Uncategorized | Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Australian Election

May 20, 2019

I was uncertain for the whole last week that Labor would win. Partly because the movement of the polls was in the wrong direction, partly because of the relentless misinformation, and partly because Bill Shorten’s speeches were not precise, and did not say what Labor would not do – which was vital. Labor should also have broken with the misinformation that coal mines bring jobs…. but for whatever reason that seemed impossible.

However the main reason for my despair was reading right wing internet groups. Some of this reading was deliberate and some of this was because I was getting quite a lot of promotional material on Facebook without asking for it. Please note, any remarks here are impressionistic and not a mark of extended research…

The appearance of these groups is of seething hatred and dedication, together with apparent loathing of general uncertainty and uncertain boundaries in particular.

Groups tend to argue by abuse and by flat statement as a way of reinforcing boundaries (if you can’t take it then you are not one of ‘us’), but expressions of disgust and certainty are not uncommon online. The point is that ‘we’ are the righteous, and need to expel the different to keep the boundaries going.

According to participants, nearly everything bad that happens to normal people happens as a result of some left wing policy. Low wages and unemployment, because of restrictions on the economy, migrants, refugees, positive discrimination, green tape and so on. Corporate power is a problem, because the left is all on board and wealthy (a point Tony Abbott made in his retirement speech – it is wealthy electorates who are concerned about climate change, while real people understand the Coalition and know the Coalition is best). Cultural crisis occurs because of cultural marxists, radical homosexuals and transsexuals destroying ‘our culture,’ and weakening its self-preserving boundaries by insisting that foreign Islam, other races and gender constructions are acceptable. It is also felt that Leftists are snobs, hate ‘us’ and make no attempt to understand ‘us’ (or that such attempts are aimed at undermining ‘us’) – and indeed the common left lament that the people have failed has more than a hint of this. Green policies are further attempts to sacrifice working people to rich people’s needs, radical lies and snobbery. Taxation is theft, and its always the working people who get taxed by high taxing parties, which is pretty true; only its the Coalition that does this.

It is common to see people in these groups blame corruption in the Church, the police or politics on leftist values, or the sixties. There is a single handy explanation for everything, despite 40 years of largely right wing dominance.

This blaming merges with scapegoating of particular groups, as a form of avoidance of responsibility. And indeed, one of the problems of the modern world is that we are all responsible. Some more than others perhaps, but not ourselves ever – and we all often fight to avoid recognising that part-responsibility.

The Israel Folau issue (the sacking of a very expensive footballer for claiming gays would go to hell) was surprisingly important because it clearly ‘showed’ oppression of religion, or at the least suppression of authenticity, while demonstrating that the left had joined with the corporate sector in attacking working people who expressed righteous anger with people who attacked gender roles, boundaries and certainties. Again the scare campaign that Labor was going to force our kids to be gender fluid only makes sense in this kind of environment, of existential boundary fear. However, it is a mistake to think that traditional gender roles have much support either, even if people claim they do. Its more complex and flexible than that.

In a few academic articles I have got into trouble with reviewers for arguing that trust in authority has little to do with belief. While these groups fiercely distrust the left they don’t trust the political right either. If their own side is irrefutably shown to have lied or schemed against them, the response is not to consider the possibility of being wrong, but to state “all media lie,” “all politicians lie,” “both sides are the same” or something similar. This allows people to keep their opinion while dismissing evidence that it may be false. This is what contemporary skepticism (or ‘independent thinking’) means, being skeptical of counter-evidence to your own, or group’s, position.

People seek to defeat the uncertainty of a complex crumbling society by being stable, righteous, and avoiding responsibilty by finding scapegoats, who, if removed would solve all the problems people face. For the left it might be capitalists or neoliberals, for the right it is leftists, feminists, gays, transsexuals and sometimes abortioneers. Obviously I think the first position is more likely to be correct

The Coalition campaign made fertile use of these trends – they are much better than Labor at it, perhaps because it avoids criticising real power. More and more, Labor depends on the powers that undermine them, for funding, publicity and respectability.

The basic assumptions of these groups were supported by the Murdoch press and other media promoting the general social fantasies they depend on such as ideas that the coalition manage the economy better, the economy is primary, virtue involves identifying or punishing out-groups. The Labor party ignored this part of life, or perhaps they did not see it or dismissed it as the work of a few fanatics, rather than of a relatively large group of people, who would support anyone who promised to get rid of what they perceived as the leftist challenge to their existence.

Due to communication having to involve interpretation rather than transmission of meaning, it is more or less impossible for such groups to actually hear what people on the other side are saying. Once identified as from that other side, then the boundaries are to be reinforced: that person’s comments are to be attacked, and the person ideally driven away if they cannot be converted. This then leads to a shouting war which tends to reinforce the separation and the further rejection of ‘good communication’.

What to do? The first thing is to admit these groups exist, and that they are powerful and real expressions of ordinary people’s lives. Even intellectuals can often be quick to blame the left for problems or for hostile fanaticisms… Rather than convert them intellectually, they need to be listened to and understood, and then argued with, with some understanding rather than just a condemnation which reinforces their boundaries and life worlds. This requires patience.

It is another example of the paradox that if we are to do anything democratically it will be slow (perhaps too slow), but if we don’t do it democratically and bring people along, then we will fail.

