Comments nedruod has made

That number needs more perspective

I'm not sure of the answer (seems difficult to dig up), but I'd say that number is somewhat meaningless without some idea of the percentage of companies that are actually profitable.  No profits, no income tax seems fair.  And if you're looking at the number in a non-size adjusted count, I expect there are many unprofitable small businesses that either haven't made it yet, or aren't going to.

But really, don't know, couldn't find out.  I could believe a number as low as 10% and as high as 50% (On Two-thirds of corporations operating in the U.S. pay no income tax posted 1 year, 2 months ago 2 Responses

Timing

For the purpose of calculations it would be more appropriate to use the timeline of land recovery for coal than the expected lifetime of the solar panels.

Some might estimate that as low as 10 years, I'd probably say 20, if the right practices are followed.  From what I read they aren't, and when they aren't it might be more like a hundred years for recovery, maybe more.On Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine posted 1 year, 6 months ago 80 Responses

Two Part Answer: Work and Wealth

There are two parts to the answer.

One, there is definitely more short term work created by the need for efficient design, for replacement of inefficient infrastructure, and for the build up of renewable energy sources.  Efficient design also requires more ongoing long term work.

The second part, wealth, is hard to answer because wealth itself is not well defined, especially in a long term sense.  It's relatively possible to sum out current wealth by dollar figures, but future long term wealth can only be described as a complex set of items, capabilities, responsibilities, risks, etc, and all of these have a relative value which may differ not only from generation to generation, or individual to individual, but even over a single individual's lifetime.

Acknowledging that difficulty we can see sources of wealth that will emerge.  Efficiency and renewables represent expanded capabilities.  Renewables are the larger example because we with enough investment end up with what today would be considered limitless energy.

Right now we have an energy deficit.  We are using more than we can sustainably use, given our current mode of production, its limited resources, and its impacts which will require a great amount of work and energy to reverse.

This gives the impression that efficiency and renewables only cause work, which may require diversion of work on other topics.  But efficiency and renewables can, after we are no longer in a deficit, result in excess energy which used appropriately will reduce work per unit of production elsewhere.

On the topic of work and diversion, a key element is worth remembering.  The world has a vast surplus work force which is not being allowed to participate, and anyone who thinks work on efficiency, renewables or less impactful farming requires diversion of workers should remember the untapped workforce.  There's certainly no need to grow international populations in order to grow the international workforce.On With all the upbeat talk about an environmental labor boom, is rhetoric running away from reality? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 13 Responses

Ethanol in moderation

Bio, I think you missed a key point.  You can increase efficiency and use some ethanol at the same time.

My opinion is ethanol has a place, in moderation.  It's not a replacement for oil, certainly not in the quantities we currently use, but as an additive it is positive.  People have cars today that will be on the road for another twenty, and they won't get more efficient, and they won't start being able to run off batteries, hydrogen, or (except for a few cases) E-85 or biodiesel.  But they all run on E-10 just fine.

In the future we hope more efficient cars will be produced, purchases and used to replace cars that have reached the end of their usable life.  We also hope many battery/electric cars, or at least plug-in hybrids will be produced to take more pressure off liquid fuel usage.

As this happens, one of the big arguments against ethanol and bio-diesels will disappear because less liquid fuel consumption will mean it will be plausible for these fuels to meet a bigger percentage of the liquid fuel demand without increases in production.

We also hope that production will become more efficient.  How much is hard to say, but some progress is certain.  

So, say 15 years from now 50% of our vehicle fleet is electric, 30% is standard petrol, 10% is diesel, and 10% is flex fuel.  Say, cellulosic has
increased production efficiency by 50%.  Today, ethanol is about about 6% of gasoline, so that would mean about 9% of today's usage.  The 30% petrol vehicles would use about 3% of ethanol produced as E-10, and the 5% E-85 would use about 4.25%.  Together they would reduce gasoline usage by 20% and use 20% less cropland than it does today.
On The global nature of global warming posted 1 year, 12 months ago 70 Responses

A bit of this, a bit of that

One interesting mistake I see is the assumption that "organic" and "conventional" are two totally separate species and thus mutually exclusive.  They are really just two sets of practices, not complete organisms.

Seems to me though, that it's not nearly so simple.  Studies that compare the two in that way have a point; to establish that organic practices have yield advantages.  But, if your only goal was higher sustainable yields, it seems to me there's practices not part of the conventional "organic" that when would, when combined with the extra labor and attention to detail necessary for conventional organic, would produce higher yields than either of the idealogical concepts.

