Rune’s Recent Comments

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  If this was a free market . . .

  . . . then I should be able to choose the price at which I will sell my share of rights to undamaged air quality, as well organize a collective of like minded sellers to act as a bloc (so long as it is not so large and powerful as to influence the overall market price).  But the real system at hand is nothing like that.

  Instead, I am represented in the market by proxies who are much more beholden to the buyers of my rights--if my rights are recognized at all--than they are to me and my fellow econo-men and women who are supposedly informed and willing participants in the "market."  

  It is only a free market in the same sense that the wealthy business owners in the British Empire who inspired Adam Smith to pontificate about the virtues of such a thing were involved in free, international markets that just happened to be built on the spoils of a colonial system that was anything but free.  The market at hand is more or less free to those in positions of power and privilege, while those who are set up for exploitation are assumed to be without substantial rights or importance, and being so "underprivileged anyway," it is further assumed that "this is working very well for them," as former First Lady Barbara Bush once explained the basic concept.  Seems like a hell of a price to pay for something that is purported to be free.
  On A cap-and-trade system will not by itself eliminate dirty energy's unfair advantages posted 1 year, 7 months ago 5 Responses

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  I smell BS. Lots of BS!

  "There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation."
    -- Herman Daly, former World Bank economist

  The lead post gives the impression (IMO) that mitigation banking is new.  It is not.  However, in many cases, mitigation banking fails because (a) we don't know how to quickly create diverse and resilient ecosystems that would otherwise take the spans of many human lifetimes to evolve and, (b) even when there is a promising plan in place, mitigation project monitoring and remediation is often inadequate in one of several ways, so key components of the project die before the whole ecosystem is well established.  In addition, there are problems with later industrial and development projects having unmitigated cumulative impacts on pre-existing mitigation banking projects, and unless the mitigation banking project takes place on a brownfield or reclaimed and abused land, it generally involves reducing one sort of ecosystem to replace it with another that is deemed more  valuable by certain government and business entities.

  So, what is new, here?  My first impression is that the same rats who built a house of cards in the traditional financial markets, which are finally tumbling now that layers of lies and corruption have grown too large and wobbly to remain entirely concealed and ignored, are looking for another system to raid and wreck.  Whereas most regulated land developers who seek to mitigate the damage their projects will cause by paying for specific mitigation banking projects to offset that damage (if they go the mitigation banking route), we are looking at adding some layers of abstraction and aggregation to the scheme, then chopping it up and selling (and reselling?) the "assets" to those who want offsets and/or profits for destroying a bit of the biosphere--which we share with all humans and all living things as our natural and necessary heritage.  For a quick review of how wrong things can go when moving in this direction, please review the so-called sub-prime mortgage crisis, which is but one component of the global financial crisis.

  It's all fine and well to speak up for the virtues of an open and accountable trading system, but experience has shown that there will be a great deal of pressure to do away with enforcement of sunshine laws, truth in advertising laws, common sense laws that allow even industry insiders to figure out who owns what and what, if any, value it is delivering, and anything else that corporate think tanks and lobbyists will condemn as "burdensome regulations."  Even if it gets off to a good start, there will be a tendency over time for the foxes to move into positions of guarding the hen house and the system will be quietly corrupted as they wish.  At a time when it is clear to many that much of the government is already completely subservient to its corporate overlords, we would do well to ponder the implications of opening the doors any wider to this sort of exploitation of the most basic life supporting systems on our one and only planet.  We have scant enough firm ground upon which to stand and defend our right to unspoiled and unsold nature and "natural services" as it is.

  I agree, Tigahs, there is something that doesn't smell right about "private equity sweeping in to protect the ecosystems."  It's not unlike the owners and directors of industries that have poisoned our air, water, and food turning around and selling us (or even getting us to volunteer for R&D fundraisers) "treatments" for the myriad diseases they are causing (for a profit) elsewhere in our lives rather than being forced to stop making us sick or pay for the deaths and injuries when the do.

  What's wrong with this picture, in my opinion, is that it is based on the notion that "ecosystem services" are not recognized as our common heritage and right.  Instead, the natural environment is treated as a low cost dumping ground and store of presumably wasting "assets" until (a) it is handed over to a private party to rent or sell back to us a bit at a time or (b) it is so severely damaged (in pursuit of private profits) that the once healthy functioning natural systems are deemed precious due to their scarcity and precariousness, conditions arising due to enormous damages to public "goods and services" for which there has been little accountability or compensation (i.e, negative externalities accumulating on a grand scale).

  So, what do you suppose will happen if and when the workings of an ecosystems services financial market hits the big time?  My guess is that the same thing that happens in conventional industries will occur.  That is, there will be a focus on increasing "productivity" to gain a competitive advantage and spur ever greater "growth" and profits.  

