A bimonthly thread for discussions on solutions and responses to climate change. For climate science topics, please comment on the Unforced Variations thread.
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697 Responses to "Forced Responses: Dec 2018"
Ron R.says
Nigel, #243. A good modern example. Again, if human populations were much lower, our collective impact on the environment would be much less. But as human populations continue to rise, our impacts, not just on wildlife, but on so many other environmental issues, like deforestation, resource depletion, climate change, pollution of land, sea and air etc. etc. will only multiply. I don’t know why the physics of this isn’t obvious to people. Without a universal will to change, the situation will become ever more dire until the end when only Maslowian priorities are left. But for it to work long term, it should be a willing change by all, informed not just by our heads, but by our hearts. On that score, I believe that indigenous peoples have a lot to teach us moderns.
AB: Christians are devoutly dedicated to ritualistic cannibalism.
BPL: An old, old jibe. Stupid, too.
Killiansays
Unintelligent Comment: On another issue, to clarify something I mentioned earlier, I think the communal ownership and sharing nature of indigenous tribes is more related to the small size and limited resources so this was a natural outcome, not a moral choice
There is absolutely no support for this. You dreamed this out of your ass. “I think” does not qualify as legitimate scholarly analysis. I have posted links to Peter Gray’s essays. I have posted links to Helga’s work and mentioned her.
Stop talking nonsense.
Private ownership seems embedded to me, and experiments to the contrary have not been convincing.
Societies existing millennia is not convincing? Have you studied the imperfect, but far better than your precious selfishness, Mondragon?
When you begin to devise and execute plans that will reward you with higher numbers of buffalo in twenty years, and to devise and executive plans for increasing secondary growth meadowland and younger forest, to achieve resource goals unlikely to be realized in a single lifetime, it is no longer just reacting in instinctive or even conditioned ways to your environment. You are no longer just an animal in a ecological niche, you transform each ecosystem to your own needs by conceptualizing the needs of all the other living things in that ecosystem, and promoting an overall diversity and a stability that favours human survival. You need not find your niche, you make it.
You need a different order of conceptual models. You will have think more comprehensively, and in longer chains of causality that last for hundreds of years. These kinds of cultural paradigms cannot become normalized, nor even appear, overnight. It takes generations of observation and discussion to reach the level regularly found among hunter-gatherers. The conceptualization, of relationships between plants and animals, as parts of integrated communities, and the operationalization of this understanding into deliberate and practical interventions, goes beyond mere “planning ahead”.
We have evidence, from hunter-gatherer cultures living 12,000 years ago, 2000 years before the domestication of plants and animals, of cooperative efforts which appear to have created purely ritual and ceremonial sites bringing hundreds and possibly thousands of people together -possibly several times a year- from over vast inhabited wilderness teeming with wildlife and rich plant life. These were not competing cultures, they were cooperating, The sites were places of healing and ritual. In one article, one of the sites is even even fancifully referred to as a possible source of the myth of a garden of Eden. These cultures were not associated with any evidence of warfare or violent death.
We evolved without much need to be “warding off the neighbouring tribe” since there WERE no “tribes” until fairly recently. Tribal organization is due to the development of a combination of corporate groups based on lineal descent (patrilineal or matrilineal) involved in allocating primary rights to a fixed natural resource (a salmon run, an area of land producing wild cereals reliably, a herd of animals like reindeer or cattle etc). It also usually involves sedentism for a part of the year at least, a higher rate of population growth than among mobile hunter-gatherers, and some sort of status ranking, both among individuals and also among various lineages. Higher population growth rates would inevitably lead to competition over fixed resources, and this, inevitably to some fighting between groups with opposing claims. Hence, warfare. but we do not see any real evidence of warfare much before 10,000 BP, although of course we do see evidence of murder and cannibalism.
Proposition: It is unlikely that anatomically modern humans evolved in a context of frequent violent group conflict among themselves. Most contemporary studies of mobile foragers have revealed a consistent economic pattern involving reciprocal access to resources. This means that when the rain did not come, or the antelope failed to migrate near your own home range, you did not have to go take away your more fortunate neighbour’s food or territory, you simply went and lived with them for the duration. Since your neighbours were usually relatives of one kind or another -even fictive kin will do- they could and did do the same when the position was reversed.
In fact, you might just want to go visit your neighbours anyway, in the course of a yearly round, and they might just want to come visit you. Picture this not in terms of any permanent houses and villages, but as a set of inter-related people, say 2000 strong, spread out over thousands of square miles, all of them living in small camping groups.
Mobile foragers live in camping groups of 3-5 families, and these are fluid rather than fixed in their membership. Every few weeks or months when camps break up and move, chances are that at least some families will go camp with other friends or relatives than the ones they were living with before. Camps are loosely organized around kinship lines, but residential patterns are neither nor necessarily matrilocal nor patrilocal.
But we do have a problem with inequality that could be fixed at least in theory, and within the current economic paradigm.
No, it can’t. That is an assertion with no backing. It’s just you stating what *you* want as if it were a scholarly theory. This economic paradigm creates winners and losers because it is inherently competitive. The Dem Socialist countries do a good job of evening out ineqaulity, but they do nothing to curb growth, resource consumption or climate. Very rough equality – they still have unemployment and poor people – in a dying system is rather pointless.
Now, please DO NOT respond to this. Contact Helga and ask her her views on sharing cultures. I do not need to discuss this with you. It is for your edification and so you wil stop posting foolish opinion as if it were meaningful.
nigeljsays
Killian @253
“What about the Amish? Kibbutzes?”
What you have quoted here is a religious community with some form of shared ownership, not a great model for the world, especially given you are so critical of religion. Israels kibbutzes are admirable but are a response to their unique situation.
Most attempts at shared ownership fail, for example state communism of the USSR, popular communism of venezuela, and the majority of small alternative communities fail in my country and in the links I posted.
A few examples that seem work due to religious adherence or whatever is not terribly compelling to me as a model that could be scaled up globally, but good luck to them. And do they actually work that well anyway? I respect the people commited to them. Its just not my thing personally, and it doesnt seem a compelling model for some transformation of humanity.
Public ownership does seem to work for healthcare and eduation and most countries have some form. I think that is good, but we know ‘why’ it works and is desirable, its not just for warm fuzzy reasons.
And yes hunter gatheres had shared ownership. Where have I disputed this?
Modern humans have developed a private ownership culture (largely) and its become the norm especially since the failed shared ownership experiments of early last century, and this is so obvious I dont know why anyone would debate it. You seem to think its possible to reverse this. I think it would be difficult. You seem to think it could work at local scale if environmental gaols united people. I’m more sceptical for reasons stated.
Anyway what is gained by shared ownership? Why is it so magical?
You certainly ignore the obvious benefits of private ownership.
“We have evidence, from hunter-gatherer cultures living 12,000 years ago, 2000 years before the domestication of plants and animals….. ”
I don’t see what this has got to do with shared ownership. It also doesn’t change what I said about how conservation values emerged in ancient peoples. I have never denied some of these groups practiced good conservation values, just that it is very variable and evolved from their circumstances.
I dont know what it is “you specifically” think we can learn from hunter gatherers. We know broadly what to do to make farming more sustainable, with regenerative agriculture and so on. Its how that is scaled up globally and how one convinces people. I dont think persnally attacking everyone who has doubts will convince them.
” Hence, warfare. but we do not see any real evidence of warfare much before 10,000 BP, although of course we do see evidence of murder and cannibalism….”
This is one single anthropologists view. Others dispute it and think warfare was more widespread as in the links I posted. Anyway, it only confirms what I said that some indiginous people were war like and practiced cannabilism, so I dont know why you object to my point.
I said :”But we do have a problem with inequality that could be fixed at least in theory, and within the current economic paradigm.”
Your respnse: “No, it can’t. That is an assertion with no backing. It’s just you stating what *you* want as if it were a scholarly theory. This economic paradigm creates winners and losers because it is inherently competitive. The Dem Socialist countries do a good job of evening out ineqaulity, but they do nothing to curb growth, resource consumption or climate.”
You aren’t making a lot of sense. You say inequality can’t be fixed within a capitalist structure (my claim) then go onto admit it can be fixed within a capitalist structure (Democratic socialist countries).
Growth is another issue. I have already pointed out that growth is trending down within the current capitalist structure since the 1970’s. It would not take much to ease it down further.
I just think you dont think some things through, and thats the polite response. Im tired of your personall abuse as well. I think you kill good converstaion.
carrie the cansays
253 Killian: “We have evidence, from hunter-gatherer cultures living 12,000 years ago”
Yes. Exactly. Not to mention the evidence of hundreds of millions of people living healthy productive lives 25K, 50K, 60K, 80K years ago as well. Without needing to destroy the planet’s ecosystems.
In 1492 the native population of North America north of the Rio Grande was seven million to ten million.
Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian population was as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.
The History of Indigenous Australians began at least 65,000 years ago when humans first populated Australia.
At the time of first European contact, it is generally estimated that between 315,000 to 750,000 people lived in Australia, in diverse groups, but upper estimates place the total population as high as 1.25 million.
A cumulative population of 1.6 billion people has been estimated to have lived in Australia over 65,000 years prior to British colonisation.
The quality of life of the Australian Aboriginal societies in the 18th Century was greater than that of all Europeans except maybe for the Nobility Classes.
Someone needs to crack a scholarly book :-)
nigeljsays
One final point. When I say inequality could be ‘fixed’ I mean reducing it to lower levels, as we had in the 1960’s. I think perfect equality is a fantasy, and is all but impossible, and not necessary anyway.
Killiansays
[Given the season, and the upcoming new year, perhaps we could all resolve to be a little kinder and less combative going forward? No-one wants to read pages of sniping here. Be constructive, deal with substantive points and try not to get personal. Thanks.]
Al Bundysays
BPL,
Jibe? Where? I used Christianity to HONOR a practice. There was nary a word in my comment that didn’t gush respect and honor, but you took what I tried to say and heard it inverted. We can leave it here, or you can explain what I misunderstand about communion. So it ISN’T honor, respect, and an attempt to assimilate the good? What am I missing?
