have high
discount rates and little mutual trust, no capacity to communicate or
to enter into binding agreements, and when they do not arrange for
monitoring and enforcing mechanisms to avoid overinvestment and overuse. Ostrom
concludes that "if this study does nothing more than shatter the
convictions of many policy analysts that the only way to solve common
pool resource problems is for external authorities to impose full
private property rights or centralized regulation, it will have
accomplished one major purpose."http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/ostrom.htmlA profile of Ostrom, who is a member of the National Academies of Science and and Editor of its Proceedings, is here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1748208Her work can be found here: http://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar?q=Ostrom,+Elinor&hl=en&btnG=Search andhere: http://de.scientificcommons.org/elinor_ostromOne thing worth noting is that the historical and ongoing records are rife with examples - such as our crashing local fisheries - where government intervention has done more harm than good. In these cases and in others, Ostrom introduces an analytical approach that is acceptable widely acros the political spectrum, even if differences in opinion will remain. See, for example, this discussion at libertarian-leaning George Mason U: http://www.theihs.org/bunnygame/
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cyberfarer Posted 5:26 am
27 Aug 2009
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TokyoTom Posted 10:29 am
28 Aug 2009
to a dead planet; that is, by converting living ecosystems into
commodities for trade and profit.
The free market system is really simply people trading what they have to others for what they want, and it works quite well where resources are owned (either privately or by communities). It can, however, be a powerful engine of destruction for resources that are not owned - such as for resources sourced where property rights are not protected or the government (elites) "own" too much. Thus our continued political struggles over giveaways of public resources, the destruction of the Amazon/Indonesian forests (and Philippine under Marcos), and the collapse of fisheries that fishermen - often just guys trying to make a living - have no rights to actually protect the resource.To the free market and its
economists, a forest which provides erosion control, flood control,
climate and water conditioning, habitat, sustenance, and any number of
other services not only to humans but all other species is only
valuable in our free market system when it has been converted to lumber
or pulverized for paper or some other use. That is the true tragedy of
the commons. You are only right in part, as all of these things have obvious value, and people protect them privately or band together as groups to manage them wherever they desire and can (and are not prevented by the government). There is an awful lot of private and community conservation going on around the world. The absolute worst cases are where the resources are owned by governments, with rights to exploit being leased to companies that have no properyt and thus no longer rights or obligations. Not ownership, but the short-sighted stupidity of people
and especially of those worship wealth without understanding its source.No, absolutely ownership; people and groups compete for resources, and can preserve valuable ones only when they can PROTECT them by excluding others (i.e., owning) themYou, like Sacks, think that the only way to solve problems is to radically change either capitalism (while ignoring worse destruction takes place outside of free market regimes) or human nature. Sorry, but this is blind and stupid, and ignores the fact that local traction is available for most problems.See the case of the Amzaon, for example:http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/05/24/capitalism-the-destructive-exploitation-of-the-amazon-and-the-tragedy-of-the-government-owned-commons.aspxI highly recommend you start studying (not simply free thinking), which will make your very legitimate concerns much more effective. I mean, even the environmental groups are calling for better property rights/protection for fisheries, species, forests and water. Are they stupid and evil too?
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newnoah Posted 9:23 am
27 Aug 2009
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ecceman Posted 12:21 pm
27 Aug 2009
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Lezlie Posted 12:21 am
28 Aug 2009
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Rmoen Posted 8:22 am
28 Aug 2009
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marcie Posted 8:35 am
28 Aug 2009
things - 1)
as many have noted there's not much to take away in terms of action. I am starting a venture that will be
dedicated to driving more revenue towards solving environmental problems. If
anyone would like to help steer me in the direction of the best organizations
that can make the most difference, I would be happy to hear your input. Please contact me, my contact info is on my profile. 2)
@cyberfarer " I suggest the corporate exectutive, directors,
shareholders, and proxies, including lobbyists, think tanks (aka, lie
factoies), and scientists in their employ all stand trial before a jury of
their peers for crimes against humanity. And once all the evidence for and
against climate change has been heard, as well as evidence as to the
catastrophic consequences, and the evidence as to how these people sought to
prevent action being taken for purely financial motives thus ensuring billions
will suffer, if found guilty, they be executed. In public." -
agree, but I had to giggle, because it reminded me about the book of
Revealation :-) Oh and also, don't put all those people in one handbasket, in
each of those 'professions' there are those fighting for the good side of the
force as well. They are few and far between, but they are there. 3)
For those talking about a radical solution - you might want to check out The
Zeitgeist Movement - I'm linking to the Wikipedia page for a short summary, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zeitgeist_Movement but there is plenty out there to see & hear by
googling. Thanks
in advance for your help!
