Earth Wind Map: I regularly look in on earth.nullschool.net. For the past month or so it seems to me that (at the 250 hPa level) nothing much is changing. Shouldn’t the Rossby waves be precessing? It appears that a major loop, standing just off the western coast of North America, is remaining stationary. Any idea what gives?
Thanks
Gordon Shephardsays
Petit Climate Graphs: Anyone have any idea why the PIOMAS Sea Ice Volume graph hasn’t been updated to November 1?
nigeljsays
Zebra @240, the problem is not mine. You have been simultaneously talking about lower population and higher density living, and so utterly confusing the issue.
But I totally agree with you that higher density living in large cities, as opposed to lots of small towns, is going to pollute less as a general rule. You mentioned the transport factor, and I would add with less urban sprawl in larger higher density types of cities, you inevitably get more efficient use of building materials. We are finally on the same page, more or less.
However just bear in mind there are numerous other factors why Europe has better energy efficiency much to do with rules around the issue.
“As the population declines, the less desirable locations will be abandoned. We observe this even with the US population that is still growing, as young people leave the smaller towns to seek opportunity in more densely populated locations.
Well yes obviously. The drift to Auckland in my country is to do with harbour access, beaches, climate, industry hub etc.
There’s also a huge pattern of drift from smaller towns to larger cities and regions, to a few larger centres related to changing economy. This has been criticised but seems irreversible to me.
nigeljsays
Killian @234
It was not clear form your post whether you were proposing the standard dictionary definition or something new. Please just stick to the dictionary definition because we have enough self appointed experts trying to redefine everything in the english language and its driving me nuts. If you want to propose something different ok but make it clear you are ‘proposing’ and dont just assume everyone is on your wave length because this is how vast number of problems start.
Your quoted dictionary definition is fine. Most countries with any sense already have laws and processes governing the commons at national or local level anyway. The real problem we have is ideogically driven right wing side of politics that does all it can to undermine this, exhibit number one is Scott Pruit the new head of Americas EPA. This is sad and ironic,as the right wing in American politics has championed some of the best environmental legislation in the past.
Digby Scorgiesays
Killian @211
I had a look at the article you referred to. It confirms what I’ve felt for a long time now: humanity is in “overshoot mode”. After overshoot comes collapse. So I too am curious to know when this collapse will occur. Probably a lot of people hope they can avoid the collapse, but I reckon they can’t.
nigeljsays
Killian @235
“This form of commons requires agreed rules on how to deal with disputes and stop problems. Its a legal issue.”
“It’s legal for you. It need not be. When risk is shared and fully understood by all, there should be no need of external law. Even if it is used, you still begin with an agreement among people. Rules, as I said. Settling disputes inside or outsidethe Commons is a rule, a choice, not a universal requirement.”
It’s legal issue right now for about 5 billion people and their governments. There will probably always be a need for laws either at federal or community level. Even families have their own rules. I think it will be a long time before it’s otherwise, and you can be idealistic and think some nirvana like that may eventually happen and it would be nice, but I don’t see it for a very long time, and its hard to see how our behaviour can be governed without laws. Laws are basically just a form of information, and its hard to function without information.
“No. A commons is a commmons. They are always limited in some sense. E.g., why should a Russian farmer near Moscow have anything to say about the watering schedule for a farm in Iowa? We must be realistic, no? As Ostrom says, scale. My RG concept uses scale-based problem solving. Not authority, not power, not jurisdiction, but scale. Only scale and only the areas and people affected.”
Well yes it could and should be decided locally, but as stated above I find it hard to see how any community can function without a power structure or jurisdiction. Such things are human nature. Obviously such things need not be highly authoritarian, but nature of human species leads inevitably to a power structure, and it wont change until species literally evolves into something quite different which means a long time if ever. However the pecking order has huge negative downsides, and power can be abused, etc and these are all things we can improve, while still accepting a power structure. It seems to me just a case of the ‘right’ form of power structure, and promoting less inequality and some level of egalitarianism which helps society cohere together better, and be less likely to have huge civil wars.
“Killian may have a good point on that worth debating, but attempts to get rid of private property in general have not had encouraging results.
“So? Logical fallacy: It’s been difficult, so we can’t? Meh.”
Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc. Private farms are many times more efficient and productive than collective forms of ownership of farms in China and Soviet union, Venezuela etc. However like I said previously, scale comes into this, and very small operations seem to work ok if collectively owned in worker share owning cooperative structure, but only “ok”.
These are not radical redesigns. They evolved slowly. You have to unpick the resaons why before you can claim to understand any of this and attack them. Evolution and inevitable compromise and consensus is not always a bad thing. Radical redesigns like the Soviet Union and China’s plans under Mao failed. It doesn’t mean radical redesign is always wrong, it means we have to be cautious and people have to prove their case strongly, and in specific detail and answer all critics without shouting. Otherwise the proponents of radical redesign will be ignored and laughed at.
“wont be possible politically in time to fix the climate problem.”
“Crystal ball again.”
Oh come on, its obvious and doesn’t require a crystal ball. Virtually nobody has adopted your low tech ideas as a whole despite issues being discussed since the 1960s, so its unlikely to change suddenly. Even if people did agree to such a restructuring, in practical terms it would take many decades, just think we would have to transition from a huge technical infrastructure to something small, low tech and local, and this requires considerable change. Even permaculture comes up against resistance to change, although I think it will happen with time.
I think capitalism will evolve and change and has to, so I’m no stealth denier. But I dont think it will end up like you think, and we just cant be sure what the future brings. Its better to focus on whats particularly wrong with the current system, including inadequate environmental laws, and corporations with only motive being profit, and work to modify this. We also have better recognition of the commons, and thus the ideological legitimacy of environmental laws, and corporations having a wider range of goals than just profits. There are early signs this is all happening. Completely tearing up the current system, and trying to conceptualise something completely new and totally different, is naive.
Mr. Know It Allsays
248 – nigelj
Thanks for recognizing that the right wing of the USA are only 2.5% of the population. Can’t remember the first time I posted that and many comments have come back with “but those people use 20% of world resources” or “they contribute 18% of the world CO2”. No, they do not. All of the US population does that, not the half on the right side of US politics. They contribute about 1/2 of the US total.
If all the other believers in the US, and around the world, would do what they can to reduce their CO2 footprint, it would make a huge difference. Many believers in developed nations could afford to do quite a lot. Yet, most believers have done very little, but are quite content to point at others and say “YOU should do this or that, and the government(or the UN, or a world court, or a treaty)should force you to do it.”
This is the Essence of capitalism. Is there any need to say more? No. It will be written on the tombstone of capitalism:
R.I.P., Black Friday Idiocy.
I can’t wait to see that happen :)
Nemesissays
About The Black Friday Idiocy Ray Ladbury mentioned:
Don’t be fooled, the essence of capitalism is MORE material shit -> MORE profit -> MORE exploitation -> MORE ecological destruction -> MORE climate heating asf asf. Nietzsche was ranting about the state in “Zarathustra”, but poor Nietzsche could never imagine the true hell of capitalism, muhahaha. Let me quote from Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”, I will just change the term “state” into “capitalism“, it fits perfectly:
” Capitalism? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples…
Capitalism is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it capitalism: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them…
See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God.”—thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees!
Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!
Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!
Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,- the cold monster!
Everything will it give you, if ye worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes…
It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours!
Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!
Capitalism, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: Capitalism, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: Capitalism, where the slow suicide of all is called “life.”
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft— and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves…
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money— these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness— as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.- and ofttimes also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters.
My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the open air!…
There, where capitalism ceaseth— there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.”
Thomassays
believers?
hehehehe bar humbug
nigeljsays
Nemesis @261, even I think that is a good essay. Makes me think of the songs Money and Welcome to the Machine, by Pink Floyd.
nigeljsays
This article below is about the current heatwave in Australia that has broken several records. They have done some interesting research on way urban surfaces heat up, good graphic on this, and predictions of a very grim future for humid cities like Darwin, which could virtually become uninhabitable.
Mr. Know It All @257, well the right wing in America is probably around 2.5% of global population, a small proportion, I’m just not a pedantic nit picker and have no interest in calculating it precisely.
However I disagree that the 2.5% have the same carbon footprint as some third world peasant. Its considerably more because of higher electricity use and consumption. With the elite 2% in America carbon footprint is higher, regardless of politics. Of course there are exceptions, Al Gore has miles of solar panels on the roof of his mansion. This is probably not the example you wanted to hear, but I merely observe.
Killiansays
#254 nigelj said
Killian @234
It was not clear form your post whether you were proposing the standard dictionary definition or something new. Please just stick to the dictionary definition
I will stick to what is accurate. when “standard” meets that criteria, I use it; when it doesn’t, I don’t. The true commons is not what a maladaptive, collapsing, sick, self-destructive, suicidal society says it is, it is what has existed as Commonses forever. You need it to be complex because you want to keep complexity. (The use of want there is not accidental; you don’t understand the concept of designing to needs.) It is, and must be, simple: Share everything, appropriate to scale.
self appointed experts trying to redefine everything in the english language and its driving me nuts.
Sucks to be you, I guess? Neither here nor there what anyone is doing to your displeasure. I look at facts, analyze, provide the best answers I can. Period. What you or “they” do is immaterial to this.
If you want to propose something different ok but make it clear you are ‘proposing’
It is what it is. I observe, I tell. Period. You can accept that or not. Not my problem either way.
and dont just assume everyone is on your wave length
I *know* virtually no one is.
Your quoted dictionary definition is fine. Most countries with any sense already have laws and processes governing the commons at national or local level anyway.
Huh? There are zero countries with anything approaching a true Commons at any scale worth discussing.
Killiansays
#256 nigelj said some really crazy isht!!
Dude, I really get tired of your crap:
I think it will be a long time before it’s otherwise, and you can be idealistic and think some nirvana like that may eventually happen
You got beat up a lot in school for unwarranted pedantry , no doubt.
Child.
I don’t see it for a very long time
Who cares? Do you have ANY point to make?
“No. A commons is a commmons. They are always limited in some sense. E.g., why should a Russian farmer near Moscow have anything to say about the watering schedule for a farm in Iowa? We must be realistic, no? As Ostrom says, scale. My RG concept uses scale-based problem solving. Not authority, not power, not jurisdiction, but scale. Only scale and only the areas and people affected.”
Well yes it could and should be decided locally, but as stated above I find it hard to see how any community can function without a power structure or jurisdiction.