Tags:climate change, Disinformation, knowledge, religion, social category theory
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Energy and Economy

May 16, 2019

Another attempt to theorise what seems to be both obvious and undertheorized…. This material is very basic and possibly wrong.

As I have argued elsewhere economies require the transformation of materials and energy, together with exchange from one person to another. The more energy that is available, through technologies of energy production, the more that can be done by those with access to that energy.

Energy production can mark military security, as it allows action at a distance, rapid manufacture of complicated weaponry and so on (assuming access to the materials etc). Most States take action to ensure they have excess energy and can defend themselves, or extend their range of attack, as well as extend the influence and power of their nation’s businesses.

All energy on Earth largely originates in two sources:
as ‘Interspatial energy‘,
or as ‘Planetary Energy‘

Interspatial Energy (IE) comes primarily from the Sun as electromagnetic energies, light and heat. There are also gravitational tides from the Moon, which affect planetary weather and water movements – this is energetically important. The consequences for the Planetary system of IE is huge, but the return effects of Planetary systems on IE is, so far, negligible.

Planetary Energy can come from weather, the water cycle, winds, tides and so on, which result from interaction between the Planetary system and Interspatial Energy. Other sources of Planetary energy, include Geothermal energy, fire, the interactive properties of materials, and potential nuclear energy. I want to summarise all this with the term ‘Planetary Energy and Materials’ (PEM). PEM largely depends on the existence of IE. This is an example of the laws of thermodynamics in action. Without continual energy input from an external source, the Earth system will run down. It would not have much available energy, and there is little likelihood of life evolving into anything particularly complex (not completely zero chance, we have hope for the moons of Saturn, but little chance).

The PEM leads to Planetary Ecological Cycles (PEC), which are complex living systems in which everything interacts with everything else, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.

Complex systems have numerous properties in general. Some of the important ones, are

that they are in flux and evolve

they can reach temporary equilibrium states

they are subject to accident, and rapid change at tipping points and

they are (humanly) unpredictable in specific (we might be able to predict trends and general events, but not specific events).

Eventually, the living system covers the planet, becoming planet wide, and we have something approximating the Gaia idea. PEC and PEM are linked. PEC depends on both PEM and IE, and can affect PEM on some occasions – as when early life changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

PEC provides us with coal, natural gas and oil from the long time decay and death of plants and animals. These materials are all stores of ‘Carbon’ in various forms, as that is one of the major materials of Earthly life. When burnt, or released into the atmosphere, they release stored material which forms Greenhouse gases, and effects the functioning of the PEC.

Eventually we end up with humans and human organisation. Human organisation involves technologies, relations of power, relations of kinship, relations of labour, relations of knowledge and so on (all of which we often lump together and call ‘culture‘), which make use of, and are influenced by, PEC and PEM. We will call this level the Social Economy (SE), it depends upon the workings of all ‘previous’ stages, and can influence the workings of those stages.

In ‘simpler’ economies the main energy source is human labour, powered by available food and water, and perhaps fire which primarily makes more potential food edible and safe, drives away dangerous animals, allows deliberate or accidental changes in ecology and may allow some processing of minerals (copper, bronze, iron etc), which then have unexpected consequences for human lives. The use and harnessing of animals also boosts energy availability, which affects the possible scale of agriculture, population density, warfare and so on. The more organised the labour the more energy is available. However, slave (or indentured) labour appears to have been the energy basis of many large scale societies prior to widespread use fossil fuels. People also use technology to tap the power of geography and weather with river power (water wheels) and wind power (sails and windmills). This again adds to possible production, and people work to use the technology when the power is available.

Then we get the use of fossil fuels and technology to generate steam power, mechanical motion and electricity. Finally we get nuclear energy and renewable power – all stages build on the complexities of earlier stages, and multiple paths are available, both taken and not taken – for example, many nations have not used nuclear energy. Each stage in this development comes with different forms of social and work organisation, and relationship to environment (including the capacity to damage it).

The more available energy becomes, the more people can do, the wider and more integrated their organisations can become, the quicker, longer and more voluminous trade routes can become, the more separated in space the relationships that can be built, the faster armies can move and damage be delivered, and the greater the distinction in class that becomes possible: those that own or control vs those who labour, or are controlled. With plenty of cheap energy it is possible to develop mass consumption societies, with large numbers of goods.

The State, where it exists, is part of the social economy, and often promotes and protects energy systems for the obvious reasons of building trade and production that is beneficial for it and its ruling factions, and to extend military security and aggression (often to increase easy access to raw materials and energy). The State also exists to protect unequal divisions of wealth internally. The State has tended to provide slaves, protect relations of slavery (along with other forms of property), promoted navies, wind power, river power, and subsidised coal and oil production and infrastructure, and also has often supported nuclear energy because of its costs and risks. Eventually, these subsidies and supports become familiar and invisible, and support for new energy sources (not managed or owned and controlled by the same people) can become a political issue. For example the IMF advises us that fossil fuel subsidies globally amount to US$5.2 trillion or 6.5% of global GDP. This is far more than given to renewable energy generations. The subsidies include estimations for the damage from pollution, which is both a silent subsidy, and an approval of the pollution as it is not penalized.