I mean, I’m probably wrong, but it seems that you are offended by my not placing your beliefs above others’ beliefs, by honoring everyone instead of just you and yours.
[Response: No more discussions of religions/religosity etc. Thanks. – gavin]
Al Bundysays
Gavin,
Yes, religion is fraught and off-topic. Thanks for giving me the last word instead of editing. I resolve to be a better poster in this new year…
…and to be a bit cheeky, I hope you resolve to reign in some of your admirable openness and generosity. You made a call about religion. Now use those scissors and reject comments that don’t honor your vision for RealClimate2019.
Just a suggestion.
nigeljsays
Carrie @255, yes hunter gatherers did have relatively healthy lives, with little heart disease or diabetes, provided they didnt get an infection, and then it was pretty miserable. The thing is even if we wanted to go back to hunter gatherer culture we cannot, because population levels are now far too high. We are committed to farming. We have burned our bridges and rotted our teeth and become obese. Well some people have.
I did read a couple of textbooks on anthropology some years ago, one called The Human Past, utterly fantastic, and I support indiginous rights and related causes, I just dont see the whole thing through rose coloured spectatcles. Getting old and cynical. And I try to avoid confirmation bias.
carrie the cansays
Gee, who’s got the time or the money to be concerned about dealing with climate change? Certainly not America.
“NATO persisted in Afghanistan mainly as a PR mechanism for
a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and
b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.”
” … we’ve successfully brainwashed big chunks of the population into thinking it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense.
“It’s not normal. It’s insane. And we’ll never be a healthy society, or truly respected abroad, until we stop accepting it as normal.”
If you’re expecting an insane country to behave rationally based on the evidence of science and reality, then who else might be acting ‘insane’? :-)
Al Bundysays
That didn’t end well. Mulligan time:
Once you get rid of the impeding axioms… Hmm, freedom of speech extends to freedom of infinite amplification…
that rights that aren’t inalienable are worthless (an erroneous belief brought from the same areas of the psyche that breeds Trump supporters.)
That organizations are human except that they are not subject to prison (I ask why not?
Your company commits a crime that would get me ten years and ten years of future profit should be stripped from the company. Or are corporations ONLY people when it benefits the corporation?)
Lots of possibilities open up. What other ways can you think of to help transition Madison Ave from a soul-sucking machine whose sole function is to increase the pace of the well/mine to landfill/atmosphere
transfer system into a tool that informs and educates humanity?
Dr. Sarah Taber is an aquaponics and agricultural consultant and food safety scientist, Doctor of Plant Medicine, Plant Protection and Integrated Pest Management, and science communicator who’s attracted a Twitter following and is writing a book. Following the jump, a collection of links.
Also, Dr. Taber hosts the Farm to Taber podcast (feed) where she and guests discuss “sustainable farm and food strategies, and the humans behind them”; there’s been one season of 10 regular episodes and one bonus Patreon-only episode so far. [Farm to Taber swag (Thread Reader)]
Taber explains: “My goal with this account is to beef up the “sustainable ag” info available for consumers w some science & general business mgmt info. The general public is incredibly frustrated with ag’s slow rate of change. Someone should talk about the very real reasons change isn’t instant….Some of the reasons won’t reflect nicely on our ag institutions. Oh well. I’m not gonna tell folks it’s all good, because it’s not. We need to back up this “no BS” reputation by actually cutting the BS. If you feel weird about someone airing your dirty laundry, wash it.” Also: “put info out there, see what kind of feedback it got, & thereby find out where the general knowledge level is at with ag these days”. (Thread Reader)
Many links in the text on the source page.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @262
I think a corporation is considered a person so that it has certain rights and responsibilies, and can be sued rather than suing the employees and / or owners directly, all to encourage business growth. Did this stuff in a basic business studies course back in the day.
Corporations are sued for huge sums and this is reflected in lower dividend payments but I think the problem is the guilty people never feel the pain really directly, so incentives to change behaviour are weak. But if owners were made fully liable for problems would anyone want to invest? So its a sort of dilemma.
It is possible to sue employees and directors, but its not easy and certain circumstances have to apply. Likewise its possible to hold them criminally liable for negligence, but its not easy. The bar is set quite high. Its really frustrating, yet if the bar is set too low nobody would want to be a director or executive.
I think if we want better behaviour from corporations, stop electing people who are soft on them. Just stop electing idiots!
But I think it’s more about getting corporations to have a different set of goals from just the profit motive, including environmental goals, and then measuring progress and making it transparent. Embarass the hell out of the poor performers.
zebrasays
#262 Al Bundy,
All this stuff about “corporations” and “capitalism” you have written seems a bit confused and inconsistent.
You say that progress and added value comes from inventors and such, and you say that you yourself are one. But without capital, you can’t have inventions, or start up/build a business, and you can’t have science, and you can’t have art…
And if you actually got your invention working, are you suggesting that you would not form a corporation to at least limit your personal liability? Do you think you should lose all your property if there’s a manufacturing defect in your product over which you have no direct control?
Of course it would be nice to have an actual democracy in the USA, but we don’t, for multiple reasons. I see no way to move things in the direction we would like without recognizing that money and influence on “our side” is a necessity. I would like us to have all electric vehicles as soon as possible; if that means Elon Musk buys some votes to achieve it, fine with me.
You can’t go on and on about how important fixing the climate problem is and then get squeamish about how the political system works. If you don’t win, you can’t play.
Ray Ladburysays
Al Bundy: “Your company commits a crime that would get me ten years and ten years of future profit should be stripped from the company.”
As Robert Reich said: “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”
“Of course it would be nice to have an actual democracy in the USA, but we don’t, for multiple reasons. I see no way to move things in the direction we would like without recognizing that money and influence on “our side” is a necessity. I would like us to have all electric vehicles as soon as possible; if that means Elon Musk buys some votes to achieve it, fine with me.”
Agreed. The thing is money is very embedded in America politics. Attempts have been made to put caps on campaign donations, but these have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional based on the second amendment. I don’t like the influence of money in politics and would prefer publicly financed election campaigns, but its hard to achieve this, so the next best thing is for some liberal leaning philanthropists to get more involved and not feel guilty about it
jgnfldsays
@266
With all due respect to you and Mr. Reich, I’d be happy enough to believe if some corporation was simply put in jail–i.e., required to close shop–for some period of time for criminal behavior as well.
Carriesays
“Do you think you should lose all your property if there’s a manufacturing defect in your product over which you have no direct control?”
Shit Yeah! And go to jail!
If you are selling a product over which YOU have no direct control then YOU should not be manufacturing it in the first place. Go to Jail, go directly to Jail, do not pass go or collect your Dividend Check either.
There is NO “I didn’t know” when there should only be an “I should have known” or never sold it in the first place.
Life is far simpler than low lifes allow it to be. Put the lying thieving Low Lifes in jail – and YOU solve the climate problem = Simple …. it really is.
Agreed. The thing is money is very embedded in America politics. Attempts have been made to put caps on campaign donations, but these have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional based on the second amendment.
Actually, that mis-states the chronology in a way; some of the restrictions on campaign finance had been of quite long standing and were struck down by the ongoing re-engineering of American political, cultural and legal norms by the corporate libertarians such as the Koch network. Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” chronicles the developments, which go back to the late 1970s, when a legal strategic framework for achieving this gutting was first articulated.
Corporations had always had a certain limited ‘personhood’ for the reasons you stated (ability to be subject to, or to seek, legal redress). What is new is the assertion of a robust and comprehensive corporate right to free speech, which explicitly includes the right to spend money on communication. That’s the ground that led to Citizen’s United and the related rulings that have done so much to cement the power of the oligarchy.
The ‘long game’ that they have played is admirable from the point of view of strategy and persistence; from results in the real world, not so much.
mikesays
one quibble: Nigel said ” money is very embedded in America politics. Attempts have been made to put caps on campaign donations, but these have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional based on the second amendment.”
These have been first amendment decisions about whether money is speech. Second amendment is about the right to bear arms.
Mike
nigeljsays
Found a free preview of the book Dark Money below. About 20 pages out of the book. Had a quick scan. Frightening, and rings true with other material I have read.
“Do you think you should lose all your property if there’s a manufacturing defect in your product over which you have no direct control?”
“Shit Yeah! And go to jail!”
The law has this principle that generally a manager cannot be held liable for a mistake by a staff member or other party, unless the manager was personally involved in the decision making, and the applicable law is the case Trevor Ivory v Anderson. So for example if an employee made a technical mistake the manager would not be liable unless he was involved in the specific decison making on the issue.
It’s a reasonable law, because for example it would not be fair to expect the head of Apple to be responsible for mistakes by literally thousands of employees who he has no involvement with in day to day terms.
There is also vicarious liability in civil law, where for example a manager can be held liable for acts of others in certain situations. And managers can be liable if they delegated work to people not properly qualified.
Not saying I particularly like the way managers sometimes get away with things. Just happen to be slightly familiar with the law.
carriesays
nigelj “I just dont see the whole thing through rose coloured spectatcles”
Of course not, only other people do, right? :-)
The point is, you’ll run up against a lot of modern cultural myths and revisionist history, and interpretations of history through certain cultural lenses that obscure reality and skew it to a particular worldview. It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just a psychological condition to do this, to see the world through a particular worldview and bias. Then, that’s what gets written down as reality, and … boom … you get a cultural myth. Millions of them in fact. This is what Truth and the Facts are up against 24/7. Everyone already Knows It All. The only question left is who wins the “debates”.
Carriesays
For N.
This explains why the Great Forgetting was not exposed by the development of evolutionary theory.
Evolution in fact had nothing to do with it. It was paleontology that exposed the Great Forgetting (and
would have done so even if no theory of evolution had ever been proposed). It did so by making it
unarguably clear that humans had been around long, long, long before any conceivable date for the
planting of the first crop and the beginning of civilization.
Paleontology made untenable the idea that humanity, agriculture, and civilization all began at
roughly the same time. History and archaeology had put it beyond doubt that agriculture and
civilization were just a few thousand years old, but paleontology put it beyond doubt that humanity
was millions of years old. Paleontology made it impossible to believe that Man had been born an
agriculturalist and a civilization-builder. Paleontology forced us to conclude that Man had been born
something else entirely—a forager and a homeless nomad—and this is what had been forgotten in the
Great Forgetting.