Never have I ever said zero structure. Ever. One more… let’s see… almost certain to be one more zero-IQ straw man right around the corner…
Such things are human nature. Obviously such things need not be highly authoritarian, but nature of human species leads inevitably to a power structure
Bingo! Except, and I have said this before to you… more than once… we *all* lived in Commonses until agrarian times, most up to only 4k years ago according to new research on the issue, and some few still do. And those few are the only examples of sustainable systems we have, so, *IF* we have a “human nature,” it is to live in a Commons. 290k out of 300k years.
A thousand strikes, yyyyyyyyyyerrrrrr OUT!
And then he said some other word salad stuff, but I have overworked my garbage disposal already. Unteachable, unreachable, unintelligent monkey typing. Please, god, keep the other 999 away from me.
I used to like monkeys.
zebrasays
Nigel 253,
“, the problem is not mine. You have been simultaneously talking about lower population and higher density living, and so utterly confusing the issue.”
Umm… that is the issue.
Nigel, I think the confusion is because you, like most people, do not think quantitatively as a matter of course.
I’ve said it over and over by now, and perhaps you just aren’t capable of grasping this simple relationship:
As population declines globally, population density increases locally.
(And, to be sure you are not further confused, “globally” can apply to any entity, as in my example of the entire US population decreasing and concentrating on the coasts. Could be China, or NZ, or an entire continent, whatever.)
Do you understand this relationship? If you do understand, do you agree or disagree?
Killiansays
#255 Digby Scorgie said Killian @211
I had a look at the article you referred to. It confirms what I’ve felt for a long time now: humanity is in “overshoot mode”. After overshoot comes collapse. So I too am curious to know when this collapse will occur. Probably a lot of people hope they can avoid the collapse, but I reckon they can’t.
Overshoot and collapse, rather than being mutually exclusive, are, in my opinion, the same process. Like a wave crashing to shore, overshoot is the crest, bubbles on the sand are the end result.
The numbers already say we have been collapsing for a long time. What makes it a collapse in the end is whether we go so far we can’t control the landing, and then it’s still collapse, just controlled or chaotic.
The issue is whether we choose one or the other, but make no mistake, either one will have been our choice.
There’s no more time for “they” this or that: We are sustainability, or we’re not.
The answer is in the mirror. Sustainability is ultimately local.
zebrasays
nigel 256,
“Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc.”
Two problems:
1. Dust Bowl. Private “ownership” does not prevent people from destroying the resource, because short-term interests always outweigh long-term.
2. Soviet Union and China unproductive farms are standard right-wing memes, but there was no “collective ownership” in any meaningful sense.
As I’ve tried to explain, the concept of “ownership” is not a simple one. Farms are successful or not depending on their management, not who is able to sell the land.
So, the government could be the “owner” of the land overtly, and if the government is not corrupt or incompetent, it can allow a business to use the land to grow crops, while charging a fair “rent”, and also collect a “security deposit” to cover damage to the resource.
But, unlike the current “private ownership” paradigm, the “tenant” would not be able to profit by selling the land for e.g. development of housing, and would not be allowed to profit from anti-competitive practices.
So, what crops are grown is decided by the farmer as determined by the market, and the farmer is obviously motivated to be productive.
Nemesissays
@nigelji, #263
” Nemesis @261, even I think that is a good essay. Makes me think of the songs Money and Welcome to the Machine, by Pink Floyd.”
Love to see that we agree on that. That Money Machine called capitalism will eat us all if no massive paradigm shift happens, that’s for sure. Now, how does a true, successful capitalist see it?:
” Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.”
– Bill Gates
Yeah, that’s how capitalism argues all the time: If you critizise capitalism, you are a communist and you have to move to North Korea. So, let’s stick to the Money Machine resp The Black Friday Idiocy, as no one wants to move to North Korea, right? :) Btw:
No, I don’t want to move to North Korea, as I got nothing to lose, no children, nothing, so I can afford to trust in capitalism ;)
nigeljsays
Killian @267, I don’t respond to your repeated, relentless personal abuse, and unintelligible writing.
Mr. Know It Allsays
269 – Killian
“The answer is in the mirror. Sustainability is ultimately local.”
Exactly right. Everyone needs to stop saying “the government needs to do this or that”, and just do it themselves.
260 Nemisis
“This is the Essence of capitalism.” The essence of capitalism, combined with free markets, is that it unleashes the creativity of people to produce products that other people are willing to pay for. Many of those products help others, prolong life, make it easier, more enjoyable, etc. Yes, some products may do harm to the environment – if you think that is so, then don’t buy those items. It’s easy. The solution is in the mirror, as Killian suggests.
265- nigelj
“However I disagree that the 2.5% have the same carbon footprint as some third world peasant.”
Who are you disagreeing with? I did not say that their carbon footprints were the same – that’s a ridiculous claim. I’m saying that if the believers will do their part, the CO2 problem will start to become less of an issue; then you can work on getting the skeptics to change their behavior. But you’d rather point fingers and complain about the skeptics than to take concrete steps yourself. Right?
nigeljsays
Zebra @268
“As population declines globally, population density increases locally.”
I have already agreed with this in my last post. The issues I disagree on were some of your other assertions. But your assertion is academic, as growing population is also concentrating in cities, so its not a terribly convincing argument to reduce population growth. There are better, simpler arguments for benefits of smaller populations.
I’m sick of your criticisms that I don’t think quantitatively. Im far from perfect, but I’m not a totally stupid person. I just got a perfect score an a short 10 question IQ test that was allegedly so hard nobody can get a perfect score, and only 1% of people get more than half the questions correct. No guesses either. I know these things don’t prove a lot, but I’m just saying I’m not a totally stupid person.
I just think these sorts of environmental issues are complex, and do involve a degree of ethics, in addition to quantitative ideas about population. I know its hard changing human “monkey” nature you keep going on about, but we have to push things slowly in better direction and these things are not entirely fixed, humans are pretty amazing. We no longer eat people for example!
You and Killian are both very rude and emotive. You are so similar in many ways. Maybe its best I leave you people to bludgeon everyone over the head, until you force them to agree, and you will be happy then.
nigeljsays
Killian
“Bingo! Except, and I have said this before to you… more than once… we *all* lived in Commonses until agrarian times, most up to only 4k years ago according to new research on the issue, and some few still do. And those few are the only examples of sustainable systems we have, so, *IF* we have a “human nature,” it is to live in a Commons. 290k out of 300k years’
Blah blah yes humanity used to live like that sharing and no private property etc etc. Has it occured to you this was because things wre utterly different back then in almost every way? We have evolved since then, and our institutions have evolved into something quite different. Perhaps crack open a text on evolution. I suspect you may not even agree with theory of evolution.
We ain’t going back, unless we devolve into hunter gatherers, and population of just a few million globally. and you provide inadequate case that we should go back, with total lack of a sensible evaluation of full range of evidence.
Your approach and world view has all the same shallow logical fallacies as climate denialists.
Yet, most believers have done very little, but are quite content to point at others and say “YOU should do this or that, and the government(or the UN, or a world court, or a treaty)should force you to do it.”
Apparently, I’m not what Mr. IAT calls a ‘believer’. I’m pointing at MYSELF and every other American consumer, and saying WE shouldn’t force anyone else to pay for OUR marginal climate-change costs with their homes, livelihoods or lives; nor should any of US assume WE won’t be forced to pay an unanticipated, disproportionate price ourselves!
I’m saying that WE therefore should instruct OUR elected representatives to enact a national, revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff, so that every one of US pays just a few bucks more for a tankful of gasoline at the pump, enough to make available carbon-neutral alternatives price-competitive, and thereby drive the build-out of alternative supplies. Poor Mr. IAT seems to think he’ll be forced to buy as much fossil carbon as he does now. I can scarcely imagine how that might be done! In reality, under CF&D-BAT Mr. IAT would have the same choices HE’s always had, while the ‘invisible hand’ reduced OUR aggregate carbon footprint to zero.
Mr. IAT seems not to grasp that CF&D-BAT would only ‘force’ fossil fuel producers, who after all are the people who dig the stuff out of geologic sequestration and sell it to us for all the energy market will bear, to account for the marginal climate-change impacts of their business in their production costs. They wouldn’t be forced to raise their prices but would, as always, decide for themselves whether to raise prices, reduce profit margins, or leave the fossil carbon business and invest in something else instead. Consumers, myself and Mr. IAT included, would still have the choice of how much fuel to buy instead of something else we want, as always.
The dividend provision of CF&D-BAT means the average consumer neither gains nor loses money, but Mr. IAT apparently doesn’t realize he can make money by reducing his CO2 emissions below those of his Trumpist neighbor, who certainly wasn’t forced to buy that F250 to haul his speedboat to Lake Mead and back. OTOH, Mr. IAT would be free to roll coal if he wishes, needing only to decide how much he’s willing to pay for the privilege.
If CF&D-BAT is enacted, the only big net losers will be fossil fuel investors stuck with unsaleable fossil carbon reserves. Shrewd investors will act in a timely manner, leaving the less shrewd holding stranded assets. That’s life in the business world! It’s OK with me, if not with Mr. IAT, though perhaps he’s not really a ‘conservative’. He should be reminded that in a pluralistic democracy, not every voter ‘wins’ in every election. In the USA, he may not win even when he’s in the majority! In any case, he’ll never be forced to live with the results: if he decides to emigrate, no one will stop him from leaving ;^)!
Overshoot
The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology.
A calm but unflinching realist, Catton suggests that we cannot stop this wave – for we have already overshot the Earth’s capacity to support so huge a load. He contradicts those scientists, engineers, and technocrats who continue to write optimistically about energy alternatives. Catton asserts that the technological panaceas proposed by those who would harvest from the seas, harness the winds, and farm the deserts are ignoring the fundamental premise that “the principals of ecology apply to all living things.” These principles tell us that, within a finite system, economic expansion is not irreversible and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. If we disregard these facts, our sagging American Dream will soon shatter completely.
“Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc.
“Two problems:
“1. Dust Bowl. Private “ownership” does not prevent people from destroying the resource, because short-term interests always outweigh long-term.”
“2. Soviet Union and China unproductive farms are standard right-wing memes, but there was no “collective ownership” in any meaningful sense.”
Come on, one example of dust bowl proves nothing in science, which requires wide evidence, and weight of evidence argument at the very least. Especially as dust bowl it was partly weather related, and no decent environmental laws at the time.
Your comments on Soviet Union are just hard to fathom. If this isn’t collective ownership I’m mystified what is. You can in fact define it any way you like, but it sure wasn’t private ownership. Look, the weight of real world modern evidence is collective and state ownership on large scale doesn’t work terribly well, look at Venezueala, Soviet Union, Cuba, China under Mao, how many examples do we need? They all have massive economic and environmental failure worse than capitalist countries (which are bad enough).