What defines the two sets of practices isn't a mutual exclusivity of most of the practices, it's a set of values that defines the choices.  Yields are important to both sets of practices, but conventional farming practices place labor efficiency as either first or just behind yield on the value list.  Another way of saying this would be that conventional places profit as it's prime value, and profit is revenue-cost, which in a farm today is simplified as "harvest - (LABOR + land)".  Thus the undecidedness between the primacy of bushels per labor hour or bushels per acre.

Organic places "naturalness" as the first and foremost priority.  That organic clearly, rather than vaguely puts yields as a non-prime value is why people naturally assumed yields were lower.  But organic farmers were more inventive and detail oriented which actually led them to do as good or better.

So.. my opinion is, we would benefit greatly from more detailed care of crops, many of the practices organic farming has discovered, rediscovered, or honed.  But I also think GMO is a natural opportunity.  Some GMO plants may be losers under  a non-labor oriented value system, but I'm sure many GMO plants would be winners under a yield-sustainability-environmental mix of values.  That may sound similar to organic, but there is an important departure from the naturalness ideology, that allows better focus on the goals I agree with.  The fact that those goals are better represented by "organic" than "conventional" means I support organic.  Still it's not a perfect set of values by my book, though I'm sure many would disagree.On Another study shows organic ag outpacing conventional posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

Wrong path

Extreme localism is not the right path.  There are so many things wrong with the concept in today and tomorrow terms.  It's an idealistic concept.

Lets start with tomorrow.  It will never be the case that every region has equal resources or more importantly equivalent proportions of resources.  One area will have water, sunlight and good soil.  Another will have rich mineral deposits but little water.  Trade will be necessary to make best use of each regions natural resources.  Making better use of natural resources allows you to do more with them without destroying them.

There is a term for this, and it's efficiency, and it's gotten a bad name in the parts of the environmental community.  Cradle-to-Cradle prefer the term "effective".  But really the problem with efficiency is that it defined in terms of our monetary system, and our monetary system doesn't include critical variables, such as the global impact of pollution.  Redefine the rules of the monetary system and everything will make a lot more sense again.

It's not that hard to redefine, a simply carbon tax goes a long way.  Localism is appropriate at times, but in my honest opinion, I would never support any form of localism that would not be driven just as effectively by the economics of a refined monetary system.

As far as U.S. manufacturing goes, why?  Really, what are they going to manufacture?  If the suggestion is stimulating manufacture of solar panels, batteries for electric cars then sure, good.  But if it's just trying to buy our toys locally, it's the wrong path.

You mention the people who have "given up looking for work".  Two points, one is that many people in that are not there because they tried to find a job and gave up.  Second, whatever number is truly left after deducting the crazies, lazies, incompetents, "too good for that"'s and those justifiably distracted (stay at home mothers, for example), is small.  Very very small in comparison  to the billions of people in other countries looking for work, many of which have struggled and strived in their own way through inadequate schools.

No doubt there's good things to a bit less shipping, and I'd agree that many products are not in proper balance.  But the rest of the localism argument is dangerous, and I'm afraid that the well meaning people involved in the movement are blind to the fact that they are promoting those aspects most loudly because they connect with people who would like to think their bad intentions are actually good.

If you could really pull off a coordinated change where Americans stop consuming needless gadgets, start manufacturing large quantities of the infrastructural changes necessary to improve efficiency, and then start exporting FOR FREE, all the services and initial startup equipment necessary to develop the developing world without needing them to export to the US, then fine.  

But that is a large number of extremely hard tasks to coordinate together, and if you omit one component and you'll be making things alot worse.  Leave out the FREE exports and the developing world will advance at a snails pace and as part of struggle tear up the natural world worse than even we do.  They don't need our help to do so, they need our help to prevent it.On Manufacturing a new economy posted 2 years ago 32 Responses

A quaint but dreamlike thought

John, the rural life is almost universally more demanding upon the planet at the same standard of living.  There are three reasons people gain the misconception that destroying cities could actually be beneficial.

One, the effects of a more rural population is less visible, even if each individuals contribution is greater because the observation is made by square foot.

Second, there are better known, and more extreme examples of people living in the country who choose a life which eschew many contributing elements.

Third, those examples wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for quantities of land which I'm not sure are available if divided by 5 billion.