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Lezlie Posted 8:41 am
28 Aug 2009
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TokyoTom Posted 11:31 am
28 Aug 2009
to a dead planet; that is, by converting living ecosystems into
commodities for trade and profit.
The free market system is really simply people trading what they have to others for what they want, and it works quite well where resources are owned (either privately or by communities). It can, however, be a powerful engine of destruction for resources that are not owned - such as for resources sourced where property rights are not protected or the government (elites) "own" them. Thus our continued political struggles over giveaways of public resources, the destruction of the Amazon/Indonesian forests (and Philippine under Marcos), and the collapse of fisheries that fishermen - often just guys trying to make a living - have no rights to actually protect the resource.To the free market and its
economists, a forest which provides erosion control, flood control,
climate and water conditioning, habitat, sustenance, and any number of
other services not only to humans but all other species is only
valuable in our free market system when it has been converted to lumber
or pulverized for paper or some other use. That is the true tragedy of
the commons. You are only right in part, as all of these things have obvious value, and people protect them privately or band together as groups to manage them wherever they desire and can (and are not prevented by the government). There is an awful lot of private and community conservation going on around the world. The absolute worst cases are where the resources are owned by governments, with rights to exploit being leased to companies that have no properyt and thus no longer rights or obligations. Not ownership, but the short-sighted stupidity of people
and especially of those worship wealth without understanding its source.No, absolutely ownership; people and groups compete for resources, and can preserve valuable ones only when they can PROTECT them by excluding others (i.e., owning) themYou, like Sacks, think that the only way to solve problems is to radically change either capitalism (while ignoring worse destruction takes place outside of free market regimes) or human nature. Sorry, but this is blind and stupid, and ignores the fact that local traction is available for most problems.See the case of the Amazon, for example; like Indonesia, the problem is that the government owns the resources (and may still in the process of taking land away from natives, whose property rights it seldom protects):http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/05/24/capitalism-the-destructive-exploitation-of-the-amazon-and-the-tragedy-of-the-government-owned-commons.aspxI highly recommend you start studying (not simply free thinking), which will make your very legitimate concerns much more effective. I mean, even the environmental groups are calling for better property rights/protection for fisheries, species, forests and water. Are they stupid and evil too?