Of course private ownership is not be definition perfect. It must go with strong environmental laws.
And public ownership has provably worked well for some things like education and healthcare in some cases. And we understand why.
“As I’ve tried to explain, the concept of “ownership” is not a simple one. Farms are successful or not depending on their management, not who is able to sell the land.”
Thankyou yoda. Nobody frigging said it is.
“So, the government could be the “owner” of the land overtly, and if the government is not corrupt or incompetent, it can allow a business to use the land to grow crops, while charging a fair “rent”, and also collect a “security deposit” to cover damage to the resource.”
Ok fine, potentially good idea. China leases land. Of course the magic word is if the government is not corrupt.
And please appreciate this is totally different from what Killian and myself understand as ownership, because Killian is talking about far more than land to considering all assets (although who knows he is as clear as mud).
What I think you are really talking about is renting or leasing land off the state. I can see where you are going and it could have benefits by removing power of owners to cause problems of certain types, but is hardly going to revolutionise sustainablity. How likely do you think it is that society would actually embrace your proposal? I would say don’t hold your breath, humanity is firmly on a private ownership mode currently, and that includes land. Mention leasing land and The Republicans would have a fit.
What your proposal does is weaken the power of rogue owners to wreck things, and gives the state and ultimately public slightly more control over how land is used. I think it makes some sense, but the main factor is environmental law. China is excellent proof of this as they lease land, but this has clearly not resolved all environmental problems and things have only improved with strong arm of the state.
“But, unlike the current “private ownership” paradigm, the “tenant” would not be able to profit by selling the land for e.g. development of housing, and would not be allowed to profit from anti-competitive practices.”
This solves property speculation and economic problems, but doesn’t seem too relevant to environment.In fact it might be mainly of value in terms of economic issues.
“So, what crops are grown is decided by the farmer as determined by the market, and the farmer is obviously motivated to be productive.”
Yes, and?
I think your land ownership proposal is ok, but I was really talking about private versus public ownership in much wider terms. I think in wider terms the evidence clearly points one way that best societies have mainly private ownership of assets, and about 25% public ownership (broadly speaking) eg Scandinavia etc. When you move away from this in either direction there seem to be problems. In other words there appears to be a sort of optimal balance looking at global evidence. I’m pretty sure the economist.com did an article praising Scandinavia.
nigeljsays
Mr. Know It All
“However I disagree that the 2.5% have the same carbon footprint as some third world peasant.”
“Who are you disagreeing with? I did not say that their carbon footprints were the same – that’s a ridiculous claim. I’m saying that if the believers will do their part, the CO2 problem will start to become less of an issue; then you can work on getting the skeptics to change their behavior. But you’d rather point fingers and complain about the skeptics than to take concrete steps yourself. Right?”
I’m pretty sure you have argued that the 2.5% aren’t worse, but forget it. Maybe I read you wrong.
Most of my criticisms of sceptics isn’t their “behaviour”. It’s their scepticsm of the science, which is just so infuriating, and its misleading form of scepticism as well.
I do roughly agree with your comments about the power of capitalism to generate useful goods and services, but its a fact markets dont always work well, in certain cases. This is the tragedy of the commons. This can be well fixed with appropriate laws, processes and penalties.
I suggest get used to it, because as things get worse people will start to realise this most acutely, and will demand better environmental law. We have seen this in recent elections in my country.
Of course half of the equation is personal initiative, but this cannot solve wider scale issues.
nigeljsays
And yes carbon fee and dividend seems the most practical proposal overall, that doesn’t force anyone, gets to taxing the root source of problem, is revenue neutral so is not big government, and gives money back to public, and helps subsidise renewable energy, just the little bit needed to get it across the line. Great idea.
Whats not to like? The Republicans will find something no doubt. Never happy. If its not hard right its apparently communism.
Digby Scorgiesays
Hank Roberts @277
So would you care to hazard a guess as to when we’ll see the minimum in the load curve of Catton’s Model D? (I assume this is the most likely scenario in our case.)
patricksays
What’s a good image for the Photovoltaics adoption curve? Chart. Is this fair?
“…a disconnect to reality so profound that I decided I had found my new frontier.” –from the Introduction
Mr. Know It Allsays
276 – Mal Adapted
I did check out your link on the Carbon Fee and Dividend, and I watched the video. They claim that the “fee” will be $15/ton initially increasing by $10/ton/year. They claim each $1/ton adds about $0.009/gallon of gasoline. By my calcs, after 20 years, the fee will be $215/ton. Sounds like that would add 215 x 0.009 dollars per gallon or $1.935/gallon of gasoline. That would bring the total price of gasoline up to about $5/gallon – not much above where it was in 2008, when a barrel of oil cost $150 +/-. That is not going to do much of anything to curb gasoline use – especially in 20 years after inflation destroys what’s left of the dollar. Of course, in reality, what they claim is the plan isn’t really the plan – once the foot is in the door, they’ll knock the door off it’s hinges and the “fee” will increase more like $50 or more per year – not $10.
They also claim: “About two-thirds of households will break even or receive more than they would pay in higher prices. This feature will inject billions into the economy, protect family budgets, free households to make independent choices about their energy usage, spur innovation and build aggregate demand for low-carbon products at the consumer level.”
They do not say why people who receive a dividend would suddenly decide to use renewable energy and demand low-carbon products. Here in the PNW, I’m guessing a large chunk of them will just use the money to buy weed! :) Seriously! It will increase aggregate demand alright – for Chinese crap and muscle cars! If not, why not?
KIA 273: Everyone needs to stop saying “the government needs to do this or that”, and just do it themselves.
BPL: Right, you guys. Stop burning coal in 1-2 GWe electric power plants, and stop refining gasoline from oil. I know you’ve all got a refinery complex and a coal-fired power plant!
Killiansays
Oh, Hank, you do try so hard, but, sadly for you, I said same *process*, not the same *thing.* Processes have parts, sections, tipping points, sometimes non-reversible. To say overshoot is not part of the process of collapse is plainly goofy. The only difference between overshoot and collapse is pretty much nothing except the latter describes overshoot reaching irreversibility. If one were to arrest a societal collapse – I know of no case of it happening – that doesn’t mean it wasn’t collapsING, but only that it was prevented in some way.
Oversteering is the direct cause of the final state of “wreck.” There is no moment when they become separate. They are merely names for parts of the same process. I suppose in your world being a teen isn’t part of growing up.
From Wiki: “The consequence of overshoot is called a collapse”
Oh, yeah, very separable, those two.
Paul Chefurka? A blogger? And a quote that has nothing to do with your point? (It does echo things I’ve said here for years, though, so… thanks for the support.) Well… not a great rebuttal. Catton did great work. Well aware. Nothing I say is against his basic theory, so far as I know. No disrespect to Paul. He and I have crossed paths before, primarily on the oil drum, IIRC.
Buh-bye.
Killiansays
#275 nigelj said More veggies!
humanity used to live like that sharing and no private property
You’re not paying attention. Sustainable societies never stopped. They still exist.
Has it occured to you this was because things wre utterly different back then in almost every way?
A savant! Anyone think he has any clue how close he got there?
We have evolved since then
I am glad I was not drinking something when I read that.
and our institutions have evolved into something quite different.
So close! Yet, so very, very far.
Perhaps crack open a text on evolution. I suspect you may not even agree with theory of evolution.
He can’t possibly be that ______… can he? Even for an Ad Hom, that’s weak.
We ain’t going back, unless we devolve into hunter gatherers
That danged Straw Man just will not stay down.
Your approach and world view has all the same shallow logical fallacies as climate denialists.
Aw. Such a cute little Ad Hom.
This was fun, but you really did almost glimpse something, so I responded. I really think this needs to be the last time.
Killiansays
#256 nigelStrawMan said Private ownership means people take care of resources better.
Does he really think the U.S. has produced anywhere from 20% to 50% of the worlds’s resources? Does he really believe the OECD doesn’t live off the lifeblood of the rest of the world? Does he really believe the OECD, and especially the U.S., has not off-shored the costs, all types, of our massive consumption?
We have pushed ourselves to the point even some climate scientists have declared the condition an existential threat, but we have used resources well?
All while sustainable societies, not ruining their environments, live in egalitarian, non-capitialist process…
Hope everybody had a pleasant Thanksgiving (including those outside the US, for whom the period here so-called is of course not a holiday.)
Nigel said:
“Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc. Private farms are many times more efficient and productive than collective forms of ownership of farms in China and Soviet union, Venezuela etc. However like I said previously, scale comes into this, and very small operations seem to work ok if collectively owned in worker share owning cooperative structure, but only “ok”.”
A couple of points there:
1) Just because there were spectacular failures of large-scale collective ownership doesn’t mean that ‘it can’t be done.’ I’m not taking a position one way or the other on desirability of centralized ownership. (And, BTW, I’m not calling it “collective ownership” because, though the Communist Party in Russia did call it that, the reality is that it was in effect Party ownership–the local workers had no managerial control. If they had, the whole enterprise would have worked better.)
I’m just pointing out that early failures do not disprove possibility, any more than the existence of the ‘gag roll’ of unworkable flying machines some may remember proves that aviation is a collective delusion today. That’s particularly true since the failures of Soviet collectivism and Venezuelan socialism involved large amounts of technical ignorance and sheer wrong-headed hubris. (Much like Trumpian ‘economics’, actually.)
2) The extremely widespread failures of environmental ‘management’–which seem to have been discussed at some length while I was away eating Turkey and watching football games with relatives, and so scarcely require additional examples here–would seem to contradict the proposition that “Private ownership means people take care of resources better.”
They may take care of *their* resources better–but most of the world is not owned by ‘them’, and anyway we are living more and more in a system in which corporations own practically everything. My intuition says that in that situation, pure ‘market forces’ may well matter less in the short to medium term than the corporate management tools applied, because the latter will be the lens through which the former is perceived. And in that respect, the corporatist paradigm starts to look rather like the statist one.
3) “Only ‘ok'” is, I think, a one-sided assessment. Gross output per unit may not have been outstanding for some of the ‘very small’ traditional agricultural communities, as compared with modern technological agriculture, but those practices look pretty darn good from a sustainability point of view, having in some cases sustained their societies admirably for many centuries with little environmental degradation.
4) We seem all to be implicitly agreeing with Killian that “scale matters.”
Nemesissays
@Mr Know it all, #273
Cool, no problem for me ;)
” Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.”