It staggers the imagination to wonder what the foundation thinkers of our culture would have written
if they’d known that humans had lived perfectly well on this planet for millions of years without
agriculture or civilization, if they’d known that agriculture and civilization are not remotely innate to
humans. I can only conclude that the entire course of our intellectual history would have been
unthinkably different from what we find in our libraries today.
But here is one of the most amazing occurrences in all of human history. When the thinkers of the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries were finally compelled to admit that the entire structure
of thought in our culture had been built on a profoundly important error, absolutely nothing happened.
It’s hard to notice nothing happening. Everyone knows that. Readers of Sherlock Holmes will
remember that the remarkable thing the dog did in the night was . . . nothing. And this is the
remarkable thing that these thinkers did: nothing. Obviously they didn’t care to do anything. They
didn’t care to go back to all the foundation thinkers of our culture and ask how their work would have
changed if they’d known the truth about our origins. I fear the truth is that they wanted to leave things
as they were. They wanted to go on forgetting . . . and that’s exactly what they did.
Of course they were forced to make some concessions. They couldn’t go on teaching that humans
had been born farming. They had to deal with the fact that farming was a very recent development.
They said to themselves, “Well, let’s call it a revolution—the Agricultural Revolution.” This was
slovenly thinking at its worst, but who was going to argue about it? The whole thing was an
embarrassment, and they were glad to dismiss it with a label. So it became the Agricultural Revolution,
a new lie to be perpetuated down through the ages.
Historians were sickened to learn the true extent of the human story. Their whole discipline, their
whole worldview, had been shaped by people who thought that everything had begun just a few
thousand years ago when people appeared on the earth and started immediately to farm and to build
civilization. This was history, this story of farmers turning up just a few thousand years ago, turning
farming communes into villages, villages into towns, towns into kingdoms. This was the stuff, it
seemed to them. This was what counted, and the millions of years that came before deserved to be
forgotten.
pg 117 https://newsfromthefront.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/daniel-quinn-the-story-of-b.pdf
(wink)
zebrasays
#271 Kevin McKinney,
The long game started even sooner, I believe, with the re-definition of economic terms and principles, through various “schools” and “think tanks”.
But the problem at the moment is that “our side” does not want to face political reality, for the most part. What the extraction oligarchs figured out was how to take advantage of both the structural and social weaknesses in the US “democracy”, which have always been there.
The strategy was to apply resources at the state level, where the clout of their money was maximized– taking a few at a time allowed that maximum effect. But it only works because of our system of government, with its unrepresentative Senate, and (somewhat less) unrepresentative House. You get the Senate, and you also get the courts, all the way up.
On the social side, of course, we have the racism, which all the science says is what swung the last election (and previous ones at all levels), not economics or “ideology”.
Let’s examine your favorite carbon-tax-with-dividend-to-the-citizens type of approach.
The Koch brothers are going to run endless ads that point out that people who drive cars are going to be sending money to certain folks who live in the inner cities, for the most part. That’s poor minority folk and elitist hipsters. And, if you think about it, this will be the rare occasion where the right-wing propaganda has an element of reality.
How do you get the votes in the Senate to pass an effective level of taxation? That’s even with a realistically attainable Democratic majority, because there are far more states where those ads will work to threaten the politician than where they will not.
So, while Citizens United may be a problem, the real problem is all the people “on the left” who can’t accept that this is a long war, that requires sound incremental strategy, not histrionics and righteous indignation, endlessly (and ineffectively) repeated.
Carrie (@276): You’re referencing a term used in a novel why exactly? Is there a point you’d like to make?
nigeljsays
Carrie @275
“The point is, you’ll run up against a lot of modern cultural myths and revisionist history, and interpretations of history through certain cultural lenses that obscure reality and skew it to a particular worldview. ”
Yes true. Its very hard to sort fact from fantasy and the lens of ideological bias. However that is why I read a textbook on the issue of ancient human cultures, (plus it was on sale) rather than just relying on media articles because a textbook is probably the closest one would get to something reliable.
Even peer reviewed research runs some risk of bias, so I always try to look at a range of research papers to try to get a feel for where the truth lies, as I’m sure you would.
Revisionist history and interpretive history is mostly junk. I mostly avoid it like the plague. The exception would be Jared Diamond. N H Harari is also good.
The long game started even sooner, I believe, with the re-definition of economic terms and principles, through various “schools” and “think tanks”.
Per Dark Money, the late 70s are more or less when the Kochs started doing that sort of thing in earnest–though such activity really took off after Koch lost his vice-presidential bid in 1980. Per Wikipedia:
Koch [shared] the [Libertarian] party ticket with presidential candidate Ed Clark. The Clark–Koch ticket promised to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE.
But of course there were antecedents; Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead came out in 1943, and Atlas Shrugged in 1957. That gave rise to the “Objectivist movement”:
By 1962, they were putting out newsletters. And if that sounds too fringe, note that this guy named “Alan Greenspan” was a charter member.
Moving on to redistricting/gerrymandering:
The strategy was to apply resources at the state level, where the clout of their money was maximized– taking a few at a time allowed that maximum effect.
Correct. I haven’t read the book–just heard author interviews–but this is outlined in detail in David Daley’s Ratf**cked (sic). And it’s no secret; the project was called “redmap”, for obvious reasons, and they have an active website to this very day:
On the social side, of course, we have the racism…
Which, I think, is increasingly going to be a political liability. Society is increasingly pluralistic; the politics of minoritarian race-and-gender-based privilege won’t cut it. (Providing, of course, that votes matter at all.)
The Koch brothers are going to run endless ads that point out that people who drive cars are going to be sending money to certain folks who live in the inner cities…
Correction: people who drive *gasmobiles.* That’s going to be a decreasing proportion much faster than most people think, IMHO. (Well, technically it’s true now, but you know what I mean–I’m talking about non-trivial numbers.)
How do you get the votes in the Senate to pass an effective level of taxation? That’s even with a realistically attainable Democratic majority, because there are far more states where those ads will work to threaten the politician than where they will not.
Good questions. But there are political pluses to the scheme as well, even in those red states. I think a lot of middle and working class folks would enjoy a monthly rebate check–especially since, unlike the recent failed GOP tax cut–I mean “failed” in its aim of currying widespread political favor for the midterms–it would disproportionately tend to favor the less-well-off.
So, while Citizens United may be a problem, the real problem is all the people “on the left” who can’t accept that this is a long war, that requires sound incremental strategy, not histrionics and righteous indignation, endlessly (and ineffectively) repeated.
Agreed enthusiastically (though not happily). That’s precisely why I keep bringing up Dark Money and the systemic nature of the problem. That’s why I advise people to organize politically, and that is why I’m attempting in multiple dimensions to follow my own advice (even though I’m a bit of a loner by nature/nurture, and thus I must work on the ground of a personal weakness.)
nigeljsays
Regarding the Koch Brothers, libertarianism and Ayn Rand. I read Ayn Rands Novels years and years ago. The fountainhead was quite good, with a good message on individualism. Well that’s the end of the good news.
Atlas shrugged was not so good thematically. It appeared to be extolling the virtues of laissez faire capitalism and the corporate sector, and criticising trade unions and collective action, government regulation etc and drawing various philosophical conclusions, namely corporations great, trade unions evil.
Its too one sided, and ignores the wrong doing of corporations and the legitimate role of trade unions in trying to improve working conditions, and obvious practical benefits of collective action. Atlas Shrugged is not an evidence based book and is based on cherrypicking and bias. For me Ayn Rand is not objective, and this is amusing given the woman calls herself an objectivist.
The book is not good economics or philosophy. It is also quite inhumane, and doesn’t make sense economically because social security etc provides a good spending base to the economy. Sure some people abuse this system, just as some might waste the dividend from a carbon tax, and some cheat on their insurance claims, but this is a narrow way of looking at the issue. Social security helps tens of millions of good people.
The Democrat philanthropists spend too much time supporting worthy causes and not enough time funding members of congress and evening up that playing field. The long game is indeed important.
carriesays
279 nigelj says: “However that is why I read a textbook on the issue of ancient human cultures..”
Good point. Now about the author who wrote that book ….. “The point is, you’ll run up against a lot of modern cultural myths and revisionist history, and interpretations of history through certain cultural lenses that obscure reality and skew it to a particular worldview. ”
It’s difficult to get inside an authors “head” but it is not impossible. Most never ever think of it. There’s no one to blame here. It’s an essential part of everyone’s cultural ‘conditioning’. It’s a very good thing to get past that psychological brick-wall.
“When one does not see what one does not see,
one does not even see that one is blind.”
-Paul Veyne
278 MartinJB; Was it a ‘novel’? I didn’t notice the label. The content is related to various previous comments by multiple participants. A short quote with a ref link for anyone interested in some deep thinking toward ‘solutions’ via system changes and paradigm shifts. ;-)
Tricky business.
zebrasays
#280 Kevin McKinney,
(I was thinking Chicago School economics and offspring specifically, which didn’t really arise from a couple of teenage-level novels.)
Well, anyway, I guess we have to go back to basics on the politics. I said:
“…we have the racism, which all the science says is what swung the last election (and previous ones at all levels), not economics or ‘ideology’.”
When you still think that those red-state voters are going to be swayed by the prospect of getting that check, you are denying all the research that has been done, just like denialists ignore physics, and what we/they can observe themselves.
If reasoned self-interest prevailed, we wouldn’t be in the current mess, would we?
And it is equally pollyannaish to think that there will be lots of EV for people to buy, because that would require the major auto companies to actually build them, which they have demonstrated they are unwilling to do.
My point, which was also part of our earlier discussion which you dropped, is that we have to be more realistic, however frightening and unpleasant it may be, about what motivates monkeys, including our personal selves.
If climate change is “the most important thing in the world”, then lots of other political preferences need to be valued for their efficacy in winning, not, again, in how righteous they might make one feel.
nigeljsays
“(I was thinking Chicago School economics and offspring specifically, which didn’t really arise from a couple of teenage-level novels.)”
I have read plenty about the Chicago School, and you might be surprised how influential Ayn Rand is, sadly to say.
“…we have the racism, which all the science says is what swung the last election (and previous ones at all levels), not economics or ‘ideology’.”
Meh. Racism was obviousy a factor, nobody needs a scientifc analysis to work out that one (not that Zebra provided a link to one).
I think Trumps rhetoric about immigration was a pure dog whistle to the racists. But a) its obviously not the only thing that swung the election, and b) its not frozen in stone. In NZ we have a lot of immigration, but the so called red necks and racists are less visible than previously. People have slowly become more accepting of multi culturalism. If it can happen here it could happen in America. Or is it a lost cause there?
“And it is equally pollyannaish to think that there will be lots of EV for people to buy, because that would require the major auto companies to actually build them, which they have demonstrated they are unwilling to do.”
Well they are building some actually. They are hardly going to build huge numbers and have them sitting around. The problem is lack of enough demand, but I would suggest things always start slowly. Early smartphone sales were not huge, just look at it now a few years later! And they have the physical capacity to build millions of electric cars.
“My point, which was also part of our earlier discussion which you dropped, is that we have to be more realistic, however frightening and unpleasant it may be, about what motivates monkeys, including our personal selves.”
Absolutely right and its almost a case of working with that and manipulating policies around it. BUT humans can also be nudged towards higher motivations, morals and goals. I think history shows this, its just a slow process.
The books Enlightenment now and The Moral Arc are relevant.
When you still think that those red-state voters are going to be swayed by the prospect of getting that check…
I’d remind you that I live in a red state. It doesn’t give me a crystal ball, but it does help remind me that ‘red state’ does not denote something either internally homogeneous or unchanging.
…we have to be more realistic, however frightening and unpleasant it may be, about what motivates monkeys, including our personal selves.
Which is precisely why I think a rebate check would be very popular indeed. Yes, self-interest can be unenlightened, but it doesn’t take Buddha to explain a check in your mailbox.
Quite parallel is the way in which large numbers of red state votes responded positively to Democratic campaigning on health care. The GOP assaults on Obamacare (or its remnants) have been felt in red state pocketbooks, ERs, and, yes, addiction clinics. That, too, doesn’t require a Buddha to interpret for the man in the street.
People have slowly become more accepting of multi culturalism. If it can happen here it could happen in America. Or is it a lost cause there?
No, it is happening and indeed has happened in America. Trump is in this respect a reaction, but the primary long term effect of this reaction will be to discredit and disorganize the right. The underlying demographic drivers continue to move against the GOP. And they know it; ‘redmap’ was conceived partly in order to buy them time to deal with demographic change they knew was against them following Obama’s election in 2008.
What they didn’t anticipate was that the very gerrymandering that was supposed to allow them time to work out a more viable long-term strategy would lock them all the more firmly into the old dysfunctional one, due to the polarizing effects of the ‘primary’ system–as you may know, primary voters are the most strongly partisan on average, so in a gerrymandered Republican safe seat, the determinative voters become precisely the most reactionary ones.
All very well and good for them, except that their base continues to shrink through death and disability and insufficient demographic recruitment–and all the faster the worse their healthcare is, ironically enough.
On EVs, a lot of people haven’t noticed, but Tesla now is, in effect, a major auto company on the American scene. Its market capitalization is roughly on par with Ford and GM, and its Model 3 is outselling all but a handful of cars–by memory, I think the list was Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord and Elantra. Note that the 3 is considerably more expensive than any of those, which means 1) it’s likely the #1 seller by revenue, and 2) there is still probably a lot of pent-up demand for more affordable BEV models. (And they are coming, as economies of scale drive unit costs down; this is a ‘virtuous circle’ we’ve previously seen in action with wind and solar PV technologies.)
Production? I look forward to the Q4 numbers, which presumably will be out later this month, but they’ve been close on the order of 30,000 vehicles a month. Another story that hasn’t been widely reported outside the business pages is that Q3 was profitable. Q4 figures to be more so, as volumes are up and expenses (we think) are down.
Tesla, however, is largely a North American story for now–they are just starting to move in Europe, and are currently building a Chinese Gigafactory (in Shenzen–where else?) But availability in those markets has been limited so far.
…in November, the European passenger plug-in market was back at cruising speed, with +31% year over year (YoY) sales. There were some 37,500 registrations, pulling the year-to-date (YTD) count to 345,000 deliveries (+34%). In broader context, 2018 EV market share grew to 2.4%, thanks to a 3.2% market share in November.
Growth continues to be more or less exponential, and there are now more than a million BEVs on European roads (North American ones, too, actually: the millionth sale apparently happened sometime last August.)
Meanwhile, China is the #1 BEV market in the world, and is dominated by local players, such as EV specialist BYD. Plug-in electrics as a class set a new sales record earlier this year (I don’t have more recent figures at hand–or in search window–but this should be sufficiently indicative for our BOTE purposes just now.)
In a falling mainstream market (−12% YoY), the continued growth of the plug-in market also meant that the PEV share hit a new all-time best, 5.2% market share. The 2018 market share thus rose to 3.3%. The 3.3% market share is well above the 2.1% share of 2017 sales, and PEV sales are expected to continue growing as the year advances. The 2018 PEV share could end north of the 3% to 4% threshold, with December possibly reaching 7%.
Again, it will be interesting to see the end-of-year figures. I think that the Chinese manufacturers will be increasingly significant at a global level over time; the combination of favorable government policy, rapidly increasing technological sophistication and a massive domestic market base gives them a huge leg up.
All of the above helps explain why many of the traditional major companies are committing significant budgets to the development of EVs. They know that that’s where the future of mobility is going to be, basically. It’s true that there is reluctance to fully commit to an electric future–not least because that future is a threat to the dealership model, which relies on maintenance as a profit center, and is moreover traditionally focused on emotional, not rational, sales strategies. Nevertheless, serious coin is going into electrics, with Volkswagen probably leading the way, in terms of sheer capital involved, at least:
As far as sales, could we optimistically hope for 8 million plug-in cars a year from these brands by 2023? 10 million? 3 million?
Given that current annual sales are ~100 million vehicles, 3 million seems unrealistically low to me, since we’re already seeing 3% market shares in many markets today, and market share growth is proceeding a a brisk clip. 5 years at current rates should yield at least a single doubling in market share, and I think that the reality will be better than that. So my guess is that EVs will hold more than 6% market share in new auto sales by 2023, perhaps quite significantly more. Growth will be much faster than linear for quite some time.
Says here that 1) the average household will come out ahead, and 2) payment will be annual and administered by Revenue Canada, which handles income tax–despite the fact that carbon-tax funds will not be commingled with regular tax income. It’s just meant to be for administrative efficiency.
Stay tuned as the political ruckus continues. Trudeau’s governing Liberals have been losing support, but still lead the polls. The next federal election is expected in October (a pretty safe expectation as the Liberals hold a majority in Parliament, leaving only the possibility of them calling an early ‘snap election’ if they see political advantage in doing so.)
nigeljsays
Kevin McKinney @285, agreed regarding carbon fee and dividend. People can be persuaded if you give them something for free, or which has the ‘appearance’ of being free, and they will soon forget their political and ideological worldview. Pure monkey training, and basic operant conditioning!
nigeljsays
Kevin McKinney @285, growth of electric cars is also very rapid in Norway.
Of course they are subsidised and very cost competitive, but this shows at least one thing: There’s an acceptance of the technology if its cost competitive.
I think all this is understandable, because cars are a big purchase for the average family and so even if they are concerned about climate change, cost is a legitimate factor in the decision making. The electric car option has to be made attractive for them. Norway have it figured out.
Another thing stands out for me. Up until the last couple of years electric cars have had range issues, but in the last two years this has changed and its just going to take a little while for the public to register this.
Choice has also been an issue but has improved hugely last year. Previously it was either the Tesla at high cost or a few lower cost cars like the nissan Leaf which were not very pretty looking. Never underestimate the importance of looks to the public, especially in America. But this is changing fast as companies like VW and General Motors bring out well styled electric vehicles that look more like tried and tested conventional styled cars.
But prising people away from the big V8, with its throbbing growling engine might be hard for some. Me I like cars that are whisper quiet.
Racism is horrible and played an obvious part in Trumps victory, but I feel the reason Hilary lost the election was largely Hilary. She lacked charisma, lacked a clear plan for the country, and she was tainted by several scandals, and unfortunately mud sticks, even although the accusations were ridiculous.
I’m not a mysogenist, and and she is basically a good person, its all to do with who she was politically. Its important because you need the right candidate with a good plan for combating climate change.
nigeljsays
The Democrats have some out with this huge, gobsmackingly huge, infrastructure plan to fight climate change as below:
I feel a huge government spend on infrastructure might be popular with the public as opposed to a tax, but the government doesn’t really have the money, and simply creating credit might be inflationary. Very inflationary. And its yet another new plan so is confusing. I don’t hate it, but hmmm.
I would think its better to go with a combination of incremental sorts of things: renewable energy, carbon tax and dividend, maybe some selective subsidies, some reduced per capita energy use, but at realistic levels, and slower population growth ( a lot slower). This seems technically the correct plan and has some realistic chance of being adopted. Slim but possible.
Al Bundysays
Zebra, I’ll respond later (about economic theory and how it applies to my situation).
Nigel, maintenance is a dead issue because in a sharing economy internal combustion engines last *forever* because wear and tear are negligible other than during warmup and cool down. Since shared vehicles rarely cool off, their engines last decades and decades, especially in a hybrid application, where the engine just plods along almost endlessly.
nigeljsays
Scientific American has done a series of articles on the science of economic inequality, including one implicating inequality as a cause of environmental problems (no great surprise there!):
“After reviewing the current literature on the causes of economic inequality, the article models the historical emergence of inequality as the result of a key technological change (i.e., the adoption of agriculture ) that widened income differentials and led to the construction of state institutions, which shaped (depending on their particular nature, moreor less authoritarian) the final distribution of economic assets withinand across different societies”
“The ancient roots of the 1%,” traces the development of economic disparity back to Natufian hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 10,000 years ago, where—new evidence suggests—individuals and families might have begun taking “ownership” of choice fishing spots and plentiful forest patches, storing surpluses of food, and amassing the accoutrements of wealth. This predates previous estimates of the age of wealth inequality, which had been linked to the advent of agriculture, by a few thousand years.”
So while hunter gatherer society was clearly mainly more equal than ours, significant inequality goes way back well before capitalism emerged. So blaming capitalism is somewhat simplistic.
nigeljsays
Nissan have sold 300,000 nissan leafs. Not insignificant.
Al Bundy @294 you got the wrong person there I think. I think the point was that electric cars are very low maintainance, so the car companies resist them because it removes a revenue stream? Although I dont know if that would be a big issue with them or not.
No doubt you are right about warming up and cooling off stressing motors (like it does with electronics). But internal combusion engines in hybrids don’t just plod along all the time, they switch on and off all the time.
I would like to be able to share a car, so order up a self driving car when needed if the cost was ok. Owning a car is such a curse, always some issue to worry about. But a sharing system would have to work seamlessly to get people to give up their car. We aren’t there yet by a long way.
Gordon Shephardsays
nigelj@11, kind of depends on how you define “capitalism,” doesn’t it? If “capitalism” depends on the conversion of resources to some form of indestructible surrogate (e.g. money), then okay. But I’d suggest a broader definition, whereby “capital” is anything in excess of what you need, today, to continue living. If it is in excess of what you need, today, you can trade it (or the labor you don’t need to use to produce it) for something that might improve your life tomorrow – in other words, an investment. In that sense, “ownership” of anything becomes a form of capitalism.
I think the point was that electric cars are very low maintainance, so the car companies resist them because it removes a revenue stream? Although I dont know if that would be a big issue with them or not.
That was indeed the specific point I was making–although it’s embedded in a larger one, which is that in practice car dealers seem not to be very supportive of their various companies’ electric offerings, according to persistent reports from car shoppers who are interested in EVs. The maintenance revenue provides a solid reason in terms of self-interest for this phenomenon, but I think there are a lot of cultural reasons, too–the emotional-based traditional sales strategies and culture; sheer ignorance on the part of staff (a recurring refrain has been that the customer knew more about the EVs than salespersons); and just good old inertia.
At the corporate level, model availability is badly skewed towards states like California. For instance, I think I could find a Volt or two in Columbia, SC, and probably a Nissan Leaf. (Those latter are actually fairly popular in Atlanta, where I used to live, as a commuter car.) But an electric Ford or Fiat/Chrysler or Hyundai? I doubt it.
Nigel, #243. A good modern example. Again, if human populations were much lower, our collective impact on the environment would be much less. But as human populations continue to rise, our impacts, not just on wildlife, but on so many other environmental issues, like deforestation, resource depletion, climate change, pollution of land, sea and air etc. etc. will only multiply. I don’t know why the physics of this isn’t obvious to people. Without a universal will to change, the situation will become ever more dire until the end when only Maslowian priorities are left. But for it to work long term, it should be a willing change by all, informed not just by our heads, but by our hearts. On that score, I believe that indigenous peoples have a lot to teach us moderns.
http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/signatories
http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/additional-signatories
Al Buddy, #244. Don’t even get me started on advertising and marketing!
AB: Christians are devoutly dedicated to ritualistic cannibalism.
BPL: An old, old jibe. Stupid, too.
Unintelligent Comment: On another issue, to clarify something I mentioned earlier, I think the communal ownership and sharing nature of indigenous tribes is more related to the small size and limited resources so this was a natural outcome, not a moral choice
There is absolutely no support for this. You dreamed this out of your ass. “I think” does not qualify as legitimate scholarly analysis. I have posted links to Peter Gray’s essays. I have posted links to Helga’s work and mentioned her.
Stop talking nonsense.
Private ownership seems embedded to me, and experiments to the contrary have not been convincing.
Societies existing millennia is not convincing? Have you studied the imperfect, but far better than your precious selfishness, Mondragon?
What about the Amish? Kibbutzes?
https://mises.org/library/economic-lessons-amish
Try to see why this, without mentioning sharing, reveals your opinion as the ignorance and hubris it is:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/helga-ingeborg-vierich/the-gardeners-of-eden/10156436983355833/
More:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/10151143904610833/
But we do have a problem with inequality that could be fixed at least in theory, and within the current economic paradigm.
No, it can’t. That is an assertion with no backing. It’s just you stating what *you* want as if it were a scholarly theory. This economic paradigm creates winners and losers because it is inherently competitive. The Dem Socialist countries do a good job of evening out ineqaulity, but they do nothing to curb growth, resource consumption or climate. Very rough equality – they still have unemployment and poor people – in a dying system is rather pointless.
Now, please DO NOT respond to this. Contact Helga and ask her her views on sharing cultures. I do not need to discuss this with you. It is for your edification and so you wil stop posting foolish opinion as if it were meaningful.
Killian @253
“What about the Amish? Kibbutzes?”
What you have quoted here is a religious community with some form of shared ownership, not a great model for the world, especially given you are so critical of religion. Israels kibbutzes are admirable but are a response to their unique situation.
Most attempts at shared ownership fail, for example state communism of the USSR, popular communism of venezuela, and the majority of small alternative communities fail in my country and in the links I posted.
A few examples that seem work due to religious adherence or whatever is not terribly compelling to me as a model that could be scaled up globally, but good luck to them. And do they actually work that well anyway? I respect the people commited to them. Its just not my thing personally, and it doesnt seem a compelling model for some transformation of humanity.
Public ownership does seem to work for healthcare and eduation and most countries have some form. I think that is good, but we know ‘why’ it works and is desirable, its not just for warm fuzzy reasons.
And yes hunter gatheres had shared ownership. Where have I disputed this?
Modern humans have developed a private ownership culture (largely) and its become the norm especially since the failed shared ownership experiments of early last century, and this is so obvious I dont know why anyone would debate it. You seem to think its possible to reverse this. I think it would be difficult. You seem to think it could work at local scale if environmental gaols united people. I’m more sceptical for reasons stated.
Anyway what is gained by shared ownership? Why is it so magical?
You certainly ignore the obvious benefits of private ownership.
“We have evidence, from hunter-gatherer cultures living 12,000 years ago, 2000 years before the domestication of plants and animals….. ”
I don’t see what this has got to do with shared ownership. It also doesn’t change what I said about how conservation values emerged in ancient peoples. I have never denied some of these groups practiced good conservation values, just that it is very variable and evolved from their circumstances.
I dont know what it is “you specifically” think we can learn from hunter gatherers. We know broadly what to do to make farming more sustainable, with regenerative agriculture and so on. Its how that is scaled up globally and how one convinces people. I dont think persnally attacking everyone who has doubts will convince them.
” Hence, warfare. but we do not see any real evidence of warfare much before 10,000 BP, although of course we do see evidence of murder and cannibalism….”
This is one single anthropologists view. Others dispute it and think warfare was more widespread as in the links I posted. Anyway, it only confirms what I said that some indiginous people were war like and practiced cannabilism, so I dont know why you object to my point.
I said :”But we do have a problem with inequality that could be fixed at least in theory, and within the current economic paradigm.”
Your respnse: “No, it can’t. That is an assertion with no backing. It’s just you stating what *you* want as if it were a scholarly theory. This economic paradigm creates winners and losers because it is inherently competitive. The Dem Socialist countries do a good job of evening out ineqaulity, but they do nothing to curb growth, resource consumption or climate.”
You aren’t making a lot of sense. You say inequality can’t be fixed within a capitalist structure (my claim) then go onto admit it can be fixed within a capitalist structure (Democratic socialist countries).
Growth is another issue. I have already pointed out that growth is trending down within the current capitalist structure since the 1970’s. It would not take much to ease it down further.
I just think you dont think some things through, and thats the polite response. Im tired of your personall abuse as well. I think you kill good converstaion.
253 Killian: “We have evidence, from hunter-gatherer cultures living 12,000 years ago”
Yes. Exactly. Not to mention the evidence of hundreds of millions of people living healthy productive lives 25K, 50K, 60K, 80K years ago as well. Without needing to destroy the planet’s ecosystems.
In 1492 the native population of North America north of the Rio Grande was seven million to ten million.
Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated that the pre-Columbian population was as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.
The History of Indigenous Australians began at least 65,000 years ago when humans first populated Australia.
At the time of first European contact, it is generally estimated that between 315,000 to 750,000 people lived in Australia, in diverse groups, but upper estimates place the total population as high as 1.25 million.
A cumulative population of 1.6 billion people has been estimated to have lived in Australia over 65,000 years prior to British colonisation.
The quality of life of the Australian Aboriginal societies in the 18th Century was greater than that of all Europeans except maybe for the Nobility Classes.
Someone needs to crack a scholarly book :-)
One final point. When I say inequality could be ‘fixed’ I mean reducing it to lower levels, as we had in the 1960’s. I think perfect equality is a fantasy, and is all but impossible, and not necessary anyway.
[Given the season, and the upcoming new year, perhaps we could all resolve to be a little kinder and less combative going forward? No-one wants to read pages of sniping here. Be constructive, deal with substantive points and try not to get personal. Thanks.]
BPL,
Jibe? Where? I used Christianity to HONOR a practice. There was nary a word in my comment that didn’t gush respect and honor, but you took what I tried to say and heard it inverted. We can leave it here, or you can explain what I misunderstand about communion. So it ISN’T honor, respect, and an attempt to assimilate the good? What am I missing?
I mean, I’m probably wrong, but it seems that you are offended by my not placing your beliefs above others’ beliefs, by honoring everyone instead of just you and yours.
[Response: No more discussions of religions/religosity etc. Thanks. – gavin]
Gavin,
Yes, religion is fraught and off-topic. Thanks for giving me the last word instead of editing. I resolve to be a better poster in this new year…
…and to be a bit cheeky, I hope you resolve to reign in some of your admirable openness and generosity. You made a call about religion. Now use those scissors and reject comments that don’t honor your vision for RealClimate2019.
Just a suggestion.
Carrie @255, yes hunter gatherers did have relatively healthy lives, with little heart disease or diabetes, provided they didnt get an infection, and then it was pretty miserable. The thing is even if we wanted to go back to hunter gatherer culture we cannot, because population levels are now far too high. We are committed to farming. We have burned our bridges and rotted our teeth and become obese. Well some people have.