Now, what might work is not hamlets, but dense micro-cities.  If you keep density high, more dispersal might work, might even be good.  But hordes of one story, single family homes dispersed of a larger land area will not help, and is entirely unrealistic.On Is the cure worse than the disease? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 7 Responses

Of course not. Did he actually get one?

On Notable quotable posted 2 years, 1 month ago 12 Responses

Jon - Who Pays?

Jon, there are a lot of forces involved in who pays for anything.  I think asking that question in as part of a debate on carbon pricing a needless distraction.  The issue will come up surely, and all the necessary paybacks, pork, will happen.

Ultimately what will happen is the people paying will be the people from each class who are the most wasteful.  Some poor will pay more, many will pay less.  Some middle class will pay more, many will pay less, etc.

There is an element of fairness in that equation that goes beyond class, and I see it as exceptionally likely the greater fairness will afford some flexibility toward the marginal overall revenue necessary for public investment.On Stabilizing the climate requires technology, public investment, and global economic development posted 2 years, 1 month ago 24 Responses

What we know how to do, and what we don't

Finally, the commodified nature of energy (one electron is as good as another) makes it difficult to develop initial commercial products that can command a higher price. While Apple enthusiasts lined up to shell out $600 for an iPhone, very few consumers are willing to pay two to three times more for clean energy.

This argument states one and only one thing to me.  The necessity of carbon pricing.  How else can you replicate an initial higher price?  Is that not precisely what carbon pricing would do?

Investment is important, but will never succeed alone.  If I had the choice of one, and only one policy, it would be carbon pricing.  It would work.  The only reason for continued debate is whether there is a mix of approaches that will work better.

Once you set carbon pricing, attacking climate change becomes no different than every other economic issue.  Investment is important in clean technologies.  Investment has always been important in non-clean technologies too.  Our economic, policy and corporate infrastructure knows how to balance all of these factors from experience, assuming that the numbers they are working from represent a goal we actually want.On Stabilizing the climate requires technology, public investment, and global economic development posted 2 years, 1 month ago 24 Responses

Can't leave the box if you don't know what it is

That means doing non-entrepreneurial (sic) work like energy remodels of every occupied building in the US, then the world. That's just not going to be profitable in the  short run. It may provide jobs and wages but not "profit" in the modern sense.

What makes you believe that this is non-entrepreneurial work?  The definition of an entrepreneur is:

A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.

All of that work is, currently, high risk, because it is dependent upon long term paybacks

.  If energy prices don't go up, or if regulations prevent costs from being recouped, than an investor is going to lose money.  Also, in a historical sense, companies have made more money by avoiding these tasks.

I believe that is all changing, but to insure it does we need to make sure regulations support it.

Climate change will not be solved within the current profit system. It has to go.

Isn't this what I'm saying when I say "the inclusion of environmental effects in the profitability equation"?  Or do you think we need to get rid of any system with:

Profit - An advantageous gain or return; benefit.

Leaving the box involves more than lashing out at abstract terms like "corporate", "profit", "entrepreneur" and "government".  At the very least you have to know what they are.  Maybe they're trapped in the same box as you are.  Maybe they're all trying to escape too.On It's a hot topic on campus these days posted 2 years, 2 months ago 5 Responses

What is the goal?

Maybe you have different goals than I would, but is it really about a "connection to the natural world"?

It seems to me, at least with youth, it's more beneficial to simply establish a connection to "the world", and not separate nature out.  Kids are growing up in a much more global world, and are going to be here a lot longer, so it's in their own best interests to take care of it.  In addition, many of the long term solutions are founded on international cooperation, and that requires a different perspective than most adults have grown up with.On Attack of the sulky teen posted 2 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Important, but not sustainable

The sustenance of entrepreneurship is profitability.    Profits make garage ventures into publicly traded corporations.  Profitability brings investment dollars necessary to go from a few kilowatts of generation to a few terawatts.

There are some overlooked opportunities that are good for the environment and conventionally profitable.  But there are many more that are not conventionally profitable, or are at least less profitable than non-environmental possibilities.

Like the point I made in response to an EcoGeek post, about technology the sustenance of long term change toward environmentally profitable policies, is the inclusion of environmental effects in the profitability equation.  The only option I know of to accomplish this, is legislation, preferably global, though national would be a good first step.