– Bill Gates
Yeah, that’s how capitalism argues all the time: If you critizise capitalism, you are a communist and you have to move to North Korea. No, I don’t want to move to North Korea, I can afford to trust in capitalism as I got nothing to lose, no children, nothing, so just walk on, lovely capitalism, I love you :) Oh, please, can we have more Black Fridays? It’s a form of culture, real, inspiring, creative culture, I love it, rock on, lovely capitalism :)
nigeljsays
Quoted @211
“Ecological collapse refers to a situation where an ecosystem suffers a drastic, possibly permanent, reduction in carrying capacity for all organisms, often resulting in mass extinction. Usually, an ecological collapse is precipitated by a disastrous event occurring on a short time scale.”
The trouble is defining drastic and short time scales. Evidence suggests asterioid impact or gigantic volcanic eruption have led to near instant impacts and rapid mass extinctions.
However we are altering climate pretty rapidly as well even if its ramping up over a century as opposed to instant.
Perhaps “short term time scales” is defined as faster than organism can evolve to deal with change or beyond its abilities to deal with the challenge. Perhaps it also means faster than society and its institutions can evolve to deal with change, which is ominous sounding problem.
However humans are adaptable and innovative in dealing with sudden problems, and time will tell whether we deal with pollution and resource problems by slowing down or deal with problems before they become catastrophic.
Then we have impacts of pollution and resource use. it seems intuitively obvious these are already pushing boundaries of the planet in some ways. It is equally intuitively obvious a population heading to 10 billion will increase pressure especially if they all want middle class lifestyles. It does not seem possible no matter how clever we are. Population in particular is an issue.
But if things continue the way they are with bad trends how would collapse unfold? Well an asteroid impact would put catastrophic pressure on our complex systems. Pollution and resource use are different, and problems could manifest in agonising drawn out process of slowly reducing life expectancy, famines, and slow population decline from these things. Or humanity may just reach a stagnant phase. It would not necessarily be sudden extinction, or as simple as problem colony of animals face if subjected to adverse environment.
The things humanity can do right now and also longer term following the precautionary principle are 1) reduce dependence on fossil fuels 2) reduce rates of population growth 3) reduce pollution and 4) more moderate consumption and less waste.
However the difficult question is what level of consumption makes sense for the immediate future? How much should we aim to scale back? You can apply ‘principles’ like “only consume what you need” which is sensible sounding, but rather hard to actually define. Do we need computers?
We have to moderate our consumption, but don’t want to overshoot with deliberately very low consumption and primitive life that also achieves nothing because resources will still eventually be used up over millenia sooner or later leaving only recycline and innovation. You also have potential blame game where poor are blamed for worlds problems and told their aspirations for higher consuming life are a problem. Its a very complicated issue.
Then there are competing visions from Zebra and Killian of people living mostly in large efficient cities, or smaller sharing dispersed communities. Both interesting visions but completely different, so hard to see that both could be correct.
I think humanity should aim for more sensible consumption with acceptance of apartment size living and don’t buy a whole lot of things you don’t really need that don’t add much real value (nutribullets, huge televisions etc). However I don’t see sense in trying to live without electric appliances completely. But this is personal choice and only my opinion. This is a middle ground approach to sensible use of resources.
Ray Ladburysays
Killian: “The answer is in the mirror. Sustainability is ultimately local.”
Mr. KIA: “Exactly right. Everyone needs to stop saying “the government needs to do this or that”, and just do it themselves.”
Except that we don’t live in self-sufficient little enclaves, but rather in a complex global web of commerce. Unless you want to go all Unabomber and eat food fertilized with your own crap, you are going to be consuming food from a grocery store, fuel from a gas station (or wall outlet) and so on. The problem is that the economy as it exists now doesn’t even provide an option to live sustainably–and the overwhelming majority of people will continue to consume as part of that economy. Moreover, there is no way a society of unabombers is going to produce enough food, etc. to sustain a population of 10 billion humans around mid century.
Congratulations. You’ve solved the problem for a world that does not exist and can never exist unless human population crashes by a factor of a hundred or so.
see the figures, argentina imported 1250 MW, vs tesla’s 100 MW battery (cost $33 mln)These things are happening all the time, somewhere, but we only hear about it via msm when it affects first world anglophone nations.
eg california’s fires are now a forgotten thing of the long distant past, unless one lives there and lost your home.
meanwhile humans cannot cope working outdoors continually at +38C – or as your link said +35C in high humidity regions.
meanwhile the Arctic zone is again up to +20C above average temps in recent weeks, maybe a similar starting point to winter as occurred last year …. maybe a new ‘pattern’ but only Time ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EzURpTF5c8 ) will tell.
284 – BPL
Let “them” burn it. For yourself, install grid-tied PV on your roof and go net zero. If all the believers do this, many of those coal burners will go away; charge your electric cars with your own PV, and many of those refineries will go away too.
287 – K
I think he means if you own a resource, you will treat that particular resource carefully. That is mostly true.
289 – Nemesis and 291 Ray L
What system do you propose that is better than capitalism; and can you point to a nation under that system that people are moving to by the millions, like they are here in the USA?
292 – Thomas
I’m going to invest in Fire Truck stock. ;)
nigeljsays
Kevin McKinney @288
Thank’s for your thoughtful comments. But I’m resigned to the fact it looks like large scale collective ownership just doesn’t work terribly well overall. Please note that this is both economically and environmentally. There’s a lot of historical evidence, and also an understanding of reasons why it doesn’t, to do with human nature, need for competition etc. I’m not sure it can be made to work better than private ownership.
Yes I know it depends on exactly what is meant by collective, but I have to generalise a bit because of time limitations writing posts.
Collective ownership of land might be viable as Zebra points out.
Please note I think collective ownership works well for some things like state owned education, for fairly obvious reasons in that private markets causes some problems here, and also there’s a question of making sure education is easily accessed by everyone.
For all Americas faults, private ownership has been largely consistent with resolving at least some environmental problems better than in China or communist countries. Also democracy seems to produce better environmental outcomes than dictatorships, unless you have a benign and sensible dictator I suppose.
I agree completely with what you say about corporate ownership. The corporaist paradigm does start to look like the statist one. The real danger, imho is large corporate monopolies, abusing their power and with a state too timid to do anything about this. At least with governments and state ownership, we can vote them out of power if they go wrong and state owned assets aren’t being well managed.
Again its a complex issue with many models of ownership and its evolving over time. Many things are now owned by pension funds so effectively owned by millions of individuals, but decisions are mostly made by a few profit driven fund managers. Then there was Thatchers share owning democracy, but the scale is such that influence of individual shareholders is limited, and ownership ends up back in the hands of large corporates and funds.
Scale matters, but possibly not in the way Killian and yourself entirely think. Smaller farms with local or family ownership do appear more efficient, with even the UN promoting these. This is as opposed to huge farms with anonymous pension fund types of owners.
But try making cars or computers small and local. Some things suit large scale.
Plus the difference between small scale and large scale is unlikely to be huge. Small hippie type sharing communities often go badly wrong, they are not a panacea. I used to be involved in one of these. All communities have negative trouble makers and lazy people regardless of size. Orwells Animal Farm sums it all up.
I think the “mixed economy” mixed ownership models of Europe work best, looking at evidence. In other words systems that combine private and collective / state ownership as appropriate on economic and social basis. Private ownership makes general sense, but collective or state ownership makes sense where the market has problems and doesn’t supply adequate services.
However I have no problem if people want to start small scale local shared ownership experiments, I’m not standing in their way.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury @291, exactly, I have told Killian this myself so many times. We live in a complex society. Even if he is right in small, low tech, and local such a transition could take centuries, and is not of much use in resolving the big climate change threat. I also just don’t see it happening.
It also just doesn’t matter whether we conserve resources or not, because we will still use them up. We might as well use lithium for batteries, there’s no point leaving it in the ground. Then eventually we will recycle what we have, and already we have the possibility of aluminium batteries as well.
Of course we must reduce the huge levels of demand implicit in an exploding population by reducing rates of growth. We may also have to accept lower gdp growth, and it may not be a bad thing.
nigeljsays
Killian @287
“#256 nigelStrawMan said Private ownership means people take care of resources better.”
“Does he really think the U.S. has produced anywhere from 20% to 50% of the worlds’s resources?”Does he really believe the OECD doesn’t live off the lifeblood of the rest of the world? Does he really believe the OECD, and especially the U.S., has not off-shored the costs, all types, of our massive consumption?”
So Killian accuses me of making a strawman argument by my pointing out a simple fact totally relevant to the issues he raised. He then seems to doubt the USA has huge economic output. Hello? Is it worth discussing anything with someone like this?
He the changes subject to some bizarre statement about America using imported materials a huge “straw man” of his own and utterly irrelevant to working out whether private ownership is more or less efficient than collective ownership. Also ignoring that the USA export a lot of raw materials.
He then says MY posts should be in borehole. Ha ha ha I’m dying laughing.
I’m a critic of capitalism, and sometimes American foreign policy. At least I do it intelligently and constructively, not at the level of a demented ranting fool. You see this is what people like Killian (and Donald trump) eventually do, they are so insulting, they eventually push everyone else down to their own sordid creepy level.
nigeljsays
Thomas @293,exactly. We all live in bubbles only seeing little bits of world events. We both try to see wider picture, but there are only so many hours in the day. And of course the media only tell us what they want, and what makes for inflammatory headline click bait.
It’s especially worrisome with climate change. because its a phenomenon where we must have full picture in order to make sense of it.
“They do not say why people who receive a dividend would suddenly decide to use renewable energy and demand low-carbon products.”
Because people who receive a dividend–like everyone else in the economy–will respond to the price signal. Gas costs more, so EVs are more competitive. Coal plants are even less competitive, so they are retired at an accelerated schedule. Et cetera.
No big mystery. The beauty of the carbon fee concept is that it acts across broad swathes of the economy, sharing both pain and gain pretty widely. It isn’t just ‘people receiving dividends’. Or just people paying taxes.
And of course, there is nothing saying that a carbon fee must be the only strategy one employs. If you only had one, it probably would be one of the better choices, but there are many, many policy levers one can push to enable people to make greener choices. Scanning some of the national plans submitted to the Paris process is interesting in this regard. They are all publicly available.
Earth Wind Map: I regularly look in on earth.nullschool.net. For the past month or so it seems to me that (at the 250 hPa level) nothing much is changing. Shouldn’t the Rossby waves be precessing? It appears that a major loop, standing just off the western coast of North America, is remaining stationary. Any idea what gives?
Thanks
Petit Climate Graphs: Anyone have any idea why the PIOMAS Sea Ice Volume graph hasn’t been updated to November 1?
Zebra @240, the problem is not mine. You have been simultaneously talking about lower population and higher density living, and so utterly confusing the issue.
But I totally agree with you that higher density living in large cities, as opposed to lots of small towns, is going to pollute less as a general rule. You mentioned the transport factor, and I would add with less urban sprawl in larger higher density types of cities, you inevitably get more efficient use of building materials. We are finally on the same page, more or less.
However just bear in mind there are numerous other factors why Europe has better energy efficiency much to do with rules around the issue.
“As the population declines, the less desirable locations will be abandoned. We observe this even with the US population that is still growing, as young people leave the smaller towns to seek opportunity in more densely populated locations.
Well yes obviously. The drift to Auckland in my country is to do with harbour access, beaches, climate, industry hub etc.
There’s also a huge pattern of drift from smaller towns to larger cities and regions, to a few larger centres related to changing economy. This has been criticised but seems irreversible to me.
Killian @234
It was not clear form your post whether you were proposing the standard dictionary definition or something new. Please just stick to the dictionary definition because we have enough self appointed experts trying to redefine everything in the english language and its driving me nuts. If you want to propose something different ok but make it clear you are ‘proposing’ and dont just assume everyone is on your wave length because this is how vast number of problems start.
Your quoted dictionary definition is fine. Most countries with any sense already have laws and processes governing the commons at national or local level anyway. The real problem we have is ideogically driven right wing side of politics that does all it can to undermine this, exhibit number one is Scott Pruit the new head of Americas EPA. This is sad and ironic,as the right wing in American politics has championed some of the best environmental legislation in the past.
Killian @211
I had a look at the article you referred to. It confirms what I’ve felt for a long time now: humanity is in “overshoot mode”. After overshoot comes collapse. So I too am curious to know when this collapse will occur. Probably a lot of people hope they can avoid the collapse, but I reckon they can’t.
Killian @235
“This form of commons requires agreed rules on how to deal with disputes and stop problems. Its a legal issue.”
“It’s legal for you. It need not be. When risk is shared and fully understood by all, there should be no need of external law. Even if it is used, you still begin with an agreement among people. Rules, as I said. Settling disputes inside or outsidethe Commons is a rule, a choice, not a universal requirement.”
It’s legal issue right now for about 5 billion people and their governments. There will probably always be a need for laws either at federal or community level. Even families have their own rules. I think it will be a long time before it’s otherwise, and you can be idealistic and think some nirvana like that may eventually happen and it would be nice, but I don’t see it for a very long time, and its hard to see how our behaviour can be governed without laws. Laws are basically just a form of information, and its hard to function without information.
“No. A commons is a commmons. They are always limited in some sense. E.g., why should a Russian farmer near Moscow have anything to say about the watering schedule for a farm in Iowa? We must be realistic, no? As Ostrom says, scale. My RG concept uses scale-based problem solving. Not authority, not power, not jurisdiction, but scale. Only scale and only the areas and people affected.”
Well yes it could and should be decided locally, but as stated above I find it hard to see how any community can function without a power structure or jurisdiction. Such things are human nature. Obviously such things need not be highly authoritarian, but nature of human species leads inevitably to a power structure, and it wont change until species literally evolves into something quite different which means a long time if ever. However the pecking order has huge negative downsides, and power can be abused, etc and these are all things we can improve, while still accepting a power structure. It seems to me just a case of the ‘right’ form of power structure, and promoting less inequality and some level of egalitarianism which helps society cohere together better, and be less likely to have huge civil wars.
“Killian may have a good point on that worth debating, but attempts to get rid of private property in general have not had encouraging results.
“So? Logical fallacy: It’s been difficult, so we can’t? Meh.”
Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc. Private farms are many times more efficient and productive than collective forms of ownership of farms in China and Soviet union, Venezuela etc. However like I said previously, scale comes into this, and very small operations seem to work ok if collectively owned in worker share owning cooperative structure, but only “ok”.
“Radical redesigns are dangerous”
“Representative democracy aka republics, for example? Market economies? Private ownership? Agreed.”
These are not radical redesigns. They evolved slowly. You have to unpick the resaons why before you can claim to understand any of this and attack them. Evolution and inevitable compromise and consensus is not always a bad thing. Radical redesigns like the Soviet Union and China’s plans under Mao failed. It doesn’t mean radical redesign is always wrong, it means we have to be cautious and people have to prove their case strongly, and in specific detail and answer all critics without shouting. Otherwise the proponents of radical redesign will be ignored and laughed at.
“wont be possible politically in time to fix the climate problem.”
“Crystal ball again.”
Oh come on, its obvious and doesn’t require a crystal ball. Virtually nobody has adopted your low tech ideas as a whole despite issues being discussed since the 1960s, so its unlikely to change suddenly. Even if people did agree to such a restructuring, in practical terms it would take many decades, just think we would have to transition from a huge technical infrastructure to something small, low tech and local, and this requires considerable change. Even permaculture comes up against resistance to change, although I think it will happen with time.
I think capitalism will evolve and change and has to, so I’m no stealth denier. But I dont think it will end up like you think, and we just cant be sure what the future brings. Its better to focus on whats particularly wrong with the current system, including inadequate environmental laws, and corporations with only motive being profit, and work to modify this. We also have better recognition of the commons, and thus the ideological legitimacy of environmental laws, and corporations having a wider range of goals than just profits. There are early signs this is all happening. Completely tearing up the current system, and trying to conceptualise something completely new and totally different, is naive.
248 – nigelj
Thanks for recognizing that the right wing of the USA are only 2.5% of the population. Can’t remember the first time I posted that and many comments have come back with “but those people use 20% of world resources” or “they contribute 18% of the world CO2”. No, they do not. All of the US population does that, not the half on the right side of US politics. They contribute about 1/2 of the US total.
If all the other believers in the US, and around the world, would do what they can to reduce their CO2 footprint, it would make a huge difference. Many believers in developed nations could afford to do quite a lot. Yet, most believers have done very little, but are quite content to point at others and say “YOU should do this or that, and the government(or the UN, or a world court, or a treaty)should force you to do it.”
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/26/headed-for-an-ice-apocalypse_partner/
PIOMAS has been updated here: http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1_CY.png
@Ray Ladbury #241
“The Black Friday Idiocy”
This is the Essence of capitalism. Is there any need to say more? No. It will be written on the tombstone of capitalism:
R.I.P., Black Friday Idiocy.
I can’t wait to see that happen :)
About The Black Friday Idiocy Ray Ladbury mentioned:
Don’t be fooled, the essence of capitalism is MORE material shit -> MORE profit -> MORE exploitation -> MORE ecological destruction -> MORE climate heating asf asf. Nietzsche was ranting about the state in “Zarathustra”, but poor Nietzsche could never imagine the true hell of capitalism, muhahaha. Let me quote from Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”, I will just change the term “state” into “capitalism“, it fits perfectly:
” Capitalism? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples…
Capitalism is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it capitalism: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them…
See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God.”—thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees!
Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!
Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!
Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,- the cold monster!
Everything will it give you, if ye worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes…
It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours!
Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!
Capitalism, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: Capitalism, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: Capitalism, where the slow suicide of all is called “life.”
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft— and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves…
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money— these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness— as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.- and ofttimes also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters.
My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the open air!…
There, where capitalism ceaseth— there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.”
believers?
hehehehe bar humbug
Nemesis @261, even I think that is a good essay. Makes me think of the songs Money and Welcome to the Machine, by Pink Floyd.
This article below is about the current heatwave in Australia that has broken several records. They have done some interesting research on way urban surfaces heat up, good graphic on this, and predictions of a very grim future for humid cities like Darwin, which could virtually become uninhabitable.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11948291
Mr. Know It All @257, well the right wing in America is probably around 2.5% of global population, a small proportion, I’m just not a pedantic nit picker and have no interest in calculating it precisely.
However I disagree that the 2.5% have the same carbon footprint as some third world peasant. Its considerably more because of higher electricity use and consumption. With the elite 2% in America carbon footprint is higher, regardless of politics. Of course there are exceptions, Al Gore has miles of solar panels on the roof of his mansion. This is probably not the example you wanted to hear, but I merely observe.
#254 nigelj said
Killian @234
It was not clear form your post whether you were proposing the standard dictionary definition or something new. Please just stick to the dictionary definition
I will stick to what is accurate. when “standard” meets that criteria, I use it; when it doesn’t, I don’t. The true commons is not what a maladaptive, collapsing, sick, self-destructive, suicidal society says it is, it is what has existed as Commonses forever. You need it to be complex because you want to keep complexity. (The use of want there is not accidental; you don’t understand the concept of designing to needs.) It is, and must be, simple: Share everything, appropriate to scale.
self appointed experts trying to redefine everything in the english language and its driving me nuts.
Sucks to be you, I guess? Neither here nor there what anyone is doing to your displeasure. I look at facts, analyze, provide the best answers I can. Period. What you or “they” do is immaterial to this.
If you want to propose something different ok but make it clear you are ‘proposing’
It is what it is. I observe, I tell. Period. You can accept that or not. Not my problem either way.
and dont just assume everyone is on your wave length
I *know* virtually no one is.
Your quoted dictionary definition is fine. Most countries with any sense already have laws and processes governing the commons at national or local level anyway.
Huh? There are zero countries with anything approaching a true Commons at any scale worth discussing.
#256 nigelj said some really crazy isht!!
Dude, I really get tired of your crap:
I think it will be a long time before it’s otherwise, and you can be idealistic and think some nirvana like that may eventually happen
You got beat up a lot in school for unwarranted pedantry , no doubt.
Child.
I don’t see it for a very long time
Who cares? Do you have ANY point to make?
“No. A commons is a commmons. They are always limited in some sense. E.g., why should a Russian farmer near Moscow have anything to say about the watering schedule for a farm in Iowa? We must be realistic, no? As Ostrom says, scale. My RG concept uses scale-based problem solving. Not authority, not power, not jurisdiction, but scale. Only scale and only the areas and people affected.”
Well yes it could and should be decided locally, but as stated above I find it hard to see how any community can function without a power structure or jurisdiction.
Never have I ever said zero structure. Ever. One more… let’s see… almost certain to be one more zero-IQ straw man right around the corner…
Such things are human nature. Obviously such things need not be highly authoritarian, but nature of human species leads inevitably to a power structure
Bingo! Except, and I have said this before to you… more than once… we *all* lived in Commonses until agrarian times, most up to only 4k years ago according to new research on the issue, and some few still do. And those few are the only examples of sustainable systems we have, so, *IF* we have a “human nature,” it is to live in a Commons. 290k out of 300k years.
A thousand strikes, yyyyyyyyyyerrrrrr OUT!
And then he said some other word salad stuff, but I have overworked my garbage disposal already. Unteachable, unreachable, unintelligent monkey typing. Please, god, keep the other 999 away from me.
I used to like monkeys.
Nigel 253,
“, the problem is not mine. You have been simultaneously talking about lower population and higher density living, and so utterly confusing the issue.”
Umm… that is the issue.
Nigel, I think the confusion is because you, like most people, do not think quantitatively as a matter of course.
I’ve said it over and over by now, and perhaps you just aren’t capable of grasping this simple relationship:
As population declines globally, population density increases locally.
(And, to be sure you are not further confused, “globally” can apply to any entity, as in my example of the entire US population decreasing and concentrating on the coasts. Could be China, or NZ, or an entire continent, whatever.)
Do you understand this relationship? If you do understand, do you agree or disagree?
#255 Digby Scorgie said Killian @211
I had a look at the article you referred to. It confirms what I’ve felt for a long time now: humanity is in “overshoot mode”. After overshoot comes collapse. So I too am curious to know when this collapse will occur. Probably a lot of people hope they can avoid the collapse, but I reckon they can’t.
Overshoot and collapse, rather than being mutually exclusive, are, in my opinion, the same process. Like a wave crashing to shore, overshoot is the crest, bubbles on the sand are the end result.
The numbers already say we have been collapsing for a long time. What makes it a collapse in the end is whether we go so far we can’t control the landing, and then it’s still collapse, just controlled or chaotic.
The issue is whether we choose one or the other, but make no mistake, either one will have been our choice.
There’s no more time for “they” this or that: We are sustainability, or we’re not.
The answer is in the mirror. Sustainability is ultimately local.
nigel 256,
“Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc.”
Two problems:
1. Dust Bowl. Private “ownership” does not prevent people from destroying the resource, because short-term interests always outweigh long-term.
2. Soviet Union and China unproductive farms are standard right-wing memes, but there was no “collective ownership” in any meaningful sense.
As I’ve tried to explain, the concept of “ownership” is not a simple one. Farms are successful or not depending on their management, not who is able to sell the land.
So, the government could be the “owner” of the land overtly, and if the government is not corrupt or incompetent, it can allow a business to use the land to grow crops, while charging a fair “rent”, and also collect a “security deposit” to cover damage to the resource.
But, unlike the current “private ownership” paradigm, the “tenant” would not be able to profit by selling the land for e.g. development of housing, and would not be allowed to profit from anti-competitive practices.
So, what crops are grown is decided by the farmer as determined by the market, and the farmer is obviously motivated to be productive.
@nigelji, #263
” Nemesis @261, even I think that is a good essay. Makes me think of the songs Money and Welcome to the Machine, by Pink Floyd.”
Love to see that we agree on that. That Money Machine called capitalism will eat us all if no massive paradigm shift happens, that’s for sure. Now, how does a true, successful capitalist see it?:
” Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.”
– Bill Gates
Yeah, that’s how capitalism argues all the time: If you critizise capitalism, you are a communist and you have to move to North Korea. So, let’s stick to the Money Machine resp The Black Friday Idiocy, as no one wants to move to North Korea, right? :) Btw:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/06/bill-gates-climate-scientists-geoengineering
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603974/harvard-scientists-moving-ahead-on-plans-for-atmospheric-geoengineering-experiments/
No, I don’t want to move to North Korea, as I got nothing to lose, no children, nothing, so I can afford to trust in capitalism ;)
Killian @267, I don’t respond to your repeated, relentless personal abuse, and unintelligible writing.
269 – Killian
“The answer is in the mirror. Sustainability is ultimately local.”
Exactly right. Everyone needs to stop saying “the government needs to do this or that”, and just do it themselves.
260 Nemisis
“This is the Essence of capitalism.” The essence of capitalism, combined with free markets, is that it unleashes the creativity of people to produce products that other people are willing to pay for. Many of those products help others, prolong life, make it easier, more enjoyable, etc. Yes, some products may do harm to the environment – if you think that is so, then don’t buy those items. It’s easy. The solution is in the mirror, as Killian suggests.
265- nigelj
“However I disagree that the 2.5% have the same carbon footprint as some third world peasant.”
Who are you disagreeing with? I did not say that their carbon footprints were the same – that’s a ridiculous claim. I’m saying that if the believers will do their part, the CO2 problem will start to become less of an issue; then you can work on getting the skeptics to change their behavior. But you’d rather point fingers and complain about the skeptics than to take concrete steps yourself. Right?
Zebra @268
“As population declines globally, population density increases locally.”
I have already agreed with this in my last post. The issues I disagree on were some of your other assertions. But your assertion is academic, as growing population is also concentrating in cities, so its not a terribly convincing argument to reduce population growth. There are better, simpler arguments for benefits of smaller populations.
I’m sick of your criticisms that I don’t think quantitatively. Im far from perfect, but I’m not a totally stupid person. I just got a perfect score an a short 10 question IQ test that was allegedly so hard nobody can get a perfect score, and only 1% of people get more than half the questions correct. No guesses either. I know these things don’t prove a lot, but I’m just saying I’m not a totally stupid person.
I just think these sorts of environmental issues are complex, and do involve a degree of ethics, in addition to quantitative ideas about population. I know its hard changing human “monkey” nature you keep going on about, but we have to push things slowly in better direction and these things are not entirely fixed, humans are pretty amazing. We no longer eat people for example!
You and Killian are both very rude and emotive. You are so similar in many ways. Maybe its best I leave you people to bludgeon everyone over the head, until you force them to agree, and you will be happy then.
Killian
“Bingo! Except, and I have said this before to you… more than once… we *all* lived in Commonses until agrarian times, most up to only 4k years ago according to new research on the issue, and some few still do. And those few are the only examples of sustainable systems we have, so, *IF* we have a “human nature,” it is to live in a Commons. 290k out of 300k years’
Blah blah yes humanity used to live like that sharing and no private property etc etc. Has it occured to you this was because things wre utterly different back then in almost every way? We have evolved since then, and our institutions have evolved into something quite different. Perhaps crack open a text on evolution. I suspect you may not even agree with theory of evolution.
We ain’t going back, unless we devolve into hunter gatherers, and population of just a few million globally. and you provide inadequate case that we should go back, with total lack of a sensible evaluation of full range of evidence.
Your approach and world view has all the same shallow logical fallacies as climate denialists.
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
Apparently, I’m not what Mr. IAT calls a ‘believer’. I’m pointing at MYSELF and every other American consumer, and saying WE shouldn’t force anyone else to pay for OUR marginal climate-change costs with their homes, livelihoods or lives; nor should any of US assume WE won’t be forced to pay an unanticipated, disproportionate price ourselves!
I’m saying that WE therefore should instruct OUR elected representatives to enact a national, revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff, so that every one of US pays just a few bucks more for a tankful of gasoline at the pump, enough to make available carbon-neutral alternatives price-competitive, and thereby drive the build-out of alternative supplies. Poor Mr. IAT seems to think he’ll be forced to buy as much fossil carbon as he does now. I can scarcely imagine how that might be done! In reality, under CF&D-BAT Mr. IAT would have the same choices HE’s always had, while the ‘invisible hand’ reduced OUR aggregate carbon footprint to zero.
Mr. IAT seems not to grasp that CF&D-BAT would only ‘force’ fossil fuel producers, who after all are the people who dig the stuff out of geologic sequestration and sell it to us for all the energy market will bear, to account for the marginal climate-change impacts of their business in their production costs. They wouldn’t be forced to raise their prices but would, as always, decide for themselves whether to raise prices, reduce profit margins, or leave the fossil carbon business and invest in something else instead. Consumers, myself and Mr. IAT included, would still have the choice of how much fuel to buy instead of something else we want, as always.
The dividend provision of CF&D-BAT means the average consumer neither gains nor loses money, but Mr. IAT apparently doesn’t realize he can make money by reducing his CO2 emissions below those of his Trumpist neighbor, who certainly wasn’t forced to buy that F250 to haul his speedboat to Lake Mead and back. OTOH, Mr. IAT would be free to roll coal if he wishes, needing only to decide how much he’s willing to pay for the privilege.
If CF&D-BAT is enacted, the only big net losers will be fossil fuel investors stuck with unsaleable fossil carbon reserves. Shrewd investors will act in a timely manner, leaving the less shrewd holding stranded assets. That’s life in the business world! It’s OK with me, if not with Mr. IAT, though perhaps he’s not really a ‘conservative’. He should be reminded that in a pluralistic democracy, not every voter ‘wins’ in every election. In the USA, he may not win even when he’s in the majority! In any case, he’ll never be forced to live with the results: if he decides to emigrate, no one will stop him from leaving ;^)!
>Killian … Overshoot and collapse, rather than being mutually exclusive, are, in my opinion, the same process.
Errrr — nope. That’s like thinking oversteering equals a car wreck. It can certainly lead to one. Or you can recover without crashing.
You can at least look at the pictures, online at:
http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/footnotes-overshoot-graphs_fichiers/catton-3.gif
Even better, read the book:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/63fae3tq9780252008184.html
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Overshoot_2.png
zebra @270
“Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc.
“Two problems:
“1. Dust Bowl. Private “ownership” does not prevent people from destroying the resource, because short-term interests always outweigh long-term.”
“2. Soviet Union and China unproductive farms are standard right-wing memes, but there was no “collective ownership” in any meaningful sense.”
Come on, one example of dust bowl proves nothing in science, which requires wide evidence, and weight of evidence argument at the very least. Especially as dust bowl it was partly weather related, and no decent environmental laws at the time.
Your comments on Soviet Union are just hard to fathom. If this isn’t collective ownership I’m mystified what is. You can in fact define it any way you like, but it sure wasn’t private ownership. Look, the weight of real world modern evidence is collective and state ownership on large scale doesn’t work terribly well, look at Venezueala, Soviet Union, Cuba, China under Mao, how many examples do we need? They all have massive economic and environmental failure worse than capitalist countries (which are bad enough).
Of course private ownership is not be definition perfect. It must go with strong environmental laws.
And public ownership has provably worked well for some things like education and healthcare in some cases. And we understand why.
“As I’ve tried to explain, the concept of “ownership” is not a simple one. Farms are successful or not depending on their management, not who is able to sell the land.”
Thankyou yoda. Nobody frigging said it is.
“So, the government could be the “owner” of the land overtly, and if the government is not corrupt or incompetent, it can allow a business to use the land to grow crops, while charging a fair “rent”, and also collect a “security deposit” to cover damage to the resource.”
Ok fine, potentially good idea. China leases land. Of course the magic word is if the government is not corrupt.