  Now, how does one manifest greater productivity in natural ecosystems without entailing ever greater costs that come with better protecting them and allowing them to flourish naturally?  Again, looking to other industries, a couple likely answers involve synthesizing and cutting corners in only a few key dimensions of natural systems, very likely with harmful and unintended consequences, and covering up and lying about the implications of those unintended consequences for as long as possible (then leaving the public holding the bag if at all possible).

  This way of doing business has already turned our atmosphere into what should, by all rights, be recognized as the world's largest and potentially most deadly Superfund site--if only we had such a mechanism for getting the world's point and nonpoint polluters to chip in to undo the damage they have done.  Do we really want to accelerate this process?

  See, I have a very different idea.  To the extent that we have not yet handed over what is left of nature to the gnomes of globalization, I don't think we should.  It's ours--all of ours--and it is very valuable to us just the way it is, even if we never put it on the auction block to see how much one of the very few holders of very great wealth might bid for it against a very limited field of competition.  In fact, these "environmental services" are so valuable that people (and other things) die when they are damaged.  I think that should be illegal and heavily penalized, just as it is illegal and heavily penalized (when it does not "shock the conscience of the court" to do so) damage privately held assets in such a way as to cause deaths.  We have already allowed far too much of these critical "environmental services" to be impaired or destroyed.  We need to allow them to rebuild instead of auctioning off what is left or exchange them for cheap imitations cobbled together by corporations and committees.

  Yes, yes, I hear the din of those who will rightly point out that we have all had a hand in screwing things up, as well as those who note that some ecosystems are so badly destabilized that they require management in addition to protection to make their way back to more or less safe and self sustaining status.  Fine let's pay our share and do our best to do what we must for all of our sake.  Buy I am not in favor of giving up any more of our commons with ample and due compensation (what price health and life?) in the hopes that someone seeking to make a buck won't follow the course of business history by finding ways to enrich him or herself by cutting corners and leaving the rest of us to deal with the lingering negative externalities. On On the oddity of privatizing nature posted 1 year, 7 months ago 31 Responses

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  Building performance vs. green building

  I agree with the earlier comment suggesting that green point rating systems are more of a problem than a help in this scenario because they lead to all sorts of green materials and whiz bang equipment being assembled in a new building without assuring that the hoped for energy efficiency gains are actually met.  The building performance trade addresses that head on by directly measuring the actual energy uses and losses of whole building systems as they are actually installed.  Doing so leads to reports that make it easy to see the amount of energy one might expect to use to heat, cool, light, and run a given building, which in turn makes it possible to estimate the relative financial advantage of a new or retrofitted high performance building (to the extent that one can predict the future costs and availability of energy) and factor that into purchase or finance decisions.

  The three main problems are that there is relatively low awareness of the building performance (known as "home performance" in the residential market) and building commissioning trades so people don't know of the benefits it can provide, there are not nearly enough highly skilled professionals to do the exacting investigations and installation work necessary to realize the gains made possible through the whole building systems approach to building performance, and it is much, much easier to market and profit from investments in an alternative energy project (for which demand will likely outstrip supply for decades) than it is to educate the public and train crews of trades people and building inspectors (to say nothing of legislators writing building codes).  The result is that we continue to get endless hype about the almost religious hope and righteousness of renewable energy projects while the very large potential to reduce the demand for energy used in buildings--shaving off 1/3 of heating and 1/2 of cooling and lighting energy needs is a typical result--remains more or less unknown even to those who are passionate about the need to actually conserve energy.

  Conserving energy is necessary because it is unlikely that alternative energy will be able to offset the dirty sources of energy unless the total quantity of energy demanded levels off or falls.  A 2% increase in the total amount of energy being consumed worldwide dwarfs the entire annual alternative energy manufacturing capacity even as new plants and projects are popping up like flowers in Spring.  We need some serious conservation programs, and building performance is one of the most promising and beneficial prospects for making a large scale, welcome impact.  Not only can building performance projects save energy, they also tend to improve indoor air quality dramatically, improve the comfort of conditioned living and working spaces, and result in less wear and tear on components of buildings.On Green building may be quickest path to decreased emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 8 Responses

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  Absenteeism and direction

  A couple of quick comments relative to Jon Rynn's most recent post:

  The problem of absenteeism and alienation is central to the tendency toward corruption in national and international institutions.  When the players are relatively close to the action that concerns them, as in the Mondragon co-op collective, it is much easier to maintain accountability and proactively head off attempts to game or mooch the system.  As enterprises become much larger and their functions become more abstract and distant from those they impact, the opportunities and temptations to corrupt the game increase.

