The latest from Project Drawdown

March 17, 2020

From The latest report slightly rephrased.

1) We can reach Drawdown by mid-century if we use the climate solutions already in hand at a large enough scale. We can solve our problems even without technological innovation.

2) Climate solutions are interconnected as a system, and they should reinforce each other.

3) Climate solutions have other benefits for people as well, such as no longer being poisoned by pollution, or having their land destroyed.

4) Savings significantly outweigh costs.

5) We need to accelerate moves to reduce or replace the use of fossil fuels. We need to actively stop the use of coal, oil, and gas and replace them with other sources of energy – renewables, hydrogen etc.

6) We need to simultaneously start reducing emissions towards zero and support, or expand, nature’s carbon sinks

7) Some powerful climate solutions receive comparably little attention, reminding us to widen our lens.

  • Food waste reduction and plant-rich diets
  • Regenerating eco-systems
  • Restoration of temperate and tropical forests
  • Rehabilitating peat lands
  • Encouraging Ocean based Carbon sinks (which improve fisheries)
  • Preventing leaks and improving disposal of chemical refrigerants
  • New cements, which exist
  • Building recycling responsibility into products
  • Bio-plastics
  • Electric Transport and improved public transport running on zero-emissions energy.
  • Access to high-quality, voluntary reproductive healthcare and high-quality, inclusive education

8) Solutions do not scale themselves. We need means of removing barriers and accelerating their implementation and expansion. That is, we need political and cultural action.

9) The climate crisis requires systemic, structural change across our global society and economy. Footholds of agency exist at every level, for all individuals and institutions, to participate in advancing climate solutions.

10) Greta Thunberg: “You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up can never ever be an option.”

We should probably add that we need to stop, as quickly as possible, all pollution – that is all waste which cannot be processed by the ecology in the amounts that are emitted. We also need to stop deforestation, and over-fishing.

We need to phase out all subsidies for fossil fuels, whether they are taxpayer handouts, tax breaks, tax evasions, royalty holidays or anything else. If needed the recovered money could be used to help renewable development.

All of these moves will cause lots of opposition, but they are necessary. It is not just a matter of what we do, but what we refrain from doing.

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A sketch of the Dynamics of Climate Argument

March 13, 2020

There are several points which seem relevant to the question of the politics of ‘disbelief’ in climate change, and the popularity of refusal to act when it seems needed, even if surveys continually report the result that people say they want action.

General factors affecting information in “information society”

The dominance of neoliberalism with its long established belief in economic growth at all costs, the sanctity of corporate profit, hostility to environmentalism (especially when this affects the profit of established companies), active disempowering of political participation by ordinary people, and its tendencies to plutocracy, is vital to the promotion of climate change denial or do-nothingness. Wealth gives groups of people the power to promote information that suits them. However, I’m not going to consider that here, it remains a background. This post will be about the dynamics of information society and what I call ‘information groups’.

Most of the problems with climate inaction stem from the obvious fact that, in an ‘information society,’ even one with lots of good knowledge, nobody can accurately ‘know’ everything. People cannot accurately know even a fraction of what is relevant to them. Even if they specialise in a field they almost certainly do not know everything in that field either.

Most of us are stunningly ignorant about all kinds of things. The more ignorant a person is, the harder it is for them to recognise their own ignorance – they have little accurate knowledge with which to judge what is plausible or what are the likely consequences of their actions.

Furthermore:

1) Information and communication are only secondarily about accuracy. Information and communication primarily function to create group bonds and group memberships (what Malinowski called phatic communication), and to persuade others to do as the speaker prefers.

Given this, information and communication can be thought of almost entirely in terms of strategy and tactics, or the effect that the message has on others. Rather than keep talking of strategy and tactics, I will, from now on, use the term ‘politics’. If accuracy contributes to this politics then it can be important, but it tends to be secondary. We all know that in everyday life people lie to keep others on side, to avoid hurting them, or to keep bonds functional and relatively harmonious. This is normal in conversation. It is a daily experience at work, in encounters with management in particular.

Truth is not always necessary, and is often avoided to help social functioning, avoid conflict, and get on with those in power.

Although complete inaccuracy could eventually lead to breakdown, it may in the short term contribute to political success in terms of producing harmony and co-operation within the group, and asserting dominance over other groups.