I did read a couple of textbooks on anthropology some years ago, one called The Human Past, utterly fantastic, and I support indiginous rights and related causes, I just dont see the whole thing through rose coloured spectatcles. Getting old and cynical. And I try to avoid confirmation bias.
Gee, who’s got the time or the money to be concerned about dealing with climate change? Certainly not America.
“NATO persisted in Afghanistan mainly as a PR mechanism for
a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and
b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.”
” … we’ve successfully brainwashed big chunks of the population into thinking it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense.
“It’s not normal. It’s insane. And we’ll never be a healthy society, or truly respected abroad, until we stop accepting it as normal.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-syria-withdrawal-772177/
If you’re expecting an insane country to behave rationally based on the evidence of science and reality, then who else might be acting ‘insane’? :-)
That didn’t end well. Mulligan time:
Once you get rid of the impeding axioms… Hmm, freedom of speech extends to freedom of infinite amplification…
that rights that aren’t inalienable are worthless (an erroneous belief brought from the same areas of the psyche that breeds Trump supporters.)
That organizations are human except that they are not subject to prison (I ask why not?
Your company commits a crime that would get me ten years and ten years of future profit should be stripped from the company. Or are corporations ONLY people when it benefits the corporation?)
Lots of possibilities open up. What other ways can you think of to help transition Madison Ave from a soul-sucking machine whose sole function is to increase the pace of the well/mine to landfill/atmosphere
transfer system into a tool that informs and educates humanity?
https://www.metafilter.com/178181/Intersectional-sustainable-crop-science-and-GIFs
Many links in the text on the source page.
Al Bundy @262
I think a corporation is considered a person so that it has certain rights and responsibilies, and can be sued rather than suing the employees and / or owners directly, all to encourage business growth. Did this stuff in a basic business studies course back in the day.
Corporations are sued for huge sums and this is reflected in lower dividend payments but I think the problem is the guilty people never feel the pain really directly, so incentives to change behaviour are weak. But if owners were made fully liable for problems would anyone want to invest? So its a sort of dilemma.
It is possible to sue employees and directors, but its not easy and certain circumstances have to apply. Likewise its possible to hold them criminally liable for negligence, but its not easy. The bar is set quite high. Its really frustrating, yet if the bar is set too low nobody would want to be a director or executive.
I think if we want better behaviour from corporations, stop electing people who are soft on them. Just stop electing idiots!
But I think it’s more about getting corporations to have a different set of goals from just the profit motive, including environmental goals, and then measuring progress and making it transparent. Embarass the hell out of the poor performers.
#262 Al Bundy,
All this stuff about “corporations” and “capitalism” you have written seems a bit confused and inconsistent.
You say that progress and added value comes from inventors and such, and you say that you yourself are one. But without capital, you can’t have inventions, or start up/build a business, and you can’t have science, and you can’t have art…
And if you actually got your invention working, are you suggesting that you would not form a corporation to at least limit your personal liability? Do you think you should lose all your property if there’s a manufacturing defect in your product over which you have no direct control?
Of course it would be nice to have an actual democracy in the USA, but we don’t, for multiple reasons. I see no way to move things in the direction we would like without recognizing that money and influence on “our side” is a necessity. I would like us to have all electric vehicles as soon as possible; if that means Elon Musk buys some votes to achieve it, fine with me.
You can’t go on and on about how important fixing the climate problem is and then get squeamish about how the political system works. If you don’t win, you can’t play.
Al Bundy: “Your company commits a crime that would get me ten years and ten years of future profit should be stripped from the company.”
As Robert Reich said: “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”
https://www.farmtotaber.com/episodes/2018/6/1/grappling-with-our-ghosts-the-american-farm-legacy
“Of course it would be nice to have an actual democracy in the USA, but we don’t, for multiple reasons. I see no way to move things in the direction we would like without recognizing that money and influence on “our side” is a necessity. I would like us to have all electric vehicles as soon as possible; if that means Elon Musk buys some votes to achieve it, fine with me.”
Agreed. The thing is money is very embedded in America politics. Attempts have been made to put caps on campaign donations, but these have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional based on the second amendment. I don’t like the influence of money in politics and would prefer publicly financed election campaigns, but its hard to achieve this, so the next best thing is for some liberal leaning philanthropists to get more involved and not feel guilty about it
@266
With all due respect to you and Mr. Reich, I’d be happy enough to believe if some corporation was simply put in jail–i.e., required to close shop–for some period of time for criminal behavior as well.
“Do you think you should lose all your property if there’s a manufacturing defect in your product over which you have no direct control?”
Shit Yeah! And go to jail!
If you are selling a product over which YOU have no direct control then YOU should not be manufacturing it in the first place. Go to Jail, go directly to Jail, do not pass go or collect your Dividend Check either.
There is NO “I didn’t know” when there should only be an “I should have known” or never sold it in the first place.
Life is far simpler than low lifes allow it to be. Put the lying thieving Low Lifes in jail – and YOU solve the climate problem = Simple …. it really is.
nigel, #268–
Actually, that mis-states the chronology in a way; some of the restrictions on campaign finance had been of quite long standing and were struck down by the ongoing re-engineering of American political, cultural and legal norms by the corporate libertarians such as the Koch network. Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” chronicles the developments, which go back to the late 1970s, when a legal strategic framework for achieving this gutting was first articulated.
Corporations had always had a certain limited ‘personhood’ for the reasons you stated (ability to be subject to, or to seek, legal redress). What is new is the assertion of a robust and comprehensive corporate right to free speech, which explicitly includes the right to spend money on communication. That’s the ground that led to Citizen’s United and the related rulings that have done so much to cement the power of the oligarchy.
The ‘long game’ that they have played is admirable from the point of view of strategy and persistence; from results in the real world, not so much.
one quibble: Nigel said ” money is very embedded in America politics. Attempts have been made to put caps on campaign donations, but these have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional based on the second amendment.”
These have been first amendment decisions about whether money is speech. Second amendment is about the right to bear arms.
Mike
Found a free preview of the book Dark Money below. About 20 pages out of the book. Had a quick scan. Frightening, and rings true with other material I have read.
https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Dark_Money.html?id=DkPOCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Do you think you should lose all your property if there’s a manufacturing defect in your product over which you have no direct control?”
“Shit Yeah! And go to jail!”
The law has this principle that generally a manager cannot be held liable for a mistake by a staff member or other party, unless the manager was personally involved in the decision making, and the applicable law is the case Trevor Ivory v Anderson. So for example if an employee made a technical mistake the manager would not be liable unless he was involved in the specific decison making on the issue.
It’s a reasonable law, because for example it would not be fair to expect the head of Apple to be responsible for mistakes by literally thousands of employees who he has no involvement with in day to day terms.
There is also vicarious liability in civil law, where for example a manager can be held liable for acts of others in certain situations. And managers can be liable if they delegated work to people not properly qualified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability
Not saying I particularly like the way managers sometimes get away with things. Just happen to be slightly familiar with the law.
nigelj “I just dont see the whole thing through rose coloured spectatcles”
Of course not, only other people do, right? :-)
The point is, you’ll run up against a lot of modern cultural myths and revisionist history, and interpretations of history through certain cultural lenses that obscure reality and skew it to a particular worldview. It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just a psychological condition to do this, to see the world through a particular worldview and bias. Then, that’s what gets written down as reality, and … boom … you get a cultural myth. Millions of them in fact. This is what Truth and the Facts are up against 24/7. Everyone already Knows It All. The only question left is who wins the “debates”.
For N.
This explains why the Great Forgetting was not exposed by the development of evolutionary theory.
Evolution in fact had nothing to do with it. It was paleontology that exposed the Great Forgetting (and
would have done so even if no theory of evolution had ever been proposed). It did so by making it
unarguably clear that humans had been around long, long, long before any conceivable date for the
planting of the first crop and the beginning of civilization.
Paleontology made untenable the idea that humanity, agriculture, and civilization all began at
roughly the same time. History and archaeology had put it beyond doubt that agriculture and
civilization were just a few thousand years old, but paleontology put it beyond doubt that humanity
was millions of years old. Paleontology made it impossible to believe that Man had been born an
agriculturalist and a civilization-builder. Paleontology forced us to conclude that Man had been born
something else entirely—a forager and a homeless nomad—and this is what had been forgotten in the
Great Forgetting.
It staggers the imagination to wonder what the foundation thinkers of our culture would have written
if they’d known that humans had lived perfectly well on this planet for millions of years without
agriculture or civilization, if they’d known that agriculture and civilization are not remotely innate to
humans. I can only conclude that the entire course of our intellectual history would have been
unthinkably different from what we find in our libraries today.
But here is one of the most amazing occurrences in all of human history. When the thinkers of the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries were finally compelled to admit that the entire structure
of thought in our culture had been built on a profoundly important error, absolutely nothing happened.
It’s hard to notice nothing happening. Everyone knows that. Readers of Sherlock Holmes will
remember that the remarkable thing the dog did in the night was . . . nothing. And this is the
remarkable thing that these thinkers did: nothing. Obviously they didn’t care to do anything. They
didn’t care to go back to all the foundation thinkers of our culture and ask how their work would have
changed if they’d known the truth about our origins. I fear the truth is that they wanted to leave things
as they were. They wanted to go on forgetting . . . and that’s exactly what they did.
Of course they were forced to make some concessions. They couldn’t go on teaching that humans
had been born farming. They had to deal with the fact that farming was a very recent development.
They said to themselves, “Well, let’s call it a revolution—the Agricultural Revolution.” This was
slovenly thinking at its worst, but who was going to argue about it? The whole thing was an
embarrassment, and they were glad to dismiss it with a label. So it became the Agricultural Revolution,
a new lie to be perpetuated down through the ages.
