With an estimated (to be engineered!) roundtrip efficiency of 53%, the system is an economic viable storage solution for seasonal fluctuations in energy production on national level.
A pilot system is being built in coöperation with the Technical University of Eindhoven.
53% seems grossly optimistic. To make 1 kg of CH4 (HHV 55.5 MJ/kg) requires the consumption of 0.5 kg H2 (HHv 142.18 MJ/kg), or 71.09 MJ minimum, plus CO2. The process of making storable methane from electricity and CO2 is thus 78% efficient at best. Generating electric power from methane in a CCGT barely clears 60% efficiency, so the round-trip efficiency is likely to be well under 50%. This means there will have to be absolutely massive wind farms to generate and store adequate energy to make it through winter.
Given the low capacity factor of the electrolyzers and methanation systems, this is going to be some very expensive methane and make some very expensive electric power. Nuclear will be much cheaper, and also not pose a climate threat from the inevitable leaks.
Ye gods, this guy Bates is an innumerate clown. He can’t even get basic information right. He wrote:
The IPCC report states,
Large contributions with costs less than USD$20/tCO2-eq-1 come from solar and wind energy, energy efficiency improvements, reduced conversion of natural ecosystems, and CH4 emissions reductions [coal mining, oil and gas, waste].
The IPCC is obviously not considering ancillary costs and energy/materials demands for firming of unreliable power, diminishing returns with penetration, or the need to get to 100% decarbonization. What does the methane emission from coal mining matter, when we have to stop mining coal?
His “simplified chart” is full of howlers. Someone postulates north of 6 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent could be saved by use of biochar. Someone forgot to note that to make biochar, you first have to make biomass, and NPP (net primary productivity) puts a hard cap on that. Also, the number for nuclear energy is disgracefully low. Some 10% of world-wide electric generation currently comes from nuclear energy. In 2020, nuclear energy supplied 2553 TWh of electricity. At the EPA figure of 709 gCO2/kwh for coal-fired power, displacement of 2.553 trillion kWh of coal-fired power already displaced 1.81 billion tons of CO2. If we escalated world nuclear electric generation from 10% to 75% of the total, that figure would come closer to 13.5 billion tons/year, leaving biochar in the dust… without consuming a gram of biomass.
Using low-temperature nuclear heat from mostly spent steam can further decarbonize by displacing combustion sources of space heat and DHW. The Russians are doing this at Pevek and the Chinese are going whole-hog at Haiyang, for starters.
95% of the greenhouse gas emissions occur not from the reactors themselves but from the fuel cycle, including some very potent fluorocarbons used in gas centrifuge fuel enrichment.
Uranium enrichment doesn’t use fluorocarbons at all. It uses uranium hexaflouride (UF6), which becomes a gas at atmospheric pressure and slightly elevated temperatures.
Then he went off the deep end with trivially-debunked assertions:
The Ukraine invasion brought these designs into sharp focus after Russian troops overran the site of the Chernobyl disaster and made camp in the “Red Forest,” so named for the radiation damage to its trees.
The main damage to the “Red Forest” came from iodine-131. I-131 has a half-life of 8.02 days.
“Hey, look!” said the generals, “There is a giant gap in the Ukrainian line. Let’s go through there!” Only after they had kicked up enough dust to produce acute radiation sickness were the troops evacuated to die somewhere else, bleeding from every orifice.
From 26 April 1986 to April 18 2022 is 13141 days, some 1638 half-lives of I-131. After even 20 half-lives, the isotope is effectively gone; after 1638 it is going to be virtually undetectable. NOBODY got radiation poisoning from a brief exposure in the Red Forest. Exposure from remnant Sr-90 and Cs-137 won’t be enough to sicken anyone.
He gets even worse:
The IPCC report states that:
Most of the countries which might introduce nuclear power in the future for their climate change mitigation benefits do not envision developing their own full fuel cycle, significantly reducing any risks that might be linked to proliferation.
That statement is nonsensical because the plutonium and U-233 of greatest interest to bomb-makers is kept on site in swimming pools to cool for decades after being burnt. Moreover, some “advanced” reactors like Gates’s TerraPower Natrium Small Modular Reactor use cheaper, low-enriched uranium that then can become bomb-grade plutonium cores for nuclear weapons — with serious proliferation implications.
Where to begin….
1. Without a domestic nuclear fuel cycle, there is no way to build a “Little Boy” style uranium bomb.
2. The plutonium isotope mix in end-of-cycle LWR fuel cannot be used to make nuclear weapons. Weapons-grade plutonium is at least 93% Pu-239; all other isotopes comprise 7% or less. Used LWR fuel (see Table 1, p. 18) has 2.84 kg Pu-240 vs. 5.81 kg Pu-239 per metric ton heavy metal at discharge. That’s a ratio of 49% Pu-239 to all other isotopes, WAY out of spec for weapons. The heat and gamma generation threatens to destroy the implosion system and electronics, and the spontaneous fissions will pre-initiate most attempts at implosion detonations and cause them to fizzle.
3. Used LWR fuel contains essentially NO U-233. U-233 is a product of neutron capture in Th-232, and thorium is not a component of current LWR fuel elements. Use of Th-232 results in production of substantial amounts of U-232, which is not a problem for reactors but decays fairly rapidly to Th-228 which quickly produces problematic amounts of Tl-208, a gamma-emitter.
Fast-spectrum reactors essentially destroy higher actinides. Multiplying one minus the transmutation probabilities of isotopes from Pu-239 through Cm-244, only a trifling 0.000009635 (that’s 0.0009635%, around 10 parts per million) of Pu-239 would survive to become an isotope heavier than Curium-244 in a fast-spectrum reactor. All the rest would become short-lived fission products, releasing energy and fission neutrons. None of it whatsoever would be weapons-useful materials.
I’m done with this clown. He’s not right; he’s not even wrong.
Killiansays
Ye gods, this guy Bates is an innumerate clown.
You just invalidated anything you have to say. That “inumerate clown”…:
Has argued law before the SCOTUS.
Co-created one of the first all-solar vehicles.
Co-created the first portable defibulator.
Global leader in ecovillage design and ecovillage design education.
Best-in-class expert on bio-char.
Just to name a few.
You can fairly argue you disagree with him, but when you start with an absurd Ad Hom, you give Dear Readers no reason to read further as you have shown you have no objectivity WRT the topic.
nigeljsays
NUMERACY especially ENGINEERING MATHS is clearly not proven by “practicing law, having some unspecified input into a solar vehicle, ecovillage design and self proclaimed expertise in biochar” None of these things require any special level of numeracy, and even if Bates does these things, it does NOT prove he is numerate.
EP is right about Albert Bates: He is is getting some of this stuff about energy systems wrong, and his numeracy ( maths) isn’t too good, Its hardly surprising because Bates is a lawyer with no formal training in science or engineering. His views on biochar are suspect as well. Anyone with any intelligence can see all that at a glance.
The skillsets of lawyers are pretty much exclusive to the ones required of actual scientists and engineers. Lawyers argue to convince judges and juries; Nature could not care less about empty words.
Co-created one of the first all-solar vehicles.
Sounds like someone else did the electrical, mechanical and aerodynamic engineering, though.
Co-created the first portable defibulator.
I don’t think anyone wants or needs a portable device to remove fibulae. Designing such a device would be the work of a true bone-head. ;)
Global leader in ecovillage design and ecovillage design education.
And what, pray tell, are the concrete results of this?
Best-in-class expert on bio-char.
Dry lignocellulose is about 45% carbon by mass. 1 billion dry tons of lignocellulose thus burns to make about 1.65 billion tons of CO2, and will make something less than 0.45 billion tons of biochar depending on the losses to CO2 in the pyrolysis process. Eliminating 6 billion tpy of CO2 via creation of biochar is going to require on the order of 4 billion tpy of dry lignocellulose, when the world’s agricultural giant, the USA, would have to strain to create ¼ of that. This also means foregoing all the other uses and products of that biomass. Some of those uses would be replaced by fossil fuel.
Removing the equivalent of 6 billion tpy of CO2 is nothing compared to 35 billon tpy of emissions. It amounts to re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and any serious analysis has to take that into account.
when you start with an absurd Ad Hom, you give Dear Readers no reason to read further as you have shown you have no objectivity WRT the topic.
It is not “ad hominem” to declare someone incompetent to opine when the details of their incompetence are laid out for all to see. Bates gets basic scientific facts completely wrong in a piece which is obviously designed to convince ignorant people of fictitious dangers, not even educated laymen let alone subject-matter experts.
Such efforts are proof of dishonesty, and thus malicious intent.
Killiansays
Co-created one of the first all-solar vehicles.
Sounds like someone else did the electrical, mechanical and aerodynamic engineering, though.
Unfounded, non-evidentiary, baseless claim and logical fallacy of a nuclear troll. Your bias is well-known here. Even the Peanut Gallery doesn’t put up with your nonsense.
Adam Leasays
I have a question on how to counter an argument which sounds reasonable at first but is probably deeply flawed.
The UK is facing a recession as the escalating cost of living forces people to cut spending and consumption. From an environmental point of view, this could be perceived as a good thing because mass consumption is the biggest contributor to environmental destruction and unsustainable living. However, I have heard the argument that if people reduce consumption significantly, it would result in many businesses closing down, with subsequent mass unemployment, which historically doesn’t result in a good quality of life (e.g. the 1930’s Great Depression).
If we all transition to a lifestyle where consumption is minimised, what do all the people now do that were previously involved in manufacturing and commercial industries? Presumably we also have to end the concept of money and economics but I don’t yet understand what would replace the capitalist system we have at present, If we dispense with money, how do people purchase essentials like food, and if people have to produce their own food through local community schemes, what about those who don’t have the health/strength to participate?
You set the conditions, then ignore them: If we all transition to a lifestyle where consumption is minimised
Logical result of minimizing? The end of the current economy. A mere 20% = The Great Depression, so what would an 80%+ reduction do? There’s no way around an entirely different way of managing resources/consumption. It would require a system that didn’t *require* profit and growth to survive, right? It would clearly be almost enturely local.
Now, you can have lower consumption and still have Capitalism technically, but realistically, Capitalism leads to the violation of the Commons because of greed. There is an interesting new analysis that noted only societies that produced core foods that could be saved and stored developed complex hierarchies and centralized power and wealth. The reason is startlingly simple.
A taro root-based society (vs. grain-based) is difficult to tax and to hoard wealth because taro cannot be stored long-term. What good does it do to tax taro when it will rot in storage? Grains, however, can be held for years, accumulated, and used to manipulate the people either by creating artificial scarcity or by how doling out the reserves in times of true scarcity is done.
Taro = no kings; grains = kings.
I agree this analysis is germane.
The only way equality can be achieved and maintained long-term is via egalitarian decision-making and Commons because if there is any individual or group ownership of production, the Commons will be violated, imbalances will occur. Hoarding (wealth) will come not because of the group, but bc of selfish/sociopathic individuals. Certainly, even in a Commons a sociopath can seek to overthrow or ignore the existing system, but with resources common to all, they’d have a hard time dominating the rest of the community and/or society as they would have no advantage over any other in a conflict.
The Mississippian culture of NA tried hierarchy for some centuries then rejected it in a fit of violence. They found the whole thing so distasteful, they seem to have not only abandoned, but completely avoided the area around Cahokia, e.g., for centuries and gave it some sort of ominous, negative name I can’t recall. (See Graber, et al., 2021)
What need of money? What is there to buy?
So, what do/did people do in simpler, slower societies with all that free time? Whatever they want/wanted. Play. Swim. Think. Talk. Make. Create. Dance. Sing. Paint. Rest. Ponder. Whatever.
Adam Leasays
Thanks Killian it is starting to make sense to me now. To summarise, we need societies where there is no individual ownership, but resources are shared, and distribution of resources is decided collectively, with the condition that consumption of resources must not exceed generation. This sounds a bit like the community allotment project I am involved with, which consists of a group of volunteers working a plot of land together to grow vegetables, with the harvest shared out, and tasks that need doing weekly are discussed and people at the regular work parties work together to do those tasks. There is a shed full of tools which individuals use when required, and there is no ownership of anything or heirachal structure, all volunteers have equal weight. I have found over the years that cooperative projects like this provide a significant boost to my emotional wellbeing. If this could be scaled up it sounds like a superior way of living, not just from the sustainability/ecosystem point of view, but in terms of human welfare as well.
