GreenHick’s Recent Comments

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  Erosion of credibility of market-based solutions

  I think the level of trust right now is, or should be, so low in "markets" and those who design and run them that we should start with something simple that we all understand, and look to add market-based solutions as they prove themselves worthy.

  Caps, taxes, and targeted dividends. Perhaps a form of green stamp program for ecologically desirable purchasing and investment. Could be a carbon tax, a comprehensive green tax, or a brace of measures. The  dividend for targeted  investments, such as transit, grids, weatherizing, and green stamps for organic foods, transit passes, high efficiency appliances... Or redeemable in an e-bay style auction.

  The idea of having financiers and their lobbyists at the heart of this thing, given what we are now be shown about what we've been taught about markets, leaves me slightly sickened. On Surrendering in advance: just how the Democrats roll posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago 3 Responses

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  Mortality is the cause; death is the means

  Understandable that we have reluctantly come to discuss geoengineering. But in JR's list of arguments against, to which we must add many, omitted is the more central understanding that climate change is itself only a symptom. We may geoengineer the earth but it remains a finite space for civilization apparently hooked on infinity.

  Geoengineering emerges in turn as another symptom of the little god complex.
  On Desperate enough to contemplate geo-engineering posted 11 months ago 22 Responses

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  CGSD--Cap and Green-Stamp Dividend

  While I like the dividend concept as basis for moving the discussion forward, I think it can be tempered and improved. The dividend is implicitly compatible with the notion that we should all begin with an equal grant to the goods of the earth. That notion will also serve us well when it comes time to begin rationing.

  But putting the dividend solely in the hands of consumers, while politically savvy, will have to be tempered with something more forward looking and sane than the f**king markets. (This used to be called a tax.) By dividing the revenue flows between taxes and dividends we get balance. But, as important will be to create mechanisms that channel consumption in green directions.

  Thus, the fully convertible green stamps--the poor may sell them for cash to spend as they choose. Though ideally they would have a greater value when redeemed directly. But eventually, the purchaser of those stamps will spend them on green products and services. This can be an open-ended list of designated items. From hybrid cars to weatherizing to...On Attempting to un-vex the vexing subject of cap-and-dividend posted 11 months, 1 week ago 9 Responses

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  Abacuses, slide rules and pocket protectors

  Most interesting to me is the question as to why non-specialists feel bound to contest the work of the overwhelming proportion of the world's climate change authorities.

  It's one thing for Galileo to challenge the Jesuit geocentrists. It's another for his hairstylist to do so.

  A critical part of critical thinking is thinking about the limits of one's competence to contribute to knowledge on a subject.

  We do not pull out our slide rules to contest the results of theoretical physics. Why this?

  Because we can look outside at the sky, or because we have been socialized to oppose change that the power elites oppose--the Jesuit geocentrists of our day.On NOAA says July 08 was fifth warmest on record posted 1 year, 3 months ago 15 Responses

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  This dog doesn't hunt

  The piece is yet another NYT outrage. I'm not entirely sure whether you were actually expecting the NYT to come anywhere close to serving a democracy's critical need for viable knowledge.

  This is not the NYT's function any longer. If it ever was. Their job, I believe, is to neutralize change from below while helping to make the empire governable by the smallest possible group that demonstrates its commitment to seizing power and preventing its devolution to the people.On The New York Times' absurd energy editorial posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses