Against Libertarians and Neo-liberals again

November 13, 2022

There are significant problems with modern formulations of ‘free markets’ by libertarians and neo-liberals. This is another attempt to express my discontent with these positions

There is no evidence that capitalism can exist without government. It has not done so, so far.

  • Libertarians are not real anarchists, as they ignore the power differentials in capitalism or assert that with real free markets the State will collapse – a bit like communists insist that after the dictatorship of the proletariat the State will collapse, sometime in the future, and that imagined collapse justifies whatever is happening now.
  • Capitalist markets have never existed without a State.
  • Some libertarians and neoliberals try to avoid this problem essentially by asserting trade is capitalism, and that therefore lots of Stateless capitalist societies have existed.
  • But there are many modes of exchange and not all of them are capitalistic.
  • If we accept that capitalism is trade, then communism is capitalism. Both systems engage in trade. Capitalism does not encourage free trade, but trade according to the rules of the rich elites.
  • Capitalism is a particular set of political organisations of production and restrictions on trade and property, that stops most people from being self-supporting and demands they engage in wage labour, favors hoarding by the rich elites, and suppresses opposition to those elites.

Capitalism promotes wealth inequality

  • Most libertarians and neoliberals celebrate inequality of riches.
  • They argue that massive inequality of riches is reward for talent alone. Power has nothing to do with the inequality.
  • But one possible part-definition of capitalism is that it is a system of exchange organised to benefit the rich elites and increase their power over everyone else who has to depend on them for survival because everyone else has to engage in a market controlled by those rich elites.
  • The fundamental social relationship in capitalism is not liberty but obedience to a boss who is wealthier than you are. Capitalism is about submission to wealth.

Riches buy power

  • Riches can buy all forms of power, especially if riches are considered good in themselves. they can buy control over: Violence, Communication, Information, Energy, Religions, organisational power and so on.
  • Riches can also buy liberty for those who have riches.
  • Therefore the more unequal the riches the more unequal access there is to power and liberty.
  • Libertarians and neoliberals support liberty for rich people, and the rights of rich people to not be hindered in any of their activities, including those which impinge upon poorer people.
  • At the extreme point, the legal system (courts, judges, lawyers, police etc) is up for sale to the highest bidder, so there can be no challenge to the rich at all.
  • In neoliberal or libertarian capitalism your rights are what you can pay for.

Capitalism tends towards plutocracy

  • Humans tend to collaborate with each other. You could not have corporate capitalism if this was not the case.
  • Therefore it is likely the hyper-rich will collaborate to either set up government in the unlikely event that there was no government previously, or take over the government if there is a government.
  • Once they take over the government, they will promote government for their collective interests, and collective liberties, and suppress other needs or other liberties which conflict with theirs, or their riches. This is what people often do.
  • They can stack government with their supporters, and make legislation which supports them and makes it harder for others. They can repeal legislation which impinges on their liberty, but keep legislation which impinges on the liberty of others.
  • As they control information and support generation of information which supports them, they will attack the best truth we have, if it conflicts with their dominance or wealth generation for themselves.
  • They suppress other modes of power which are not capitalistic. Which means there is little in the way of division of power – capitalist States tend to become mono-powers, and encourage capitalistic organization for everything.
  • Capitalists will set up plutocracy, and curtail the liberty of other ‘classes’. It is very hard to find a capitalist system in which this does not happen.
  • Indeed, we have had forty years of talk about free markets and we now have a straightforward plutocracy. The plutocracy is unstable, because it has ignored and suppressed inconvenient people and the working classes, and has suppressed the needs and dynamics of the ecology we live within. But corporations and their interests come first (although they may pretend not).
  • Libertarians seem far more comfortable with authoritarian capitalists, authoritarian religions, and State removal of the rights of workers than they seem comfortable with democratic socialists, or communal anarchists, who want to overcome the suppression of people in general. Given capitalists, in practice, use the State all the time, this comfort has nothing to do with getting rid of the State or increasing liberty.

The origins of capitalism do not reside in hard work but theft and violence

  • The libertarian, neoliberal and capitalist origin myth asserts that inequalities of riches (and the other inequalities these buy) arise from hard work and talent.
  • But capitalism arose in theft and oppression.
  • It started in aristocracy which depended on the taking of land, usually through violence or conquest.
  • Capital developed by stealing. People’s lives were stolen through slavery, indentured labour, truly terrible and often cheap but lethal working conditions, and so on. Land was stolen by ‘colonial’ violence from people who already used the land as in India, the US, Australia, and in the UK by theft of commons. It originated in the theft of treasure from India, and South America, or more accurately in the South American case, from British pirates stealing from Spanish treasure ships. It originated in massive cheap pollution, poisoning and environmental destruction which stole people’s lives and health.
  • Wherever it was arrived, capitalism stole property and self-sufficiency from people and turned them into wage laborers, depriving them of basic liberty.
  • Capitalist colonialists would often impose monetary taxes on people to force them to engage in otherwise meaningless wage labor, and submit to the colonial forces.
  • There is no reason to think that this is no longer the case, and that capitalism is now not structured by riches inherited from that violence, or that if violence and ecological destruction can be got away with profitably it will not be engaged in.
  • Libertarians and neoliberals are really good at seeing that ordinary people can co-operate to inhibit the market and they seem to want to suppress such movements. However, they are pretty useless at seeing the normal violence of capitalism or the ways that capitalists can cooperate to interfere with the market, both with the State and outside the State, for their benefit and power.
  • Libertarians often seem to define their “non-aggression principle” to exclude normal capitalist violence and suppress real rebelliousness, or demands for recompense for capitalist theft as aggression, probably because they support the establishment more than then people.

People are not just driven by profit or power

  • While in actual life libertarianism and neoliberalism reduces everything to profit and the liberty of the wealthy humans have many other drives
  • Libertarianism and neoliberals essentially dismiss these drives. If it does not make money, its of no value or use . If it does make money it is of value of use.
  • We may example: not very good art, non-capitalist religion, co-operation, care, love etc are all downplayed by libertarians and neoliberals in favor of the market.
  • It might be that everything worthwhile in life comes from outside the capitalist market and is destroyed by that market, as everything is reduced to money and profit.

Capitalism damages people

  • Historical theft and violence continues to damage people today, as colonialism and its racism, class distinctions and so on continue to affect peoples lives and allocate life chances. This does not mean people cannot triumph against huge obstacles, but they face those obstacles and structural inhibitions, because of previous and continuing capitalist theft and violence.
  • It has already been stated that capitalism damages and poisons ecology. People need functional ecology to live well, so damage to ecology damages people.
  • Capitalism encourages obedience and submission with the threat of being dumped into poverty.
  • Capitalism requires most people to have no relationship to what they produce, or to take no reward in what they produce, and have no control over what happens to what they produce. This is what Marx called alienation. It harms people’s involvement in their own lives.
  • Capitalism encourages machine production, and therefore, for most people, discourages craft production or the development of holistic skills and the use of their body and mind and feelings etc. This damages them. Adam Smith while encouraging division of tasks and labour, recognised that it inculcated mental and ‘spiritual’ stultification.
  • Capitalism encourages exhaustion, not just of land, but of people through overwork, media saturation and so on. This lessens their ability to respond to life and problems, or to reject capitalism.
  • People can nearly always be replaced, as they have no intrinsic value. This also damages people and shows they are of no real worth, as bosses cannot be bothered to treat them like ‘human beings’.
  • Possibly all the major problems in the West have been generated by capitalism and its markets.

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Drax and woodchip energy

November 8, 2022

This is basically a paraphrase of an article in the New Yorker with a few additions. The Millions of Tons of Carbon Emissions That Don’t Officially Exist: How a blind spot in the Kyoto Protocol helped create the biomass industry. By Sarah Miller December 8, 2021, because its really important and even by my standards is a bit long – although naturally this version grew as it went along. But please read the original.

Drax 1

The article is primarily about the wood chip powered energy production in the village of Drax, in Yorkshire, by the Drax Group. The huge Drax power station used to be a coal fired energy generator, but is, or has, now translated to “sustainably sourced biomass,” or wood pellets, so as to enable “a zero carbon, lower cost energy future (p.4).” It also:

can be at the heart of the green economic recovery in the North. Scaling up BECCS at Drax could support thousands of jobs during construction at its peak and contribute significantly to the local economy, according to a report from Vivid Economics, commissioned by Drax.

Drax: 3

BECCS is Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. We also learn from the Drax Report that:

In the US, EU and in the UK, policy makers have continued to regulate biomass in the context of global and domestic efforts to meet net zero. In the EU, the European Commission’s Green New Deal proposed a new biodiversity strategy and re-opening key legislation such as the REDII and EU ETS. In the UK, the Government announced it would begin work on a new bioenergy strategy – to be published in 2022. In the US, the EPA has been actively considering the carbon credentials of biomass.

Drax

So Drax supposedly has all the benefits of low emissions, contributing to the economy and jobs, and being backed by officials.

Ok back to the article

In 2019 Drax “emitted more than fifteen million tons of CO2, which is roughly equivalent to the greenhouse-gas emissions produced by three million typical passenger vehicles in one year” (Miller). Of these emissions 12.8 million tons were “biologically sequestered carbon.” We might need to bear the ‘sequestered,’ or stored, in mind, as like the BECCS it may not be happening. Emissions increased the next year.

Draz receives heavy subsidies from the UK government….

The thinktank Ember calculates that, from 2012 until 2027, when Drax’s ROC subsidies end, it will have collected more than £11bn in government payouts.

Lawson Energy bills may rise if government gives Drax more support, say MPs. The Guardian 20 September 2022

It was possible during the energy crisis of 2022, that the British Government could get locked into another agreement, to keep power prices down, that would subsidise Drax for even longer.

Drax said in July that profit before tax had jumped to £200m in the first half of the year, up from £52m in the same period a year earlier, aided by high electricity prices. It upgraded annual profit forecasts, and has signed a deal with National Grid to keep its coal-fired operations open through the winter.

In the past 12 months, its stock has risen 63% to 709p, valuing the company at £2.84bn

Lawson…Emphasis added.

Some History of Biofuels – Origins in bad accounting?

The issue here has its beginnings quite a while back when the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated in 1997. The conference did not quite know how to classify wood burning. Burning wood is renewable up to a point. If you burn it, it eventually, grows back. For some reason the IPCC decided that “if they counted emissions from harvesting trees in the land sector, it would be duplicative to count emissions from the burning of pellets in the energy sector” (Miller),

William Moomaw of Tufts University, says that negotiators thought of biomass as only a minor part of energy production. It was small-scale enough that forest regrowth could theoretically keep up with tree harvesting of . He said “At the time these guidelines were drawn up, the I.P.C.C. did not imagine a situation where millions of tons of wood would be shipped four thousand miles away to be burned in another country,” (Miller). Officially loss of biomass did not count. Beverly Law of Oregon State University told Miller, “The wood biomass energy claims of carbon neutrality are incorrect and misleading… It can worsen climate change even if wood displaces coal.”

In 2009 the EU passed the Renewable Energy Directive to enforce the guidelines set up in Kyoto, asking nations to reduce emissions by 20% or more by 2020. Many European States decided that the cheapest and easiest way to go was to switch coal plants to woodchip plants.

Scot Quaranda of Dogwood Alliance, and activist forest-protection group says “Countries had to meet their renewable-energy targets,… There was no way to do it without gaming the system and counting biomass as carbon neutral.” If so then an error in the mode of accounting has had considerable effect.

In 2017, the E.U. spent six and a half billion euros on subsidies for biomass plants. Last year, Drax got about $1.1 billion from the British government. “The governments can claim they are compliant, while former coal companies that would have been dead get rich on government subsidies and selling electricity—much of which, with proper planning, could have come from wind and solar,” Quaranda said. “The forests are destroyed, and the world burns.”

By 2019, biomass accounted for about fifty-nine per cent of all renewable-energy use in the E.U.

Miller

Another journalist writes:

Europe gets 60 percent of its renewable energy from biomass fuels, a process that uses wood scraps, organic waste and other crops to generate heat and electricity in specially designed power plants. U.N. rules allow the European Union to write off the emissions as carbon-neutral, so long as sustainable guidelines are met, even though burning the fuel can release more warming gases into the atmosphere than coal….

[As a result] Many countries are significantly underreporting their emissions to the United Nations, leading to a massive undercount of what is actually released into the atmosphere

Birnbaum E.U.’s big climate ambitions have the scent of wood smoke The Washington Post. 10 Nov 2021

At the Glasgow COP there was little conversation about the problems of biomass, and Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s executive vice president for the European Green Deal said:

To be perfectly blunt with you, biomass will have to be part of our energy mix if we want to remove our dependency on fossil fuels….. I do admit that it’s quite complicated to get this right…. [Europe would] try to use the biomass that is not at odds with our environmental and climate objectives.

Birnbaum emphasis added

The Dogwood Alliance estimate that at least sixty thousand acres of trees—trees that would have otherwise sequestered carbon—are burned each year to supply the plants, and the amount is growing. Global demand for wood pellets is expected to double by 2027.

What is more, there is apparently no “binding governmental or industrial oversight for replanting trees at all”, which if true means that forests can be cleared for other purposes, the regrowth does not happen, and everything is ok by the regulations.

Problems with biofuel

When President Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said that the E.P.A. would declare the burning of wood from managed forests for energy production to be “carbon neutral” several scientists wrote to him saying:

Mr. Pruitt’s declaration contradicts some basic facts. Burning wood from forests to generate electricity is not carbon neutral when the direct emissions from combustion, plus emissions from soil and logging <transport> and processing the wood, are considered. Scientific studies have shown that it will worsen the consequences of climate change for decades or through the end of this century. This was not a decision based in science, but in politics, a giveaway to the forest products industry. 

Pruitt Is Wrong on Burning Forests for Energy

They pointed to scientists in Europe who had written to the EU:

Even if forests are allowed to regrow,… using wood deliberately harvested for burning will increase carbon in the atmosphere and warming for decades to centuries…. even when wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas.

Pruitt is Wrong

And then resumed, pointing to the time and delay factor which usually seems to be ignored:

regrowth takes time, a century or more for native forests, assuming they don’t fall victim to wildfire or disease. And regrowth never occurs if the land is developed or converted to pasture or farmland.

Moreover, throughout the many decades before the replacement forests can grow enough to remove the extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the previously added gas will thaw more permafrost and melt more ice, make ocean acidification worse, accelerate global warming, speed sea-level rise, increase the incidence of extreme weather, worsen drought and water stress, and hurt crop yields — effects that will persist for centuries or longer.

Pruitt is wrong

Biomass harvesting can have other ecological effects, such as increasing water run off, furthering floods and silting up rivers. They conclude that through the use of woodchips

British taxpayers there are paying electricity providers to make climate change worse.

Pruitt is wrong

Drax: Selling the project and CCS

Back to Drax. Miller gives an account of a tour of the establishment. The tour guides made a big deal of wood being natural, and the wood coming primarily from timber waste products (such as sawdust) in the USA and Canada. Given the quantities of wood involved (one mill requires fifty-seven thousand acres per year) this seems implausible, especially when many of the wood mills are owned by Drax. “Some of this activity is in primary-growth forests—forests that have never before been logged” (Miller). And photographic evidence suggests forests have been removed.

Apparently “under international definitions, if a government or private entity cuts down a forest but doesn’t develop the land, it has not officially engaged in deforestation” (Miller). The rules seem confusing and not particularly adapted to reducing emissions.

Ali Lewis, the head of media and public relations for Drax, disputed the idea of gaming the system. “How can we be ‘gaming the system’ when the carbon accounting for biomass is derived from the principles set by the world’s leading climate scientists at the U.N. I.P.C.C., and we follow those rules to the letter?”

Miller

Drax also tried to start a carbon capture and storage project it called White Rose, which does not seem to have eventuated. However, the tour guides apparently emphasised carbon storage as well.

“Before the carbon can even leave that big smokestack, Drax is intervening, and binding it with a solvent, and burying it in the ground… It’s a matter of balancing what’s being used with what’s being replaced. Wood is a sustainable material because they’re taking it away as they’re replacing it…. The solvent looks like really runny honey,”

Miller.

Miller asked them how much carbon they stored, the response was not clear at all, but:

Almuth Ernsting, the co-director of Biofuelwatch, an international anti-biomass-industry N.G.O., told me, “Drax has never actually stored a single pound of carbon.”

“With government support, the first beccs unit at Drax could be operational in 2027 with a second in 2030,” a Drax spokesperson told me.

Miller

As usual CCS projects deliver sometime in a possible future. It not only had troubles with activist organisations, but financial and political organisations.

The climate thinktank Ember has argued that Drax’s CCS plans could cost people paying energy bill £31.7bn over 25 years, amounting to £500 a household. “The cost of supporting its future bioenergy plans could climb to more than the cost of subsidising Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.” Drax claimed that the cost of retrofitting an existing plant would be much cheaper.

Shortly after the British Minister energy minister secretly expressed reluctance about biofuels (see below), the government announced a new discussion on biofuels and particularly BECCS, with Rishi Sunak telling the Yorkshire Post:

I created the £1 billion Carbon Capture and Storage Infrastructure Fund as Chancellor… As a Yorkshire MP, I am excited about the opportunities and jobs that Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage could bring to our region, as well as its potential for sustainable power generation. 

Bocott-Owen Bid to create thousands of jobs at Drax Power Station in Yorkshire to be greenlit by Government. Yorkshire Post 18th August 2022

The Yorkshire Post adds that ‘Whitehall Sources’ told them that:

Drax’s implementation of the new technology would be key to the UK’s future energy security.

“BECCS is the only sustainable way to continue biomass in the way it removes emissions from the atmosphere.

“[Drax] is by far the single largest renewable energy generator in Britain, it is critical to energy security and without it we’d have to import that electricity from abroad or burn more gas….

“It’s a no-brainer from the Government’s perspective. But of course it will take time, and no decisions have been made just yet.”

Bocott-Owen Bid to create thousands of jobs at Drax Power Station in Yorkshire to be greenlit by Government. Yorkshire Post 18th August 2022

Problems for Drax

Not all relevant organisations are positive about Drax.

Greenpeace discovered that Drax Biomass exceeded limits on chemical emissions at its wood chip plants close to residential communities in Louisiana. These included “volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a class of air pollutants linked to cancer, breathing difficulties and other health effects.” Drax agreed to two payments of $1.6m each with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to settle claims against two of its wood pellet plants, without accepting liability. The previous year “Drax had been fined $2.5m for air pollution violations in the neighbouring state of Mississippi”

In October [2021], Drax lost its place on the S. & P. Global Clean Energy Index, as did Albioma, a biomass company in France, after analysts expressed skepticism about the true carbon neutrality of their operations. But Drax doesn’t appear to be at any risk of losing its government subsidies

Miller

Luke Sussams, a Jefferies equity analyst, had argued that:

bioenergy was unlikely to make a positive contribution to climate action because of “uncertainties and poor practices” in some parts of the timber industry regarding the sources of wood, forest management practices, supply chain emissions and high combustion emissions…..

“We argue that bioenergy production is not carbon neutral, in almost all instances. This casts doubt on whether bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a net-negative emissions technology. The widespread deployment of BECCS looks challenging,”

Ambrose. Drax dropped from index of green energy firms amid biomass doubts. The Guardian 19 October 2021

A spokesperson for Drax defended the company arguing that:

“The world’s leading authority on climate science, the UN’s IPCC, is absolutely clear that sustainable biomass is crucial to achieving global climate targets, both as a provider of renewable power and through its potential to deliver negative emissions with BECCS.”

Ambrose

The Government hesitates

Kwasi Kwarteng, perhaps better known as Liz Truss’ Treasurer and supporter of unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy, was energy minister in August 2022. He had a recording of a private meeting leaked. In the meeting he apparently said:

I can well see a point where we just draw the line and say: This isn’t working, this doesn’t help carbon emission reduction, that’s it – we should end it. All I’m saying is that we haven’t quite reached that point yet… There’s no point getting [wood] from Louisiana – that isn’t sustainable … transporting these wood pellets halfway across the world – that doesn’t make any sense to me at all.” 

Carrington Burning imported wood in Drax power plant ‘doesn’t make sense’, says Kwarteng. The Guardian, 11 August 2022

Other MPs apparently agreed.

One MP at the meeting told Kwarteng: “It can take 100 years to grow a tree but 100 seconds to combust it. So, unless we actually have a measure of how much CO2 is being released in the same period of time as is being sequestered by new growth, it seems to me ludicrous to say that this is carbon neutral.” Another MP said: “It’s cutting down huge numbers of forests and it’s not defensible.”

Carrington Burning imported wood

In public Mr Kwarteng has stated: “The government is fully behind biomass energy to provide more power in Britain.”

The European Academies Science Advisory Council earlier had said that burning wood in power stations was “not effective in mitigating climate change and may even increase the risk of dangerous climate change”.

Drax is more than biofuel

Drax bought the gas power stations owned by Scottish Power, when the Scottish company went fully renewable.

Drax was also planning the “biggest gas power station in Europe [which] could account for 75% of the UK’s power sector emissions when fully operational”. The British Planning Inspectorate recommended in 2019 that the station not be allowed as it:

would undermine the government’s commitment, as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008, to cut greenhouse emissions [by having] significant adverse effects.

Carrington Legal bid to stop UK building Europe’s biggest gas power plant fails. The Guardian 22 January 2021

The minister refused the advice. And a court case to stop the project was lost. However, a Drax spokesperson stated “the gas plant project was not certain to go ahead because it depended on Drax’s investment decisions and on securing a capacity market contract from the government.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy said:

“As we transition to net zero emissions by 2050, our record levels of investment in renewables will meet a large part of the energy demand. However, natural gas will still provide a reliable source of energy while we develop and deploy low carbon alternatives.”

Carrington Legal bid.

Drax later scrapped plans for the Gas energy. However, according to the article the company may still build another four small-scale gas plants for use during times of peak electricity demand.

The Real Problem?

Miller concludes by pointing to the real problem; the economy. It needs to grow and make profit and provide jobs and consume massive amounts of energy.

Even as we watch economic growth literally killing us, it is what we talk about before we talk about anything else—we are told, over and over, that we must run to it for help. The truth is that if the economy is not entirely unmade, the debates over the folly of biomass, over what counts as renewable, over whether or not a tree can grow back faster than it burns—all of it will vanish into a great silence.

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Fragments of recent good energy news

November 4, 2022

You might not think there is any good energy news, with the current electricity price crisis which will probably result in not a few deaths over the northern winter.

However, the fossil fuel companies are showing major increases in their profit [1] [2] [3] [4]. While this is a boon if you are an investor, it may also be good for the transition as, for once, increasing profit is getting attention – perhaps because this hurts other companies as well as ordinary people. The fossil fuel companies could well appear to be profiteering in this price crises and rejoicing in the expected deaths or, at best, doing nothing to diminish the number. This is not a good look.

The price of fossil fuel electricity is rising and perhaps encouraging renewables

The International Energy Agency states:

High gas and coal prices account for 90% of the upward pressure on electricity costs around the world. …

A key question for policy makers, and for this Outlook, is whether the crisis will be a setback for clean energy transitions or will catalyse faster action. Climate policies and net zero commitments were blamed in some quarters for contributing to the run-up in energy prices, but there is scant evidence for this. In the most affected regions, higher shares of renewables were correlated with lower electricity prices, and more efficient homes and electrified heat have provided an important buffer for some – but far from enough – consumers. ….

[It is possible that] New policies in major energy markets [will] help propel annual clean energy investment to more than USD 2 trillion by 2030 in the STEPS, a rise of more than 50% from today.

World Energy Outlook 2022 Executive summary

While it is still possible to blame Putin and ignore the profiteering, or indeed blame renewables, EU Executive Vice-President Timmermans and Commissioner Simson essentially supported the IEA, announcing that

Putin’s war has stoked an energy crisis in Europe that continues to have huge repercussions. In response, we have moved swiftly to secure alternative supplies, accelerate the rollout of renewables, and start reducing gas demand to ensure European citizens are safe for winter.

We need to understand that the pre-war situation with abundant, cheap fossil fuels is not coming back

First, [our action] brings a European reduction in electricity consumption of 10%. During peak-hours, electricity consumption must go down at least 5% so we avoid using the most expensive gas-fired power plants and bring down the price of energy. This will be mandatory, so that the targets are met by everyone

Second, our package proposes a European mechanism for collecting and redistributing the exceptional surplus profits and revenues that the war in Ukraine has brought several energy companies. This can generate up to € 117 billion for Member States to support European households and businesses who face unsurmountable energy bills.

Our dependence on Russian gas is down from 40% to 9%. Storage in every Member State is quickly nearing the required 80%, and the EU-average, as the President said this morning, is close to 84%. We are all saving more and more energy. And the pace of renewables being rolled out is steadily rising.

In the end, our green energy transition is the only way to rid ourselves of Putin’s energy yoke and it will create energy sovereignty in Europe. The era of cheap fossil fuels is over and the faster we move to cheap, clean, and home-grown renewables, the sooner we will be immune to Russia’s energy blackmail and anybody else who may think they can blackmail us with energy.

Opening remarks by Executive Vice-President Timmermans and Commissioner Simson at the press conference on an emergency intervention to address high energy prices

There is other evidence for the increasing build of renewables in the EU, despite increased costs. Bloomberg New Energy Finance announced that:

Surging energy costs are expected to help drive yet another record year for new solar installations in Europe. As households look to lower their energy bills, residential solar build in the region is forecast to hit 10.4 gigawatts in 2022, a 42% increase from a year earlier… This is projected to propel annual solar additions in Europe to an all-time high of 41 gigawatts this year, on the way to 93 gigawatts by the end of the decade. The momentum comes despite elevated prices for modules due to the raised cost of key raw material polysilicon.

Europe’s Energy Crisis to Support Record Solar Build. Bloomberg 8 September 2022

Capital is available

It also seems we have the money to get through transition, only its currently being invested in fossil fuels. The IISD has announced new meta-research (ie researching the research on pathways through climate change) which says we can probably stay under 1.5 degrees increase if:

  • 1) Global oil and gas production decreases by at least 65% by 2050
  • 2) No new oil and gas fields are started
  • 3) The planned investments in new oil and gas to 2030 were used to fully finance the scale-up of wind and solar energy needed.

In Australia, Beyond Zero Emissions in their Deploy report argue that:

81% emissions reduction is achievable by 2030 with an ambitious rollout of cleantech over the next five years, supported by targeted carbon drawdown. This can create up to 195,000 jobs and repower Australia’s manufacturing regions.

https://bze.org.au/research_release/deploy/

and that

Six technologies – all available today – will do the heavy lifting: solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps and electrolysers.

Deploy Report: Executive summary

The drawdown seems to be primarily agricultural, putting carbon in the soil – which does have some problems of easy measurement and validation. It would account for 10% of the decline total, so 71% decline can be achieved without it.

The Australian e-news site RenewEconomy open a recent article with:

Brookfield Asset Management is a global giant with assets of around $A1 trillion. Andrew Forrest, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar are Australia’s three richest men. All are committed to accelerating Australia’s green energy transition. A shortage of capital is not the problem here.

Parkinson Tens of billions are ready for Australia’s renewable revolution: Can regulators and rule makers keep up? Renew Economy 10 November 2022

Brookfield is also bidding for Origin Energy and promises to spend $20 Billion on on wind, solar and storage in the next eight years. Which suggests a possible rapid transition in the Electricity field, although Brookfield’s bidding partner wants Origin’s gas.

My guess is that this quick transition would be even more possible, if we stopped subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel companies. This stoppage could be justified by their current high profits…. Not that any Australian government would probably survive that attempt.

Mike Cannon-Brookes seems to have got people interested in renewable energy onto the board of AGL a major Australian gas company and electricity supplier. see also here.

The Australian Government has announced a National Reconstruction Fund which may help the manufacture of renewables in Australia, but its a bit vague at the moment.

The Wiring problem is being faced

But we do need wiring for the transition. In a tweet Jenny Chase from Bloomberg remarked:

We don’t need a technology breakthrough. Today, solar developers just need a grid connection and permission to sell electricity and they’ll be off building solar plants whether it’s a good idea or not.

Jenny Chase Twitter 23 October 2022

And the Australian government has just promised to make sure grid connections exist, through the Rewiring the Nation project:

The proposal would provide $20 billion of equity equally over 3 years, from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2025 to create a new public non-financial corporation, which would be:
• responsible for building, managing and operating the Australian Energy Market Operator Integrated System Plan transmission network
• mandated to earn a rate of return that is sufficient to cover its financial and operational costs

Australian Parliamentary Budget Office. Powering Australia – Rewiring the Nation

Another Non-Government summary puts it this way:

Labor has promised $20bn to “rewire the nation” by accelerating the construction of new electricity transmission links between states and regions as the east coast power grid moves from running predominantly on coal power to renewable energy. Modelling for Labor by the consultants RepuTex suggested it would help lift renewable energy generation from about 35% to 82% by 2030.

Murphy & Morton ‘Rewiring the nation’: Albanese and Andrews governments to jointly fund renewable energy zones. The Guardian 19 October 2022

In the UK something similar was announced, but the political confusion make it harder to be optimistic.

National Grid announced this summer it was making a £54bn upgrade to the electricity network, the biggest since the 1960s, to help connect offshore windfarms more easily and enable battery storage facilities to connect up to store renewable power, a crucial issue in the industry

Lawson ‘Everything has changed, nothing has changed’: what’s stopping green energy. The Guardian 15 November 2022

Likewise in the US, a much smaller amount of US$13bn has also been announced to modernize the U.S. power grid using allocations from the infrastructure law. This is claimed to be the “biggest federal investment in transmission and distribution in U.S. history”.

the administration has also issued approvals for several interstate transmission lines that will span Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and California and unlock capacity of about six gigawatts

Budryk White House announces $13 billion in grid resilience funds. The Hill, 18 November 2022

Facing up to Full Renewables

This is a bit more recent, but the Australian Electricity Market Operator has announced a roadmap to prepare the grid to run on 100% renewables. AEMO expects 100% renewables going without fossil fuel backup going for intervals of time by 2025.

The Engineering Roadmap to 100% Renewables provides an overview of the engineering challenges and associated actions that will need to be undertaken to operate the NEM for the first period of 100% instantaneous penetration of renewables, and the actions required to satisfy more regular operation at 100% renewable penetration.
Responsibility for undertaking these actions and meeting the technical requirements identified in this report will ultimately be shared across many parties, including AEMO, NSPs, market bodies, market participants, and governments

AEMO Engineering Roadmap to 100% Renewables December 2022

Coal plants take many hours, or even days, to restart operation, so once taken offline, they can’t be relied on to meet immediate intraday energy demands, or provide system restart services.
Operating regularly with 100% renewable power also means reducing the need for regular reliance on gas-fired
generators to firm the electricity supply.
Operating a gigawatt-scale power system at 100% instantaneous renewable generation is a feat unparalleled worldwide.

The main obstacles are storage and renewable source “inverters, which don’t inherently deliver all of the same stabilising attributes that traditional synchronous generators provide to the power system.”

They also realise that “The human dimensions of this transition are as important as the technical requirements”.


Polling

Polling continues to show most Australians want action on climate change. This is possibly not a big deal as Australians wanted such action all through the last government’s reign, and where ignored or did not vote for it. However, the figures indicate there is support for action. Analysis of the latest Australia Institute Climate of the Nation Poll says:

Three-quarters (75%) of Australians are concerned about climate change, the same level of concern seen in 2021 and the highest since Climate of the Nation began. The intensity of concern has increased as well, with record high levels of those who are ‘very concerned’ about climate change (42%).

The top three climate impacts of concern are more droughts and flooding affecting crop production and food supply (83%), more bushfires (83%), and the extinction of animal and plant species (80%).

Climate of the Nation 2022

This indicate that Australians are actually aware of the levels of weather damage we are suffering from, and their likely effects on food and wildlife, despite the Murdoch Empire’s constant agitation against recognition of damage, or engaging in climate action.

Weather seems to be connected to coal based power by the resopondents.

79% of Australians believe that Australia’s coal-fired power stations should be phased out… 31%… think they should be phased out as soon as possible… 65% of Australians want coal-fired power generation completely ended within the next 20 years, including 38% who want it ended within the next decade…

64% of Australians support stopping new coal mines…. 73% think Australian governments should plan to phase out coal mining and transition into other industries…

ibid

Australians also seem to be losing faith in the ability of markets to solve all problems as

64% agree that failure by the market to prepare for a transition away from fossil fuels has led to electricity price increases, including 31% that strongly agree

ibid.

Conclusion

So while I still think we need more local action, and more overt political support, there are signs that things might be changing and people are thinking it might be entirely disastrous if we start showing our support for action…

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Introduction to the Introduction

November 3, 2022

I’m trying to write a book on problems with the energy transition and the use of ‘climate technologies’ such as carbon trading, carbon capture and storage, geoengineering, biofuels, nuclear, evs and so on.

This is kind of an introduction to the book’s introduction.

As well as being about the problems with the needed energy transition and the climate technologies we use to deal with climate change and ecological devastation, this book is also about some of my theoretical obsessions, such as:

  • The ways that attempts to order the world in a good way (however that is defined), generate the disorder that is feared.
  • The normality of unintended consequences, the lack of control over everything, and the need to look out for these normalities, in our lives and correct for them.
    • Despite everyone knowing about unintended consequences and their prevalence in life, this knowledge is not part of contemporary western social theory (including economics), or philosophy.
  • The realisation that everything is ecological, and interconnectedness, interdependency and lack of apparent harmony are fundamental to all life. No thing, and no one, exists by itself. Hence to perceive an action’s effects we have to look around widely.
  • This realisation implies the need for a politics which is experimental rather than dogmatic. We don’t know what a policy’s complete effects will be in advance – no matter how sensible and virtuous it appears to be.
  • The realisation that human conscious thinking is limited, and directed by the theories we have. This also tends to direct what we observe. We don’t perceive the world as it is, but through the tools we deploy.
  • To keep our modes of thinking and life, it is common for people to engage in defensive fantasy ‘solutions’ if the problem seems too big or overwhelming and potentially destructive of their ways of life. These solutions can even make the situation worse.
  • The need to listen to our unconscious awareness of patterning, and to be aware that processes which we cultivate unconsciousness of, sill exist and can harm us.
  • Forms of economic organisation can be destructive as well as productive, and we need to minimise destruction.
  • Wealth is not the same as riches.
  • Forms of economic organisation can lead to destructive power imbalances, and positive feedback loops, as the economy gets organised to feed the rich. The power and politics of neoliberalism is one of the fundamental problems of contemporary life, along with developmentalism.
  • Markets are subsidiary to ecologies, rather than ecology being submissive to markets. A market which destroys its ecology will almost certainly destroy itself.
  • Technologies involve social uses and social organisations, and they can also have harmful effects on people and ecologies if we ignore them.
  • Societies, and people, all face challenges and have to respond to them. How they succeed in this response, influences their future trajectory. Sometimes the challenges they face are self-generated and these challenges are particularly difficult to respond to, other than by avoidance of the problem. Climate change and eco-destruction are such challenges. The personal and social response are intertwined, hence they reinforce each other, either for success, avoidance or failure.
  • The obvious realisation that energy technologies, energy supply and its organisation are vital for forms of social life, what can be achieved and who is likely to dominate over others.

The energy transition is as much a matter of social and intellectual change as it is about technical phenomena. This is one reason why it can be scary. We don’t know the results.

While the book is sometimes bleak, and argues that many of the proposed technological solutions are fantasy avoidance solutions, it is also arguing that as many people as possible need to organise to face up to this problem, and this will bring some degree of personal and social health. We all have been waiting well over 40 years for governments and businesses to act, and they have delayed and prevaricated. We have tried the market for the last 40 years and it has not worked and it turns out that there are good reasons for this: markets cannot be separated from politics, corporate power or simply the power of established riches. Markets and Governments will not save us.

The problem also suggests we need a new way of thinking. This is implied in the theoretical outline above. To deal with the reality of eco-geo-social-technical problems, we have to be able to think, at nearly all times, in terms of: ecology, complexity, and unintended consequences; and be prepared to try processes out without prejudging.

We need a local action which helps us to build the communities we need to survive climate change, or uses the existing communities to build further resilience. There is an argument that local transition, is more likely to build appropriate local technologies, and that a clear local demonstration of concern is more likely to build political concern and emulation, than is a purely theoretical awareness of support.

The book attempts to draw attention to problems with the hope of advising action, and awareness of those problems. If people are forewarned, then people can act in more useful ways, and avoid distractions.

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Some fundamental Problems of Energy Transition

November 2, 2022

Three initial problems

Problem 1: Climate change is one part of a general mode of ecological destruction. It is not the total, and possibly not even the most important ecological problem we have. It may even distract us from the rest of the destruction. For instance we may do nothing about potential ocean death, or the decline in availability of phosphorus.

Problem 2: it appears that achieving contemporary ‘developed’ life, and military defense, requires massive energy consumption.

Problem 3: It is not yet demonstrated that capitalism can run with no ecological destruction, and no freeloading, or without growing ecological destruction, and without growing energy consumption.

Problems with the energy transition

Renewables make a tiny percentage of the total energy supply, although a reasonable percentage of electricity supply. They constitute about 5-8% of total energy supply if you don’t count biofuels or hydro, which are probably pretty much fixed.

While renewables are increasing, so are fossil fuels, and so are emissions and the amount of GHG (greenhouse gas in the atmosphere)

One big question is “How do we generate enough energy to manufacture the renewables we need rapidly?” as there is not enough spare Renewable energy to do this.

The answer is probably via fossil fuels – again new energy production may be needed, because we don’t have much spare. So the phase out may increase emissions for a while, and increase the problems.

Renewables are supposedly now cheaper to build and install, so this problem should diminish.

However, if we do “electrify everything” such as automobiles, then we need even more renewables, or else there is not that much point.

Emissions will not diminish if renewables (or other energy sources) do not replace fossil fuels, and emissions do not peak soon….. We cannot risk more emissions.

Reducing emissions, not only requires renewables, but probably requires some kind of degrowth.

Developing countries don’t want degrowth as it gives them less military power and prosperity, and developed countries won’t degrow because they think it will lose votes and corporate profits, and they keep promoting fossil fuels as the cheapest and easiest thing for developing countries, probably because they have been bought by fossil fuel companies.

However, life as was lived in the west in the 1960s say was ok, and released a lot less GHG emissions than we do nowadays. It was also incredibly energy inefficient, so we may well be able to attain that kind of life level for most everyone, if we wanted.

Renewables require minerals, and mining is ecologically destructive. The only compensation for the new mining being done is that coal, gas and oil mining are also ecologically destructive, and getting more so, as supplies get more difficult to find (you don’t go for tar sands, deep sea oil and coal-seam gas if you have better fields).

If open slather mining destruction is stopped, the price of minerals increases, and the transition slows.

At the moment we have masses of lithium, but like everything else it is exhaustible, and prices will increase, the greater the demand.

However, people are searching for other kinds of battery, such as weight driven batteries. I’ve certainly heard people say that lithium storage is not the way to go. (People are always talking about the endless creativity of capitalism, but for some reasons those people do not talk about it when it comes to renewables)

Many places have the prices of electricity tied to the most expensive source, which means that people rarely get rewarded for paying for renewables unless they have them personally. They still have to pay the price of fossil fuels, and deal with company profiteering. Fossil fuel profits are wildly up at the moment as there is no competition between fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel companies have the dilemma of do we sell the stuff now while we can, or do we wait and slowly keep lifting the price. They need increased revenue to deal with the more difficult fields which they are likely to be left with. Gas fields are still relatively big, and easy, but we have seen the price of gas increase massively, which also suggests something like keeping production low and price high is happening.

The fossil fuel companies are incredibly rich and powerful, and will do everything to inhibit the transition, as it would mean the end of their riches and power. They are not making a transition at all – they are depending upon everyone failing to make the transition.

We can hope for improved nuclear or fusion tech, but this does not seem to be happening. Fusion is having successes, but they are small. I have seen reports that China is rolling out small reactors, but they typically have no data, and the CSIRO had no access to any real data about costs and electricity generated. Large scale nuclear appears to be slow, usually taking far more time and money than estimated to build, as well as its other problems.

AS climate damage increases, money and energy will be diverted away from the energy transition, into repair or preparation for the next set of damage. We cannot deal with cumulative catastrophe even now, never mind another 20 years.

As the problem seems insolvable people will invent fantasy solutions to help them cope with the reality. These will be theoretically feasible, but in practice which serve to keep fossil fuels going with the hope we can easily solve the problem soon. Things like carbon credits, carbon capture and storage. This can be called saved by imaginary technology.

Another way forward, is to give up on national action and encourage villages to be self supporting on solar or wind, and just accepting that sometimes the energy will be low.

It is very possible that the amount of low emissions energy will not increase at the rate we need, and that the amount of fossil fuels being burnt will also not decrease at the rate we need. We may need to degrow, and to value other things. But that does involve changing society.

But we need to keep active.

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Summary of Narrabri and its problems with energy

October 24, 2022

All the social struggles in Narrabri essentially centre on fossil fuels, and exist within the complex of the ‘Carbon Oligarchy’ and ‘Polluter Elites‘, joined to both the effects of climate change (long scale droughts, followed by massive flooding) and the apparent decline of agriculture. Agricultural decline seems to be arising partly through climate change, and partly through displacement, or fear of displacement by mining and loss of useable bore water, again through mining. The importance of long term drinkable, and useable, bore water supplies is obvious. As well as the long-term, risk to bore water (no matter how well the current isolation plans work), there also seems to be a risk of surface and air pollution through coal dust and through mineral leaks at the gas mine heads. While it was not discussed often, there is also the threat that burning these new fossil fuels (wherever they are burnt in the world) will increase the effects of climate change in Narrabri, even though their effect may be overshadowed by the effects of other fossil fuel burn offs.

Fossil fuels are intensely supported by the State and business interests. The mine expansions and the new coal-seam gas fields have been approved, although there are still some delaying court challenges. The NSW government has also just begun a process which they hope will lead to an energy intensive manufacturing site in Narrabri, powered by gas from the gas fields (again to boost local jobs). It does not look as though they will accept intense energy manufacturing through renewables with gas back up. The gas fields are being given an artificial market as we would expect in a Carbon Oligarchy.

This context makes the disputes in Narrabri existential. There is a real, and acknowledged, threat that the town could decline, and even come to an end, without some change, as the current trends do not appear good, especially if you think population and economic growth is good. This situation is a direct threat to the residents’ existence, and likely to heighten and polarise responses. The Oligarchy approved solution of fossil fuels should bring some jobs and finance to the town, which may go some way towards helping out. However, it is not clear how many of those jobs will come to exist, or how many will be for existing locals or for temporary workers or workers from elsewhere. It is also not clear how long those jobs will last.

There will likely be many jobs during construction of the gas fields, but they will be temporary, and largely go to outsiders, as the local population is small, and does not necessarily have the required skills. We have also seen how (probably due to the population size) the high-paying jobs in the mines can already lower the workforce available for the town, and the loss of farmers can increase dislocations between town and country, as their interdependence is broken. There are, apparently, many examples of mining towns which boomed, gained complete dependence on the mining, and then collapsed when the mining ended. The mining in Narrabri is short term. The gas fields are limited even if the company moves into the better agricultural lands nearby. Fossil fuel mining is also under pressure from the possible resolution of ambiguities of State policy, through States taking serious climate action and phasing fossil fuels out. This adds to the possibilities that fossil fuel mining may not guarantee a good future for Narrabri, and indeed may help destroy that future both in terms of the town’s economy, and the local ecology.

The existential nature of the dispute, and its polarisation, may be being encouraged by mining companies and the Oligarchy, phasing the dispute not only in terms of town vs country (accelerating the dislocation) and framing objectors as outsiders, but by phrasing mining as the only, and inevitable, way forward. Given the Oligarchy, the mining can seem inevitable despite the ongoing struggles against it. Whether correct or not, the mining companies appear to have control over most of the information that local people will find easily, through their own funding and talks, but through the local newspaper growing dependent on their advertising. The companies, also have the ability to fund the community and community events and clubs, and again whether or not this is true, can appear to obstruct the presentation of counter knowledges and counter proposals. This in itself can heighten the polarity. Not only is the dispute about existential issues, but about morality.

The effects of the dispute have caused much pain to local people, and show that this kind of dispute is not beneficial for local problem solving, although it may help the established powers carry on, as the local area is fragmented. It is also worth investigating whether the dispute hampered the region’s response to the crises of climate change, or whether those crises lowered the friction as people ‘pulled together’.

In contrast with the fossil fuel industry, the renewable industry appears to distance itself from the area. Its plans are not well advertised, seem covered in unintentional secrecy, are not integrated with local business, the companies make no claims about local jobs, or supplying local energy, and appear unconcerned about engaging with locals at all. This has rendered renewables marginal to the debate and until recently, there has been little locally organised support for renewables. Even renewable providers have come from out of town.

This means that the only way forward for a renewable alternative locally is through local organisation, and local support, and this is what has happened, and which will be the subject of another paper.

Going by this initial research, it can be suggested it is important to heal the country/city gap, to connect the country with the town’s workforce again, connect with independent information, and build increased communication. Mutual exclusion is misleading in an age which requires an understanding of an interdependent and inclusive ecology. We are “all in this together,” there is little chance of a fortunate few escaping. However, this is easier proposed than carried out, as the sides are not equal in their abilities to influence events. The Carbon Oligarchy will play its role in the approval process and the information likely to be promoted will support the Oligarchy and its needs. However, climate change threatens the Oligarchy as much as it threatens everyone else and its position is ambiguous and uncertain. Therefore it is possible that local people, joined with others, can persuade the State to take its obligations seriously, even despite a better funded campaign against climate reality.

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Principles of Neoliberalism – yes again

October 23, 2022

I know I’m flogging a dead camel, but here we are again. People are saying neoliberalism is dead, but its still seems the common sense of the time, although Liz Truss’s unfinanced taxcuts and cuts to spending did upset the markets. However, its replacement with more austerity for ordinary people seemed to be perfectly acceptable.

We need to be clear. Neoliberalism is not just an economic theory, it is a political programme, backed by the corporate elites, and their networks (such as the Atlas Network), to increase their power and riches.

The principles of neoliberalism:

  • Business is good. Big Business is better than small business
  • Business generates riches, therefore it must be protected.
    • As big business is better than small business, it needs more protection.
  • The Market should govern everything.
  • The Market is the best way of doing everything.
  • The Market is the only important thing in life.
  • Anything which interferes with the market is very very bad.
    • These bad interference things include; unions, environmental protections, anti-pollution laws, planning for the good of society, taxes on the rich, affordable health care, democracy, and so on.
    • The ecology is a subset of the market, and the market can ignore it and fix all its problems.
    • These bad things must be inhibited or prevented by State legislation. Tax cuts for wealthy people and big business are nearly always acceptable, even if apparently unfunded.
  • Some things which appear to interfere with the market are not really interferences with the market and can be ignored.
    • Such as: taxpayer subsidies for established companies; military spending; rich people or organisations buying policies or being able to regulate the market; state contracting to business; cartels; monopolies; businesses co-operating to reduce wages and conditions or set prices; price gouging; suppressing data harmful to business etc.
    • If these are faults then they will be corrected by the market. No need for legislation.
  • Neoliberals should never talk about the possibility of wealth being a source of power, or wealthy people co-operating for their personal good against workers, and the word plutocracy should never be mentioned. As this is unreal. The Market will not allow it.
  • It should never be discussed, but plutocracy is good, and we call it democracy – as it counts the people who count.
  • Market failure, is always the fault of the government.
  • Poverty is always the fault of the poor. If they are poor that is because they are incompetent, lazy, stupid or criminal.
  • The term ‘class war’ can only be applied when poorer people, or workers, attack the neoliberal system of plutocracy. If the Rich classes attack the poor, then that is just The Market in Action and hence is good for everyone..

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The Republicans in the 1950s

October 18, 2022

The world has shifted rightwards. These are some highlights from the Republican Party Platform of 1956 (I’ve previously pointed to similar statements from Australian Conservative icon Robert Menzies.

This is an abridgement. Many similar to contemporary style Republican views have been deleted (such as military strength, cost cutting, etc) to emphasise the difference. I have not indicated all the breaks in the document. However, please feel free to read the original, linked above.

********************************************

August 20, 1956

Our Government was created by the people for all the people, and it must serve no less a purpose.

On its Centennial, the Republican Party again calls to the minds of all Americans the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln: “The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.”

Our great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: “In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people’s money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative.”….

We believe that basic to governmental integrity are unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government. We shall continue our insistence on honesty as an indispensable requirement of public service. We shall continue to root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.

We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people….

We shall maintain our powerful military strength as a deterrent to aggression and as a guardian of the peace. We shall maintain it ready, balanced and technologically advanced for these objectives only….

We have balanced the budget. We believe and will continue to prove that thrift, prudence and a sensible respect for living within income applies as surely to the management of our Government’s budget as it does to the family budget.

That men are created equal needs no affirmation, but they must have equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law.

We hold that the strict division of powers and the primary responsibility of State and local governments must be maintained, and that the centralization of powers in the national Government leads to expansion of the mastery of our lives…

For our guidance in fulfilling this responsibility, President Eisenhower has given us a statement of principles that is neither partisan nor prejudiced, but warmly American:

The individual is of supreme importance.

The spirit of our people is the strength of our nation.

America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.

Government must have a heart as well as a head.

Courage in principle, cooperation in practice make freedom positive.

To stay free, we must stay strong…..

Further reductions in taxes with particular consideration for low and middle income families.

To meet the immense demands of our expanding economy, we have initiated the largest highway, air and maritime programs in history, each soundly financed.

We stand for forward-looking programs, created to replace our war-built merchant fleet with the most advanced types in design, with increased speed. Adaptation of new propulsion power units, including nuclear, must be sponsored and achieved.

We pledge the continuation and improvement of our drive to aid small business. Every constructive potential avenue of improvement both legislative and executive—has been explored in our search for ways in which to widen opportunities for this important segment of America’s economy.

Small business now is receiving approximately one-third, dollar-wise, of all Defense contracts. We recommend a further review of procurement procedures for all defense departments and agencies with a view to facilitating and extending such participation for the further benefit of Small Business.

We favor loans at reasonable rates of interest to small businesses which have records of permanency but who are in temporary need and which are unable to obtain credit in commercial channels.

We also propose:

Legislation to enable closer Federal scrutiny of mergers which have a significant or potential monopolistic connotations;

Procedural changes in the antitrust laws to facilitate their enforcement;..

Under the Republican Administration, as our country has prospered, so have its people. This is as it should be, for as President Eisenhower said: “Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America.”

Wages have increased substantially over the past 3 1/2 years;

The Federal minimum wage has been raised for more than 2 million workers. Social Security has been extended to an additional 10 million workers and the benefits raised for 6 1/2 million. The protection of unemployment insurance has been brought to 4 million additional workers. There have been increased workmen’s compensation benefits for longshoremen and harbor workers, increased retirement benefits for railroad employees, and wage increases and improved welfare and pension plans for federal employees.

In addition, the Eisenhower Administration has enforced more vigorously and effectively than ever before, the laws which protect the working standards of our people.

All workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions.

Furthermore, the process of free collective bargaining has been strengthened by the insistence of this Administration that labor and management settle their differences at the bargaining table without the intervention of the Government. This policy has brought to our country an unprecedented period of labor-management peace and understanding.

The Eisenhower Administration will continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will:

Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers;

Continue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;

Strengthen and improve the Federal-State Employment Service and improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;

Protect by law, the assets of employee welfare and benefit plans so that workers who are the beneficiaries can be assured of their rightful benefits;

Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;

Clarify and strengthen the eight-hour laws for the benefit of workers who are subject to federal wage standards on Federal and Federally-assisted construction, and maintain and continue the vigorous administration of the Federal prevailing minimum wage law for public supply contracts;

Extend the protection of the Federal minimum wage laws to as many more workers as is possible and practicable;

Continue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;

Provide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment;

The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Eisenhower Administration….

The Republican Party believes that the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people is as important as their economic health. It will continue to support this conviction with vigorous action.

Republican action created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as the first new Federal department in 40 years, to raise the continuing consideration of these problems for the first time to the highest council of Government, the President’s Cabinet.

Four thousand communities, studying their school populations and their physical and financial resources, encouraged our Republican Administration to urge a five-year program of Federal assistance in building schools to relieve a critical classroom shortage.

The Republican Party will renew its efforts to enact a program based on sound principles of need and designed to encourage increased state and local efforts to build more classrooms.

The Republican Party is determined to press all such actions that will help insure that every child has the educational opportunity to advance to his own greatest capacity.

We have fully resolved to continue our steady gains in man’s unending struggle against disease and disability.

We have supported the distribution of free vaccine to protect millions of children against dreaded polio.

Republican leadership has enlarged Federal assistance for construction of hospitals, emphasizing low-cost care of chronic diseases and the special problems of older persons, and increased Federal aid for medical care of the needy.

We have asked the largest increase in research funds ever sought in one year to intensify attacks on cancer, mental illness, heart disease and other dread diseases.

We demand once again, despite the reluctance of the Democrat 84th Congress, Federal assistance to help build facilities to train more physicians and scientists.

We have strengthened the Food and Drug Administration, and we have increased the vocational rehabilitation program to enable a larger number of the disabled to return to satisfying activity.

We have supported measures that have made more housing available than ever before in history, reduced urban slums in local-federal partnership, stimulated record home ownership, and authorized additional low-rent public housing.

We initiated the first flood insurance program in history under Government sponsorship in cooperation with private enterprise.

We shall continue to seek extension and perfection of a sound social security system.

Our objective is markets which return full parity to our farm and ranch people when they sell their products. There is no simple, easy answer to farm problems. Our approach as ever is a many-sided, versatile and positive program to help all farmers and ranchers.

Benefits of Social Security have been extended to farm families. Programs of loans and grants for farm families hit by flood and drought have been made operative.

To safeguard our precious soil and water resources for generations yet unborn;

To continue and expand the Republican-sponsored school milk program, to encourage further use of the school lunch program now benefiting 11 million children, and to foster improved nutritional levels;

To work with farmers, ranchers and others to carry forward the Great Plains program to achieve wise use of lands in the area subject to wind erosion, so that the people of this region can enjoy a higher standard of living; and in summation:

The Republican Party is wholeheartedly committed to maintaining a Federal Government that is clean, honorable and increasingly efficient. It proudly affirms that it has achieved this kind of Government and dedicated it to the service of all the people.

We condemn illegal lobbying for any cause and improper use of money in political activities, including the use of funds collected by compulsion for political purposes contrary to the personal desires of the individual.

we have modernized and revitalized the postal establishment from top to bottom, inside and out. We have undertaken and substantially completed the largest reorganization ever to take place in any unit of business or government:

We have provided more than 1200 badly-needed new post office buildings, and are adding two more every day. We are using the very latest types of industrial equipment where practicable; and, through a program of research and engineering, we are inventing new mechanical and electronic devices to speed the movement of mail by eliminating tedious old-fashioned methods.

We pledge to continue and to complete this vitally needed program of modernization of buildings, equipment, methods and service, so that the American people will receive the kind of mail delivery they deserve—the speediest and best that American ingenuity, technology and modern business management can provide.

We favor self-government, national suffrage and representation in the Congress of the United States for residents of the District of Columbia.

We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for men and women.

The Republican Party points to an impressive record of accomplishment in the field of civil rights and commits itself anew to advancing the rights of all our people regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

In the area of exclusive Federal jurisdiction, more progress has been made in this field under the present Republican Administration than in any similar period in the last 80 years.

The many Negroes who have been appointed to high public positions have played a significant part in the progress of this Administration.

Segregation has been ended in the District of Columbia Government and in the District public facilities including public schools, restaurants, theaters and playgrounds. The Eisenhower Administration has eliminated discrimination in all federal employment.

Segregation in the active Armed Forces of the United States has been ended. For the first time in our history there is no segregation in veterans’ hospitals and among civilians on naval bases. This is an impressive record. We pledge ourselves to continued progress in this field..

The Republican Party accepts the decision of the U.S.. Supreme Court that racial discrimination in publicly supported schools must be progressively eliminated. We concur in the conclusion of the Supreme Court that its decision directing school desegregation should be accomplished with “all deliberate speed” locally through Federal District Courts.

The Republican Party supports an immigration policy which is in keeping with the traditions of America in providing a haven for oppressed peoples, and which is based on equality of treatment, freedom from implications of discrimination between racial, nationality and religious groups, and flexible enough to conform to changing needs and conditions.

In that concept, this Republican Administration sponsored the Refugee Relief Act to provide asylum for thousands of refugees, expellees and displaced persons, and undertook in the face of Democrat opposition to correct the inequities in existing law and to bring our immigration policies in line with the dynamic needs of the country and principles of equity and justice.

We believe also that the Congress should consider the extension of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 in resolving this difficult refugee problem which resulted from world conflict. To all this we give our wholehearted support.

NATO itself has been strengthened by developing reliance upon new weapons and retaliatory power, thus assisting the NATO countries increasingly to attain both economic welfare and adequate military defense.

We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.