Killiansays
Your example is absolutely spot on. There are many flavors of egalitarianism that range from the somewhat hierarchical to, like the Iroquois, women’s councils that determined distribution, to true egalitarianism. Population density vs. resource base seems to play a big part in which type emerges. Personally, I adhere to the adage that power corrupts and advocate for a pure Commons and egalitarianism.
It’s interesting to note, because many here and elsewhere, proclaim without anything more than a “Can’t be done” or “people won’t” that we cannot return to such lives. However, until first contact, much of pre-Columbian North America and Amazonia, Africa and and pre-contact Oceania were still living this way. That was only 232 years ago in Australia. I think in most people’s minds they kind of lazily think of such simple times as being over 10k years ago.
And, of course, many intentional communities, and c0-ops like yours, do things this way.
Of particular note, Cheran, Mexico, a city of about 16k mostly indigenous people threw out the government and declared their autonomy. They function by a form of consensus derived from their ancient practices and serve as a proof of concept that large communities can do this and also for the model I developed in 2011/12 which I call Regenerative Governance.
What is sad, is those that do not identify as indigenous (although I suspect the vast majority of Mexican citizens are of mixed ancestry), being indigenous need not have anything to do with choosing a form of egalitarian processes. There are those who argue only homogenous communities can be egalitarian. I say that is ignorance due to being bound up in the past. The problem lies in the basis for forming community and making community decisions: Shifting to rsk, needs, resources limits and rational decisions completely devoid of beliefs, ideologies, values, etc., is the key for non-homogenous communities, imo.
zebrasays
Adam,
Where did the tools come from?
What would you do if at harvest time, a group of individuals who didn’t have access to an “allotment” came and took all the crops?
This is an artificial situation; it is not at all independent from “capitalism” and “money”, because it could not exist outside the existing overall societal structure.
Just the term “allotment” demonstrates that there is a condition of scarcity; there is no difference between what you call individual ownership and ownership by the sovereign state entity.
nigeljsays
Adams example of the vegetable growing allotment and its shared resources is artificial in another way. It sounds like a group of civilised, disciplined, passionate middle class people very dedicated to the idea. Its not clear it would work in the wider world of far more varied people. The evidence suggests its wouldn’t: The modern alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have mostly failed and after only a few years (Easily googled). But people like Killian ignore this, such is their considerable level of confirmation bias.
I have nothing against this lifestyle as such. Nearly joined one of these groups myself, so I think I do see it from both sides and reasonably objectively. The problem with transitioning backwards to such lifestyles might be that modern society has evolved a long way away from those kinds of values of simple sharing and its hard to change that. The cultural evolution thing. It might work when people are actually born inside such communities but the communities first have to last that long.
The other problem is organising a shared community that has so many tools that modern humans have. Its far more complex than a simple hunter gatherer tribe or third world farmer. And the more goods you have to share the more greedy people become. To think modern humans can simply flick a switch and go back to living like ancient cultures but with modern technology added on, seems very naive to me. And the evidence is on my side because those sorts of experiments routinely run into problems as stated.
Ray Ladburysays
Zebra and Nigel,
I don’t think it is fruitful to attack either Adam’s position or Killian’s based on the fact that currently existing social structures are predicated on the current economic framework. Of course they are, but that does not in and of itself make them unrealistic or artificial.
The situation we have is that:
1) We currently exist within a global socioeconomic structure that is unsustainable
2) All social structures that exist currently depend to a greater or lesser extent on that global socioeconomic structure
3) If we wish to survive as a species, we must create a new global socioeconomic structure that supports societies that are sustainable.
4) People are going to have to acquiesce somehow to the abolition of our current structure and acquiesce to the creation of a new type of society–one that has likely never had an analog in human history. At the same time, we have to look for analogs that could guide us among current and historical societies
5) If we want people to acquiesce of their own free will, we have to promise them something better than what they have now.
6) Better cannot mean “having more stuff” as that is unsustainable, so we have to promise them something else–more time with family, more autonomy, more security, more equality…
The situation we face now is not unlike that faced by the US founding fathers–they needed to create a “democratic society” on a scale far exceeding that of any previous such society. It had to promise people something more than government by “the divine right of kings.” For all the shortcomings of the system they developed, it did serve the purpose it needed to at the time. Without such promise, the revolution never would have succeeded and the new nation would have died in the cradle.
Adam Leasays
Some tools were donated, all were bought with money at some point, yes I agree it is not independent of capitalism since none of us have the skills or raw materials to manufacture our own tools from whatever materials we can scavenge off the land. I also use my car to transport manure from a local field to the allotment (theoretically could be done by bicycle but would be an awful lot more physical effort and less time efficient). The allotment site itself (which has over 100 plots, the community allotment is just one plot) is gated and padlocked which reduces the risk of theft, though theft of produce and tools from sheds has happened. If someone does break in and take all the crops we will end up without a harvest to share, it hasn’t happened in the 10 years it has existed so I think such an extreme event is unlikely. In any case, harvests have been limited due to first a lack of man/woman power and secondly a recent flip in the climate towards locked in weather patterns**, which make gardening a lot more difficult, and crop failures from weeks of soaking rains/weeks of drought, or favourable condistions for pests/diseases more likely. When embedded in a capitalist system, it is virtually impossible to be completely independent of it, a possible exception being Mark Boyle (https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-moneyless-man/mark-boyle/9781786075994), but even he was dependent on charity from others who were engaged in the capitalist system.
And this. The community allotment was partly under water during February 2020, the wettest February on record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyZVFB4Sco
The winter veg largely survived thankfully.
Nigel: No I don’t know how you scale up a localised project consisting of like minded people to the scale of a region or even country.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury
I agree with your points 1-6 in general terms. It almost sounds like you are making a case for a universal basic income.
My criticism is that Killians often stated plans of shared ownership and nobody owning anything, getting rid of money and capitalism completely, getting rid of almost all private property and his 90% reductions in use of energy in two decades idea would all be hugely problematic and a disaster no matter how you do it, and no matter how much more time we promise people to have with their families etc, etc. You appear to think it would work just fine.
Killiansays
I’m so sorry you have to put up with the usual biased logical fallacies. Using the “But you’re using a computer!” argument? They know better. I’ve been here for at least 13 years, and I think I first started reading here in 2007, and it has *never* changed; the same intentionally misleading arguments all that time. Intentionally and knowingly biased.
1. How does one start the steps to regenerative status from within the current system without using that system? They are literally making the “but a computer!” argument. It’s immoral after all this time to still be using this. They know what they are doing.
2. Numerous times the concept of Embedded Energy has been presented on these pages. Again, the choice to ignore that to make pejorative jabs at attempts to discuss/do regenerative things is highly questionable, to put it politely.
3. Numerous times the concept of Appropriate Technology has been presented on these pages. Using existing tools/materials to achieve regenerative changes is not only logical, it’s necessary and to be lauded. Yet, we get the same pejorative nonsense ignoring this concept. It’s not accidental. We’ve been over this too many times. It’s cannibalism within the “green” movement.
4. Did you claim it was outside the current structures? No. Straw Man fallacy. Again, addressed ad nauseum on these pages. Its use is pejorative.
5. Zebra states another Straw Man that you did not raise: No difference between Commons and sovereign ownership. This is perhaps not intentionally pejorative because it is utterly wrong. A sovereign state entity can impose whatever limits, restrictions, penalties it wishes on the people while a group that has set up a Commons cannot, by definition, do that. The two are so different as to make the comment absurd.
6. nigel’s typical diahrrea, of course, complete with outright lies this time around.
…artificial in another way. It sounds like a group of civilised, disciplined, passionate middle class people very dedicated to the idea. Its not clear it would work in the wider world of far more varied people.
First, he ignores the arguments made above that these are systems being done within an utterly unsustainable, broken, mentally and emotionally stunted society. So, yes, difficult to succeed. Of course, nigel knows nothing of such communities and, as ever, parrots bullet points he has no real understanding of while ignoring the reality that, in fact, hundreds, if not thousands of such communities and organizations currently exist. “Ecovillages” are but one type of community. It is my opinion that they fail for a reason others do not account for: Too much homogeneity. I have found time spent in them to be artificial socially. This is due, imo, to people from this paradigm trying to reproduce a paradigm they do not fully understand and overemphasizing NVC. Further, their thinking and community designs are based on modern theorists, not observation and mimicry of extant regenerative societies.
The evidence suggests its wouldn’t
THE evidence? Do tell: You ignore Cheran, Mexico, The Farm, Findhorn, hundreds of intact indigenous societies, and on and on. Why?
The modern alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have mostly failed and after only a few years (Easily googled). But people like Killian ignore this, such is their considerable level of confirmation bias.
Bald-faced lie. This is a point *I* have made on these pages, and discussed why I think they have, as above, repeatedly. Nigel, as ever, is a liar, period.
I have nothing against this lifestyle as such.
Liar. Flat out. See: The problem with transitioning **backwards**
Nothing but pejorative statements and ignorance from this morally-challenged person. How is simplification backwards? How is more time for family, friends, leisure, creativity, skill-building, etc., backwards? By what bizarre definition is a *healthier*, mentally, socially, physically, society backwards? Less technology = backwards? That thinking is what is backwards.
To think modern humans can simply flick a switch and go back to living like ancient cultures but with modern technology added on, seems very naive to me.
Another Straw Man lie. Flick a switch? Bullshit.
And the evidence is on my side because those sorts of experiments routinely run into problems as stated.
Really? Because we have successful examples and we’re getting better at it all the time. More and more communities all the time, not fewer and fewer. And how absurd to imply successfully creating regenerative communities, or at least moving in that direction, is somehow undesirable *compared to* remaining in a suicidally sick, broken society that is so far beyond the tipping point into failure that it cannot be saved no matter what. This is how badly this man seeks to hold on to his comforts, his privilege, modernity, and convenience rather than serve humanity and Nature.
Killiansays
Ray Ladbury,
So refreshing and hopeful to see this sober response.
zebrasays
Ray Ladbury,
Ray, your example about the USA reinforces my position on this exactly.
The condition was an abundance of resources relative to the population, which is what I always suggest as necessary to have a sustainable society that offers the advantages of science and technology.
The “current socioeconomic structure” exists because of scarcity. It’s a pretty straightforward thought experiment, beginning with an extreme value condition:
Have a stable world population of 300 million, distributed among the optimal geographic locations. It’s not about “acquiescing”; it’s about making rational, self-interested, economic and societal choices.
-If there were 20-30 million people living on the East coast of the US, and the same on the West, and none in between, what would be the rational choice for energy sources?
-What would be the conditions of social equity when there is a fixed labor pool, and individuals have the choice to go somewhere else if they feel like it?
The list could go on but I leave it to your imagination to add similar questions. I think you will then realize that the ills of our existing paradigm would not be present.
And my point is not that I have a magic instant way to get there, but that what’s problematic is the idea that there is some Kumbaya solution based on a moral epiphany of every human on the planet, given the current physical conditions.
It ain’t gonna happen. A very large proportion of the human population is currently rooting for Putin (and autocracy for themselves), and sweet reason isn’t going to change that.
Conditions must change, and the type of society you are hoping for will evolve naturally.
Killiansays
The condition was an abundance of resources relative to the population, which is what I always suggest as necessary to have a sustainable society that offers the advantages of science and technology.
Fundamentally incorrect. Recall the eternal mouse whose only limit is that it must eat. On a planet of cheese as large as Saturn, or even the sun, it will someday die. The ratio is meaningless. What matters, in the end, is one thing: Are the resources either sustainable and/or eternally recyclable?
We’ve been talking about this for over a decade. How is this still a concept you do not understand?
Ray Ladburysays
Nigelj,
In 1700, a political system that did not rely on the “divine right of kings” was considered unthinkable. As theory, they would claim that without divine sanction of a monarch, no regime could be legitimate. As evidence, they could cite the English Civil War and the subsequent failure of the Protectorate under Cromwell. And yet, before the next century was out the idea that the government derived it’s just power from the consent of the governed held way in the new United States (as long as you were white, male and propertied, anyway), It was the basis of the first French Republic–and even Napoleon initially gave it lip service. It was even gaining ground in England and would result in the reform laws of Parliament.