Historians were sickened to learn the true extent of the human story. Their whole discipline, their
whole worldview, had been shaped by people who thought that everything had begun just a few
thousand years ago when people appeared on the earth and started immediately to farm and to build
civilization. This was history, this story of farmers turning up just a few thousand years ago, turning
farming communes into villages, villages into towns, towns into kingdoms. This was the stuff, it
seemed to them. This was what counted, and the millions of years that came before deserved to be
forgotten.
pg 117
https://newsfromthefront.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/daniel-quinn-the-story-of-b.pdf
(wink)
#271 Kevin McKinney,
The long game started even sooner, I believe, with the re-definition of economic terms and principles, through various “schools” and “think tanks”.
But the problem at the moment is that “our side” does not want to face political reality, for the most part. What the extraction oligarchs figured out was how to take advantage of both the structural and social weaknesses in the US “democracy”, which have always been there.
The strategy was to apply resources at the state level, where the clout of their money was maximized– taking a few at a time allowed that maximum effect. But it only works because of our system of government, with its unrepresentative Senate, and (somewhat less) unrepresentative House. You get the Senate, and you also get the courts, all the way up.
On the social side, of course, we have the racism, which all the science says is what swung the last election (and previous ones at all levels), not economics or “ideology”.
Let’s examine your favorite carbon-tax-with-dividend-to-the-citizens type of approach.
The Koch brothers are going to run endless ads that point out that people who drive cars are going to be sending money to certain folks who live in the inner cities, for the most part. That’s poor minority folk and elitist hipsters. And, if you think about it, this will be the rare occasion where the right-wing propaganda has an element of reality.
How do you get the votes in the Senate to pass an effective level of taxation? That’s even with a realistically attainable Democratic majority, because there are far more states where those ads will work to threaten the politician than where they will not.
So, while Citizens United may be a problem, the real problem is all the people “on the left” who can’t accept that this is a long war, that requires sound incremental strategy, not histrionics and righteous indignation, endlessly (and ineffectively) repeated.
Carrie (@276): You’re referencing a term used in a novel why exactly? Is there a point you’d like to make?
Carrie @275
“The point is, you’ll run up against a lot of modern cultural myths and revisionist history, and interpretations of history through certain cultural lenses that obscure reality and skew it to a particular worldview. ”
Yes true. Its very hard to sort fact from fantasy and the lens of ideological bias. However that is why I read a textbook on the issue of ancient human cultures, (plus it was on sale) rather than just relying on media articles because a textbook is probably the closest one would get to something reliable.
Even peer reviewed research runs some risk of bias, so I always try to look at a range of research papers to try to get a feel for where the truth lies, as I’m sure you would.
Revisionist history and interpretive history is mostly junk. I mostly avoid it like the plague. The exception would be Jared Diamond. N H Harari is also good.
#277, zebra–
Per Dark Money, the late 70s are more or less when the Kochs started doing that sort of thing in earnest–though such activity really took off after Koch lost his vice-presidential bid in 1980. Per Wikipedia:
But of course there were antecedents; Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead came out in 1943, and Atlas Shrugged in 1957. That gave rise to the “Objectivist movement”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivist_movement
By 1962, they were putting out newsletters. And if that sounds too fringe, note that this guy named “Alan Greenspan” was a charter member.
Moving on to redistricting/gerrymandering:
Correct. I haven’t read the book–just heard author interviews–but this is outlined in detail in David Daley’s Ratf**cked (sic). And it’s no secret; the project was called “redmap”, for obvious reasons, and they have an active website to this very day:
http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/
Which, I think, is increasingly going to be a political liability. Society is increasingly pluralistic; the politics of minoritarian race-and-gender-based privilege won’t cut it. (Providing, of course, that votes matter at all.)
Correction: people who drive *gasmobiles.* That’s going to be a decreasing proportion much faster than most people think, IMHO. (Well, technically it’s true now, but you know what I mean–I’m talking about non-trivial numbers.)
Good questions. But there are political pluses to the scheme as well, even in those red states. I think a lot of middle and working class folks would enjoy a monthly rebate check–especially since, unlike the recent failed GOP tax cut–I mean “failed” in its aim of currying widespread political favor for the midterms–it would disproportionately tend to favor the less-well-off.
Agreed enthusiastically (though not happily). That’s precisely why I keep bringing up Dark Money and the systemic nature of the problem. That’s why I advise people to organize politically, and that is why I’m attempting in multiple dimensions to follow my own advice (even though I’m a bit of a loner by nature/nurture, and thus I must work on the ground of a personal weakness.)
Regarding the Koch Brothers, libertarianism and Ayn Rand. I read Ayn Rands Novels years and years ago. The fountainhead was quite good, with a good message on individualism. Well that’s the end of the good news.
Atlas shrugged was not so good thematically. It appeared to be extolling the virtues of laissez faire capitalism and the corporate sector, and criticising trade unions and collective action, government regulation etc and drawing various philosophical conclusions, namely corporations great, trade unions evil.
Its too one sided, and ignores the wrong doing of corporations and the legitimate role of trade unions in trying to improve working conditions, and obvious practical benefits of collective action. Atlas Shrugged is not an evidence based book and is based on cherrypicking and bias. For me Ayn Rand is not objective, and this is amusing given the woman calls herself an objectivist.
The book is not good economics or philosophy. It is also quite inhumane, and doesn’t make sense economically because social security etc provides a good spending base to the economy. Sure some people abuse this system, just as some might waste the dividend from a carbon tax, and some cheat on their insurance claims, but this is a narrow way of looking at the issue. Social security helps tens of millions of good people.
The Democrat philanthropists spend too much time supporting worthy causes and not enough time funding members of congress and evening up that playing field. The long game is indeed important.
279 nigelj says: “However that is why I read a textbook on the issue of ancient human cultures..”
Good point. Now about the author who wrote that book ….. “The point is, you’ll run up against a lot of modern cultural myths and revisionist history, and interpretations of history through certain cultural lenses that obscure reality and skew it to a particular worldview. ”
It’s difficult to get inside an authors “head” but it is not impossible. Most never ever think of it. There’s no one to blame here. It’s an essential part of everyone’s cultural ‘conditioning’. It’s a very good thing to get past that psychological brick-wall.
“When one does not see what one does not see,
one does not even see that one is blind.”
-Paul Veyne
278 MartinJB; Was it a ‘novel’? I didn’t notice the label. The content is related to various previous comments by multiple participants. A short quote with a ref link for anyone interested in some deep thinking toward ‘solutions’ via system changes and paradigm shifts. ;-)
Tricky business.
#280 Kevin McKinney,
(I was thinking Chicago School economics and offspring specifically, which didn’t really arise from a couple of teenage-level novels.)
Well, anyway, I guess we have to go back to basics on the politics. I said:
“…we have the racism, which all the science says is what swung the last election (and previous ones at all levels), not economics or ‘ideology’.”
When you still think that those red-state voters are going to be swayed by the prospect of getting that check, you are denying all the research that has been done, just like denialists ignore physics, and what we/they can observe themselves.
If reasoned self-interest prevailed, we wouldn’t be in the current mess, would we?
And it is equally pollyannaish to think that there will be lots of EV for people to buy, because that would require the major auto companies to actually build them, which they have demonstrated they are unwilling to do.
My point, which was also part of our earlier discussion which you dropped, is that we have to be more realistic, however frightening and unpleasant it may be, about what motivates monkeys, including our personal selves.
If climate change is “the most important thing in the world”, then lots of other political preferences need to be valued for their efficacy in winning, not, again, in how righteous they might make one feel.
“(I was thinking Chicago School economics and offspring specifically, which didn’t really arise from a couple of teenage-level novels.)”
I have read plenty about the Chicago School, and you might be surprised how influential Ayn Rand is, sadly to say.
“…we have the racism, which all the science says is what swung the last election (and previous ones at all levels), not economics or ‘ideology’.”
Meh. Racism was obviousy a factor, nobody needs a scientifc analysis to work out that one (not that Zebra provided a link to one).
I think Trumps rhetoric about immigration was a pure dog whistle to the racists. But a) its obviously not the only thing that swung the election, and b) its not frozen in stone. In NZ we have a lot of immigration, but the so called red necks and racists are less visible than previously. People have slowly become more accepting of multi culturalism. If it can happen here it could happen in America. Or is it a lost cause there?
“And it is equally pollyannaish to think that there will be lots of EV for people to buy, because that would require the major auto companies to actually build them, which they have demonstrated they are unwilling to do.”
Well they are building some actually. They are hardly going to build huge numbers and have them sitting around. The problem is lack of enough demand, but I would suggest things always start slowly. Early smartphone sales were not huge, just look at it now a few years later! And they have the physical capacity to build millions of electric cars.
“My point, which was also part of our earlier discussion which you dropped, is that we have to be more realistic, however frightening and unpleasant it may be, about what motivates monkeys, including our personal selves.”
Absolutely right and its almost a case of working with that and manipulating policies around it. BUT humans can also be nudged towards higher motivations, morals and goals. I think history shows this, its just a slow process.
The books Enlightenment now and The Moral Arc are relevant.
zebra, #283–
I’d remind you that I live in a red state. It doesn’t give me a crystal ball, but it does help remind me that ‘red state’ does not denote something either internally homogeneous or unchanging.
Which is precisely why I think a rebate check would be very popular indeed. Yes, self-interest can be unenlightened, but it doesn’t take Buddha to explain a check in your mailbox.
Quite parallel is the way in which large numbers of red state votes responded positively to Democratic campaigning on health care. The GOP assaults on Obamacare (or its remnants) have been felt in red state pocketbooks, ERs, and, yes, addiction clinics. That, too, doesn’t require a Buddha to interpret for the man in the street.
nigel, #284 (and indirectly zebra’s #283)–
No, it is happening and indeed has happened in America. Trump is in this respect a reaction, but the primary long term effect of this reaction will be to discredit and disorganize the right. The underlying demographic drivers continue to move against the GOP. And they know it; ‘redmap’ was conceived partly in order to buy them time to deal with demographic change they knew was against them following Obama’s election in 2008.
What they didn’t anticipate was that the very gerrymandering that was supposed to allow them time to work out a more viable long-term strategy would lock them all the more firmly into the old dysfunctional one, due to the polarizing effects of the ‘primary’ system–as you may know, primary voters are the most strongly partisan on average, so in a gerrymandered Republican safe seat, the determinative voters become precisely the most reactionary ones.