And please appreciate this is totally different from what Killian and myself understand as ownership, because Killian is talking about far more than land to considering all assets (although who knows he is as clear as mud).
What I think you are really talking about is renting or leasing land off the state. I can see where you are going and it could have benefits by removing power of owners to cause problems of certain types, but is hardly going to revolutionise sustainablity. How likely do you think it is that society would actually embrace your proposal? I would say don’t hold your breath, humanity is firmly on a private ownership mode currently, and that includes land. Mention leasing land and The Republicans would have a fit.
What your proposal does is weaken the power of rogue owners to wreck things, and gives the state and ultimately public slightly more control over how land is used. I think it makes some sense, but the main factor is environmental law. China is excellent proof of this as they lease land, but this has clearly not resolved all environmental problems and things have only improved with strong arm of the state.
“But, unlike the current “private ownership” paradigm, the “tenant” would not be able to profit by selling the land for e.g. development of housing, and would not be allowed to profit from anti-competitive practices.”
This solves property speculation and economic problems, but doesn’t seem too relevant to environment.In fact it might be mainly of value in terms of economic issues.
“So, what crops are grown is decided by the farmer as determined by the market, and the farmer is obviously motivated to be productive.”
Yes, and?
I think your land ownership proposal is ok, but I was really talking about private versus public ownership in much wider terms. I think in wider terms the evidence clearly points one way that best societies have mainly private ownership of assets, and about 25% public ownership (broadly speaking) eg Scandinavia etc. When you move away from this in either direction there seem to be problems. In other words there appears to be a sort of optimal balance looking at global evidence. I’m pretty sure the economist.com did an article praising Scandinavia.
Mr. Know It All
“However I disagree that the 2.5% have the same carbon footprint as some third world peasant.”
“Who are you disagreeing with? I did not say that their carbon footprints were the same – that’s a ridiculous claim. I’m saying that if the believers will do their part, the CO2 problem will start to become less of an issue; then you can work on getting the skeptics to change their behavior. But you’d rather point fingers and complain about the skeptics than to take concrete steps yourself. Right?”
I’m pretty sure you have argued that the 2.5% aren’t worse, but forget it. Maybe I read you wrong.
Most of my criticisms of sceptics isn’t their “behaviour”. It’s their scepticsm of the science, which is just so infuriating, and its misleading form of scepticism as well.
I do roughly agree with your comments about the power of capitalism to generate useful goods and services, but its a fact markets dont always work well, in certain cases. This is the tragedy of the commons. This can be well fixed with appropriate laws, processes and penalties.
I suggest get used to it, because as things get worse people will start to realise this most acutely, and will demand better environmental law. We have seen this in recent elections in my country.
Of course half of the equation is personal initiative, but this cannot solve wider scale issues.
And yes carbon fee and dividend seems the most practical proposal overall, that doesn’t force anyone, gets to taxing the root source of problem, is revenue neutral so is not big government, and gives money back to public, and helps subsidise renewable energy, just the little bit needed to get it across the line. Great idea.
Whats not to like? The Republicans will find something no doubt. Never happy. If its not hard right its apparently communism.
Hank Roberts @277
So would you care to hazard a guess as to when we’ll see the minimum in the load curve of Catton’s Model D? (I assume this is the most likely scenario in our case.)
What’s a good image for the Photovoltaics adoption curve? Chart. Is this fair?
https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-projections-of-the-international-energy-agency/
“…a disconnect to reality so profound that I decided I had found my new frontier.” –from the Introduction
276 – Mal Adapted
I did check out your link on the Carbon Fee and Dividend, and I watched the video. They claim that the “fee” will be $15/ton initially increasing by $10/ton/year. They claim each $1/ton adds about $0.009/gallon of gasoline. By my calcs, after 20 years, the fee will be $215/ton. Sounds like that would add 215 x 0.009 dollars per gallon or $1.935/gallon of gasoline. That would bring the total price of gasoline up to about $5/gallon – not much above where it was in 2008, when a barrel of oil cost $150 +/-. That is not going to do much of anything to curb gasoline use – especially in 20 years after inflation destroys what’s left of the dollar. Of course, in reality, what they claim is the plan isn’t really the plan – once the foot is in the door, they’ll knock the door off it’s hinges and the “fee” will increase more like $50 or more per year – not $10.
They also claim: “About two-thirds of households will break even or receive more than they would pay in higher prices. This feature will inject billions into the economy, protect family budgets, free households to make independent choices about their energy usage, spur innovation and build aggregate demand for low-carbon products at the consumer level.”
They do not say why people who receive a dividend would suddenly decide to use renewable energy and demand low-carbon products. Here in the PNW, I’m guessing a large chunk of them will just use the money to buy weed! :) Seriously! It will increase aggregate demand alright – for Chinese crap and muscle cars! If not, why not?
KIA 273: Everyone needs to stop saying “the government needs to do this or that”, and just do it themselves.
BPL: Right, you guys. Stop burning coal in 1-2 GWe electric power plants, and stop refining gasoline from oil. I know you’ve all got a refinery complex and a coal-fired power plant!
Oh, Hank, you do try so hard, but, sadly for you, I said same *process*, not the same *thing.* Processes have parts, sections, tipping points, sometimes non-reversible. To say overshoot is not part of the process of collapse is plainly goofy. The only difference between overshoot and collapse is pretty much nothing except the latter describes overshoot reaching irreversibility. If one were to arrest a societal collapse – I know of no case of it happening – that doesn’t mean it wasn’t collapsING, but only that it was prevented in some way.
Oversteering is the direct cause of the final state of “wreck.” There is no moment when they become separate. They are merely names for parts of the same process. I suppose in your world being a teen isn’t part of growing up.
From Wiki: “The consequence of overshoot is called a collapse”
Oh, yeah, very separable, those two.
Paul Chefurka? A blogger? And a quote that has nothing to do with your point? (It does echo things I’ve said here for years, though, so… thanks for the support.) Well… not a great rebuttal. Catton did great work. Well aware. Nothing I say is against his basic theory, so far as I know. No disrespect to Paul. He and I have crossed paths before, primarily on the oil drum, IIRC.
Buh-bye.
#275 nigelj said More veggies!
humanity used to live like that sharing and no private property
You’re not paying attention. Sustainable societies never stopped. They still exist.
Has it occured to you this was because things wre utterly different back then in almost every way?
A savant! Anyone think he has any clue how close he got there?
We have evolved since then
I am glad I was not drinking something when I read that.
and our institutions have evolved into something quite different.
So close! Yet, so very, very far.
Perhaps crack open a text on evolution. I suspect you may not even agree with theory of evolution.
He can’t possibly be that ______… can he? Even for an Ad Hom, that’s weak.
We ain’t going back, unless we devolve into hunter gatherers
That danged Straw Man just will not stay down.
Your approach and world view has all the same shallow logical fallacies as climate denialists.
Aw. Such a cute little Ad Hom.
This was fun, but you really did almost glimpse something, so I responded. I really think this needs to be the last time.
#256 nigelStrawMan said Private ownership means people take care of resources better.
Does he really think the U.S. has produced anywhere from 20% to 50% of the worlds’s resources? Does he really believe the OECD doesn’t live off the lifeblood of the rest of the world? Does he really believe the OECD, and especially the U.S., has not off-shored the costs, all types, of our massive consumption?
We have pushed ourselves to the point even some climate scientists have declared the condition an existential threat, but we have used resources well?
All while sustainable societies, not ruining their environments, live in egalitarian, non-capitialist process…
Every post you make belongs in the Bore Hole.
Hope everybody had a pleasant Thanksgiving (including those outside the US, for whom the period here so-called is of course not a holiday.)
Nigel said:
“Private ownership means people take care of resources better. Just look at Soviet Union or China etc. Private farms are many times more efficient and productive than collective forms of ownership of farms in China and Soviet union, Venezuela etc. However like I said previously, scale comes into this, and very small operations seem to work ok if collectively owned in worker share owning cooperative structure, but only “ok”.”
A couple of points there:
1) Just because there were spectacular failures of large-scale collective ownership doesn’t mean that ‘it can’t be done.’ I’m not taking a position one way or the other on desirability of centralized ownership. (And, BTW, I’m not calling it “collective ownership” because, though the Communist Party in Russia did call it that, the reality is that it was in effect Party ownership–the local workers had no managerial control. If they had, the whole enterprise would have worked better.)
I’m just pointing out that early failures do not disprove possibility, any more than the existence of the ‘gag roll’ of unworkable flying machines some may remember proves that aviation is a collective delusion today. That’s particularly true since the failures of Soviet collectivism and Venezuelan socialism involved large amounts of technical ignorance and sheer wrong-headed hubris. (Much like Trumpian ‘economics’, actually.)
2) The extremely widespread failures of environmental ‘management’–which seem to have been discussed at some length while I was away eating Turkey and watching football games with relatives, and so scarcely require additional examples here–would seem to contradict the proposition that “Private ownership means people take care of resources better.”
They may take care of *their* resources better–but most of the world is not owned by ‘them’, and anyway we are living more and more in a system in which corporations own practically everything. My intuition says that in that situation, pure ‘market forces’ may well matter less in the short to medium term than the corporate management tools applied, because the latter will be the lens through which the former is perceived. And in that respect, the corporatist paradigm starts to look rather like the statist one.
3) “Only ‘ok'” is, I think, a one-sided assessment. Gross output per unit may not have been outstanding for some of the ‘very small’ traditional agricultural communities, as compared with modern technological agriculture, but those practices look pretty darn good from a sustainability point of view, having in some cases sustained their societies admirably for many centuries with little environmental degradation.
4) We seem all to be implicitly agreeing with Killian that “scale matters.”
@Mr Know it all, #273
Cool, no problem for me ;)
” Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.”
– Bill Gates
Yeah, that’s how capitalism argues all the time: If you critizise capitalism, you are a communist and you have to move to North Korea. No, I don’t want to move to North Korea, I can afford to trust in capitalism as I got nothing to lose, no children, nothing, so just walk on, lovely capitalism, I love you :) Oh, please, can we have more Black Fridays? It’s a form of culture, real, inspiring, creative culture, I love it, rock on, lovely capitalism :)
Quoted @211
“Ecological collapse refers to a situation where an ecosystem suffers a drastic, possibly permanent, reduction in carrying capacity for all organisms, often resulting in mass extinction. Usually, an ecological collapse is precipitated by a disastrous event occurring on a short time scale.”
The trouble is defining drastic and short time scales. Evidence suggests asterioid impact or gigantic volcanic eruption have led to near instant impacts and rapid mass extinctions.