Without this change research investments, entrepreneurship, and personal actions will do more to benefit those who don't take them, then those who do.  Not only is this not fair, and damaging to the motivation behind these valuable acts, but it has the insurmountable problem of slowly allocating more power, in the form of money, to those opposed to the good cause.  This slow power drain makes policy, unless it incorporates environmental legislation, as unsustainable as the world damaging practices we are trying to change.On It's a hot topic on campus these days posted 2 years, 2 months ago 5 Responses

Get something done make it clear it's a compromise

I think the best route is to get something done, no matter what that is.  I don't know how far legislators can be pushed, hopefully someone has a good idea of that.  They should push for something safe and attainable this year, but keep the public word consistent with the message that it is a compromise so later support won't evaporate.

That has two benefits, one is it keeps people's attention, and second it unifies people.  At least that's what I hope it would do.On On whether to advocate weaker climate change bills posted 2 years, 2 months ago 10 Responses

All too common

Counterintuitive "Lifecycle" analysis seems to the current trademark of anyone who has a reason to dislike X or Y green solution/alternative.

I've had the same kinds of comments about CFL's popup up quite often.  It's likewise ridiculous to suggest that a product sold for $3, and recycled for another $3 actually uses more energy in production/recycling than the $60 in energy from a wall socket it will over it's life save.

I am pretty sure the reason this tactic is so popular is because it allows the opposition to pose as green rather than the "opposition", and thus disguise their true motives.On Prius easily beats Hummer in lifecycle energy use; 'Dust to Dust' report has no basis in fact posted 2 years, 3 months ago 15 Responses

Sometimes true, Sometimes not

Biodiverst has it right.  The correct way to balance the concerns is through carbon taxes.

The truth is some local eating can be good, but 100% would create all the problems you attempt to discount.

Does the third world need us? Depends on what you mean by need.  If we pack up and leave and become isolationist, suffering will initially rise.  Likely they won't entirely depopulate, but it could be a long time before anything improves (think Europe in the dark ages).  The simple truth is too many people are alive in the third world to be supported without technology which we control.  Simple things, like water, for example, which even with the limited amount of technology that has been traded or given is still woefully inadequate.

If you want to stop buying food from third world regions, you should definitely plan to increase investment in the area either through charity or development, or ideally both.  I've always thought the solution to the problems of the third world lied in charitable organizations supporting economic development, rather than replacing it.  That idea is more and more prevalent these days, and I've seen some benefits from it.

Anyhow, short form, it's a complicated situation, and you're not completely right.  More importantly, you're attacking the problem through the most superficial means if all you're doing is trying to insure all your food is grown locally.  Also important is that by doing this as an individual action, you may be accomplishing no more than making Guatemalan tomatoes cheaper for the average consumer.
On Is it really a savior for smallholder farmers in the global south? posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

Limits

I can think of some extreme examples where it would be bad, but what's the likeliness of them happening?

Everything has it's limits.  Walking is a good way to burn off excess calories, but if we setup power plants powered by human walking I think everyone would agree that would be inefficient and just plain dumb (even if they used bikes).

What might not be so stupid is using the energy from people exercising an hour a day to stay in shape.

Another factor is if everyone spent 3 hours a day walking to work and back, productivity would go down and we'd have a harder time creating more efficient systems.  But wait!  Many people spend 3 hours a day driving to work and back.  Most walkers/bikers spend less time.

In terms of productivity, public transportation is near the top.  10 minute walk/bike ride commutes can compete, but I can read on the bus even if it's 20 or 30 minutes.

It's an odd vision, but I have one idea that maximizes all those concerns.  First, get an automated personal transportation system.  Second put a bike in each "pod".  Then you can read, exercise, generate power and get to work all at once.

Alas, it's a doomed idea because the cyclists will hate it because it won't give the exhilaration of biking, the drivers will be afraid they'll have to bike, and the environmental purists will dislike it because it doesn't require enough personal sacrifice.On Debunking the notion that walking is bad for the planet posted 2 years, 3 months ago 8 Responses

Rules of thumb

It seems the first question is does it cost more.  If it's cheaper local then it's likely a better environmental choice.  If it's cheaper imported, then you'll have to do some research.

It's too bad there isn't a system to estimate environmental costs and present you with an adjusted price.  Something like $5 local cost + $3 H20 vs $3 store cost + $6 CO2.

trackback: http://ryan-technorabble.blogspot.com/2007/08/cheaper-is- ...On Think again posted 2 years, 3 months ago 29 Responses

More than retaining patents

I like your idea to have the government buy patents.  I had the same thought last year almost to the day, though I wasn't even thinking about the environmental possibilities at the time.

http://ryan-technorabble.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-nationa ...On Here are some posted 2 years, 4 months ago 32 Responses