All very well and good for them, except that their base continues to shrink through death and disability and insufficient demographic recruitment–and all the faster the worse their healthcare is, ironically enough.
On EVs, a lot of people haven’t noticed, but Tesla now is, in effect, a major auto company on the American scene. Its market capitalization is roughly on par with Ford and GM, and its Model 3 is outselling all but a handful of cars–by memory, I think the list was Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord and Elantra. Note that the 3 is considerably more expensive than any of those, which means 1) it’s likely the #1 seller by revenue, and 2) there is still probably a lot of pent-up demand for more affordable BEV models. (And they are coming, as economies of scale drive unit costs down; this is a ‘virtuous circle’ we’ve previously seen in action with wind and solar PV technologies.)
Production? I look forward to the Q4 numbers, which presumably will be out later this month, but they’ve been close on the order of 30,000 vehicles a month. Another story that hasn’t been widely reported outside the business pages is that Q3 was profitable. Q4 figures to be more so, as volumes are up and expenses (we think) are down.
Tesla, however, is largely a North American story for now–they are just starting to move in Europe, and are currently building a Chinese Gigafactory (in Shenzen–where else?) But availability in those markets has been limited so far.
So, turning to Europe, how do EVs look there?
Pretty good, actually:
Growth continues to be more or less exponential, and there are now more than a million BEVs on European roads (North American ones, too, actually: the millionth sale apparently happened sometime last August.)
Meanwhile, China is the #1 BEV market in the world, and is dominated by local players, such as EV specialist BYD. Plug-in electrics as a class set a new sales record earlier this year (I don’t have more recent figures at hand–or in search window–but this should be sufficiently indicative for our BOTE purposes just now.)
Again, it will be interesting to see the end-of-year figures. I think that the Chinese manufacturers will be increasingly significant at a global level over time; the combination of favorable government policy, rapidly increasing technological sophistication and a massive domestic market base gives them a huge leg up.
All of the above helps explain why many of the traditional major companies are committing significant budgets to the development of EVs. They know that that’s where the future of mobility is going to be, basically. It’s true that there is reluctance to fully commit to an electric future–not least because that future is a threat to the dealership model, which relies on maintenance as a profit center, and is moreover traditionally focused on emotional, not rational, sales strategies. Nevertheless, serious coin is going into electrics, with Volkswagen probably leading the way, in terms of sheer capital involved, at least:
Here’s a summary of announced policy, with some comment–and a couple of bottom line guesses:
Given that current annual sales are ~100 million vehicles, 3 million seems unrealistically low to me, since we’re already seeing 3% market shares in many markets today, and market share growth is proceeding a a brisk clip. 5 years at current rates should yield at least a single doubling in market share, and I think that the reality will be better than that. So my guess is that EVs will hold more than 6% market share in new auto sales by 2023, perhaps quite significantly more. Growth will be much faster than linear for quite some time.
Here’s the low-down on the Canadian carbon tax:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-carbon-tax-plan-trudeau-1.4874258
Says here that 1) the average household will come out ahead, and 2) payment will be annual and administered by Revenue Canada, which handles income tax–despite the fact that carbon-tax funds will not be commingled with regular tax income. It’s just meant to be for administrative efficiency.
Stay tuned as the political ruckus continues. Trudeau’s governing Liberals have been losing support, but still lead the polls. The next federal election is expected in October (a pretty safe expectation as the Liberals hold a majority in Parliament, leaving only the possibility of them calling an early ‘snap election’ if they see political advantage in doing so.)
Kevin McKinney @285, agreed regarding carbon fee and dividend. People can be persuaded if you give them something for free, or which has the ‘appearance’ of being free, and they will soon forget their political and ideological worldview. Pure monkey training, and basic operant conditioning!
Kevin McKinney @285, growth of electric cars is also very rapid in Norway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_Norway
Of course they are subsidised and very cost competitive, but this shows at least one thing: There’s an acceptance of the technology if its cost competitive.
I think all this is understandable, because cars are a big purchase for the average family and so even if they are concerned about climate change, cost is a legitimate factor in the decision making. The electric car option has to be made attractive for them. Norway have it figured out.
Another thing stands out for me. Up until the last couple of years electric cars have had range issues, but in the last two years this has changed and its just going to take a little while for the public to register this.
Choice has also been an issue but has improved hugely last year. Previously it was either the Tesla at high cost or a few lower cost cars like the nissan Leaf which were not very pretty looking. Never underestimate the importance of looks to the public, especially in America. But this is changing fast as companies like VW and General Motors bring out well styled electric vehicles that look more like tried and tested conventional styled cars.
But prising people away from the big V8, with its throbbing growling engine might be hard for some. Me I like cars that are whisper quiet.
My #286–
Apparently I should have waited a bit to write that post, as some early Q4 Tesla estimates just came out.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/02/tesla-delivers-90700-vehicles-in-q4-sets-new-production-delivery-records/
Says here that they moved a tad over 90,000 units in Q4, and “All told, 2018 saw 245,240 vehicles delivered to customers…”
2019 should make that well over 400k, I would think.
https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/01/05/document_gw_04.pdf
Bernhardt … erased a chapter on climate change from the department’s handbook.
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=677390503
The New Acting Interior Secretary Is An Agency Insider And Ex-Oil Lobbyist
Racism is horrible and played an obvious part in Trumps victory, but I feel the reason Hilary lost the election was largely Hilary. She lacked charisma, lacked a clear plan for the country, and she was tainted by several scandals, and unfortunately mud sticks, even although the accusations were ridiculous.
I’m not a mysogenist, and and she is basically a good person, its all to do with who she was politically. Its important because you need the right candidate with a good plan for combating climate change.
The Democrats have some out with this huge, gobsmackingly huge, infrastructure plan to fight climate change as below:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/29/green-new-deal-plans-proposal-ocasio-cortez-sunrise-movement
What do people think?
I feel a huge government spend on infrastructure might be popular with the public as opposed to a tax, but the government doesn’t really have the money, and simply creating credit might be inflationary. Very inflationary. And its yet another new plan so is confusing. I don’t hate it, but hmmm.
I would think its better to go with a combination of incremental sorts of things: renewable energy, carbon tax and dividend, maybe some selective subsidies, some reduced per capita energy use, but at realistic levels, and slower population growth ( a lot slower). This seems technically the correct plan and has some realistic chance of being adopted. Slim but possible.
Zebra, I’ll respond later (about economic theory and how it applies to my situation).
Nigel, maintenance is a dead issue because in a sharing economy internal combustion engines last *forever* because wear and tear are negligible other than during warmup and cool down. Since shared vehicles rarely cool off, their engines last decades and decades, especially in a hybrid application, where the engine just plods along almost endlessly.
Scientific American has done a series of articles on the science of economic inequality, including one implicating inequality as a cause of environmental problems (no great surprise there!):
https://www.scientificamerican.com/report/the-science-of-inequality1/
I’m curious about the historical origins of inequality. These research papers are interesting and might be surprising:
https://www.princeton.edu/~cboix/ARPS-2010.pdf
https://phys.org/news/2014-05-deep-roots-economic-inequality.html
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/a-brief-history-of-modern-inequality
“After reviewing the current literature on the causes of economic inequality, the article models the historical emergence of inequality as the result of a key technological change (i.e., the adoption of agriculture ) that widened income differentials and led to the construction of state institutions, which shaped (depending on their particular nature, moreor less authoritarian) the final distribution of economic assets withinand across different societies”
“The ancient roots of the 1%,” traces the development of economic disparity back to Natufian hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 10,000 years ago, where—new evidence suggests—individuals and families might have begun taking “ownership” of choice fishing spots and plentiful forest patches, storing surpluses of food, and amassing the accoutrements of wealth. This predates previous estimates of the age of wealth inequality, which had been linked to the advent of agriculture, by a few thousand years.”
So while hunter gatherer society was clearly mainly more equal than ours, significant inequality goes way back well before capitalism emerged. So blaming capitalism is somewhat simplistic.
Nissan have sold 300,000 nissan leafs. Not insignificant.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianblanco/2018/01/09/nissan-leaf-300000-sales-global/#3e61e0431cf6
Al Bundy @294 you got the wrong person there I think. I think the point was that electric cars are very low maintainance, so the car companies resist them because it removes a revenue stream? Although I dont know if that would be a big issue with them or not.
No doubt you are right about warming up and cooling off stressing motors (like it does with electronics). But internal combusion engines in hybrids don’t just plod along all the time, they switch on and off all the time.
I would like to be able to share a car, so order up a self driving car when needed if the cost was ok. Owning a car is such a curse, always some issue to worry about. But a sharing system would have to work seamlessly to get people to give up their car. We aren’t there yet by a long way.
nigelj@11, kind of depends on how you define “capitalism,” doesn’t it? If “capitalism” depends on the conversion of resources to some form of indestructible surrogate (e.g. money), then okay. But I’d suggest a broader definition, whereby “capital” is anything in excess of what you need, today, to continue living. If it is in excess of what you need, today, you can trade it (or the labor you don’t need to use to produce it) for something that might improve your life tomorrow – in other words, an investment. In that sense, “ownership” of anything becomes a form of capitalism.
Besides, is money really indestructible?
al, nigel, #294 7 6–
That was indeed the specific point I was making–although it’s embedded in a larger one, which is that in practice car dealers seem not to be very supportive of their various companies’ electric offerings, according to persistent reports from car shoppers who are interested in EVs. The maintenance revenue provides a solid reason in terms of self-interest for this phenomenon, but I think there are a lot of cultural reasons, too–the emotional-based traditional sales strategies and culture; sheer ignorance on the part of staff (a recurring refrain has been that the customer knew more about the EVs than salespersons); and just good old inertia.
At the corporate level, model availability is badly skewed towards states like California. For instance, I think I could find a Volt or two in Columbia, SC, and probably a Nissan Leaf. (Those latter are actually fairly popular in Atlanta, where I used to live, as a commuter car.) But an electric Ford or Fiat/Chrysler or Hyundai? I doubt it.
Eh? I’ve never see a warmed-up shared vehicle handed off from one user to another.
https://gigcarshare.com/how-it-works/
Are you thinking about Uber and Lyft-driven vehicles?