However we are altering climate pretty rapidly as well even if its ramping up over a century as opposed to instant.
Perhaps “short term time scales” is defined as faster than organism can evolve to deal with change or beyond its abilities to deal with the challenge. Perhaps it also means faster than society and its institutions can evolve to deal with change, which is ominous sounding problem.
However humans are adaptable and innovative in dealing with sudden problems, and time will tell whether we deal with pollution and resource problems by slowing down or deal with problems before they become catastrophic.
Then we have impacts of pollution and resource use. it seems intuitively obvious these are already pushing boundaries of the planet in some ways. It is equally intuitively obvious a population heading to 10 billion will increase pressure especially if they all want middle class lifestyles. It does not seem possible no matter how clever we are. Population in particular is an issue.
But if things continue the way they are with bad trends how would collapse unfold? Well an asteroid impact would put catastrophic pressure on our complex systems. Pollution and resource use are different, and problems could manifest in agonising drawn out process of slowly reducing life expectancy, famines, and slow population decline from these things. Or humanity may just reach a stagnant phase. It would not necessarily be sudden extinction, or as simple as problem colony of animals face if subjected to adverse environment.
The things humanity can do right now and also longer term following the precautionary principle are 1) reduce dependence on fossil fuels 2) reduce rates of population growth 3) reduce pollution and 4) more moderate consumption and less waste.
However the difficult question is what level of consumption makes sense for the immediate future? How much should we aim to scale back? You can apply ‘principles’ like “only consume what you need” which is sensible sounding, but rather hard to actually define. Do we need computers?
We have to moderate our consumption, but don’t want to overshoot with deliberately very low consumption and primitive life that also achieves nothing because resources will still eventually be used up over millenia sooner or later leaving only recycline and innovation. You also have potential blame game where poor are blamed for worlds problems and told their aspirations for higher consuming life are a problem. Its a very complicated issue.
Then there are competing visions from Zebra and Killian of people living mostly in large efficient cities, or smaller sharing dispersed communities. Both interesting visions but completely different, so hard to see that both could be correct.
I think humanity should aim for more sensible consumption with acceptance of apartment size living and don’t buy a whole lot of things you don’t really need that don’t add much real value (nutribullets, huge televisions etc). However I don’t see sense in trying to live without electric appliances completely. But this is personal choice and only my opinion. This is a middle ground approach to sensible use of resources.
Killian: “The answer is in the mirror. Sustainability is ultimately local.”
Mr. KIA: “Exactly right. Everyone needs to stop saying “the government needs to do this or that”, and just do it themselves.”
Except that we don’t live in self-sufficient little enclaves, but rather in a complex global web of commerce. Unless you want to go all Unabomber and eat food fertilized with your own crap, you are going to be consuming food from a grocery store, fuel from a gas station (or wall outlet) and so on. The problem is that the economy as it exists now doesn’t even provide an option to live sustainably–and the overwhelming majority of people will continue to consume as part of that economy. Moreover, there is no way a society of unabombers is going to produce enough food, etc. to sustain a population of 10 billion humans around mid century.
Congratulations. You’ve solved the problem for a world that does not exist and can never exist unless human population crashes by a factor of a hundred or so.
Elon Musk’s giant (100Mw) lithium ion battery completed by Tesla in SA’s Mid North in under 100 days – goes online about Dec 1st
http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/australian-battery-built-by-billionaire-elon-musk-to-be-powered-up-for-first-time-as-testing-phase-begins/news-story/c122917b8e143cf3ae7f2cf53c67914d
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/11/24/elon-musk-completes-south-australias-battery-ahead-100-day-deadline
re 264 nigelj
http://www.thebubble.com/argentina-had-to-import-energy-from-neighboring-countries-because-of-the-heat-wave/
see the figures, argentina imported 1250 MW, vs tesla’s 100 MW battery (cost $33 mln)These things are happening all the time, somewhere, but we only hear about it via msm when it affects first world anglophone nations.
eg california’s fires are now a forgotten thing of the long distant past, unless one lives there and lost your home.
meanwhile humans cannot cope working outdoors continually at +38C – or as your link said +35C in high humidity regions.
2015 – https://theconversation.com/el-nino-is-over-but-has-left-its-mark-across-the-world-59823
meanwhile the Arctic zone is again up to +20C above average temps in recent weeks, maybe a similar starting point to winter as occurred last year …. maybe a new ‘pattern’ but only Time ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EzURpTF5c8 ) will tell.
Ode To KIA et al https://youtu.be/ymgYEQgSqLI?t=2m55s :-)
November 19 – 25, 2017 406.14 ppm
November 19 – 25, 2016 403.82 ppm
November 19 – 25, 2005 382.99 ppm
Is there any chance that we will see a number under 400 again in our lifetimes, or say, before 2050? I won’t be around for that one.
Cheers
Mike
282 – patrick
Here’s a good chart showing the PV piece of the pie. It shows “solar” electrical power generation, but does not break out if it’s PV or thermal solar:
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/IER-Grid-Project-Electricity-Generation-20131.png
284 – BPL
Let “them” burn it. For yourself, install grid-tied PV on your roof and go net zero. If all the believers do this, many of those coal burners will go away; charge your electric cars with your own PV, and many of those refineries will go away too.
287 – K
I think he means if you own a resource, you will treat that particular resource carefully. That is mostly true.
289 – Nemesis and 291 Ray L
What system do you propose that is better than capitalism; and can you point to a nation under that system that people are moving to by the millions, like they are here in the USA?
292 – Thomas
I’m going to invest in Fire Truck stock. ;)
Kevin McKinney @288
Thank’s for your thoughtful comments. But I’m resigned to the fact it looks like large scale collective ownership just doesn’t work terribly well overall. Please note that this is both economically and environmentally. There’s a lot of historical evidence, and also an understanding of reasons why it doesn’t, to do with human nature, need for competition etc. I’m not sure it can be made to work better than private ownership.
Yes I know it depends on exactly what is meant by collective, but I have to generalise a bit because of time limitations writing posts.
Collective ownership of land might be viable as Zebra points out.
Please note I think collective ownership works well for some things like state owned education, for fairly obvious reasons in that private markets causes some problems here, and also there’s a question of making sure education is easily accessed by everyone.
For all Americas faults, private ownership has been largely consistent with resolving at least some environmental problems better than in China or communist countries. Also democracy seems to produce better environmental outcomes than dictatorships, unless you have a benign and sensible dictator I suppose.
I agree completely with what you say about corporate ownership. The corporaist paradigm does start to look like the statist one. The real danger, imho is large corporate monopolies, abusing their power and with a state too timid to do anything about this. At least with governments and state ownership, we can vote them out of power if they go wrong and state owned assets aren’t being well managed.
Again its a complex issue with many models of ownership and its evolving over time. Many things are now owned by pension funds so effectively owned by millions of individuals, but decisions are mostly made by a few profit driven fund managers. Then there was Thatchers share owning democracy, but the scale is such that influence of individual shareholders is limited, and ownership ends up back in the hands of large corporates and funds.
Scale matters, but possibly not in the way Killian and yourself entirely think. Smaller farms with local or family ownership do appear more efficient, with even the UN promoting these. This is as opposed to huge farms with anonymous pension fund types of owners.
But try making cars or computers small and local. Some things suit large scale.
Plus the difference between small scale and large scale is unlikely to be huge. Small hippie type sharing communities often go badly wrong, they are not a panacea. I used to be involved in one of these. All communities have negative trouble makers and lazy people regardless of size. Orwells Animal Farm sums it all up.
I think the “mixed economy” mixed ownership models of Europe work best, looking at evidence. In other words systems that combine private and collective / state ownership as appropriate on economic and social basis. Private ownership makes general sense, but collective or state ownership makes sense where the market has problems and doesn’t supply adequate services.
However I have no problem if people want to start small scale local shared ownership experiments, I’m not standing in their way.
Ray Ladbury @291, exactly, I have told Killian this myself so many times. We live in a complex society. Even if he is right in small, low tech, and local such a transition could take centuries, and is not of much use in resolving the big climate change threat. I also just don’t see it happening.
It also just doesn’t matter whether we conserve resources or not, because we will still use them up. We might as well use lithium for batteries, there’s no point leaving it in the ground. Then eventually we will recycle what we have, and already we have the possibility of aluminium batteries as well.
Of course we must reduce the huge levels of demand implicit in an exploding population by reducing rates of growth. We may also have to accept lower gdp growth, and it may not be a bad thing.
Killian @287
“#256 nigelStrawMan said Private ownership means people take care of resources better.”
“Does he really think the U.S. has produced anywhere from 20% to 50% of the worlds’s resources?”Does he really believe the OECD doesn’t live off the lifeblood of the rest of the world? Does he really believe the OECD, and especially the U.S., has not off-shored the costs, all types, of our massive consumption?”
So Killian accuses me of making a strawman argument by my pointing out a simple fact totally relevant to the issues he raised. He then seems to doubt the USA has huge economic output. Hello? Is it worth discussing anything with someone like this?
He the changes subject to some bizarre statement about America using imported materials a huge “straw man” of his own and utterly irrelevant to working out whether private ownership is more or less efficient than collective ownership. Also ignoring that the USA export a lot of raw materials.
He then says MY posts should be in borehole. Ha ha ha I’m dying laughing.
I’m a critic of capitalism, and sometimes American foreign policy. At least I do it intelligently and constructively, not at the level of a demented ranting fool. You see this is what people like Killian (and Donald trump) eventually do, they are so insulting, they eventually push everyone else down to their own sordid creepy level.
Thomas @293,exactly. We all live in bubbles only seeing little bits of world events. We both try to see wider picture, but there are only so many hours in the day. And of course the media only tell us what they want, and what makes for inflammatory headline click bait.
It’s especially worrisome with climate change. because its a phenomenon where we must have full picture in order to make sense of it.
KIA, whatever number that was:
“They do not say why people who receive a dividend would suddenly decide to use renewable energy and demand low-carbon products.”
Because people who receive a dividend–like everyone else in the economy–will respond to the price signal. Gas costs more, so EVs are more competitive. Coal plants are even less competitive, so they are retired at an accelerated schedule. Et cetera.
No big mystery. The beauty of the carbon fee concept is that it acts across broad swathes of the economy, sharing both pain and gain pretty widely. It isn’t just ‘people receiving dividends’. Or just people paying taxes.
And of course, there is nothing saying that a carbon fee must be the only strategy one employs. If you only had one, it probably would be one of the better choices, but there are many, many policy levers one can push to enable people to make greener choices. Scanning some of the national plans submitted to the Paris process is interesting in this regard. They are all publicly available.