2) Need for information filtering. In ‘information society; with massive amounts of information available, people need to filter information otherwise they cannot orient themselves in the world or act in the world. There are too many contrary positions for ease of functioning, and given that people know information is often false, expressions of ignorance, or deliberate lies for political purposes, they cannot accept (particularly uncomfortable or disruptive information) immediately.

This lack of accuracy and certainty in information, is so fundamental to modern life that it is more useful and accurate to talk of ‘disinformation society‘ than of ‘information society’. The society does not function entirely through accurate knowledge, but through using or dealing with an ‘information mess’. Information mess can be increased deliberately, as when Steven Bannon, who was an adviser to President Trump, recommended “flood[ing] the zone with shit.” This prevents consensus about accuracy or probability from forming, and it creates a disorientation, which might help people to be manipulated by dominant people within the group.

3) Information groups as filters. Because of the disorientation arising from too much contradictory information, people end up relying on other people (groups) for filtering information and belief. This involves the creation of strong group identification, and a level of trust and distrust of that group and other groups. These groups I call ‘information groups,’ they help people decide what is real. In disinformation society, many of the primary information groups seem to be politically oriented. Perhaps this is because politics is about action and orientation in the world, and this is what has become confused.

This kind of group identification involves personal identity as well, as it sets forth who one is to like, admire and emulate, and who one dislikes, avoids and tries to be different to. In that way, a person’s sense of who they are in disinformation society can come from those they identify with and the principles, or information, they identify with. The stronger the boundaries around the groups a person identifies with, the more strongly the group acts as a filter, and can reject unwelcome data in general.

Because of these processes of self-identification, the people in the group have a claim to be moral, while those outside the group (especially if classified as oppositional) rarely appear to have such a claim. Leftwingers are communist, satanist, effeminate whimps who cry a lot. Rightwingers are stupid, ill-educated, redneck, racists.

The prime point of these processes is that if an information source seems to be an exemplar of the group and its values, then its information will seem more trustworthy than if not. If the information appears to come from a source which is not exemplary, or is exemplary of the ‘opposition group’ then the information will seem untrustworthy, or ‘politically motivated’. If a source can make contrary information seem to come from an ‘opposition group’, while their own information matches the information groups’ values and beliefs, then they will often have achieved persuasion, without any mention of ‘facts’ or any real evidence.

Group alliance and identification becomes the primary (and unconscious) way of determining what is to be believed and what is to orient action.

There is also some research that suggests that having one’s opinions confirmed by others is pleasurable, and having others disagree is unpleasurable, so there is further incentive to seek out sources and others who agree with you and thus join information groups, even if without being aware of it.

4) Knowledge and Status. One way of claiming high status and functionality in information society, is to claim, and persuade others in your information group, that you are knowledgeable, well informed and certain, and that others are not. This probably decreases the chance of the person being well informed, because they ‘know’ the truth of their own certainty, and ignore counter arguments and data. However, the certainty (especially if the person is enunciating positions of group identity) can be attractive to other people in the group, and helps those people gain certainty in their own knowledge and orientation, and in the incorrectness, or immorality, of those who disagree. It also grants the original person more power, authority and influence; so it becomes a self-reinforcing loop.

To repeat: Solidarity, or lack of solidarity with the information group, acts as a filter for the information a person receives and accepts. Consequently, it is important for successful propagandists to manufacture a strong degree of solidarity and identity amongst those who support them, and to break the solidarity and identity of those who oppose them. The more confused the information mess, the more the zone is flooded with shit, the more that any hostility of ‘information outgroups’, to the group and its identities, will appear to make the solidarity of within the group reassuring. This also has the result that most conveyors of misinformation will be repeating what others have told them and not be deliberate propagandists.

Experience of repetition of information from multiple sources (even if they are from the same information group), makes that information more compelling, it gives it social backing and certainty – as well as implying people who disagree must be mistaken.

The other side of keeping the information groups’ truth going, involves, increasing the distrust of sources the person might disagree with (because of their group identification), and a degree of building trust for those sources they agree with.

In capitalist information society, distrust can be a general framework, not only because there is so much counter-information, and so much alienation from the ‘establishment’, but because distrust allows a person who finds their favoured sources have deceived them, to say that they never trusted them anyway, and to keep on following them and keep their group identification. It declares their wisdom and freedom – they are not being manipulated, they can tell themselves and others, they know how to evaluate news.

Practical consequences of the above.

Within this framework

1) Winning Rhetoric.

The modern right appear to want to win at all costs, they do not appear that interested in accuracy, truth or principle, which does not contribute to victory. Indeed they may well regard ‘the masses’ as needing to be led, and have no problem manipulating people and lying to them. The current left (such that it is), on the whole, tend to regard the people as equals and as needing to be informed, rather than manipulated. In disinformation society the left is vulnerable, and will generally lose.

2) The Process of Persuasion has several prongs:

a) Binarism. You need to make an opposed binary, ‘us and them’, and to convince people that they cannot trust the institutions and information of the other side.

b) Condemnation In pro-fossil fuel thought, this involves attacks on scientists as socialist conspirators, or as only being in it for the money. In climate action thought this involves condemning people on the other side as corporate tools, trolls, or ignorant ‘rednecks’. The abuse helps keep parties apart when they attempt to discuss the issue (“the other side is so abusive, they can’t think”). If this strategy works, people on our side no longer even have to listen to the other side.

c) Trust? This leads to the situation in which we are virtuous, and (on the whole) can be trusted, while those immoral people who support the other side cannot be trusted with anything.

d) Messy contradictory messages. For example, when Lomborg implies we don’t have to do anything, but research is necessary, nuclear is necessary, CCS is necessary and so on. This allows people to take a flexible position, with regard to winning an argument. “We need do nothing and we must do research into green technology, but not their green technology.”

It actually appears, in this case, that the idea seems to be that we don’t research or explore nuclear or the CCS, even while promoting them as solutions. That way you can confuse the issue, and attract both those who think something should be done but that renewables or social transformation is not the answer, and those who want to do nothing.

These strategies are so common, that people may not even think about them, but just deploy them.

3) Muddy the waters by:

a) Playing on the idea that ‘consensus’ means that scientists got together and agreed on something for their own purposes, rather than were persuaded by the evidence. Its a conspiracy!!

b) Providing other scientists or even non-scientists who can put forward the position there is no climate change, or its not humanly caused. This confuses the issue.

This is effective because in information society, most people are ignorant and confused, and cannot check the research themselves. They probably will not check whether the sources ‘refuting’ climate change are climate scientists or not, but if it turns out the source does not have experience in that field, then it does not matter as climate scientists are immoral and conspire.

c) Insist the media cover ‘both sides’ of the controversy equally. If they won’t then they are biased. Everyone on the right ‘knows’ the media is left wing, because it occasionally criticises the right, so this is easy to believe. This is despite the obvious fact that the media is owned and sponsored by the corporate sector, and hence is likely to support that sector and its established authority. Those people who insist that the media cover all sides of the climate ‘debate’, never insist that the media cover all sides of the economic debate, and that debate is actually a real debate. So this insistence seems purely political.

d) If you can persuade people on your side that only a few media organisations are truthful because they support “our side,” and those organisations run specific campaigns, then people will tend to believe those campaigns, because those media organisations are part of the information group.

e) Flooding the zone with shit, means that much real information will be ignored or become normal, as when the repetitive narratives of President Trump and his allies’ corruption, deceit and convictions become normal, and they pass away beneath new showers of shit, and are not repeated ad nauseam as were the allegations of Clinton corruption, which then appear true, even if they never resulted in anything.

4) Emphasise the costs and uncertainties of action.

Do not mention the costs and uncertainties of inaction. In a social situation where neoliberalism is based on the idea that cost to profit is bad, this will help emphasise the immorality of action.

5) Heroic individualism

The US has a guiding belief in heroic individualism, which grows out of, and feeds into contemporary neoliberalism. Not only does this individualism fit with the survival politics of neoliberalism and disguises the fact that we don’t come to know things by ourselves, it also sets up the idea that the person taking what is portrayed as a ‘minority’ position is heroically doing the research by themselves. They will not realise that most of their heroic research is being channeled by their own side (or propagandists for the establishment, or people appearing to be on their side) into work which supports their sides objectives – which may not be their own objectives of finding ‘truth’.

I have met many climate change deniers who seem to consider they have done research, when that research only involves reading what deniers say. If the group opposition is established strongly enough they don’t have to read that which they might disagree with, as it is clearly faked. They have little to no contact with real research, don’t know how to recognise it if they did, and frequently misuse it when they find it (apparently not even having read it, in many cases). Those people who tell them they are wrong, are clearly being persuaded by the group mind, the dominant faction, the uniformity of the media etc. Again they do not have to listen.

6) Claims of persecution

Another important tactic is to imply the information group is being persecuted for its knowledge by a dominant group. This reinforces the idea that counter-information is purely a matter of the other groups’ politics, and thus dismissable. However those in our information group are heroic individuals struggling to get the truth out against powerful opposition. This is so, even if the side one is on is actually the powerful one largely successful in stopping information from circulating. Thus rightwing governments often insist employees not discuss climate change, take down information from government websites, scrap research and so on, while claiming to be in a persecuted and censored position.

7) Role of Wealth

Information is spread by the use of wealth, which helps generate repetition. If information is considered only in strategic terms (as opposed to accuracy terms) then, if you are wealthy enough, information can be easily disseminated, through the use of people who are not officially connected with you, and who sound like they are members of particular groupings. We can instance the mud that has stuck on ‘Hilary Clinton-criminal’ despite continuing long term ‘witch hunts’ which have never resulted in enough evidence for her, or her associates, to be charged with anything. The repeated allegations are enough, and become reason to stay with the opposition to her.

8) Information hangs around

In information society, refuted information remains, and can always be found by those who don’t know of the refutation and be used again. In any case the refutation can usually be dismissed as biased.

Climate change

Climate change is particularly challenging for human groups, because climate change information generates what we might call an existential crisis in individuals and in society.

If climate change is true, then it changes everything. Almost all the actions we now think of as normal and which contribute to our security and orientation in the world, are harmful. The patterns of order and life-meaning that society has developed disrupt the orders and meanings of that society, and our way of life. There is no easy solution to such problems. We cannot safely simply continue to act in the ways that we have previously supported. Traditional socialism, traditional capitalism, and traditional developmentalism all seem to be dead ends. Historically, and at present, they produce more pollution than functional ecologies can process. Through that action these modes of life destroy their ability to establish and maintain themselves. We cannot return to Lenin with ecological success any more than we can return to Nehru, Menzies or Atlee. This means that our previous understandings and life patterns are useless. This is disorienting in itself.

Likewise, if a person decides to deny the importance or reality of climate change, they still face an existential threat, because they know that others wish to completely change their ways of life, and it is not clear what is to be done to stop them, except to deny the problem, or say it is out of human hands, and continue on as best they can.

In this kind of situation, optimism is both easy and deadly. It is relatively easy, in a situation in which there is no agreed upon solution, to convince people that the established modes of life, and/or theories of life, are both necessary and relatively harmless. People want to continue, and are encouraged to shelter in their established group identities and to enforce them, as the breaking of those identities is an apparently obvious form of disintegration. The strengthening of identity groups serves to reinforce the power of those established in those groups (particularly true in religion, eg. Islam and fundamentalist Christianity), which can lead to encouragement of those identities by dominant factions.

The crisis apparently strengthens the function of information groups, and the need for information groups and leads to political inaction and paralysis.

The only way out is to understand these dynamics and the mess they produce, and start using them properly or undermining them.

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On a Bjorn Lomborg Article 02: Rhetoric

March 11, 2020

Continuing from part 1

1) Do not mention that pollution can cause problems, so we do not have this drawn to our attention. Particularly don’t mention that if pollution cannot be processed by ecologies, or disrupts or poisons ecologies then we are playing a losing game. You certainly don’t want people to think that modern economies seem to function through pollution and destruction. If things are not mentioned, and people want to believe the economic/survival system is ok, then they will forget them, at least for a while.

2) Do not mention that some forms of pollution (carbon emissions) cause global warming, so we do not have to think about this.

3) Do not mention that emissions have been increasing steadily over the last 20 years so the problem is becoming more intense.

4) Do not mention that rapid climate change (which is caused by emissions) will have severely costly and disruptive effects on society, so we do not have to think about the consequences of continuing to emit, and only think of the costs of acting.

5) Have a dramatic headline, so that the article implies an attack on all green actions, while in the article suggest that the most practical policy… “is… investment in low and zero-carbon energy innovation.” That way you can satisfy the hard core ‘let’s do nothing brigade’, and should anyone object to your support for inaction, say that you are clearly arguing for sensible research.

6) Refer to sources, but do not identify them, and imply the results are uniform and everyone agrees on them.

7) Mix up basic issues like intensity of fires with areas of fire, so that the problem can seem to be diminishing and it appears that worrying about fire is bad.

8) State as fact something which is a matter of interpretation, or dispute, such as renewables cannot replace fossil fuels because they are too expensive.

9) Do not mention the subsidies that fossil fuels do receive and have received in handouts, tax breaks, or State funded building.

10) Make token suggestions for nuclear and CCS research, but do not mention that they are costly and difficult, and therefore, by the argument being followed, not worth pursuing. Also mention batteries, but forget to mention that the reason for being interested in batteries is renewable energy.

11) Suggest that if this research does not eventuate, it is because climate action people are afraid of innovation or have agendas, rather than because the fields are costly, and uncertain, and less commercially attractive than renewables, or because the right is apparently not interested in anything that does not support fossil fuels.

12) Suggest that the fires have been exaggerated by those with a “specific agenda”. Do not mention that the seriousness of the fires has likely been downplayed by those with a specific agenda, and that the downplayers only solution to the problem is to keep on with what we are doing, have more fires, and get used to it.

13) Be certain about the figures you use, but imply other figures are not calculable.

14) Extract Australian actions from world actions, when both climate change and Australia actions are world phenomena.

15) Extract the effect of actions taken now, from the history. If we had acted earlier then this would not be as much a problem as it is now, but we did not act earlier because of similar arguments. If we don’t act now, then we are ignoring the increasing consequences.

16) Use spurious accuracy in the figures, to imply scientific veracity

17) Suggest some remedies to lower fire spread. Forgetting to mention that we already do controlled burns but it is getting harder to do enough because of lack of rain and changing climate. Forget to mention that fire proof houses have burnt down, or that the temperatures were so great that apparently aluminium vaporised. Don’t mention that grasses and crops burnt fiercely.

18) In summary we can say the technique involves asserting certainty and reassurance where there is none (the fire was not that bad, renewables are too expensive, nuclear and carbon capture are useful, we cannot proceed with the technologies we have, any bad effects will be in the distant future, climate action will not help, action is too expensive, and we can just manage as we are), and uncertainty where there is little (assertions, or implied assertions, that climate change is not getting worse, climate change does not make intense fires in Australia more likely, emissions do not matter, continued growth is not harmful, nuclear and CCS are cheap and sensible, and fossil fuels are neither harmful nor expensive to taxpayers). He may also hope that his readers are so longing for his answers, that they do not notice the reverse plausibility of his claims – or maybe he is primarily engaged in persuading himself.

19) Basically he provides a screen for avoiding the issues, or the changes we are experiencing, and while we cannot be sure, that seems to be his purpose.

There is a third article on a rather silly editorial which uses Lomborg as an excuse.

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On a Bjorn Lomborg Article 01: The Argument

March 11, 2020

I was recommended to read an article by Bjorn Lomborg in The Australian the other day. So lets look at it.

It was called “We don’t have money to burn on green mania”

Presumably the headline is meant to imply that we should not spend money on climate change, new green technology, or developing the green technology we already have that works? However the headline might be the Murdoch Empire’s gloss and not his. So we should probably ignore it, even if it is part of the articles’ rhetoric.

The article opens by arguing that the bushfires we have had were not that significant, and do not call for “drastic climate policies”

Apparently in 1900 “11 per cent of [Australia’s] surface burned annually. These days, 5 per cent of the country burns every year.” I’m not sure where the satellite pictures for that information came from, and he gives no source, but let us assume he is correct. Does this mean what we call traditional burning was still happening across Australia? How intense were these burns? For instance, were long established rain forests burning (the type that have not burned in 100s or perhaps thousands of years)? Where the burns patchy, leaving areas which could shelter animals and plants and let them spread out again, as is normal, but unlike the current burns?

Everything else I’ve read and heard implies that the bushfires last year, were more extensive than previously after we started using modern firefighting techniques. For example the Bureau of Meteorology, in its annual Climate statement, says:

The extensive and long-lived fires appear to be the largest in scale in the modern record in New South Wales, while the total area burnt appears to be the largest in a single recorded fire season for eastern Australia.

Although it is not a formal study the chief of the Rural Fire service in a press released entitled ‘Fire season comes to a close in NSW‘ remarked:

Today marks the official end to the most devastating bush fire season in the state’s history.

NSW Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said this season had been unprecedented in terms of conditions experienced, the loss of lives and property, and the threat to communities across large parts of NSW.

“NSW RFS crews and other agencies have responded to more than 11,400 bush and grass fires that have burnt more than 5.5 million hectares, the equivalent of 6.2% of the state,” Commissioner Fitzsimmons said.

“Fires this season have destroyed 2,448 homes; however, the great work of firefighters saw 14,481 homes saved.”

“This season there were six days where areas across NSW recorded catastrophic fire weather conditions.

“At the height of activity, there was on average around 2,500 firefighters in the field each shift with up to 4,000 on days of increased fire danger and impact.

The fires were behaving in manners seen rarely by fire fighters (such as burning back over the same areas (making hazard reduction burns less useful than normal), generating their own weather, burning down previously untouched rainforests, and so on). We had weeks of dust and ash in Sydney, which I’ve never seen before. It certainly looked different. I’ve written about this before, and plenty of commercial media has discussed reports from fire fighters. Even newsltd can point out:

The deadliest bushfires in the past 200 years took place in 1851, then 1939, then 1983, 2009, now 2019-20. The years between them are shrinking rapidly.

news.com.au 17 Jan 2020

For a summary see the climate council.

The point is that it is the intensity and destructiveness of burns which count, not the area of burning, and he should know that.

He might even be missing the fact that some parts of Australia are wetter as a result of climate change and may have fewer fires as a result; that could seem to explain his argument and observations, assuming they are correct in the first place.

It is odd, but throughout his article, which is (at best) arguing for an ‘unusual position’, he gives no references at all. For example “A new review of available data suggests it’s not actually possible to detect a link between global warming and fire for Australia today.” Surely it would not be hard to name this review and where it was, or will be, published? Given that Lomborg is supposedly a scientist and an expert, who is not writing a blog but in the public media to convince people of a position, this lack is pretty inexcusable (whether it comes from him, or his copy editor).

Then he implies that doing something (presumably in Australia alone, as that seems to be his focus?) would not make any appreciable difference to the fires. This is something which might be possible, but he simply cannot know, and he gives a spuriously accurate figure, so it seems empty talk. (The “burnt area in 2100 would be 5.997 per cent instead of 6 per cent.” Given the precision of 5.997% then we can accurately predict that the burnt area will be exactly 6%?) But obviously the situation would be better if everyone did something.

In the long run, climate change action has to be global, but if we wait for everyone to act then it will be too late. Countries who can, and are relatively wealthy have to move first. Nobody will act if the wealthy countries do not act first.

He suggests that “for decades to come, solar and wind energy will be neither cheap enough nor effective enough to replace fossil fuels.” That is something that many people dispute (including the CSIRO). See also [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. In Australia people are prepared to build renewable energy, or to put it on their rooftops, but no one will build coal power without government subsidy. It would be nice to have some arguments and figures in favour of Lomborg’s position, but none are presented.

He is correct that the IEA reports state that the amounts of energy currently (2018) coming from renewables is trivial, although it is going to be significant soon in some parts of the world (the UK apparently, for not that much cost outside the Hinkley Point reactor which will be boosting electricity prices, way above their current levels).

Lomborg oddly neglects the parts of the IEA reports where they state we have to reduce emissions, and we have to do carbon extraction because of those emissions, if we are not going to face massive and extremely costly disaster. There is a real problem with emissions which he chooses to ignore, altogether. I guess he hopes his audience will not remember the stuff about carbon budgets and how we are exceeding them.

He then seems to imply that people concerned about climate don’t want innovation, which is odd. He writes:

We need to find breakthroughs for batteries, nuclear, carbon capture and a plethora of other promising technologies. Innovation can solve our climate challenge. Unfortunately, many reports on Australia’s fires have exploited the carnage to push a specific agenda.

First of all, wanting to do something is an agenda – well I guess that is True!

However, the only people opposed to innovation are those that don’t want anything to happen to fossil fuels.