My point is that intractable problems look intractable until someone comes up with a way to look at it differently that removes the seeming obstacles. Yes, a world without personal property sounds odd to us, but does it sound any odder than an egomaniac being able to buy Twitter for what he considers pocket change? Does it sound any odder than a kleptocrat mobilizing the armed forces of a nuclear power to invade a neighboring country?
I don’t know what the future society and economy will look like. Neither do you. It hasn’t been conceived in full just yet. What I do know is that no matter what that society looks like, we’re going to have a helluva sales job. We need to start thinking about how that society will make peoples’ lives better, at least for the vast majority of people.
nigeljsays
Killian
nigelj: The evidence suggests its wouldn’t.
Killian: THE evidence? Do tell: You ignore Cheran, Mexico, The Farm, Findhorn, hundreds of intact indigenous societies, and on and on. Why?
Nigelj: Killian routinely quotes me out of context. This is what I actually said in full. “The evidence suggests its wouldn’t: The MODERN alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have MOSTLY failed and after only a few years (Easily googled).
NigelJ: The modern alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have mostly failed and after only a few years (Easily googled)….”
Nigelj: Even Killian acknowledged the difficulties making some these sorts of things work where he says “Ecovillages” are but one type of community. It is my opinion that they fail for a reason others do not account for: Too much homogeneity. I have found time spent in them to be artificial socially. ”
The trouble is with so many failing it suggests the fundamental concepts are flawed, and no amount of tinkering or trying to make them less homogenous will make them work. And Killian’s formula for regenerative governance is very fixed: absolutely no hierarchies or private property etc, etc, so it doesn’t leave that much room for social variety.
Ecovillages that accept private property rights, and some semblance of hierarchy but perhaps with more decision making delegated than in mainstream society look more plausible to me.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury.
“In 1700, a political system that did not rely on the “divine right of kings” was considered unthinkable….”
Agreed on all that. .
“My point is that intractable problems look intractable until someone comes up with a way to look at it differently that removes the seeming obstacles. Yes, a world without personal property sounds odd to us, but does it sound any odder than an egomaniac being able to buy Twitter for what he considers pocket change? Does it sound any odder than a kleptocrat mobilizing the armed forces of a nuclear power to invade a neighboring country?”
Its not that a world without personal property sounds “odd”. Its that multiple modern attempts have ALREADY been made to do this everywhere from Stalinist Russias collectivist organisations, to Maos China, to Cuba (to an extent) to multiple modern intentional (alternative communities) and they have mostly all failed! So its just doesn’t seem like a scalable workable proposition. What works for hunter gather tribes will not necessarily work for modern technology using societies. As Einstein said “don’t keep doing the same thing expecting different results.” The reasons for the failures are well researched. I’m just expressing my scepticism.
Now such a society MIGHT evolve naturally over a long time period. You cant rule that out, but I’m very sceptical of it being something that would develop over the next few decades. We do see the rise of the idea of hiring autonomous self drive cars but they are still privately owned by corporations.
I don’t think your comparison with those dreadful egomanics and kleptocrats makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately those odious behavious do not seem so odd to me.
“I don’t know what the future society and economy will look like. Neither do you. It hasn’t been conceived in full just yet.
Agreed. I’m just sceptical that it will go down the shared ownership pathway. I do believe it will involve some version of the circular economy idea because its workable and sellable to the public and farming has to change to something involving less tilling of the soils and use of pesticides etc. . But beyond things like that its hard to say.
“What I do know is that no matter what that society looks like, we’re going to have a helluva sales job. We need to start thinking about how that society will make peoples’ lives better, at least for the vast majority of people.”
Agreed. If we want people to cut consumption or recycle more things there do indeed have to be rewards as you say. We cannot force people to do such things, and not everyone can conceive the problems we are getting into and just make changes of their own volition. But I doubt that you will ever be able to sell people the idea of giving up on ownership or making huge and rapid reductions in consumption.
We are in quite a sticky difficult situation. Our civilisation is at risk of collapse but attempts to simplify our civilisation could also cause a collapse according to Joseph Tainter. He said we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t and that rapid deindustrialisation looks problematic.
We have to promote things that might work without making it all worse. The circular recycling economy idea has potential. And its about a rate of change of lifestyles that we can adapt to. I suggest you google the work of Joseph Tainter. Somebody I discovered recently who really is well worth a read.
Killiansays
Its not that a world without personal property sounds “odd”. Its that multiple modern attempts have ALREADY been made to do this
You mean are being made and are succeeding? Yes, true. But in nigelWorld…
everywhere from Stalinist Russias collectivist organisations, to Maos China, to Cuba (to an extent)
Are you serious here, or just don’t mind saying stupid shit knowing you’re going to get reamed because? You are calling dictatorships “collectivist organizations,” drawing a parallel between egalitarian communities with personal autonomy to autocratic dictatorships by political parties? Citing the asinine attempts at “Communism” in those countries as examples of the failure of attempts at egalitarian, Commons-based communities is beyond ignorant.
Par for your course,
to multiple modern intentional (alternative communities) and they have mostly all failed!
You keep citing the failures, yet completely leave out the successes. Apparently, you cannot grasp the successes are the ones that will inform future and ongoing efforts about what works while failure is by far the best teaching tool there is.
In nigelWorld, this is all bad.
Further, it took 10k years to get from Hunter-Gatherer-Gardener bands to where we are today. Apparently, we failed all those millennia rather than changing over time. Because nigelWorld-speak. And now that there’s been an “ecovillage” movement ramping up for a bit more than half a century, it’s a complete failure that deserves your constant, ignorant, uneducated scorn? Ah, to live in nigelWorld.
So its just doesn’t seem like a scalable workable proposition.
** Entire planet was exactly that workable, scalable proposition.
** Hundreds of societies never stopped engaging in that workable, scalable proposition.
** We have not only long-term variants such as Findhorn, the Amish, Mondragon, La Via Campesina, other locations in the GEN and IC networks, but a city of 16k doing exactly this in Cheran, Mexico, and other cities in Mexico trying to do the same. But in nigelWorld, that’s not progress, it’s a reason to dismiss the only hope we have in favor of continuing the stupid shit that is destroying the planet. That such efforts are growing means nothing in nigelWorld, they must, in less than a single human lifetime, have spread over the entire planet and included 8 billion people – even though the true state of the emergency has only been fully acknowledged by most in the last few years.
** Example: “There are now estimated to be between 2000 and 3000 communities involved in Transition initiatives in over 50 countries”
From ZERO to thousands in 16 years, but, hey, nigel says he’s skeptical!
What works for hunter gather tribes will not necessarily work for modern technology using societies.
What works? What is that, nigelWorld? You have no clue despite having this conversation since 2017. Yeah, sure, just leave another version of your caveman bullshit laying there.
You have it completely backward: If we don’t do “what works” for Hunter-Gatherer-Gardener societies, there is zero chance of this “modern” society surviving. So, “what works for modern technology-using societies” absolutely will not work for regenerative societies. Mimicking the patterns, principles, and functions of H-G-G societies is our only hope.
Just not in the ignorant land of nigelWorld.
As Einstein said “don’t keep doing the same thing expecting different results.
Ah, yet another nigelism! Taking thins I have said to him *many times* and pretending he cleverly thought of it. But we already covered it: Taking 10k years to get where we are is just fine, but half a century-ish is far too long to return society to sanity.
nigelWorld: Come for the ignorance, stay for the suicidally stupid.
By the way, learn to write above a middling 6th Grade level, eh? Your posts are riddled with the kinds of mistakes I’d fail an elementary school student for making. And, no, nigelWorld, not the typos.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury,
Adding to my previous response upthread.
The other issue is its not clear why eliminating private ownership would actually improve environmental outcomes. because people will still be producing and consuming and having environmental impacts, wanting to travel etc, etc. Shared ownership might stop a few ambitious people hugely overconsuming, but that isn’t nearly sufficient to fix the problem.
The soviet union tried to eliminate private ownership and environmental outcomes were much worse than in America. I know there are many complex factors involved, but it gives a clue that some form of shared ownership might not work and is is not a panacea.
Zebras definition of sustainability of a small global population of modern technology using humans seems more useful. I assume he means a population that consumes at the level of Americas middle classes.
The problem is what do we do between now and the point we get to s small global population? Because there would be huge potential environmental degradation in that period. I would say the most viable solutions are the circular recycling economy and some form of regenerative farming. All the ideas like deindustrialisation and eliminating private property look like pipe dreams to me that would cause more harm than good.
—————————
Killian
The soviet union is obviously a totalitarian dictatorship, but their collective farms give us a CLUE about the problems of eliminating private property.
The examples you give of long lasting modern technology using communities that share things are somewhat outweighed by the number that fail. (Refer my links). That worries me that its not really a viable model.
Some of those communities that have worked and lasted are held together by their religious convictions. More and more people are tending towards atheism or less stringent forms of religion, or forms of religion that don’t form separatist communities.
zebrasays
Adam,
You are asking two different questions at once.
1. What would constitute a society in which ‘consumption’ doesn’t lead to extreme environmental degradation?
2. What would be required to make the transition from the current state?
-The first question is easy. If you have a stable population size such that there is an abundance of resources per capita, then you can have a culture with most of the amenities we take for granted in First World countries. “Capitalism” and “money” are not the problem, it is ownership of resources that create the issues you seem to be concerned about.
Sustainability doesn’t mean everything remains the same; science and technology, given the opportunity in such a society, will find adaptations to meet actual needs and even desires.
-The second question is the difficult one. As I’ve pointed out previously, it requires that population growth be greatly curtailed along with the transition of technologies away from fossil fuel consumption. The best we can hope for is that this can occur with minimal harm, but it will not happen rapidly, so there will indeed be serious disruption.
And, obviously, that requires overcoming the obstacles presented by vested interests.
So we’ll see how the contest between liberalism and authoritarianism plays out… it may end up solving the population problem; ironically, a nuclear war might eliminate mostly those who are consuming the most, leaving the Southern hemisphere full of Brown and Black people to apply the lessons learned.
(Living in a prime target zone, I will certainly never know.)
Killiansays
-The first question is easy. If you have a stable population size such that there is an abundance of resources per capita, then you can have a culture with most of the amenities we take for granted in First World countries.
This is an extremely common fallacy. Note you failed to address that most resources are finite. Population is not the key factor for a small population, time is.
Recall, if you will, the Eternal Mouse living on a giant planet of cheese; eventually, there is only shit.
nigeljsays
Adam Lea
Regarding the proposition that reducing levels of consumption of resources would cause job losses, and consequent unemployment and related poverty. Yes it could, and I have said this several times on this website. Its basic economics. We see it every time there’s an economic recession. Its beyond something that is debatable.
However it depends on circumstances. Its intuitively a rate of change issue. Big reductions in consumption (for example 50%) implemented quickly would most likely completely destabilise our society and cause depression conditions and dire poverty as happened in the 1930’s. People would not have time to retrain for new jobs for one problem.
If reductions in consumption were set at realistic levels phased in very gradually it seems intuitively obvious the system would adjust / adapt without too many problems. The question is how much time would the system need to adjust smoothly without too many problems? I would hazard a guess if we assume we cut consumption levels by 50% we are talking about 50 – 100 years to phase down to that in an orderly way. One clue is Japans economy has had low growth for over three decades and has not imploded although it came close to imploding.
I have a feeling that consumption levels of at least some resources will ultimately fall naturally (without being forced by policy) and at a fairly slow pace. Because resources are finite obviously.
However if population size does fall like Zebra points out reducing levels of per capita consumption becomes less critical.
The idea of getting rid of money seems very problematic. We got rid of bartering because of all the problems that caused, so why would we go back to bartering? Bartering would be even more difficult now because of the huge variety of goods we would have to try and barter.
The other alternative to money is a shared economy and the community collectively just decides what goods people get. This works in ancient cultures but our society has a much larger variety of goods and so it could be a very complicated time consuming exercise, and relying on a level of goodwill that modern humans don’t really have.
However the way we use money could obviously be improved (not convinced that bitcoin is the solution).
Carbomontanussays
To all and everyone
on “biochar”
The conscept has come up and Killian has been a proponent.
It is hardly known and hardly relevant in tempered sones, but seems to have paid a traditional role in Brazilean rainforest conditions with extreeme microbial growth and extreemly fast natural decay of dead organic material, and Kaolination of the soils. Where anything is washed out and lost and only the most resistant component of clay minerals ( Si Al)2 O7 remains. . All humus is rather up in the treetops with mosses and frogs, herrons and all. Chop down and burn that, and the very mineral plant nutrician reserve is washed out into the river and you can drive on waggons and trains of industrial mineral fertillizers.
The situation here where I am living is radically different. The soils and loose masses are very young and remarkably rich even without humus and fertillizers. What is typical of very young marine and glacio- fluvial sediments from very rich and varied bedrock composed of granite old plutonic Magma, Perm vulkanism, and extreemly old metamorphic precambrian marine sediments. That typical traditional morraine- sand is good enough and exellent for making strongest concrete, it is practically humus- free. And good enough for new landfilling in the gardens. When uncovered by bulldozers along the new highway, the local flora and forest shoots right up from “nothing” up to Stradivarii Violoncelli dimensions in only a few hundret years. And gives a best “brown earth” for pioneering agriculture, swinery and poultry, rhyebread and beers. For apples that need more potassium, look after enough blue marine clay bottom also. Bio- char is false and silly on it.
The huge tempered and very varied broad leave frorests of New England are similar. A very rich landscape only too stony for industrial agriculture but exellent for swinery poultyry cattle potatoes and cider- culture It is Vin- land. Naturally there have been wild bears and beasts in the same landscapes. Apple trees can grow up on sheere impossible boulder areas and even from cracks in the bedrocks. Biochar is si9lly.. There is stable Potassi9um Phosphate Calsium Magnesium Boron Copper Zink Selen,.. you name it and Ammonium in the natural substrate.
When having rhoded chopped and burnt you can build houses from the thimbers and have record yeld of rhye and potatoes for several years befrore you have to bring back some manure on it. Such are the rich and preferabgle landscapes in the tempered zones. Due to very varied bedrock and clay minerals.
When organic material decays and rots, most of the Carbon goes back again to the air by microbic activity “cool combustion” and the plant nutrician minerals are re- cycled. Only a small fraction of the photosynjthesis carbon is settled. C14 dating of the Ah horizon in rich mineral soils show averages of 6000 years and more. telling us the truth about common metabolism and re- cyclings. And telling us further that Jöns Jacob Berzelius together with Killian & al were wrong on this. Higher Plants do not eat Humus. And hardly need humus either. And Justus von Liebig was right on the same 180 years ago allready together with Gay Lussac.
Moral: On rich well varied sheere sterile mineral soil you can grow tomatoes and even wine, only, you must wait a bit for their roots to stretch out longer. Addition of humus and compost and fertillizer piss and manure is hardly natural and only for artificially more intense and prophitable agriculture.
The rather natural and organic and traditioinal culture that I am telling of will take quite more land for the same yield than if you can buy waggons and trains of NPK fertillizer, Granulated dolomite , and russian NH4 NO3. And “biochar” rather stupidifying to worldwide. The half burnt wood into “biochar” will not decay fast enoutgh to deliver back its wooden- ash- mineral component. So you will have to piss on it or buy waggons and trains of substitutes for the same.
Carbomontanussays
Futher on “bio-char” even for the tiniest brains:
If you burn common barbecue- coal, you get ashes, so called “pot- ash”.
what is it? I did “eluate” it. It is hardly potassium carbonate. That fameous remedy showed to be rather an alkali- phosphate solution, still exellent for washing and for making soap. But Calsium remains. It hardly follows the water extract. Calsium is shown by eluating the residuum by thin HcL and add oxalic acid solution, then you find a lot of calsium in most plant ashes also.
Thus, that ash itself is an eminent , fameous, and traditional fertillizer, it contains all the minerals taken up by roots from the soil to make that plant organism live healthy. Exept for ammonium, the amino- acids of life. That burns and disilles off.
Thus when common leavefall and plant materials rot, when composted aerobically for instance, you get rid of all the carbohydrates , set free and get back those valuable mineral plant nutricians, and can grow your “veggies” on it. Mushroms and microbes and microfauna will exel in it.
Then dare to think one tiny step further.
Now, what happens if you turn your “veggies” and woods and twigs into “-char” instead, that will not rot and decay naturally in your jungle, because mushroms and worms and “bugs” will not eat and digest it?
You loose all your very valuable “Potash” and wooden ashes forever and dare to be proud of it and teach that you are using “bio- char”.
Thus it comes when you never learnt to think in terms of permanence of matter and permanence of chemical elements, and label your strange beliefs, that never learnt the elements, for “permaculture”. and even “re- cycling”, Re-storation and Re- vival.
Nope! Nobody wants simpler lives, or higher quality of life!!!
nigeljsays
Regarding the link about people moving from high density central city areas back to the suburbs and more rural areas. I have mentioned previously several times on this website that we may see a process like this. However in this instance its mainly driven by a desire to live in larger homes (according to the article), and you also have to consider that suburban living is generally more reliant on the automobile tan inner city living. Large homes and ICE automobiles tend to have large environmental footprints, and generally not in a good way. So it may be slightly simpler but is it really any better?
Adam Leasays
People want a higher quality of life but those articles don’t say anything about simplicity, the first is the desire for cheaper housing, which is the same reason in the UK the SE transport networks are rammed full, because London is too expensive to buy property so the city workers have to live in towns and villages in the commuter belt. The second article is about women deciding they’ve had enough of high stress jobs, and the pandemic and working from home has revealed opportunities to do this. There is nothing revolutionary here, people who can afford it and don’t have ties have always moved to locations which they prefer more than where they live (e.g. retired people moving from cities to the coast or areas of outstanding natural beauty), and people have always changed jobs if they have the opportunity to find a better one. I’ve attempted myself to relocate to a better job, but every time I’ve tried I get to the interview and end up not being the successful candidate, so I have stayed where I am.
Killiansays
The articles don’t need to. Part and parcel of simplicity is exactly the choice of less affluence for better quality of life. Those articles show the desire for and willingness to explore that less is more.
People who can afford it? Have you been paying attention to the “Great Resignation?” It’s been an important part of the supply chain issues, and it’s not just people with money.
Anyway, it was a simple point: People will choose less is more. Some always have. More will once they fully understand it is the only choice. These are just small indicators, but I have learned small indicators can be very important harbingers of change. (E.g. when I started a debate by simply noting there were unusual CO2 excursions in February a couple/few years ago. Of course, the ultraconservatives here jumped on that as unscientific and not supported by the data. The next year they started in January. And, so, here we are with a pretty clear regime change in progress, but I, of course, didn’t know wtf I was talking about, eh?
Guess who have never stepped and said, gee, Killian, you seem to have been on to something there….
Anywho… The “People won’t!” nonsense always looks stupid when you ask its purveyors, 1. do they know the true existential threat? Uh… no… And, 2., did you tell them there are ways out via simplicity? Uh… no…
“Part and parcel of simplicity is exactly the choice of less affluence for better quality of life. Those articles show the desire for and willingness to explore that less is more.”
The problem is the contention is not well supported by the first link Killian posted. It talks about people leaving high density inner city housing for larger, cheaper homes in the suburbs. There is nothing about changing jobs, and any monetary savings they make on their cheaper house purchases will inevitably go into other consumer goods or travel. So its not clear that they are seeking or achieving less affluence in any real terms. Its not simplification. Its a sideways step.
Some of the women seeking less stressful jobs may well settle for more flexible hours or fewer hours. This supports Killians contention quite well. I did much the same. I chose a career that maximised job satisfaction, not one that had a massively high income. That said I still had a high income in about the top 10%.
Ray Ladburysays
I think the point of these articles is not that they represent a Utopian ideal, but rather that they show that people are looking for something different…something better, whether they an define what better is or not. In a way, the lack of focus in their definition could be viewed as an opportunity to give them at least part of what they want wrapped in a bright, shiny package of sustainability.
In some ways, the COVID crisis helped to make the way forward clearer–more telecommuting, more virtual meetings, less business travel…, even as it demonstrated the resistance we’ll face from idiots in implementing even painless, commonsense reform.
When I was a kid, my hometown city council wanted to pass an ordinance against building in a flood plain. They faced such a backlash that the ordinance was overturned by a popular referendum. A couple of years later, the council came up with a plan to build a lot of new parks and preserve open space. People loved it. Of course, the open space was all in the flood plain. Sometimes you have to package what people need inside of what they think they want. It’s the gummy-bear-vitamin theory of governance.
If you think about it, we have so much that we need to do to build a new, sustainable society that it is absurd to talk about people being put out of work. Really, as long as we can produce enough food, shelter, clothing… to meet needs, we have work for them to do to earn such. It is only that so much of the economy is owned by the top 0.00001% that distorts the situation and produces scarcity and fear.
nigeljsays
Ray Ladbury
“If you think about it, we have so much that we need to do to build a new, sustainable society that it is absurd to talk about people being put out of work. Really, as long as we can produce enough food, shelter, clothing… to meet needs, we have work for them to do to earn such”
Depends on what you mean by sustainable, which isnt too clear. And it depends on resource use and rate of change change. If we were to reduce the consumption of resources slowly I’m sure people would find jobs. Do it too quickly in a place like America and there would be mass unemployment, poverty and chaos. That is basic economics, the sort of economics that really is on solid ground.
zebrasays
Adam, you should take your observation a bit further. People will move to places/jobs they prefer… and what they prefer covers a wide range of possibility.
Given the choice, at any given stage in their lives, they may want to live in the city, or the suburbs, or spend time in a hippie farm commune, or whatever. And jobs may be attractive because they pay more or because they are challenging or socially valued or, again, whatever.
So we are back to the question of how you have a society in which this is possible. And the answer, although it doesn’t fit into some people’s need to apply some moral judgment, is to have an abundance of resources with a proportionally small and stable population.
What that does is elevate the value of labor over the value of “owning” resources. Again, it isn’t about “capitalism” or “money”; people would not be constrained as you describe, because there would be cheap housing whether in cities or elsewhere, and jobs everywhere.
“And the answer, although it doesn’t fit into some people’s need to apply some moral judgment, is to have an abundance of resources with a proportionally small and stable population.”
Great idea!
But how? Snapping my fingers and wishing really hard doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
But let’s apply your test… in a world where the ratio of resources to population is decreasing, “how” does that Kumbaya society arise that the Cornucopians like Ray imagine??
Autocracy and inequality is the result of (and requires) scarcity, not the other way around. And if we look at today’s paper, we see the distinct possibility that this the direction in which we are headed.
nigeljsays
The following is an example from todays news paper of an ecovillage that has turned into a total disaster. It illustrates some of the points I’ve been making. Their intentions are admirable, but dubious management and funding concepts, human nature, deceit, and incompetence gets in the way. Its not the only example.
“Debt, distrust and deadlock: How peace at an idyllic eco-village was shattered”
But let’s apply your test… in a world where the ratio of resources to population is decreasing, “how” does that Kumbaya society arise that the Cornucopians like Ray imagine??
Define “resource”, especially in contrast to “reserve”. A “resource”, in petroleum terminology, is what exists. A “reserve” is what can be produced at current prices.
The oceans are chock-full of magnesium. Seawater is the main source of magnesium metal; all that is required to convert it from soluble ions to metal is energy, and from there it will return to soluble ions all by itself. The main determinant of how much magnesium we can have per capita is how much embodied energy we can make per capita. Much the same is true of aluminum; it’s very common in Earth’s crust, but the energy required to reduce and recycle it determines how much of it we can have for our own use.
Autocracy and inequality is the result of (and requires) scarcity, not the other way around.
Properly understood, that scarcity is almost always scarcity of energy, not the material itself. Aside from some truly scarce elements such as precious metals, most everything else is simply not concentrated enough for our purposes (e.g. “rare earths”, which are neither rare nor earths). We can overcome these difficulties with sufficient energy.
Ye gods, with energy at 1¢/kWh, we could feed tens of billions with the produce of vertical farms watered by seawater stills and fertilized with wet-oxidized sewage plus some additional fixed nitrogen. The oceans are also full of potash and phosphorus.
And if we look at today’s paper, we see the distinct possibility that this the direction in which we are headed.