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flyfisherman Posted 1:10 pm
28 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 2:06 pm
28 Aug 2009
are not owned - such as for resources sourced where property rights are
not protected or the government (elites) "own" them"Yes, the government elites. Those evil bastards unlike the coprorate elites who you would have own everthing and who would manage the globe's remaining resources altruistically and in the best interests of all humanity. Yeah ...What you believers fail to recognize as you kneel before the altar of private property is that the government elites are, by and large, the exact same corporate elites. Look at the cabinets and agency appointments of every president since Abe Lincoln and you will discover a revolving door between the government and the private sector. Big government only exists to service the interests of big business. That you small government advocates haven't worked that out yet is absolutely astounding.You say: "Thus our continued political struggles over giveaways of public
resources, the destruction of the Amazon/Indonesian forests (and
Philippine under Marcos), and the collapse of fisheries that fishermen
- often just guys trying to make a living - have no rights to actually
protect the resource."Yes, but why? Because the private property interests of Western capital, in collusion with neo-liberal governments, often imposed with the assistance of Western forces or intelligence agencies, drive indigenous peoples off their lands and out of the oceans to be replaced by Western corporations, privatization as they call it, to own and manage the national treasures -- translate that into rape and pillage, the resources.You say: "as all of these things have obvious value, and people protect them
privately or band together as groups to manage them wherever they
desire and can (and are not prevented by the government). There is an
awful lot of private and community conservation going on around the
world. The absolute worst cases are where the resources are owned by
governments, with rights to exploit being leased to companies that have
no properyt and thus no longer rights or obligations. "First of all, only indigenous people protect their land base, and these are mostly co-operatve tribal societies without private ownership. So that puts the lie to argument. Second, these indigenous peoples are under attack all over the globe as Western capitalists seek the resources under their feet, as we recently witnessed in Peru. Third, yes, there are community (from the word communal) groups buying land for conservation, but this is a drop in the bucket. Fourth, there is land ownership. Communal land ownership by indigenous peoples. A form of land ownership that has never been respected by Western societies. Not when we massacred the Blackfoot and not now as we force Colombian descendents of slaves off their property and out of their homes to steal the coal under their feet.You say: "No, absolutely ownership; people and groups compete for resources, and
can preserve valuable ones only when they can PROTECT them by excluding
others (i.e., owning) them."But again, you are wrong. People and groups do not compete for resources. Exanding civilizations demand ever greater land bases to support ever greater populations and they sieze resources. As Custer proved to the Blackfoot and as George W. Bush proved to the Iraqis, and all of us, ownership of a resource, be it gold or oil, is only as good as the strength of the army arrayed against you with a mission to steal them.What you believers fail to understand and what Sacks is trying to point out, I think, is that Civilization demands growth of both population and consumption to survive, and ownership is no barrier to the appetite of a growing and aggressive civilization -- in this case Western civilization, now global in scale.You say: "You, like Sacks, think that the only way to solve problems is to
radically change either capitalism (while ignoring worse destruction
takes place outside of free market regimes) or human nature. Sorry,
but this is blind and stupid, and ignores the fact that local traction
is available for most problems."Well, I'm sorry, but talk about blind and stupid. There has been no more destructive force on our planet, outside of global natural disasters such as meteor strikes or the release of tons of methane gas, than global consumer capitalism. In 200 years it has laid waste to our planet consuming millions of years of stored hydrocarbons, killing the seas, decimating forests and mountains, and bringing about an extinction event that ranks with the worst our planet has ever witnessed. You can apologize for it and lie for it but the reality is every single life system on our planet is in decline and almost all of it a direct consequence of the consumer capitalist model that drives consumption for consumption's sake.Further, you fail to appreciate the role of capitalism is to make a profit. In the industrial era, corporations owned the land where their factories where situated. When they squeezed every last penny of profit from them, they walked away from the structures and the land leaving behind a legacy of toxic waste for those who remained behind to inherit and too often die from. They didn't care about the land just because they owned the property. Allowing corporate ownership of entire resources merely awards them a monopoply to exploit until it is exhausted or evey last penny of profit has been extracted.To me, the conclusion comes from a single question: Humanity, blessed with the discovery of an unbelievable inheritance, hydrocarbons that produce more energy at a lower cost than anything ever before possible, has been squandered in fewer than 150 years, and what do we have to show for it? A fleet of a billion automobiles, an ocean of plastic, ribbons of tarmac stretching across the planet, and all of humanity's ills, poverty, disease, crime, addiction, slavery, thirst, hunger, still firmly rooted in place but growing faster and on a planet so degraded as face ecological collapse.That is the legacy of capitalism.Environmentalists and others who believe the consumer capitalist system with the profit motive at the center of all human development can be reformed, are sadly, sadly mistaken.For the record, I have read. Probably a great deal more than you. I was once part of The Church. But once you get past the blinders of ideology, all ideology including religion, and especially television (the true opiate of the masses), reality begins to come into sharp relief.And the reality is we live in a system where economics is paramount and where economists work with models disconnected from the living world and from the true source of all wealth: the land.We are on a dying world. We know it. And yet we remain wedded to the ideologies and systems wholly responsible and in denial of the emergent crises we face. That to me is stupid and smacks of the banality of evil.It's not the people of the earth who resist changes to our world for a more sustainable planet. It is the owners of property, the invisible class of investors, who hire the executives, appoint the directors, fund the lie factories, who pay for the army of lobbyists, and who grease the political campaigns to ensure no change, no matter how critical, will infringe on profit.That is political reality.
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TokyoTom Posted 8:39 am
30 Aug 2009
I see you`ve adopted a page from the climate "skeptics" playbook, by
applying the sefl-deceptive ad hominem device of labelling those you
disagree with as "true believers" in something. This is a partisan
tactic that lets you treat others as enemies, and spares you from the
trouble of listening to them, trying to figure out what they`re saying
and responding the them, as oppose to a strawman that you`ve conjured
up. Congratulations on mirroring those whom you dislike most.Second, with all of your clear thinking, like Mr. Sacks, you offer us no practical advice, just reasons for despair. Lezlie, who follows you, at least provides an agenda.Third, of course, you`ve got me all wrong; I`m not an idealogue, a "true believer" or even an apologist of any kind the status quo; I`m a concerned human being, a fellow traveller on Plante Earth and a pragmatist. You`ve been misreading me, and certainly have not troubled yourself to consider the very pragmatic analytical tools that I`ve offered to help you figure how to diagnose and attack the problems that you perceive.And what have I offered? Nothing more or less than the rather obvious observations that resources that are not owned and managed - whether privately or by groups (including, obviously, by communities and native peoples) tend to be trashed, and that similar problems are experienced where resources are formally "owned" by governments but essentially used by elites for their own benefit. I have NOT argued that private property is the cure-all, nor have I condoned theft nor the manipulation of governments by elites. In fact, I have rather clearly pointed out that both theft and misuse of governemtn have been and remain very much a part of the problem.Fourth, you continue to misunderstand the nature of our problems, and want to lay everything at the foot of "capitalism" and "markets", when the real problem is either the lack of ownership of resources or government fiat/theft. Western capitalism is not responsible for extinctions and environmental devastation that preceded capitalism and markets, or that has taken place under state-directed economies. This gets old, but look at the prior extinctions, messes of the former USSR (and at the Aral Sea today), Hanford and Rocky Flats, Haiti, and China.Sure, the consumer and industrial supply demands of markets (not merely in the West) continue to pull chains of destruction elsewhere in the world, but destruction only occurs with respect to resources that are not owned and protected (or where theft by those more pwerful occurs). Tofu and meat eaters alike are indirectly responsible for rainforest destruction, mainly because governments "own" most the rain forests and don`t prefer to protect native title wher it is recognized, so the conversion of such land into soybeans (or palm oil to feed government-mandated demands for biofuels) continues.In any case, is it more effective to wail about the evilness of corporations that compete to provide us ever more cheaply things that we choose to buy, or to demand better property rights protection abroad, pay closer attention to where our food comes from and end domestic mandates that drive destruction? You`re welcome to your rants against true believers like me, but I`m personally more disposed towards trying to be practically effective.Fifth, you are very right to criticize corporations; Mr. Sacks has had a history of doing that. Not only do I agree with much of his analysis (which is not here), but I`ve devoted a fair amount of time to examining the enganglement of corporations and government: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limitedOur state governments were wrong to get into competition with each other to grant corprate status to investor-owned enterprises, in exchange for fees and later taxes. Corporate status freed investors from down-side risk, by limiting liaibility to the amount of capital contributed. This incentivized: investors to encourage corproations to embark on risky activities that shifted costs to innocent third parties; the concentration of wealth in corporations; the corruption of the court system that once protected third parties from damages caused by others (by replacing strict liaibility with balancing tests); and the ensuing battle - that you noted - over legislatures to regulate corporations (and courts to enforce regulations). Is there a takeaway on this. other than continuing to fight political battles to block legislative sweet deals and theft, including working to revise our corporate order?Anyway, I wish you well in your tirades.