As proposed, initially organisation of human labour and food (energy) availability, together with a set of relationship to the environment determined what could be done and what could be produced. This is the domain in which the labour theory of value is almost correct, given the addition of cultural and religious values. Relations of power are also important in influencing value, but I shall discuss all of these factors elsewhere.

Labour is simply one form of energy generation. As economies get more complex, other forms of interconnection and energy generation are added, together with issues of supply, demand, control and power. Also it is quite clear that with easily available energy people may produce more of an item than there is a market for, and it does not really matter how much labour/energy goes into the item, it can still not bring a return on a cash/commodity market. So exchange value is not directly equivalent to labour or other energy expenditure.

One important concept for consideration of energy in the economy is ‘Energy return on energy investment’ (EREI). I prefer the phrase ‘Energy return on energy input,’ (same initials) as it avoids using financial terms with very specific meanings. This idea refers to the ratio of the amount of energy you have to input into a technical system, when compared to the amount you get out. The higher the ratio, (or the more energy is emitted per unit of energy input), then the more easily available energy there is. If the energy input is continually higher than the energy output, the system is likely to eventually grind to a halt.

EREI is also dependent on organisation, or the direction, of energy expenditure. Uncontrolled energy expenditure is not the same as energy availability, just as the directed energy expenditure in a nuclear reactor is different to the energy expended in nuclear bomb. Energy availability may also be directed towards particular social groups; aluminium factories amy get supported by higher prices for other people; those who can afford energy may get more of it, and so on. There is, inevitably, a social component, and restrictions, to energy availability.

Fossil Fuels radically changed social EREIs. Fossil Fuels have been easy to extract, relatively easy to transport and process, and emit huge amounts of easily deployable energy in return. This availability has allowed transport of food from distant locations, world trade, world empires, world war, mass manufacturing, industrialisation, mass electrical technology and mass computing. It has allowed technology to become incredibly complicated and small. All of these procedures require, and use, cheap and easily obtainable energy – they also require a large and complicated back drop of production and skills – so technology is enmeshed in complex systems. Cheap easy energy has increased the possibilities of general prosperity, especially when coupled with organised labour.

It might also be the case, that the more freely energy became available, the more extraction can shift into destructive modes, as it becomes relatively easy to destroy ecologies (especially distant ecologies), transport the extracted materials anywhere, and to protect oneself as destroyer (temporarily) through more technology and energy expenditure.

Human energy and technology use can, fairly clearly, have consequences for the PEC, and thus affect human life.

In some cases, of long residence, it can appear that human life styles are ecologically harmonious, or even determined by ecologies. In these cases, the interactive system as a whole generates an implicit knowledge of how to survive, which may not be explicitly known by anyone. Such local harmonious systems are hard to replicate or transport elsewhere. They may also only be harmonious until external forces disrupt the system, or the success of particular internal forces generates tipping points.

Finally we get into the recognition of waste and pollution which we have discussed in other posts. Briefly, ‘waste‘ is defined as the by-products of production and consumption, which can (in relatively brief time) by reprocessed by the economy or the PEC. ‘Pollution‘ is defined as the by-products of production and consumption which cannot be processed by the economy or the PEC, and which has the capacity to disrupt or poison those processes. The more destructive the extraction processes, the less able ecologies are able to process waste and that waste becomes pollution. Pollution is often distributed according to relations of power, and dumped upon poorer or less powerful people, and poorer less visible places. Pollution eventually feeds back into the complexity of the PEM and PEC and affects a society’s ability to survive – at the least it generates changes in the Social Economy.

The problem we face is that pollution is changing the PEC to such a degree that the civilisation we participate in could fall apart in many ways. This is not that unusual. Previous civilisations have destroyed their ecologies by determined accident. In our case one of the prime dangers is the pollution from fossil fuels.

The same processes which give us a huge EREI and hence cheap, plentiful energy, will cause massively turbulent weather, storms, droughts, flooding, sea water rise and so on.

These are severe problems for us. It will be hard to tackle these problems if the EREI goes down, which it seems to be, and the problems will also increase if we continue with fossil fuels to try and keep the EREI up.

Oil and gas are no longer as easy to find and extract as they were, hence the use of tar sands and fracking. Their EREI is declining. Quite a lot of people, who claim to be experts, argue that rates of discovery of new oil and gas fields has declined since the early seventies. Some consider that no new massive oil fields are likely to be discovered in the future. Desperate attempts to keep going, may mean that oil companies are becoming overburdened with debt, which they will never be able to repay from profitable discoveries. Lack of oil will affect supply chains which largely depend on it for transport. Coal is now gained by open cut and other explosive techniques which are far more destructive of the environment and poisoning of nearby people. Any increased efficiency of use of fossil fuels is likely to require a fair amount of energy expenditure to implement, and may not be economic. Renewable technologies require far more energy input for their energy output than fossil fuel energy, at least at the beginning of their lives.

So far, the amount of coal and gas fueled energy is increasing at similar rates as solar and wind, increasing emissions.

There is a further economic theory which is of use here; the Jevons Paradox. This is disputed, and not everyone accepts it. Some of the rejection seems to stem from the recognition that, if correct, it has unpleasant consequences.

The Jevons paradox is basically that “The more, available, efficient or cheaper the energy, the more it will be used.” This implies that energy efficiency can result in greater consumption of fuel, rather than less consumption, and hence greater emissions. It is also in the interests of corporations who sell energy, to boost sales of energy, rather than to have unused energy on hand, so there are a few social drivers operating here, few of which favour reduction of pollution.

One consequence of the above, is that new renewable energy may not displace fossil fuel energy. Energy use may merely go up, as new renewable energy adds to energy availability, and is accompanied by even more Fossil Fuel burning – which seems to be what we are currently observing. India and China are building huge amounts of both renewable and fossil fuel power, and organisations may cut fossil fuel use at home and encourage it elsewhere in the world, where there are fewer controls. Renewable energy technology also requires energy input, for extraction, production and transport and this has been provided by fossil fuels. This increases Greenhouse gases. If fossil fuels remain stable, then building renewables at the rate required lowers energy available to run the rest of society. Any decline of the availability of fossil fuels, (due to shortage or phase out) may also mean that we cannot build renewables with the speed and financial return required to keep civilization going.

If we succeed and the percentage of renewables relative to fossil fuel increases then the amounts of cheaply available energy will sink, and the world will head for ‘degrowth’ and disconnection, whether voluntary or involuntary.

Involuntary degrowth could be disastrous. If emissions are to be reduced that will take legislation and regulation and a likely cut in living standards and the cut back of world trade, which may be culturally hard to accept. At the moment, working to satisfy consumption urges, drives the system. It is unlikely that this can be maintained, and that requires cultural work and change to make acceptable – and we are not good at doing this deliberately.

Tags:complexity, economics, Energy, technology
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Considerations on Technology

May 15, 2019

Another attempt at working out the basics….

Any consideration of technology has to at least five factors:

1) The Material-ecological basis. What we call the physical, chemical, biological (and so on) processes of the world. Technology depends on properties of the world and interacts with ecologies. The world does not have to be understood accurately for technology to be made. The properties of the world, and lack of understanding, mean that technology does not always produce the results intended, and has the possibility of side-effects. Not every imagined technology is possible, at every stage of technological development, and it may not be possible at all. Surprisingly, standard economics seems to assume that when a technology is needed it will arise, and arrive in the form and at the cost we would prefer. Technology may arrive, it may not.

2) Energy requirements or production. All technology requires energy to make, or to power, and some technology generates energy. The amount of energy generated for the amount of energy invested in the technology, is a relatively important indicator of how much impact the technology can have. We have to look at the energy available (human, animal, thermal, weather, fossil fuel, nuclear etc) to understand the possibilities of a technology. Even the most basic technology magnifies the effect or precision of the users actions.

Ecologies also require energy circulations, and that circulation can form part of the systems of technology, and be disrupted by those systems of technology.

3) Social organisation. Every technology comes from a form of social organization, which may influence its design and effects. It also interacts with the social organisation. Social organisation can be fundamental to the technology as, for example, when building pyramids. The organisation of labour-energy is just as important as the tools used. Technology can change or restrict forms of social organisation. Social organisation can disrupt technology as when managers assume that they can define the requirements of a software system without consultation with people doing the work, and design software incapable of being smoothly integrated into work.

3a) Social Struggle. Take it as a likely heuristic (or guide) that every form of social organisation, involves a form of social struggle. Technology is often used to extend and resist social power. It is designed to reinforce patterns of work, obedience and decisiveness. It may be being used to enforce cosmologies, and religious power. What does the design and implementation do in political terms? Who is intended to benefit? Who suffers? How are risks allocated? How is pollution and other forms of harm allocated.

4) Symbolism, art, magic, rhetoric. Technology is often designed to have a particular ‘look’ and this look or ‘decoration’ becomes inseparable from the technology and its use. Technology can act as a metaphor for the way we think about the cosmos and life. Not long ago the universe was supposed to be like a clock, nowadays it may be thought of as like a computer. Minds can be seen in terms of software etc. Technology can be used to impose and reinforce social distinctions, as with 19th Century hall furniture. Technology can be used to persuade us of the rightfulness of social actions, as when imagined Carbon Capture and Storage is used to keep fossil fuels burning. Geoengineering assumes that manipulating the world ecology is easier than changing social systems, thus defending the social systems that produce pollution and probably undermining Geoengineering’s success. In the case of CCS and Geoengineering, the imagined technology may also function as a social psychological defense mechanism, and suppress the awareness of the danger of the current situation and its social generation. Magic can be seen as a way of coordinating activity, changing people’s consciousness, focusing attention and so on, and so it can be difficult to separate what we call magic from what we call technology. Traditional Balinese irrigation systems, seemed to depend on religion for their co-ordination and functional, largely non-conflictual, distribution of water. Something which collapsed when the traditional system was abandoned as a result of taking on the magic of capitalism.

Technology can be part of the rhetoric involved in imagined futures. Or in futures hoped for by some particular social group. In that sense it can also enter into social struggle.

5) Unintended consequences. Because technology arises within complex systems and is used in complex systems its use, especially new usage, can result in unintended consequences and unintended disorders. One obvious example is that producing technology can result in pollution, or use of technology can result in pollution. These consequences are, in a way, also part of the technology. People can use them to learn more about the world, or they can dismiss them as accident (even if they are recurrent), or say that they have nothing to do with the actual technology usage.

Technology is rarely straightforward and simple. It is embedded within and generative of complexity.

A kind of definition of technology:

A combination of material (involving chemical, physical biological processes), organisational, communicational, symbolic, artistic, magical, and other, processes which expands, magnifies, or makes more precise human actions and their consequences (intended or otherwise). Technology is intimately tied up with energy production and magnification.

Tags:Energy, technology
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Pollution and Extraction

May 10, 2019

Climate Change is not our main problem. Climate change is symptomatic of two other major problems:

1) Pollution and
2) Extraction

1) Let us define ‘waste’ as the byproducts of production and consumption that can be ‘re-cycled’ or processed by either the economic system or ecological system.

‘Pollution’ is then defined as the byproducts of production and consumption that cannot be ‘recyled’ or processed by the economic or ecological systems.

Sometimes, what would normally be waste can be produced in quantities which exceed the capacity of the ecology or economy to reprocess and it becomes pollution, as has happened with CO2 emissions. It is theoretically possible that pollution could likewise become waste, but I’m not sure this has ever happened easily or well. It is often hard to make reprocessing pollution profitable or even cheap (financially or energetically).

The changes to geological markers which define the Anthropocene are largely down to pollution. Climate change is mostly generated by pollution from excess greenhouse gas emissions made from energy production.

2) Extraction is the process of extracting food, minerals, materials, fuels etc. from the earth’s ecologies.

Extraction can likewise be of two types.

‘Tame extraction’ which allows the ecological system to repair itself after the extraction occurs. This takes time.
‘Excessive extraction’ which damages the ecological system, either through straightforward destruction, or through not allowing the ecology the time to regenerate.

The more ecologies are damaged the less they can process and recycle waste, therefore excessive extraction increases the chance that waste will become pollution.

For example, the amount of carbon dioxide we can produce safely goes down as we increase deforestation and poisoning of the oceans. Instead of being absorbed, as it should be, CO2 increases and traps in heat, changing the climate. This is compounded by massive increases in the amounts of CO2 and other Greenhouse gases being emitted, largely through burning fossil fuels (or dead forests), but emissions from warming seas and tundras are also starting to accelerate, and the weather becomes more tumultuous and unstable.

Politics of pollution and extraction

Pollution has both an economics and a politics. Pollution is emitted because it is cheaper to emit it than to restrain it, or to reprocess it. Pollution increases profit. We might say a key technique of capitalism is to freeload costs onto taxpayers or those who cannot resist. This is why pro-corporate politicians, such as President Trump, often boast about how they are reducing green tape and making it easier to pollute and poison people. So any political or economic system with people in power who consider reprocessing pollution too expensive, too diminishing of corporate (or other) profit, or as inhibiting some other beneficial project, will increase pollution, and that will have consequences; in some cases that will include direct harm to people. One, not yet recognized problem for polluters, is that some forms of pollution cannot be confined; they affect everyone detrimentally.

The politics of excessive extraction is similar. It is cheaper and more profitable (in the short term) to destroy ecologies than it is to preserve them. This is especially the case if the companies involved do not have a local base. They can then move elsewhere leaving a trail of destruction behind them. A good example of this is coal mining in Australia. Anyone who travels to the Hunter Valley can observe this, if they are careful, as the destruction is often hidden by high green mounds alongside the roads. We also have massive over-fishing in the world’s oceans because it is cheaper to take huge amounts of fish than to fish selectively. This is helping to causing a complete destruction of ocean ecological cycles, which is furthered by plastic, oil and other pollution. Small fisher peoples cannot compete and they end up having to change their lives and buy the fish they used to catch or starve. It is no longer true that if you teach a person to fish you feed them for a lifetime.

The politics of pollution and the politics of extraction mean there is a tendency to put the pollution and the destruction from excessive extraction onto relatively powerless people. Powerful people, by definition, often have the ability to push poison and mess away from themselves, and the wealth to import food from places that have not yet been destroyed. It is almost always the poor, or those living in relatively remote places that suffer poisoning, or destruction of their land and surroundings. However, the effects of destruction cannot always be confined (it spreads) and as poor and remote areas get destroyed, the destruction is likely to move into more prosperous areas. For example, with the NSW government’s determination to poison residents, and destroy their homes, with the Westconnex highway and tunnel system so a toll company can tax travel forever. Pollution may also have a psycho-political component as putting it on others indicates dominance over those others, and is a literal way of making a mark on the world – hence the apparent joy some people appear to take in polluting.

The problems we face increase because pollution and destruction go hand in hand. They reinforce each other, or feedback into each other, making the situation worse. They further reinforce and are reinforced by relations of power. Governments want to encourage business, economic growth and development and, in current terms, that means pollution and excessive extraction. There is little corrective available, unless governments can be recaptured by the people being damaged, and regulations imposed on the amount of pollution that can be emitted and the amount of destruction that will be tolerated. This in itself generates a problem in an age of international neoliberal capital. Capital will likely move to them areas of lowest regulation and highest permissible destruction, because this is more profitable, leaving the area without the investment. The oceans are a particular problem as it is easy to escape observation of destruction and pollution at sea, and there is confusion over who controls what is done.

So while local regulation is important, it is also important to have international regulation, and then international competition for capital and investment can get in the way.

Unfortunately, neoliberal governments tend to believe that the State exists to protect and encourage corporate business and wealth, and regulations are only worthwhile when they prevent opposition to business, or protect established business, and hence the idea that business should be regulated for the general good, or for self-protection is anathema, and hard to achieve. People also tend to think that more consumption is good, and this supports destruction by business.

This implies nothing will change without a general change in philosophy, as well as encouragement and support for those who are resisting pollution and excessive extraction in their local areas.

To reiterate, climate change is, itself, not the problem. The problem is that we are destroying and overloading our ecologies through pollution and excessive extraction, and this is occurring for political and economic reasons; often to reinforce the power and wealth of the corporate elites. Climate change is just a very destructive symptom of these processes, which makes everything worse.

Tags:Anthropocene, climate change, economics, free markets
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Carbon Markets

April 30, 2019

Elaborations on a lecture by Gareth Bryant (Political Economy, Sydney University) although probably not accurately, and I’ve probably added some inaccuracies.

The aim of carbon trading and taxes is to keep capitalism and economic growth while making them more ecologically sensitive. We are in no way certain that we can keep corporate capitalism or keep economic growth while reducing pollution and ecological destruction, but that is the hypothesis. It could be wrong to begin with.

Assuming that it is possible, the idea is that by allowing the market to set prices on Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, they become more expensive and this diminishes their attractiveness. It lets ‘the market’ seek the answer to how this reduction is done. That contemporary corporate markets can succeed in this, is also a hopeful hypothesis.

If you go with emissions trading you have to set up an artificial market in which emissions can be traded. The idea is that people who cut emissions have ‘carbon credits’, ‘carbon permits’ or ‘carbon allowances’ which they can sell to others, allowing those others to pollute. What this does in reality is keep the emissions stable, unless permits are regularly removed from the market – which can be difficult unless taxpayers buy them.

Both allocating and removing the credits are political processes open to influence, so large companies usually end up with larger amounts of credits than they should have. In the EU trading system there was a massive over-allocation of permits, which may have made the market under-priced and under-responsive with little incentive to reduce GHG.

Some companies, predicting a trading system is coming, can increase their emissions deliberately, so as to receive larger numbers of credits than they should have. When the credits are introduced, the companies reduce their emissions back to normal and sell off the excess. This increases emissions rather than lowering them.

If people don’t want to change, or there is a severe lock-in effect, then this can just increase prices for everyone, without reducing emissions.

‘The market’ is advocated, because it is supposed to remove the knowledge and planning problem from the process. That is, if the State is going to promote Green energy, reduced emissions and so on, then it has to know what it is doing. It has (in the terminology) to “pick winners”.

In neoliberal theory, the State is inefficient and always stupid and the market always knows what is best or finds the best way of doing it. Neoliberals do not like the possibility that ordinary people could influence corporate behaviour or diminish profit, through effective use of the State.

The problem with this idea is that the ‘best way’ can just mean cheapest and most profitable in the short term, Or, perhaps, the method that requires the least actual change. The market may crash or opt for destruction in the long term.

The idea also forgets that many uses of the environment are actually destructions of the environment, and once the environment has been destroyed, or transformed into waste, it takes massive amounts of energy to put it back together again (more than it took to demolish it). Corporations are nearly always primarily concerned with whether the process of destruction and waste makes them a profit. They are unconcerned about generating waste and pollution, especially if it could significantly diminish profit to tidy it up.

While government planning is given up, as it potentially interferes with the market, the scheme pretends that there is no significant corporate planning, and that corporations do not crony together for their own benefit. Unfortunately this happens – many boards have shared members for one. So the markets get distorted in the interest of the more powerful players, and this is not perceived or considered to be part of the market process, while State planning (which could possibly be in a more general interest, and have a general input, not just a corporate input) is defined as interference in the process.

In general, carbon markets diminish the tools available to a government, and make politics become about saving the carbon market rather than dealing with climate change. As already suggested, any governmental action, or target setting, whatsoever can be construed as interfering with ‘the market’ and as stopping it from working with its supposed efficiency. It is always possible to blame the State for market failure.

However the market does not have to go in the direction intended. Markets do not force emissions reduction. If it becomes more profitable to increase emissions (perhaps they are under priced because of market collapse), or prevent decrease, or to emit false information, then that can happen.

Financial markets, such as carbon markets, depend on volatility for both their profitability and financial-trader interest. We would essentially be trying to use a volatile financial market with its continuous stream of bubbles, crashes and information corruption in order to stabilise the ecology we depend upon for life. This makes no sense at all.

Let us be clear, there is no evidence that carbon trading anywhere in the world has successfully reduced emissions by any significant amount, but such markets do reduce the possibility of demanding emissions reduction in a relatively democratic way.

Carbon taxes are better because they set a relatively predictable price and can be moved up or down depending on the results being attained. Money from a carbon tax can also be distributed to the consumers to lessen their costs nd allow them to make market choices with greater ease. However, Carbon taxes do not seem politically possible, as all Australians know. This is probably because they are step towards letting the State interfere with the markets, rather than letting corporations interfere with markets.

Tags:carbon price/carbon trading, climate change, economics, Energy, free markets, technology
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Coal Mines and jobs

April 29, 2019

In Australia we have a large dispute over coal mines. In particular, people dispute over the proposed Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, run by the Indian company Adani which would be one of the largest coal mines in the world. Some say that if it opens then we may as well give up trying to stop climate disruption.

Politicians frequently defend the mine by saying it will result in at least 10,000 jobs in a fairly depressed area. This is also the figure that Adani chuck around when they are not in court.

In court where they can charged with perjury, the story is different.
Adani’s expert witness in the Land Court, Jerome Fahrer from ACIL Allen consulting, claimed (and please read this carefully)

“Over the life of the Project it is projected that on average around 1,464 employee years of full time equivalent direct and indirect jobs will be created.”

1) This is over the *life time* of the project.

2) “1464 employee years” (so if everyone works two years that is 732 jobs for two years, if every job lasts for 4 years that is 366 jobs. If the life time of the mine is a mere 20 years, and all jobs last 20 years, then that is 70 or less jobs. The mine is forecast to be operating much longer than that (I have seen predictions of 50 to 60 years). It is likely the opening years of the mine will consume most of these “employee years” while it requires construction.

3) “Direct and indirect” – this figure includes all the jobs that will be created in response to employment at the mine – bar tenders, contractors, motel staff and so on.

4) Be created – this means on top of the jobs lost elsewhere, as other mines are forced to shut down, because of competition.

So we would be in high risk of destroying the Great Artesian Basin, Queensland’s agriculture and world climate stability, for less than 70 extra jobs over 20 years. Adani are notorious for not paying tax and royalties, so we might as well stop pretending that Australia will get anything for all this destruction.

That was for the big mine. Adani will no longer open the big mine as it is too costly at the moment, so the jobs figure will be smaller. So we should not keep telling everyone this will come anywhere near solving Northern Queensland’s unemployment problem. This seems false rhetoric designed to persuade people that the mine should go ahead, and profits should be made and taken elsewhere.

Mining jobs make up less of the workforce than retail jobs, accommodation and food, and far less than the arts. But of course people in the arts don’t count.

Mining jobs have traditionally been well paid so miners are naturally attached to them, but this small number of jobs in Queensland is probably not going to maintain a field of high paying jobs, and it is a trivial number of well paid jobs given the risks….

Mining jobs are also becoming increasingly automated, so it may be that even fewer extra jobs will be created – although this will probably be blamed on Green politicians, rather than on mining company automation.

All of this suggests that coal mines do not benefit the country in any significant way, but they do endanger it for profit.

Tags:Disinformation, economics, technology
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The Difference between libertarianism and fascism

April 24, 2019

The way it seems to work is like this:

A whole lot of business suited guys are holding a person to down and stealing their money. They are also pouring poison on them, maybe gassing them, and taking their land and freedom away. Often they appear to miss and destroy the ground everyone is standing or lying on, but that is part of the fun. Eventually, the suits get a bit bored and they hire a few politicians and think-tank people to do the work for them – as long as they get most of the money and the pleasure of doing the poisoning themselves.

Maybe the person being robbed and poisoned stands up and says “I’m going to sue you guys”, but the person finds out that the suits buy all the best lawyers and they got the politicians to write the laws they wanted, because they can. In pure Capitalistland you get the justice you can afford.

Finally, the person is coughing blood and a group of libertarians comes up and kicks them down again, yelling in perfect unison that: “The rich are better than you. Everyone can do what they want. The only reason you aren’t doing the kicking, thieving and poisoning is because you don’t work hard enough and the market is not free enough. Be grateful. If you give the market what it wants then you will benefit. Give business even more power and you will be free! If you don’t benefit, its all your own fault. Everything you suffer now is the fault of the State!”

The person being beaten up must be stopped from allying with anyone in the same position so as to defend themselves or assert their liberty from suits. And they must be stopped from objecting to the violence in the system and the destruction of the world around them.

Libertarians seem to exist to support the authority and hierarchy of wealth (and hereditary wealth at that), while pretending this hierarchy and power is entirely voluntary. They appear to be prepared to temporarily ally with anyone who wholeheartly supports this hierarchy, and attack anyone who does not. This is why they appear more comfortable supporting Republican authoritarianism or Christian totalitarianism than they are in supporting social democracy, even when the social democracy movement is attacking the power of the state to dictate people’s lives.

Indeed, democracy seems a bad word for them, as it might impact negatively on the ‘natural’ plutocracy. The people might decide they are as worthy as the rich, and don’t want to be ruled by the rich, and this form of evil ‘majoritarianism’ has to be stopped. They also seem to oppose any action which would weaken gender and race hierarchies, by pretending that this would disappear when capitalists had full control. Any other action is, in their minds, an attempt to compel the already dominant to accept equality, which cannot be allowed.

However, Libertarians can be distinguished from fascists as they probably would not support attempts to make these hierarchies more rigid in themselves, to the extent they are not based on wealth. Libertarians also would probably not support the fascist State when it tried to curtail the power of the rich and the market. Indeed it often appears they cannot tell the difference between social democracy and fascism for that reason.

The difference between real anarchists and libertarians is that anarchists realise all capitalism is crony capitalism, all capitalism both requires and sets up a state to protect capitalist power and property, and all capitalism leads to plutocracy and destruction.

Tags:economics, free markets
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Clive Palmer and the Australian Election

April 23, 2019

In Australia, we are in the middle of a Federal Election at the moment. It should be the case that the current Coalition government gets voted out, but they have the support of the Murdoch Empire and most of the media, despite their amazing incompetence, forceful suggestions of corruption and total disinterest in facing the problems of climate change.

We also have a variety of odd politicians competing. One of whom, is Clive Palmer a mining magnate, who has spent a lot of time in court…. It has been alleged that Mr. Palmer has budgeted $80 million for his parliamentary campaign, based on being Australia’s Donald Trump. This budget is plausible given that it is more or less impossible to avoid his adverts on the road, in the paper and on youtube, and has been for months.

The big questions we should be asking are: “Why is Clive Palmer spending all this money to get elected?” and “What’s in it for him?”

A plausible answer is that he is probably trying to get the huge Alpha North coalmine going in the Galilee basin near the proposed Adani Carmichael mine. Alpha North is as big as the Carmichael mine, and the Carmichael mine will probably destroy the Great Artesian Basin which inland Australia depends upon for its water. Two such mines make this almost a certainty. Adani has already been promised unlimited water access.

If Adani can get up, then his mine should be approved (after all he has the advantage of being ‘Australian!’), and he gets the rail line he needs which will have been built for the Adani mine to work.

If Adani is rejected, then he can still agitate for the money and infrastructure to get his mine going.

He apparently wants the coal mine to support a massive coal fired power station which he also wants to build in Queensland. This is despite Queensland already having more energy than it knows what to do with, but it would lock Australia into coal.

He can also probably challenge any attempts to get decent royalties out of mining companies, or to tax mining companies at a reasonable (non-zero) rate.

This is especially the case if his party holds balance of power in the Senate which is quite likely.

If any of this is true, the massive investment in his party has been worthwhile for him.

Tags:Disinformation, economics, technology
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

A good idea is not enough….

April 9, 2019

Thinking about the way that things could go wrong is useful when we start thinking ecologically in terms of systems and complexity; unsuspected connections and feedbacks, interaction of supposedly separate systems, and so on.

Linear thinking, with understood and simple causal connections, is helpful but its not always enough. In recognizing complexity, we can recognize that ‘things’ frequently get out of control.

So let us suppose we have a solution to a problem. This is a list to point us to what may happen, if we don’t think about it. The list is almost certainly incomplete.

“that something is a good idea is not enough…”

It can be feasible, but we don’t put enough energy into it to do it in time needed or avaiable.

It can be feasible but it’s much harder than we think.

It may be feasible and succeeds, but it does not do enough.

It may be feasible and succeeds, but disrupts other systems we think are not connected to it

It can be feasible but powerful people and institutions attempt to undermine its possibility, so we have a political problem as well as an ‘engineering’ problem.

It can be feasible but normally non-powerful people unite against it as it disturbs them, or they have not been consulted, or they face problems you are ignoring.

It may be feasible, but fighting for it distracts our attention from significant problems, either to do with it, or to do with the rest of the world. (As when fighting against climate change distracts us from other ecological challenges.)

It could be feasible if we knew about, or involved, other factors that we currently either don’t know or think are irrelevant.

It could be feasible but the way we are organising it’s implementation is not helpful or destructive to its aims.

It can be infeasible to begin with.

It may not be compatible with our expectations of what it will do.

It can have unintended effects which make the situation worse, but we don’t know about them until its deployed.

It can be successful at first and then fail.

It can succeed.

Tags:'nature', complexity, disorder, knowledge, technology
Posted in complexity, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The world will end in 12 years???

April 9, 2019

Another meme that seems to circulate around the net is that climate scientists are saying the world will end in 12 years. This would appear to be ridiculous, and therefore is intended to discredit the whole idea of climate change.

I personally don’t know of, nor have I read of, any scientists who warn that the world will end in 12 years due to climate change. As usual, I’m welcome to correction, but I doubt this will happen.

However, what plenty of people have warned is that we have about 12 years left in which to seriously diminish the causes of climate change. If we don’t, the weather conditions are likely to move into greater degrees of instability and tumultuousness, and sea level rises will be significant.

With only a warming of one degree, it appears that areas of the USA seem to be on the edge of failing to cope with the stresses of fires, floods and storms, and areas like Puerto Rico seem to have largely been abandoned by the current US government. The same is becoming true in Australia; areas are getting too hot for habitation, and water supplies seem to be diminishing (sometimes because of mining as well as climate change).

As chaotic weather gets worse, it will cost billions in destroyed property, and distract from other economic activity. It will probably also mean massive people movements, food shortages and so on.

I quote here from the LA times

By the end of the century, the manifold consequences of unchecked climate change will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. (emphasis added)

Cynically, this is probably a reason why EPA research is being cut back; it gives results some people might not want to hear, and might not want other people to hear.

However, while climate change could well begin the end of the civilizations we know and live in, and lead to lots of people dying, it won’t end the world. The world will carry on and some humans, those who have learnt to co-operate and have farming or hunting and gathering skills, will probably survive. With some luck, relatively large scale societies in more fortunate parts of the world may well survive. The scale and prosperity of social life we have now in the developed world and are aiming at elsewhere, will probably end.

Strangely, attempting to prevent this collapse seems relatively easy. People can disagree about what action is needed to diminish climate change, but it usually comes down to phasing out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, lowering other forms of pollution and poisoning coming from productive processes, and not taking more fish and trees than can be grown back.

If we would like long term survival, this would seem sensible anyhow.

Tags:'nature', climate change, disorder
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Climate, technology and chaos Blog