Excellent overview of the WGIII publication, it’s biggest fails and overall outline if what we are and are not doing.
https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-age-of-climatelimits.html
Quoth nigelj:
53% seems grossly optimistic. To make 1 kg of CH4 (HHV 55.5 MJ/kg) requires the consumption of 0.5 kg H2 (HHv 142.18 MJ/kg), or 71.09 MJ minimum, plus CO2. The process of making storable methane from electricity and CO2 is thus 78% efficient at best. Generating electric power from methane in a CCGT barely clears 60% efficiency, so the round-trip efficiency is likely to be well under 50%. This means there will have to be absolutely massive wind farms to generate and store adequate energy to make it through winter.
Given the low capacity factor of the electrolyzers and methanation systems, this is going to be some very expensive methane and make some very expensive electric power. Nuclear will be much cheaper, and also not pose a climate threat from the inevitable leaks.
EP: This means there will have to be absolutely massive wind farms to generate and store adequate energy to make it through winter.
BPL: Works for me.
EP: Nuclear will be much cheaper, and also not pose a climate threat from the inevitable leaks.
BPL: I’ll let that one stand on its own.
Hr Levenson
E.Poet has got other problems.
If Nuclear power had been so straight and clean and cheap and easy that he is teaching and telling, then it would have taken over the market long ago.
So he is hardly telling us the truth and all the truth about it, and that is his basic major problem.
Most probably because he does not know the truth and all the truth, or that he knows it but cannot tell it.
I would set on both until that can be cleared up first.
Reality-based climate and energy essay with a focus on nuclear folly.
https://cooldesign.medium.com/climates-red-forest-12e40b3c1dbb
Quoth Killian:
Ye gods, this guy Bates is an innumerate clown. He can’t even get basic information right. He wrote:
The IPCC is obviously not considering ancillary costs and energy/materials demands for firming of unreliable power, diminishing returns with penetration, or the need to get to 100% decarbonization. What does the methane emission from coal mining matter, when we have to stop mining coal?
His “simplified chart” is full of howlers. Someone postulates north of 6 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent could be saved by use of biochar. Someone forgot to note that to make biochar, you first have to make biomass, and NPP (net primary productivity) puts a hard cap on that. Also, the number for nuclear energy is disgracefully low. Some 10% of world-wide electric generation currently comes from nuclear energy. In 2020, nuclear energy supplied 2553 TWh of electricity. At the EPA figure of 709 gCO2/kwh for coal-fired power, displacement of 2.553 trillion kWh of coal-fired power already displaced 1.81 billion tons of CO2. If we escalated world nuclear electric generation from 10% to 75% of the total, that figure would come closer to 13.5 billion tons/year, leaving biochar in the dust… without consuming a gram of biomass.
Using low-temperature nuclear heat from mostly spent steam can further decarbonize by displacing combustion sources of space heat and DHW. The Russians are doing this at Pevek and the Chinese are going whole-hog at Haiyang, for starters.
Uranium enrichment doesn’t use fluorocarbons at all. It uses uranium hexaflouride (UF6), which becomes a gas at atmospheric pressure and slightly elevated temperatures.
Then he went off the deep end with trivially-debunked assertions:
The main damage to the “Red Forest” came from iodine-131. I-131 has a half-life of 8.02 days.
From 26 April 1986 to April 18 2022 is 13141 days, some 1638 half-lives of I-131. After even 20 half-lives, the isotope is effectively gone; after 1638 it is going to be virtually undetectable. NOBODY got radiation poisoning from a brief exposure in the Red Forest. Exposure from remnant Sr-90 and Cs-137 won’t be enough to sicken anyone.
He gets even worse:
Where to begin….
1. Without a domestic nuclear fuel cycle, there is no way to build a “Little Boy” style uranium bomb.
2. The plutonium isotope mix in end-of-cycle LWR fuel cannot be used to make nuclear weapons. Weapons-grade plutonium is at least 93% Pu-239; all other isotopes comprise 7% or less. Used LWR fuel (see Table 1, p. 18) has 2.84 kg Pu-240 vs. 5.81 kg Pu-239 per metric ton heavy metal at discharge. That’s a ratio of 49% Pu-239 to all other isotopes, WAY out of spec for weapons. The heat and gamma generation threatens to destroy the implosion system and electronics, and the spontaneous fissions will pre-initiate most attempts at implosion detonations and cause them to fizzle.
3. Used LWR fuel contains essentially NO U-233. U-233 is a product of neutron capture in Th-232, and thorium is not a component of current LWR fuel elements. Use of Th-232 results in production of substantial amounts of U-232, which is not a problem for reactors but decays fairly rapidly to Th-228 which quickly produces problematic amounts of Tl-208, a gamma-emitter.
Fast-spectrum reactors essentially destroy higher actinides. Multiplying one minus the transmutation probabilities of isotopes from Pu-239 through Cm-244, only a trifling 0.000009635 (that’s 0.0009635%, around 10 parts per million) of Pu-239 would survive to become an isotope heavier than Curium-244 in a fast-spectrum reactor. All the rest would become short-lived fission products, releasing energy and fission neutrons. None of it whatsoever would be weapons-useful materials.
I’m done with this clown. He’s not right; he’s not even wrong.
Ye gods, this guy Bates is an innumerate clown.
You just invalidated anything you have to say. That “inumerate clown”…:
Has argued law before the SCOTUS.
Co-created one of the first all-solar vehicles.
Co-created the first portable defibulator.
Global leader in ecovillage design and ecovillage design education.
Best-in-class expert on bio-char.
Just to name a few.
You can fairly argue you disagree with him, but when you start with an absurd Ad Hom, you give Dear Readers no reason to read further as you have shown you have no objectivity WRT the topic.
NUMERACY especially ENGINEERING MATHS is clearly not proven by “practicing law, having some unspecified input into a solar vehicle, ecovillage design and self proclaimed expertise in biochar” None of these things require any special level of numeracy, and even if Bates does these things, it does NOT prove he is numerate.
EP is right about Albert Bates: He is is getting some of this stuff about energy systems wrong, and his numeracy ( maths) isn’t too good, Its hardly surprising because Bates is a lawyer with no formal training in science or engineering. His views on biochar are suspect as well. Anyone with any intelligence can see all that at a glance.
Thank you, E-P.
One of the two of you is in some way innumerate, but it’s not him: https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2022/05/musk-on-mars.html
Killian beclowns himself too:
The skillsets of lawyers are pretty much exclusive to the ones required of actual scientists and engineers. Lawyers argue to convince judges and juries; Nature could not care less about empty words.
Sounds like someone else did the electrical, mechanical and aerodynamic engineering, though.
I don’t think anyone wants or needs a portable device to remove fibulae. Designing such a device would be the work of a true bone-head. ;)
And what, pray tell, are the concrete results of this?
Dry lignocellulose is about 45% carbon by mass. 1 billion dry tons of lignocellulose thus burns to make about 1.65 billion tons of CO2, and will make something less than 0.45 billion tons of biochar depending on the losses to CO2 in the pyrolysis process. Eliminating 6 billion tpy of CO2 via creation of biochar is going to require on the order of 4 billion tpy of dry lignocellulose, when the world’s agricultural giant, the USA, would have to strain to create ¼ of that. This also means foregoing all the other uses and products of that biomass. Some of those uses would be replaced by fossil fuel.
Removing the equivalent of 6 billion tpy of CO2 is nothing compared to 35 billon tpy of emissions. It amounts to re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and any serious analysis has to take that into account.
It is not “ad hominem” to declare someone incompetent to opine when the details of their incompetence are laid out for all to see. Bates gets basic scientific facts completely wrong in a piece which is obviously designed to convince ignorant people of fictitious dangers, not even educated laymen let alone subject-matter experts.
Such efforts are proof of dishonesty, and thus malicious intent.
Co-created one of the first all-solar vehicles.
Sounds like someone else did the electrical, mechanical and aerodynamic engineering, though.
Unfounded, non-evidentiary, baseless claim and logical fallacy of a nuclear troll. Your bias is well-known here. Even the Peanut Gallery doesn’t put up with your nonsense.
I have a question on how to counter an argument which sounds reasonable at first but is probably deeply flawed.
The UK is facing a recession as the escalating cost of living forces people to cut spending and consumption. From an environmental point of view, this could be perceived as a good thing because mass consumption is the biggest contributor to environmental destruction and unsustainable living. However, I have heard the argument that if people reduce consumption significantly, it would result in many businesses closing down, with subsequent mass unemployment, which historically doesn’t result in a good quality of life (e.g. the 1930’s Great Depression).
If we all transition to a lifestyle where consumption is minimised, what do all the people now do that were previously involved in manufacturing and commercial industries? Presumably we also have to end the concept of money and economics but I don’t yet understand what would replace the capitalist system we have at present, If we dispense with money, how do people purchase essentials like food, and if people have to produce their own food through local community schemes, what about those who don’t have the health/strength to participate?
I wish I could upvote this.
You set the conditions, then ignore them: If we all transition to a lifestyle where consumption is minimised
Logical result of minimizing? The end of the current economy. A mere 20% = The Great Depression, so what would an 80%+ reduction do? There’s no way around an entirely different way of managing resources/consumption. It would require a system that didn’t *require* profit and growth to survive, right? It would clearly be almost enturely local.
Now, you can have lower consumption and still have Capitalism technically, but realistically, Capitalism leads to the violation of the Commons because of greed. There is an interesting new analysis that noted only societies that produced core foods that could be saved and stored developed complex hierarchies and centralized power and wealth. The reason is startlingly simple.
A taro root-based society (vs. grain-based) is difficult to tax and to hoard wealth because taro cannot be stored long-term. What good does it do to tax taro when it will rot in storage? Grains, however, can be held for years, accumulated, and used to manipulate the people either by creating artificial scarcity or by how doling out the reserves in times of true scarcity is done.
Taro = no kings; grains = kings.
I agree this analysis is germane.
The only way equality can be achieved and maintained long-term is via egalitarian decision-making and Commons because if there is any individual or group ownership of production, the Commons will be violated, imbalances will occur. Hoarding (wealth) will come not because of the group, but bc of selfish/sociopathic individuals. Certainly, even in a Commons a sociopath can seek to overthrow or ignore the existing system, but with resources common to all, they’d have a hard time dominating the rest of the community and/or society as they would have no advantage over any other in a conflict.
The Mississippian culture of NA tried hierarchy for some centuries then rejected it in a fit of violence. They found the whole thing so distasteful, they seem to have not only abandoned, but completely avoided the area around Cahokia, e.g., for centuries and gave it some sort of ominous, negative name I can’t recall. (See Graber, et al., 2021)
What need of money? What is there to buy?
So, what do/did people do in simpler, slower societies with all that free time? Whatever they want/wanted. Play. Swim. Think. Talk. Make. Create. Dance. Sing. Paint. Rest. Ponder. Whatever.
Thanks Killian it is starting to make sense to me now. To summarise, we need societies where there is no individual ownership, but resources are shared, and distribution of resources is decided collectively, with the condition that consumption of resources must not exceed generation. This sounds a bit like the community allotment project I am involved with, which consists of a group of volunteers working a plot of land together to grow vegetables, with the harvest shared out, and tasks that need doing weekly are discussed and people at the regular work parties work together to do those tasks. There is a shed full of tools which individuals use when required, and there is no ownership of anything or heirachal structure, all volunteers have equal weight. I have found over the years that cooperative projects like this provide a significant boost to my emotional wellbeing. If this could be scaled up it sounds like a superior way of living, not just from the sustainability/ecosystem point of view, but in terms of human welfare as well.
Your example is absolutely spot on. There are many flavors of egalitarianism that range from the somewhat hierarchical to, like the Iroquois, women’s councils that determined distribution, to true egalitarianism. Population density vs. resource base seems to play a big part in which type emerges. Personally, I adhere to the adage that power corrupts and advocate for a pure Commons and egalitarianism.
It’s interesting to note, because many here and elsewhere, proclaim without anything more than a “Can’t be done” or “people won’t” that we cannot return to such lives. However, until first contact, much of pre-Columbian North America and Amazonia, Africa and and pre-contact Oceania were still living this way. That was only 232 years ago in Australia. I think in most people’s minds they kind of lazily think of such simple times as being over 10k years ago.
And, of course, many intentional communities, and c0-ops like yours, do things this way.