We believe that active duty in the Armed Forces during a state of war or national emergency is the highest call of citizenship constituting a special service to our nation and entitles those who have served to positive assistance to alleviate the injuries, hardships and handicaps imposed by their service.

In recognizing this principle under previous Republican Administrations we established the Veterans Administration. This Republican Administration increased compensation and pension benefits for veterans and survivors to provide more adequate levels and to off-set cost of living increases that occurred during the most recent Democratic Administration.

We have also improved quality of hospital service and have established a long-range program for continued improvement of such service. We have strengthened and extended survivors’ benefits, thus affording greater security for all veterans in the interest of equity and justice.

One of the brightest areas of achievement and progress under the Eisenhower Administration has been in resource conservation and development and in sound, long-range public works programming.

Policies of sound conservation and wise development—originally advanced half a century ago under that preeminent Republican conservation team of President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot and amplified by succeeding Republican Administrations—have been pursued by the Eisenhower Administration. While meeting the essential development needs of the people, this Administration has conserved and safeguarded our natural resources for the greatest good of all, now and in the future.

Our national parks, national forests and wildlife refuges are now more adequately financed, better protected and more extensive than ever before. Long-range improvement programs, such as Mission 66 for the National Parks system, are now under way, and studies are nearing completion for a comparable program for the National Forests. These forward-looking programs will be aggressively continued.

Our Republican Administration has modernized and vitalized our mining laws by the first major revision in more than 30 years.

Recreation, parks and wildlife.

ACHIEVEMENTS: Reversed the 15-year trend of neglect of our National Parks by launching the 10-year, $785 million Mission 66 parks improvement program. Has nearly completed field surveys for a comparable forest improvement program. Obtained passage of the so-called “Week-end Miner Bill.” Added more than 400,000 acres to our National Park system, and 90,000 acres to wildlife refuges. Has undertaken well-conceived measures to protect reserved areas of all types and to provide increased staffs and operating funds for public recreation agencies.

We favor full recognition of recreation as an important public use of our national forests and public domain lands.

We favor a comprehensive study of the effect upon wildlife of the drainage of our wetlands.

We favor recognition, by the States, of wild-life and recreation management and conservation as a beneficial use of water.

We subscribe to the general objectives of groups seeking to guard the beauty of our land and to promote clean, attractive surroundings throughout America.

We recognize the need for maintaining isolated wilderness areas to provide opportunity for future generations to experience some of the wilderness living through which the traditional American spirit of hardihood was developed.

Water resource development legislation enacted under the Eisenhower Administration already has ushered in one of the greatest water resource development programs this Nation has ever seen, a soundly-conceived construction program that will continue throughout this Century and beyond.

We will continue to press for co-operative solution of all problems of water supply and distribution, reclamation, pollution, flood control, and saline-water conversion.

We pledge legislative support to the arid and semi-arid states in preserving the integrity of their water laws and customs as developed out of the necessities of these regions. We affirm the historic policy of Congress recognizing State water rights, as repeatedly expressed in Federal law over the past 90 years.

We pledge an expansion in research and planning of water resource development programs, looking to the future when it may be necessary to re-distribute water from water-surplus areas to water-deficient areas.

The Republican Party is acutely aware that a foundation stone of the nation’s strength is its wealth of natural resources and the high development of its physical assets. They are the basis of our great progress in 180 years of freedom and of our nation’s military and economic might.

We pledge that we will continue the policies of sound conservation and wise development instituted by this Administration to insure that our resources are managed as a beneficial trust for all the people.

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Trusting government?

October 16, 2022

The Eastern Australian floods

If you have been looking at the Australian media, or at least the decent media, you will have read about the NEW flooding in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, with towns being evacuated and so on. You will have read, or know from your own experience, that this level of rain, all over the place, seems unprecedented.

It certainly does not seem normal.

And we are still being told that we should sell more coal and gas by the government – on the grounds that the COP26 accounting procedure means that fossil fuels mined here and burnt overseas do not increase our emissions levels, as if global emissions we encourage do not affect us. Given the tax and royalty arrangements, it also seems unlikely that we gain that much from these sales – tax avoidance seems common.

And the right (Andrew Bolt, Matt Canavan, Peter Dutton etc) are still pretending that there is no climate change or that climate change is a hoax, or that it has nothing to do with humans, and that we can do nothing about it. Anything to ignore it, and these people could be in government again relatively soon.

Let us be clear, we still have not managed to fix, or deal with, the previous flooding from this year or the bush fire damage from years before. People are still living in sheds and caravans, or in rotting houses. People are still threatened by more floods and fire damage. Roads still need fixing. Bridges still need repair.

Damage is mounting up and we cannot deal with the damage we already have. Events will compound. For example flooding means waterborne disease and sewerage are likely to be present. Crowding people together may spread airborne disease. Mosquitoes will spread other diseases (for example encephalitis from a destroyed piggery). People will likely not get insurance payments, or not be able to reinsure. There will be such a demand for building workers that people will be caught in bad conditions possibly for years. There eventually will not be enough money to rebuild towns or to move them.

How does this potential suffering stack with doing nothing, preparing for nothing and making it worse by selling more fossil fuels overseas?

Covid in Australia

Likewise the governments tell us that Covid is not a problem. But it is not clear how they are evaluating that. It seems to be to me. People are dying more now in NSW than they were over the 2020-21 period, and we know more about long covid, and it is currently appearing that people who have had covid can die of ‘unrelated’ diseases more commonly that the rest of the population. In both cases we don’t seem to want to admit it.

The government is back away from dangers that add to the crises we are experiencing, and they are encouraging the rest of us not to bother about them either. This will mount up.

This is State failure in action.

Failing infrastructure in the US and climate change

I’ve written about this before and here. But a friend of mine recently wrote:

It has been one thing after another causing problems.

Part inadequate infrastructure, part devastating weather events, part drought and wildfires, big part pandemic. I’m not even going to include the effects of dysfunctional government.

Now, the Mississippi River, which is vital to getting products to the Louisiana ports, mostly grains and some coal, is too low for the heavy loaded barges, due to prolonged drought in the middle of the US. [some barges are stranded]

Farmers are currently harvesting corn, wheat, soybeans. Harvesting must occur or the crops will be lost. With very little unused storage bins, unless alternate shipping can be utilized, a very large portion of the crops will be lost.

Certain areas of the Mississippi River have required regular dredging because of the way the Army Corp of Engineersv(ACE) rerouted the Mississippi. This didn’t happen under Trump, because of the Defense funds diverted for the wall. The monies taken were earmarked for domestic military needs, like military housing upkeep, base education, and the operation of the ACE domestic works, like dredging.

The 2021-22 US budget was written under Trump’s presidency and has just ended. Republican senators are waiting until after the midterm elections to pass a new budget.

It is readily apparent that the government does not care about the people.

Redundancy and Slack

This lack of storage is silly, if correct. I suppose a part it is the popularity of ‘just in time’ supply systems which diminish the capacity for resilience, but save corporations storage costs and hence boost profits. ‘Slack‘ and redundancy are vital for survival.

The more efficient a system becomes, the more fragile it becomes.

It seems like the US does not repair infrastructure very often which again removes slack and makes systems much more precarious than they have to be.

Not having slack assumes that everything in a complex system will always remain the same, or remain predictable. this will not happen normally, never mind in a world of global pandemics and climate change.

So far we have been lucky but not only do we need to stop or slow, climate change, we need to prepare for disruptive events. We need redundant services, we need a back up of people able to help in large disaster struck areas. We need to be able to keep on repairing infrastructure, fixing the consequences of disaster, and reducing the bad effects of climate and travel. The last thing any sensible government should be doing is lowering tax rates on the corporate sector. We and they need the money to prepare to build slack and respond to disasters that are coming, and which accumulate.

When we have huge destructive bushfires, followed by huge destructive floods, over large pandemics, we can’t afford not to have working adaptation, rescue and health services, otherwise everything just gets worse and more and more people will be displaced and suffering.

Governments have to increase both services and their income to pay for it, or we face collapse.

Being unprepared no longer cuts it. Having a state which is incapable of protecting its citizens (other than against military attack) is no longer enough.

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William Shattner on Earth and Space

October 12, 2022

I guess many people will have seen William Shattner’s response to his space journey, but just in case….

“I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses … [but] when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold … all I saw was death,”

“Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong,….. “I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things – that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe.”

“I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”

“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.

“Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took 5bn years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread.

“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

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