Comments Josh Dorner has made

  • Better start praying

    This a joke--and not a very good one.  

    Earlier today Carl Pope, our Executive Director, said:

    "The president is throwing a Hail Mary to polluters in a last-ditch effort to stave off any meaningful action on global warming.  Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming."

    Better start praying...On President Bush's speech on climate change, 16 April 2008, as prepared for delivery posted 1 year, 7 months ago 10 Responses

  • Squatting on the biosphere's commons

    Dear Tom,

        In September 2005 our grass-roots leadership -- the leaders of our distributed, semi-autonomous organization -- met in San Francisco after four months of local deliberation, and voted for change -- among the changes they called for was for us to shift our focus towards "visionary solutions."  They told us that after 115 years of stopping bad ideas -- at which we have become, we think, very adept -- we needed to emphasize making good things happen, because climate change would not be curbed by resistance alone.

         Yes, change is hard, but sometimes getting others to notice change is even harder.  We are explicitly and vigourously in favor of one version of cap-and-trade, which we call, "cap and auction", because we believe that in real markets, people pay for what they take, and that giving away or allocating permits to emit carbon dioxide, as the EU mistakenly did, is a license to steal and a reward for polluting.  We were, I think, the first large national environmental group to make the "pay for what you take" principle central to our view of cap-and-trade.  We have struggled with the reality that no form of energy production is environmentally benign, and that most communities have grown accustomed to externalizing and exporting the costs of their energy consumption to places like Appalachia, New Mexico, Wyoming or the Persian Gulf.  So we are resisting our tendency to say, "not here" -- we have set a very high bar for our local entities if they want to oppose wind or solar, for example -- and supported both Cape and Delaware Wind. (No, we don't think geothermal belongs at Old Faithful.  But we think a wind turbine might improve the National Observatory where Dick Cheney lives.)

       As for markets, we believe in them, ferociously -- but we do wonder whether most businesses do. (So did Adam Smith.)   After all, it is not a market if I go into the Safeway and walk out with a gallon of milk without paying -- it's shop-lifting.  But the US Chamber of Commerce seems fine with trade agreements that allow the continued reliance on the importation of mahogany from Peru, 90% of which was logged without paying for it.  (Pay for what you take.)  And if I go into your back yard and dig up the plants and sell them off a pick-up-truck,  it's fencing. (Own what you sell.)  But Exxon-Mobil seems quite willing to sell you CO2 in a gas tank that will flood the Maldives -- even though I am reasonably sure that the corporate vaults in Irving, Texas, do not include a deed to that nation.

       Gettting real markets in natural resources will be very hard, because global capital  has become used to squatter's rights on the biosphere's commons -- are you ready to join us in calling the sheriff to kick them off?

    Carl PopeOn Carl Pope reviews Break Through by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger posted 2 years, 2 months ago 14 Responses