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Lezlie Posted 7:07 pm
30 Aug 2009
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Lezlie Posted 5:53 pm
28 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 10:15 am
30 Aug 2009
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Lezlie Posted 8:53 pm
30 Aug 2009
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TokyoTom Posted 3:52 am
31 Aug 2009
replacing competition with co-operation, and developing a human society
where human development and sustainability, as opposed to personal
greed and destruction, sits at the centre of our social and economic
systems.Am I a dreamer? Perhaps. But my dream is far more alluring than your commitment to nightmares.""If your dream is so alluring , so practical, and the need so dire, why not put your money where you mouth is and start implementing your own advice it yourself, with some like-minded friends?Quit your job, pool your resources and all property with others who agree with you, and form a communal enterprise. Seriously.(But do not by any means trade with other like-minded groups except by barter - that would be the sin of free-market trade - and do not invest in any other enterprises - that, obviously, would be capitalism. And ignore all of the existing evil infrastructure for forming corporations, reporting and minimizing taxes and the like. Actually, ignore this part of your own advice, and just do whatever works.)I`ll be cheering you on - seriously.Evil Tom <!--Session data-->
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jasw Posted 12:50 pm
30 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 1:54 pm
30 Aug 2009
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T Worstall Posted 2:17 am
31 Aug 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 5:17 am
31 Aug 2009
not the same thing. Capitalism is a description of a method of
ownership of productive assets. Markets are a method of exchange. You
can have markets without capitalism and capitalism without markets."On that I can agree. Markets, trading, are a component part of all human societies. And markets do not need to be about gaining advantage or separating winners from losers.Evil Tom:Cheer away.A few years ago I moved to a small, quiet community with freely running clean water, a large freswater lake that still has fish,renewable energy, fertile soils, and lots of forest cover providing habitat to many species. My greatest fear is that land developers will discover our island away from the sea of sprawl.We grow much of what we eat. What we don't grow, we barter from others who do. We raise chickens for eggs and we trade with the Amish for some meats. I don't buy new. Not anything. We have collectively lost a lot of skills and re-learning them will be a major challenge.Taxes are a problem, Tom. Don't pay them and they take your property away -- doesn't matter that you own it. Regulation is an issue too. I mentioned above that big government exists for big business. I'm pleased no one challenged me on that. But while goverments water down or cast aside consumer regulations altogether, they regulate to raise the cost of entry into markets, and to make compliance so onerous as to be impossible to all but large corporations. So there is an underground market for such basics as food. Where I live, even the church bake sale is all but illegal. Ever read Joel Salatin? He is a farmer with a new book out titled Everything I Want to do is Illegal. Google it.But there is also the realization, Tom, that whatever I do it is but a drop in the ocean. I am one of a tiny minority of people against the masses who are entirely oblivious to the harm we are doing and the consequneces of our collective actions.So I didn't really come to where I am to change the world or even my very small corner of it. Rather, it is more like finding a comfortable chair among humanity, and settling in with drink and popcorn to sit back, relax, and enjoy the collapse.We can't stop it, Tom. The predominant social and economic culture is far too deeply rooted and has now spread to encompass the globe. It is rapacious and impervious and it feeds off resistance as much as it does submission.There are still battles being waged, but the war is over. Corporate consumer capitalism is triumphant and humanity has lost. I don't mean to sound like a downer, really.You know, we can't manage what the great teeming masses of humanity will do nor can we appeal to the reason and humanity of the power elites when their reasoning is so narrow and their humanity absent.Life is short and happiness is rare. Find it, embrace it, and live it according to the values you would demand from everyone else if you had such an authority. I live simply, but I live very well. I wish only the same for you.Have a decent life.
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cyberfarer Posted 7:27 am
31 Aug 2009
lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber
boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze."It's essentially pure methane."Pure
methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern
skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere.