Of particular note, Cheran, Mexico, a city of about 16k mostly indigenous people threw out the government and declared their autonomy. They function by a form of consensus derived from their ancient practices and serve as a proof of concept that large communities can do this and also for the model I developed in 2011/12 which I call Regenerative Governance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher%C3%A1n#Culture
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrPBdLiqMb0
This is from 2021, via Doha Debates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr1hapswLd0
This story demonstrates you cannot keep the old system in place. A neghboring community kept political parties, and the system is not functioning.
https://piedepagina.mx/in-the-purhepecha-plateau-communal-identity-resists-the-party-system/
What is sad, is those that do not identify as indigenous (although I suspect the vast majority of Mexican citizens are of mixed ancestry), being indigenous need not have anything to do with choosing a form of egalitarian processes. There are those who argue only homogenous communities can be egalitarian. I say that is ignorance due to being bound up in the past. The problem lies in the basis for forming community and making community decisions: Shifting to rsk, needs, resources limits and rational decisions completely devoid of beliefs, ideologies, values, etc., is the key for non-homogenous communities, imo.
Adam,
Where did the tools come from?
What would you do if at harvest time, a group of individuals who didn’t have access to an “allotment” came and took all the crops?
This is an artificial situation; it is not at all independent from “capitalism” and “money”, because it could not exist outside the existing overall societal structure.
Just the term “allotment” demonstrates that there is a condition of scarcity; there is no difference between what you call individual ownership and ownership by the sovereign state entity.
Adams example of the vegetable growing allotment and its shared resources is artificial in another way. It sounds like a group of civilised, disciplined, passionate middle class people very dedicated to the idea. Its not clear it would work in the wider world of far more varied people. The evidence suggests its wouldn’t: The modern alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have mostly failed and after only a few years (Easily googled). But people like Killian ignore this, such is their considerable level of confirmation bias.
I have nothing against this lifestyle as such. Nearly joined one of these groups myself, so I think I do see it from both sides and reasonably objectively. The problem with transitioning backwards to such lifestyles might be that modern society has evolved a long way away from those kinds of values of simple sharing and its hard to change that. The cultural evolution thing. It might work when people are actually born inside such communities but the communities first have to last that long.
The other problem is organising a shared community that has so many tools that modern humans have. Its far more complex than a simple hunter gatherer tribe or third world farmer. And the more goods you have to share the more greedy people become. To think modern humans can simply flick a switch and go back to living like ancient cultures but with modern technology added on, seems very naive to me. And the evidence is on my side because those sorts of experiments routinely run into problems as stated.
Zebra and Nigel,
I don’t think it is fruitful to attack either Adam’s position or Killian’s based on the fact that currently existing social structures are predicated on the current economic framework. Of course they are, but that does not in and of itself make them unrealistic or artificial.
The situation we have is that:
1) We currently exist within a global socioeconomic structure that is unsustainable
2) All social structures that exist currently depend to a greater or lesser extent on that global socioeconomic structure
3) If we wish to survive as a species, we must create a new global socioeconomic structure that supports societies that are sustainable.
4) People are going to have to acquiesce somehow to the abolition of our current structure and acquiesce to the creation of a new type of society–one that has likely never had an analog in human history. At the same time, we have to look for analogs that could guide us among current and historical societies
5) If we want people to acquiesce of their own free will, we have to promise them something better than what they have now.
6) Better cannot mean “having more stuff” as that is unsustainable, so we have to promise them something else–more time with family, more autonomy, more security, more equality…
The situation we face now is not unlike that faced by the US founding fathers–they needed to create a “democratic society” on a scale far exceeding that of any previous such society. It had to promise people something more than government by “the divine right of kings.” For all the shortcomings of the system they developed, it did serve the purpose it needed to at the time. Without such promise, the revolution never would have succeeded and the new nation would have died in the cradle.
Some tools were donated, all were bought with money at some point, yes I agree it is not independent of capitalism since none of us have the skills or raw materials to manufacture our own tools from whatever materials we can scavenge off the land. I also use my car to transport manure from a local field to the allotment (theoretically could be done by bicycle but would be an awful lot more physical effort and less time efficient). The allotment site itself (which has over 100 plots, the community allotment is just one plot) is gated and padlocked which reduces the risk of theft, though theft of produce and tools from sheds has happened. If someone does break in and take all the crops we will end up without a harvest to share, it hasn’t happened in the 10 years it has existed so I think such an extreme event is unlikely. In any case, harvests have been limited due to first a lack of man/woman power and secondly a recent flip in the climate towards locked in weather patterns**, which make gardening a lot more difficult, and crop failures from weeks of soaking rains/weeks of drought, or favourable condistions for pests/diseases more likely. When embedded in a capitalist system, it is virtually impossible to be completely independent of it, a possible exception being Mark Boyle (https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-moneyless-man/mark-boyle/9781786075994), but even he was dependent on charity from others who were engaged in the capitalist system.
** which periodically produce conditions like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkpEvRpzoSY&t=1s
And this. The community allotment was partly under water during February 2020, the wettest February on record:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyZVFB4Sco
The winter veg largely survived thankfully.
This wasn’t too bad in my area, though some on the allotment site suffered damage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSOP4G9ckQI
We started the community allotment shortly after this record breaking wet summer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2-MLL6NFJ4
Apparently this sort of weather is predicted to get worse with a warming climate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXVVYu8XX8w
Nigel: No I don’t know how you scale up a localised project consisting of like minded people to the scale of a region or even country.
Ray Ladbury
I agree with your points 1-6 in general terms. It almost sounds like you are making a case for a universal basic income.
My criticism is that Killians often stated plans of shared ownership and nobody owning anything, getting rid of money and capitalism completely, getting rid of almost all private property and his 90% reductions in use of energy in two decades idea would all be hugely problematic and a disaster no matter how you do it, and no matter how much more time we promise people to have with their families etc, etc. You appear to think it would work just fine.
I’m so sorry you have to put up with the usual biased logical fallacies. Using the “But you’re using a computer!” argument? They know better. I’ve been here for at least 13 years, and I think I first started reading here in 2007, and it has *never* changed; the same intentionally misleading arguments all that time. Intentionally and knowingly biased.
1. How does one start the steps to regenerative status from within the current system without using that system? They are literally making the “but a computer!” argument. It’s immoral after all this time to still be using this. They know what they are doing.
2. Numerous times the concept of Embedded Energy has been presented on these pages. Again, the choice to ignore that to make pejorative jabs at attempts to discuss/do regenerative things is highly questionable, to put it politely.
3. Numerous times the concept of Appropriate Technology has been presented on these pages. Using existing tools/materials to achieve regenerative changes is not only logical, it’s necessary and to be lauded. Yet, we get the same pejorative nonsense ignoring this concept. It’s not accidental. We’ve been over this too many times. It’s cannibalism within the “green” movement.
4. Did you claim it was outside the current structures? No. Straw Man fallacy. Again, addressed ad nauseum on these pages. Its use is pejorative.
5. Zebra states another Straw Man that you did not raise: No difference between Commons and sovereign ownership. This is perhaps not intentionally pejorative because it is utterly wrong. A sovereign state entity can impose whatever limits, restrictions, penalties it wishes on the people while a group that has set up a Commons cannot, by definition, do that. The two are so different as to make the comment absurd.
6. nigel’s typical diahrrea, of course, complete with outright lies this time around.
…artificial in another way. It sounds like a group of civilised, disciplined, passionate middle class people very dedicated to the idea. Its not clear it would work in the wider world of far more varied people.
First, he ignores the arguments made above that these are systems being done within an utterly unsustainable, broken, mentally and emotionally stunted society. So, yes, difficult to succeed. Of course, nigel knows nothing of such communities and, as ever, parrots bullet points he has no real understanding of while ignoring the reality that, in fact, hundreds, if not thousands of such communities and organizations currently exist. “Ecovillages” are but one type of community. It is my opinion that they fail for a reason others do not account for: Too much homogeneity. I have found time spent in them to be artificial socially. This is due, imo, to people from this paradigm trying to reproduce a paradigm they do not fully understand and overemphasizing NVC. Further, their thinking and community designs are based on modern theorists, not observation and mimicry of extant regenerative societies.
The evidence suggests its wouldn’t
THE evidence? Do tell: You ignore Cheran, Mexico, The Farm, Findhorn, hundreds of intact indigenous societies, and on and on. Why?
The modern alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have mostly failed and after only a few years (Easily googled). But people like Killian ignore this, such is their considerable level of confirmation bias.
Bald-faced lie. This is a point *I* have made on these pages, and discussed why I think they have, as above, repeatedly. Nigel, as ever, is a liar, period.
I have nothing against this lifestyle as such.
Liar. Flat out. See: The problem with transitioning **backwards**
Nothing but pejorative statements and ignorance from this morally-challenged person. How is simplification backwards? How is more time for family, friends, leisure, creativity, skill-building, etc., backwards? By what bizarre definition is a *healthier*, mentally, socially, physically, society backwards? Less technology = backwards? That thinking is what is backwards.
To think modern humans can simply flick a switch and go back to living like ancient cultures but with modern technology added on, seems very naive to me.
Another Straw Man lie. Flick a switch? Bullshit.
And the evidence is on my side because those sorts of experiments routinely run into problems as stated.
Really? Because we have successful examples and we’re getting better at it all the time. More and more communities all the time, not fewer and fewer. And how absurd to imply successfully creating regenerative communities, or at least moving in that direction, is somehow undesirable *compared to* remaining in a suicidally sick, broken society that is so far beyond the tipping point into failure that it cannot be saved no matter what. This is how badly this man seeks to hold on to his comforts, his privilege, modernity, and convenience rather than serve humanity and Nature.
Ray Ladbury,
So refreshing and hopeful to see this sober response.
Ray Ladbury,
Ray, your example about the USA reinforces my position on this exactly.
The condition was an abundance of resources relative to the population, which is what I always suggest as necessary to have a sustainable society that offers the advantages of science and technology.
The “current socioeconomic structure” exists because of scarcity. It’s a pretty straightforward thought experiment, beginning with an extreme value condition:
Have a stable world population of 300 million, distributed among the optimal geographic locations. It’s not about “acquiescing”; it’s about making rational, self-interested, economic and societal choices.
-If there were 20-30 million people living on the East coast of the US, and the same on the West, and none in between, what would be the rational choice for energy sources?
-What would be the conditions of social equity when there is a fixed labor pool, and individuals have the choice to go somewhere else if they feel like it?
The list could go on but I leave it to your imagination to add similar questions. I think you will then realize that the ills of our existing paradigm would not be present.
And my point is not that I have a magic instant way to get there, but that what’s problematic is the idea that there is some Kumbaya solution based on a moral epiphany of every human on the planet, given the current physical conditions.
It ain’t gonna happen. A very large proportion of the human population is currently rooting for Putin (and autocracy for themselves), and sweet reason isn’t going to change that.
Conditions must change, and the type of society you are hoping for will evolve naturally.
The condition was an abundance of resources relative to the population, which is what I always suggest as necessary to have a sustainable society that offers the advantages of science and technology.
Fundamentally incorrect. Recall the eternal mouse whose only limit is that it must eat. On a planet of cheese as large as Saturn, or even the sun, it will someday die. The ratio is meaningless. What matters, in the end, is one thing: Are the resources either sustainable and/or eternally recyclable?
We’ve been talking about this for over a decade. How is this still a concept you do not understand?
Nigelj,
In 1700, a political system that did not rely on the “divine right of kings” was considered unthinkable. As theory, they would claim that without divine sanction of a monarch, no regime could be legitimate. As evidence, they could cite the English Civil War and the subsequent failure of the Protectorate under Cromwell. And yet, before the next century was out the idea that the government derived it’s just power from the consent of the governed held way in the new United States (as long as you were white, male and propertied, anyway), It was the basis of the first French Republic–and even Napoleon initially gave it lip service. It was even gaining ground in England and would result in the reform laws of Parliament.
My point is that intractable problems look intractable until someone comes up with a way to look at it differently that removes the seeming obstacles. Yes, a world without personal property sounds odd to us, but does it sound any odder than an egomaniac being able to buy Twitter for what he considers pocket change? Does it sound any odder than a kleptocrat mobilizing the armed forces of a nuclear power to invade a neighboring country?