  I don't think renewable energy is much of a goal, if by goal we mean an outcome that satisfies our major concerns.  Rather, renewable energy may be an objective that supports goals of environmental restoration, "sustainability," etc.  So long as the name of the game is domination through unlimited hoarding of resources, however, the best we can get out of increases in efficiency or marginal reductions in environmental impact per unit of consumption is a temporary reduction in the degree of unsustainability of day to day life.  Actually pursuing something that might pass for sustainability and increasing ecological resilience will require fundamentally different values and beliefs about what is desirable and socially acceptable, I believe.On A few thoughts for environmentalists posted 1 year, 7 months ago 95 Responses

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  The market is not screwing up.

  Jon Rynn wrote:
  So evidently, the free market failed.  Anytime a government-led economic process fails, cries go up that the government can't do anything (e.g., ethanol).  So if the market screws up -- and screws up royally -- can I then complain that the market can't do anything?

  I don't mean to be picking on you, Jon, you just happen to be coming up with the most succinct quotes regarding some common ideas I have been thinking a out lately.

  I don't see anything to suggest the market has screwed up.  It is functioning predictably to deliver predictable results.  Similarly, the government is not screwing up, it is functioning fairly well and predictably to deliver the same predictable results.

  The real problem, if you want to call it that (I do!), is that the primary objective function of the game involves sequestering as much power as possible, then using that power (political, economic, social, it makes no difference ultimately) to further maximize the accumulation of power.  That always leads some or all of the heavy hitters to try to cheat the system through deceit and coercion, especially as the game appears to be nearing an end or meltdown of some sort due to the great success of some players leading to diminished opportunities for further gains once they enticed the rest of the field to offer up as much value as possible through "fair play."

  It doesn't matter if we are talking about a managed economy, a democracy, a "free" market economy, a totalitarian government, etc., the problem remains the same so long as the primary objective function of the game remains the same.  The best laid plans to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number (or the most deserving, or what have you) will eventually be overtly and overwhelmingly corrupted when the power imbalance becomes great, which is a likely state to land in given that maximizing the primary objective function of the game usually involves maximizing a corrolary objective function, that of comparative advantage (which is taken as a sort of virtue in most economic thought and business strategies stemming from such schools of thought).

  The reason this is a problem is that what most people want and enjoy is not being in a dangerous game of dominating the Earth and it people but having enough resources and options to be healthy and secure and not in a state of lack relative to their neighbors.  That was not always assumed to be the case, hence the praises of the grab-all-you-can lifestyle encouraged by classical economics back in the day.  Today, however, there is plenty of evidence pointing in that direction, just as there is plenty of evidence that large, wealthy societies based on values and social mores that promote greed and domination threaten to bring the whole cycle of boom and bust to a grim end once and for all.

  I think most of us know at some level that we would prefer a society that encourages the most able and ambitious to gain the social and economic standing they seek by putting some of their efforts into seeing that future generations and/or less gifted neighbors have better opportunities to be secure and fulfilled, too.  At the same time, there are always those who resent the prospect of free riders to the point that they reject anything that smacks of welfare, social aid, or mandatory transfers of wealth to those who have or create less.  The thing is, at a time when we are collectively killing the planet and with it the best prospects for each and all of us, there is a compelling case to be made for the notion that less really is more, at least in matters of material consumption.

  Which brings us to the bright dreams of salvation through clean, renewable energy.  Sorry, I just don't buy it.  First of all, the deck is set to grow demand for more energy as fast or faster than we can bring new supplies on line, which means we are unlikely to be significantly displacing much of the dirtier, deadly energy sources of concern so much as we will augment them with renewables.  But more importantly, more energy, whether or not it is clean, will be used to dominate and destroy natural resources being pressed to dangerous limits by a human population growing  the billions so long as those limits can be extended--as hey generally can given enough energy availability at a given moment.

  Again, we need to start rethinking what it is we want out of government, productivity, trade, etc., if we are to avoid the final collapse from which very few, if any rebound and most or all suffer terribly.  A simple start might be to refine poverty in terms of fraction of the most wealthy and, rather than fighting poverty start thinking in terms of limiting wealth to a certain multiple (say, 8 or 10) of the poorest among us.  We might take in s step further and start thinking of wealth more in terms of the amount of help and promotion one can call from society when putting forward an effort to satisfy one's self interests without unduly foreclosing opportunities for later generations rather than focusing on locking up and consuming or degrading as many physical resources as possible regardless of the consequences for present and future generations.

  Sound idealistic?  Sure it is.  And half baked, too!  But just how realistic and rational is our current system of measuring and pursuing welfare at a time when economic, environmental, and military destruction loom large in the minds of most of us.  I think we can do a lot better for ourselves in that regard.  I think we must.On A few thoughts for environmentalists posted 1 year, 7 months ago 95 Responses