And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in
the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a climate catastrophe.Is such an unlocking under way?http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i95cdYgYkw4qtBvKXa_n70i_pkJgD9ADC1C01
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jasw Posted 1:49 pm
31 Aug 2009
Teddy Goldsmith, elder brother of the financier Sir James Goldsmith,
who predeceased him, passed away on August 21. I
met Teddy in 1993 at Jimmy’s vast Mexican estate consisting of tens of
thousands of acres, one of the few remaining cloud forests, and seven
miles of beachfront on the Pacific Ocean. If one looked beyond the
luxuries and pleasures of the fabulous estate, one saw a serious
environmental operation. Scientists propagating sea turtles, protected
habitat for jaguars, scientists working with the venom of the
near-deadly scorpions. Teddy
Goldsmith believed that the high consumption era of hydro-carbon man
was of short duration, totally dependent as it is on cheap but
exhaustible petroleum energy. Teddy believed that only small-scale
societies are viable in the long-run. He opposed
the spread into
the remaining traditional societies of the development model pushed by
the World Bank and western economists. With
brother Jimmy’s money he founded a serious journal, The Ecologist. An
early issue became a book, A Blueprint for Survival, which sold 750,000
copies. Teddy
presented the UN with a petition signed by three million people calling
for attention to the destruction on the rainforests. But eventually
Teddy ran afoul of a new generation of politically-correct
environmentalists, who in turn were replaced with politically-attuned
environmentalists funded by the very interests they purported to oppose. Teddy
thought that saving the environment was everyone’s responsibility. He
was astounded when colleagues resigned from The Ecologist because he
spoke not only to gatherings of the left but also to right-wing groups.
Today the environmental movement is collapsing as mainline
organizations buy-in to cap-and-trade and other mechanisms of
environmental destruction. Teddy was an environmentalist who was ahead of his time. Humanity will pay a high price for ignoring his warnings. My
memories of Teddy include a story he told on himself. When he and Jimmy
were young men long before Jimmy had made his fortune, they saved their
money while they studied the horses. Having accumulated a stake and
having picked a horse, they went to the races and placed their bet.
Their horse won, bringing them a large pot.
Jubilant, Jimmy told Teddy to collect the winnings while he arranged the dates, the limo, and the restaurants. While
standing in line to collect their winnings, Teddy’s nervous habit of
chewing on things ruined their expectations of the evening. By the time
Teddy reached the window, he had nibbled away the winning ticket. Jimmy
had to cancel the dates, limo, and restaurants. As there wasn’t a dime
left between them, they had to walk the many miles home. The story is a
metaphor for the illusory winnings of economic progress that are being
nibbled away by the exhaustion of nature’s capital. Jimmy’s
capitalist profits funded Teddy’s endeavors in behalf of the
environment. It is not money that we should damn, but its misuse. Teddy
was a pioneer of the environmental movement. Jimmy’s money assured
Teddy an independent voice that was not besmirched by compromises with
vested interests. Teddy Goldsmith, rest in peace. See also:A Blueprint for Survivalhttp://www.theecologist.info/key27.html---------------------http://www.edwardgoldsmith.com
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Wabbit Tracks Posted 10:25 am
01 Sep 2009
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Adam Sacks Posted 10:45 am
06 Sep 2009
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John Faust Posted 7:15 pm
06 Sep 2009
You identify three fundamental problems with the current planetary state that you feel should tell us the game is over. The 30 year backlog of GHGs is surely a serious problem that, by itself, is not easy to overcome. Positive feedback loops have likely been triggered presenting us with an unstable system over which we have no real control. We can only watch while the climate deteriorates. Finally, there are nonlinearities that render the system unpredictable.
My quibble is with the last -- the nonlinearities. These are thankfully present in all real systems. Linearity is just an ideal that exists only in the world of human thought like the frictionless incline plane. Nonlinearities were present and operating when the climate was stable and hospitable so they are not inherently a problem as the other two are. In fact, we should be grateful the system remains fraught with nonlinearities. If we are lucky some benevolent nonlinearity may intercede on our behalf to limit some of the runaway conditions we have likely unleashed. We can only hope that one emerges to give us yet another opportunity to prove we are a noncancerous expression of this universe's principles. In the mean time, we should probably remain vigilant while we minimize the human footprint in hopes that redemption comes from some little understood aspect of the system that will grant us yet another chance. Yes, it is just a prayer to the gods of complex systems.
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marcie Posted 8:21 pm
06 Sep 2009
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