I don’t know what the future society and economy will look like. Neither do you. It hasn’t been conceived in full just yet. What I do know is that no matter what that society looks like, we’re going to have a helluva sales job. We need to start thinking about how that society will make peoples’ lives better, at least for the vast majority of people.
Killian
nigelj: The evidence suggests its wouldn’t.
Killian: THE evidence? Do tell: You ignore Cheran, Mexico, The Farm, Findhorn, hundreds of intact indigenous societies, and on and on. Why?
Nigelj: Killian routinely quotes me out of context. This is what I actually said in full. “The evidence suggests its wouldn’t: The MODERN alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have MOSTLY failed and after only a few years (Easily googled).
NigelJ: The modern alternative (intentional) communities that try these sorts of things have mostly failed and after only a few years (Easily googled)….”
Killian “Bald-faced lie. ”
Nigelj: Not a lie. Look again:
https://aeon.co/essays/like-start-ups-most-intentional-communities-fail-why
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bzkCYAyfdaSZitbBR/why-most-intentional-communities-fail-and-some-succeed
https://areomagazine.com/2018/03/08/why-utopian-communities-fail/
https://www.consciouscoliving.com/2019/02/27/why-communities-fail/
http://hipcrimevocab.com/2018/10/27/why-intentional-communities-fail/
Nigelj: Even Killian acknowledged the difficulties making some these sorts of things work where he says “Ecovillages” are but one type of community. It is my opinion that they fail for a reason others do not account for: Too much homogeneity. I have found time spent in them to be artificial socially. ”
The trouble is with so many failing it suggests the fundamental concepts are flawed, and no amount of tinkering or trying to make them less homogenous will make them work. And Killian’s formula for regenerative governance is very fixed: absolutely no hierarchies or private property etc, etc, so it doesn’t leave that much room for social variety.
Ecovillages that accept private property rights, and some semblance of hierarchy but perhaps with more decision making delegated than in mainstream society look more plausible to me.
Ray Ladbury.
“In 1700, a political system that did not rely on the “divine right of kings” was considered unthinkable….”
Agreed on all that. .
“My point is that intractable problems look intractable until someone comes up with a way to look at it differently that removes the seeming obstacles. Yes, a world without personal property sounds odd to us, but does it sound any odder than an egomaniac being able to buy Twitter for what he considers pocket change? Does it sound any odder than a kleptocrat mobilizing the armed forces of a nuclear power to invade a neighboring country?”
Its not that a world without personal property sounds “odd”. Its that multiple modern attempts have ALREADY been made to do this everywhere from Stalinist Russias collectivist organisations, to Maos China, to Cuba (to an extent) to multiple modern intentional (alternative communities) and they have mostly all failed! So its just doesn’t seem like a scalable workable proposition. What works for hunter gather tribes will not necessarily work for modern technology using societies. As Einstein said “don’t keep doing the same thing expecting different results.” The reasons for the failures are well researched. I’m just expressing my scepticism.
Now such a society MIGHT evolve naturally over a long time period. You cant rule that out, but I’m very sceptical of it being something that would develop over the next few decades. We do see the rise of the idea of hiring autonomous self drive cars but they are still privately owned by corporations.
I don’t think your comparison with those dreadful egomanics and kleptocrats makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately those odious behavious do not seem so odd to me.
“I don’t know what the future society and economy will look like. Neither do you. It hasn’t been conceived in full just yet.
Agreed. I’m just sceptical that it will go down the shared ownership pathway. I do believe it will involve some version of the circular economy idea because its workable and sellable to the public and farming has to change to something involving less tilling of the soils and use of pesticides etc. . But beyond things like that its hard to say.
“What I do know is that no matter what that society looks like, we’re going to have a helluva sales job. We need to start thinking about how that society will make peoples’ lives better, at least for the vast majority of people.”
Agreed. If we want people to cut consumption or recycle more things there do indeed have to be rewards as you say. We cannot force people to do such things, and not everyone can conceive the problems we are getting into and just make changes of their own volition. But I doubt that you will ever be able to sell people the idea of giving up on ownership or making huge and rapid reductions in consumption.
We are in quite a sticky difficult situation. Our civilisation is at risk of collapse but attempts to simplify our civilisation could also cause a collapse according to Joseph Tainter. He said we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t and that rapid deindustrialisation looks problematic.
We have to promote things that might work without making it all worse. The circular recycling economy idea has potential. And its about a rate of change of lifestyles that we can adapt to. I suggest you google the work of Joseph Tainter. Somebody I discovered recently who really is well worth a read.
Its not that a world without personal property sounds “odd”. Its that multiple modern attempts have ALREADY been made to do this
You mean are being made and are succeeding? Yes, true. But in nigelWorld…
everywhere from Stalinist Russias collectivist organisations, to Maos China, to Cuba (to an extent)
Are you serious here, or just don’t mind saying stupid shit knowing you’re going to get reamed because? You are calling dictatorships “collectivist organizations,” drawing a parallel between egalitarian communities with personal autonomy to autocratic dictatorships by political parties? Citing the asinine attempts at “Communism” in those countries as examples of the failure of attempts at egalitarian, Commons-based communities is beyond ignorant.
Par for your course,
to multiple modern intentional (alternative communities) and they have mostly all failed!
You keep citing the failures, yet completely leave out the successes. Apparently, you cannot grasp the successes are the ones that will inform future and ongoing efforts about what works while failure is by far the best teaching tool there is.
In nigelWorld, this is all bad.
Further, it took 10k years to get from Hunter-Gatherer-Gardener bands to where we are today. Apparently, we failed all those millennia rather than changing over time. Because nigelWorld-speak. And now that there’s been an “ecovillage” movement ramping up for a bit more than half a century, it’s a complete failure that deserves your constant, ignorant, uneducated scorn? Ah, to live in nigelWorld.
So its just doesn’t seem like a scalable workable proposition.
** Entire planet was exactly that workable, scalable proposition.
** Hundreds of societies never stopped engaging in that workable, scalable proposition.
** We have not only long-term variants such as Findhorn, the Amish, Mondragon, La Via Campesina, other locations in the GEN and IC networks, but a city of 16k doing exactly this in Cheran, Mexico, and other cities in Mexico trying to do the same. But in nigelWorld, that’s not progress, it’s a reason to dismiss the only hope we have in favor of continuing the stupid shit that is destroying the planet. That such efforts are growing means nothing in nigelWorld, they must, in less than a single human lifetime, have spread over the entire planet and included 8 billion people – even though the true state of the emergency has only been fully acknowledged by most in the last few years.
** Example: “There are now estimated to be between 2000 and 3000 communities involved in Transition initiatives in over 50 countries”
From ZERO to thousands in 16 years, but, hey, nigel says he’s skeptical!
What works for hunter gather tribes will not necessarily work for modern technology using societies.
What works? What is that, nigelWorld? You have no clue despite having this conversation since 2017. Yeah, sure, just leave another version of your caveman bullshit laying there.
You have it completely backward: If we don’t do “what works” for Hunter-Gatherer-Gardener societies, there is zero chance of this “modern” society surviving. So, “what works for modern technology-using societies” absolutely will not work for regenerative societies. Mimicking the patterns, principles, and functions of H-G-G societies is our only hope.
Just not in the ignorant land of nigelWorld.
As Einstein said “don’t keep doing the same thing expecting different results.
Ah, yet another nigelism! Taking thins I have said to him *many times* and pretending he cleverly thought of it. But we already covered it: Taking 10k years to get where we are is just fine, but half a century-ish is far too long to return society to sanity.
nigelWorld: Come for the ignorance, stay for the suicidally stupid.
By the way, learn to write above a middling 6th Grade level, eh? Your posts are riddled with the kinds of mistakes I’d fail an elementary school student for making. And, no, nigelWorld, not the typos.
Ray Ladbury,
Adding to my previous response upthread.
The other issue is its not clear why eliminating private ownership would actually improve environmental outcomes. because people will still be producing and consuming and having environmental impacts, wanting to travel etc, etc. Shared ownership might stop a few ambitious people hugely overconsuming, but that isn’t nearly sufficient to fix the problem.
The soviet union tried to eliminate private ownership and environmental outcomes were much worse than in America. I know there are many complex factors involved, but it gives a clue that some form of shared ownership might not work and is is not a panacea.
Zebras definition of sustainability of a small global population of modern technology using humans seems more useful. I assume he means a population that consumes at the level of Americas middle classes.
The problem is what do we do between now and the point we get to s small global population? Because there would be huge potential environmental degradation in that period. I would say the most viable solutions are the circular recycling economy and some form of regenerative farming. All the ideas like deindustrialisation and eliminating private property look like pipe dreams to me that would cause more harm than good.
—————————
Killian
The soviet union is obviously a totalitarian dictatorship, but their collective farms give us a CLUE about the problems of eliminating private property.
The examples you give of long lasting modern technology using communities that share things are somewhat outweighed by the number that fail. (Refer my links). That worries me that its not really a viable model.
Some of those communities that have worked and lasted are held together by their religious convictions. More and more people are tending towards atheism or less stringent forms of religion, or forms of religion that don’t form separatist communities.
Adam,
You are asking two different questions at once.
1. What would constitute a society in which ‘consumption’ doesn’t lead to extreme environmental degradation?
2. What would be required to make the transition from the current state?
-The first question is easy. If you have a stable population size such that there is an abundance of resources per capita, then you can have a culture with most of the amenities we take for granted in First World countries. “Capitalism” and “money” are not the problem, it is ownership of resources that create the issues you seem to be concerned about.
Sustainability doesn’t mean everything remains the same; science and technology, given the opportunity in such a society, will find adaptations to meet actual needs and even desires.
-The second question is the difficult one. As I’ve pointed out previously, it requires that population growth be greatly curtailed along with the transition of technologies away from fossil fuel consumption. The best we can hope for is that this can occur with minimal harm, but it will not happen rapidly, so there will indeed be serious disruption.
And, obviously, that requires overcoming the obstacles presented by vested interests.
So we’ll see how the contest between liberalism and authoritarianism plays out… it may end up solving the population problem; ironically, a nuclear war might eliminate mostly those who are consuming the most, leaving the Southern hemisphere full of Brown and Black people to apply the lessons learned.
(Living in a prime target zone, I will certainly never know.)
-The first question is easy. If you have a stable population size such that there is an abundance of resources per capita, then you can have a culture with most of the amenities we take for granted in First World countries.
This is an extremely common fallacy. Note you failed to address that most resources are finite. Population is not the key factor for a small population, time is.
Recall, if you will, the Eternal Mouse living on a giant planet of cheese; eventually, there is only shit.
Adam Lea
Regarding the proposition that reducing levels of consumption of resources would cause job losses, and consequent unemployment and related poverty. Yes it could, and I have said this several times on this website. Its basic economics. We see it every time there’s an economic recession. Its beyond something that is debatable.
However it depends on circumstances. Its intuitively a rate of change issue. Big reductions in consumption (for example 50%) implemented quickly would most likely completely destabilise our society and cause depression conditions and dire poverty as happened in the 1930’s. People would not have time to retrain for new jobs for one problem.
If reductions in consumption were set at realistic levels phased in very gradually it seems intuitively obvious the system would adjust / adapt without too many problems. The question is how much time would the system need to adjust smoothly without too many problems? I would hazard a guess if we assume we cut consumption levels by 50% we are talking about 50 – 100 years to phase down to that in an orderly way. One clue is Japans economy has had low growth for over three decades and has not imploded although it came close to imploding.
I have a feeling that consumption levels of at least some resources will ultimately fall naturally (without being forced by policy) and at a fairly slow pace. Because resources are finite obviously.
However if population size does fall like Zebra points out reducing levels of per capita consumption becomes less critical.
The idea of getting rid of money seems very problematic. We got rid of bartering because of all the problems that caused, so why would we go back to bartering? Bartering would be even more difficult now because of the huge variety of goods we would have to try and barter.
The other alternative to money is a shared economy and the community collectively just decides what goods people get. This works in ancient cultures but our society has a much larger variety of goods and so it could be a very complicated time consuming exercise, and relying on a level of goodwill that modern humans don’t really have.
However the way we use money could obviously be improved (not convinced that bitcoin is the solution).
To all and everyone
on “biochar”
The conscept has come up and Killian has been a proponent.
It is hardly known and hardly relevant in tempered sones, but seems to have paid a traditional role in Brazilean rainforest conditions with extreeme microbial growth and extreemly fast natural decay of dead organic material, and Kaolination of the soils. Where anything is washed out and lost and only the most resistant component of clay minerals ( Si Al)2 O7 remains. . All humus is rather up in the treetops with mosses and frogs, herrons and all. Chop down and burn that, and the very mineral plant nutrician reserve is washed out into the river and you can drive on waggons and trains of industrial mineral fertillizers.
The situation here where I am living is radically different. The soils and loose masses are very young and remarkably rich even without humus and fertillizers. What is typical of very young marine and glacio- fluvial sediments from very rich and varied bedrock composed of granite old plutonic Magma, Perm vulkanism, and extreemly old metamorphic precambrian marine sediments. That typical traditional morraine- sand is good enough and exellent for making strongest concrete, it is practically humus- free. And good enough for new landfilling in the gardens. When uncovered by bulldozers along the new highway, the local flora and forest shoots right up from “nothing” up to Stradivarii Violoncelli dimensions in only a few hundret years. And gives a best “brown earth” for pioneering agriculture, swinery and poultry, rhyebread and beers. For apples that need more potassium, look after enough blue marine clay bottom also. Bio- char is false and silly on it.
The huge tempered and very varied broad leave frorests of New England are similar. A very rich landscape only too stony for industrial agriculture but exellent for swinery poultyry cattle potatoes and cider- culture It is Vin- land. Naturally there have been wild bears and beasts in the same landscapes. Apple trees can grow up on sheere impossible boulder areas and even from cracks in the bedrocks. Biochar is si9lly.. There is stable Potassi9um Phosphate Calsium Magnesium Boron Copper Zink Selen,.. you name it and Ammonium in the natural substrate.
When having rhoded chopped and burnt you can build houses from the thimbers and have record yeld of rhye and potatoes for several years befrore you have to bring back some manure on it. Such are the rich and preferabgle landscapes in the tempered zones. Due to very varied bedrock and clay minerals.
When organic material decays and rots, most of the Carbon goes back again to the air by microbic activity “cool combustion” and the plant nutrician minerals are re- cycled. Only a small fraction of the photosynjthesis carbon is settled. C14 dating of the Ah horizon in rich mineral soils show averages of 6000 years and more. telling us the truth about common metabolism and re- cyclings. And telling us further that Jöns Jacob Berzelius together with Killian & al were wrong on this. Higher Plants do not eat Humus. And hardly need humus either. And Justus von Liebig was right on the same 180 years ago allready together with Gay Lussac.
Moral: On rich well varied sheere sterile mineral soil you can grow tomatoes and even wine, only, you must wait a bit for their roots to stretch out longer. Addition of humus and compost and fertillizer piss and manure is hardly natural and only for artificially more intense and prophitable agriculture.
The rather natural and organic and traditioinal culture that I am telling of will take quite more land for the same yield than if you can buy waggons and trains of NPK fertillizer, Granulated dolomite , and russian NH4 NO3. And “biochar” rather stupidifying to worldwide. The half burnt wood into “biochar” will not decay fast enoutgh to deliver back its wooden- ash- mineral component. So you will have to piss on it or buy waggons and trains of substitutes for the same.
Futher on “bio-char” even for the tiniest brains:
If you burn common barbecue- coal, you get ashes, so called “pot- ash”.
what is it? I did “eluate” it. It is hardly potassium carbonate. That fameous remedy showed to be rather an alkali- phosphate solution, still exellent for washing and for making soap. But Calsium remains. It hardly follows the water extract. Calsium is shown by eluating the residuum by thin HcL and add oxalic acid solution, then you find a lot of calsium in most plant ashes also.
Thus, that ash itself is an eminent , fameous, and traditional fertillizer, it contains all the minerals taken up by roots from the soil to make that plant organism live healthy. Exept for ammonium, the amino- acids of life. That burns and disilles off.
Thus when common leavefall and plant materials rot, when composted aerobically for instance, you get rid of all the carbohydrates , set free and get back those valuable mineral plant nutricians, and can grow your “veggies” on it. Mushroms and microbes and microfauna will exel in it.
Then dare to think one tiny step further.
Now, what happens if you turn your “veggies” and woods and twigs into “-char” instead, that will not rot and decay naturally in your jungle, because mushroms and worms and “bugs” will not eat and digest it?
You loose all your very valuable “Potash” and wooden ashes forever and dare to be proud of it and teach that you are using “bio- char”.
Thus it comes when you never learnt to think in terms of permanence of matter and permanence of chemical elements, and label your strange beliefs, that never learnt the elements, for “permaculture”. and even “re- cycling”, Re-storation and Re- vival.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/americans-moving-urban-counties-141924038.html
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/the-great-resignation-continues-as-40-of-women-workforce-look-for-a-new-job-11650974175865.html
Nope! Nobody wants simpler lives, or higher quality of life!!!
Regarding the link about people moving from high density central city areas back to the suburbs and more rural areas. I have mentioned previously several times on this website that we may see a process like this. However in this instance its mainly driven by a desire to live in larger homes (according to the article), and you also have to consider that suburban living is generally more reliant on the automobile tan inner city living. Large homes and ICE automobiles tend to have large environmental footprints, and generally not in a good way. So it may be slightly simpler but is it really any better?
People want a higher quality of life but those articles don’t say anything about simplicity, the first is the desire for cheaper housing, which is the same reason in the UK the SE transport networks are rammed full, because London is too expensive to buy property so the city workers have to live in towns and villages in the commuter belt. The second article is about women deciding they’ve had enough of high stress jobs, and the pandemic and working from home has revealed opportunities to do this. There is nothing revolutionary here, people who can afford it and don’t have ties have always moved to locations which they prefer more than where they live (e.g. retired people moving from cities to the coast or areas of outstanding natural beauty), and people have always changed jobs if they have the opportunity to find a better one. I’ve attempted myself to relocate to a better job, but every time I’ve tried I get to the interview and end up not being the successful candidate, so I have stayed where I am.
The articles don’t need to. Part and parcel of simplicity is exactly the choice of less affluence for better quality of life. Those articles show the desire for and willingness to explore that less is more.
People who can afford it? Have you been paying attention to the “Great Resignation?” It’s been an important part of the supply chain issues, and it’s not just people with money.
Anyway, it was a simple point: People will choose less is more. Some always have. More will once they fully understand it is the only choice. These are just small indicators, but I have learned small indicators can be very important harbingers of change. (E.g. when I started a debate by simply noting there were unusual CO2 excursions in February a couple/few years ago. Of course, the ultraconservatives here jumped on that as unscientific and not supported by the data. The next year they started in January. And, so, here we are with a pretty clear regime change in progress, but I, of course, didn’t know wtf I was talking about, eh?
Guess who have never stepped and said, gee, Killian, you seem to have been on to something there….
Anywho… The “People won’t!” nonsense always looks stupid when you ask its purveyors, 1. do they know the true existential threat? Uh… no… And, 2., did you tell them there are ways out via simplicity? Uh… no…
Well, then. So, we’ll see. You may want to add this to your data pile: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/census-2021-population-growth.html
Killian
“Part and parcel of simplicity is exactly the choice of less affluence for better quality of life. Those articles show the desire for and willingness to explore that less is more.”
The problem is the contention is not well supported by the first link Killian posted. It talks about people leaving high density inner city housing for larger, cheaper homes in the suburbs. There is nothing about changing jobs, and any monetary savings they make on their cheaper house purchases will inevitably go into other consumer goods or travel. So its not clear that they are seeking or achieving less affluence in any real terms. Its not simplification. Its a sideways step.
Some of the women seeking less stressful jobs may well settle for more flexible hours or fewer hours. This supports Killians contention quite well. I did much the same. I chose a career that maximised job satisfaction, not one that had a massively high income. That said I still had a high income in about the top 10%.
I think the point of these articles is not that they represent a Utopian ideal, but rather that they show that people are looking for something different…something better, whether they an define what better is or not. In a way, the lack of focus in their definition could be viewed as an opportunity to give them at least part of what they want wrapped in a bright, shiny package of sustainability.
In some ways, the COVID crisis helped to make the way forward clearer–more telecommuting, more virtual meetings, less business travel…, even as it demonstrated the resistance we’ll face from idiots in implementing even painless, commonsense reform.
When I was a kid, my hometown city council wanted to pass an ordinance against building in a flood plain. They faced such a backlash that the ordinance was overturned by a popular referendum. A couple of years later, the council came up with a plan to build a lot of new parks and preserve open space. People loved it. Of course, the open space was all in the flood plain. Sometimes you have to package what people need inside of what they think they want. It’s the gummy-bear-vitamin theory of governance.
If you think about it, we have so much that we need to do to build a new, sustainable society that it is absurd to talk about people being put out of work. Really, as long as we can produce enough food, shelter, clothing… to meet needs, we have work for them to do to earn such. It is only that so much of the economy is owned by the top 0.00001% that distorts the situation and produces scarcity and fear.
Ray Ladbury
“If you think about it, we have so much that we need to do to build a new, sustainable society that it is absurd to talk about people being put out of work. Really, as long as we can produce enough food, shelter, clothing… to meet needs, we have work for them to do to earn such”
Depends on what you mean by sustainable, which isnt too clear. And it depends on resource use and rate of change change. If we were to reduce the consumption of resources slowly I’m sure people would find jobs. Do it too quickly in a place like America and there would be mass unemployment, poverty and chaos. That is basic economics, the sort of economics that really is on solid ground.
Adam, you should take your observation a bit further. People will move to places/jobs they prefer… and what they prefer covers a wide range of possibility.
Given the choice, at any given stage in their lives, they may want to live in the city, or the suburbs, or spend time in a hippie farm commune, or whatever. And jobs may be attractive because they pay more or because they are challenging or socially valued or, again, whatever.
So we are back to the question of how you have a society in which this is possible. And the answer, although it doesn’t fit into some people’s need to apply some moral judgment, is to have an abundance of resources with a proportionally small and stable population.
What that does is elevate the value of labor over the value of “owning” resources. Again, it isn’t about “capitalism” or “money”; people would not be constrained as you describe, because there would be cheap housing whether in cities or elsewhere, and jobs everywhere.
“And the answer, although it doesn’t fit into some people’s need to apply some moral judgment, is to have an abundance of resources with a proportionally small and stable population.”
Great idea!
But how? Snapping my fingers and wishing really hard doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/03/forced-responses-mar-2022/comment-page-2/#comment-803424
The discussion here is about the first part.
But let’s apply your test… in a world where the ratio of resources to population is decreasing, “how” does that Kumbaya society arise that the Cornucopians like Ray imagine??
Autocracy and inequality is the result of (and requires) scarcity, not the other way around. And if we look at today’s paper, we see the distinct possibility that this the direction in which we are headed.
The following is an example from todays news paper of an ecovillage that has turned into a total disaster. It illustrates some of the points I’ve been making. Their intentions are admirable, but dubious management and funding concepts, human nature, deceit, and incompetence gets in the way. Its not the only example.
“Debt, distrust and deadlock: How peace at an idyllic eco-village was shattered”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/hawkes-bay/128281609/debt-distrust-and-deadlock-how-peace-at-an-idyllic-ecovillage-was-shattered
Quoth zebra:
Define “resource”, especially in contrast to “reserve”. A “resource”, in petroleum terminology, is what exists. A “reserve” is what can be produced at current prices.
The oceans are chock-full of magnesium. Seawater is the main source of magnesium metal; all that is required to convert it from soluble ions to metal is energy, and from there it will return to soluble ions all by itself. The main determinant of how much magnesium we can have per capita is how much embodied energy we can make per capita. Much the same is true of aluminum; it’s very common in Earth’s crust, but the energy required to reduce and recycle it determines how much of it we can have for our own use.
Properly understood, that scarcity is almost always scarcity of energy, not the material itself. Aside from some truly scarce elements such as precious metals, most everything else is simply not concentrated enough for our purposes (e.g. “rare earths”, which are neither rare nor earths). We can overcome these difficulties with sufficient energy.
Ye gods, with energy at 1¢/kWh, we could feed tens of billions with the produce of vertical farms watered by seawater stills and fertilized with wet-oxidized sewage plus some additional fixed nitrogen. The oceans are also full of potash and phosphorus.
What direction is that? BE SPECIFIC.