It would be great if Australia was supporting innovation, but politically this is not happening. The federal government even ran scare campaigns about electric vehicles…. hardly an innovative, or constructive move. And of course there is the Federal government’s continuing war against science and the CSIRO, which was almost the first move of the Abbott regime (cf The Land), and has been continued since. That is war against both innovation and accurate data. It seems to be a war in favour of ignorance or ideology.

But putting all hope in innovation is silly; we have to work with what we have as well. While innovation is great, we cannot guarantee innovation will come in time, or in the form we want it, or cheaply. Indeed his talk of costs, implies he would only accept innovation if it did not cost that much; for example “The costs alone make this ‘solution’ to climate change [that is, reducing carbon emissions] wishful thinking.” Perhaps, to both himself and neoliberals, not spending taxpayers’ money on anything other than themselves is more important than survival?

He also neglects to mention the cost of the massive amounts of subsidy still pouring into fossil fuels, through direct taxpayer handouts and special tax and royalty favours. There were people in the Coalition wanting to give Adani billions of dollars, including the royalty holiday they are already getting, for a mine which will produce trivial numbers of jobs, as admitted by Adani in court, where there are penalties for lying. But Australia is not the only place cheerfully using taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels, and harm the taxpayer.

Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year; with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil. European Union subsidies are estimated to total 55 billion euros annually.

Environmental and Energy Study Institute 29 July 2019

An IMF working paper, argued that figuring in destruction (including deaths from air pollution) as part of the free costs that fossil fuel companies receive, then global fossil fuel subsidies grew to $4.7 trillion, representing 6.3 per cent of combined global GDP, with annual energy subsidies in Australia totaling $29 billion. They said:

Efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015 would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP

In 2017, the IEA estimated direct subsidies to be in the order of $300 billion. The IEA stated:

untargeted subsidy policies encourage wasteful consumption, pushing up emissions and straining government budgets. Phasing out fossil fuel consumption subsidies is a pillar of sound energy policy.

Forbes, not known as a radical magazine, summed it up as:

“the $649 billion the US spent on these subsidies in 2015 is more than the country’s defense budget and 10 times the federal spending for education”

To return to Australia, the group, Market Forces, estimates:

that tax-based fossil fuel subsidies cost over $12 billion a year federally… Direct handouts and contributions to the industry are doled out at both federal and state levels. On top of this, public money is used to finance fossil fuels through our national export credit agency EFIC, as well as our involvement with international financial institutions.

Market forces

It would probably be useful to reduce handouts for harmful industries. Fossil fuels are established and destructive and should not need help if they are still viable. At this moment fossil fuels not only cost us death through pollution, despoilation of the environment, and climate change, but they also cost taxpayers large amounts of money which could be used elsewhere.

What is odd about this, is that a recurring theme in Lomborg’s earlier work is a call for ending fossil fuel subsidies. For example:

Governments around the world still subsidise the use of fossil fuels to the tune of over $500bn each year. Cutting these subsidies would reduce pollution and free up resources for investments in health, education and infrastructure.

The Guardian 20 Jul 2016

It might sound cynical, but it is more than likely he knows who he is writing for.

It also seems to be the case that conventional nuclear needs massive governmental support, not only to get built and decommissioned, but for insurance purposes which could encourage shortcuts as the company does not pay for damage, as I have written before. So I guess for him, nuclear is out, even if he gives it a token welcome in his list of needed research.

This seems to be the standard neoliberal approach to problem solving. They say the left is causing a problem by stopping them from having nuclear energy, but they neglect that they are in power, and could have nuclear energy if they wanted, and they rarely actually do anything towards getting it; probably because of the costs, and possibly because it would go against their support for fossil fuels at all costs.

Carbon Capture and Storage has numerous problems, as I have mentioned before. It is also massively expensive, and nowhere near ready to solve any climate problems. It has had money thrown at it, and little has resulted. So that is two out of three of his recommended research areas which he then seems to delete because of costs.

So while we can agree “We need to spend far more resources on green energy research”, Lomborg’s argument seems directed at reducing our real ability to do green energy research. Again in previous articles for a different audience he has said things like:

[a better option than compulsory emissions reduction is to] make low-carbon alternatives like solar and wind energy competitive with old carbon sources. This requires much more spending on research and development of low-carbon energy technology…..

The New York Times 25 April 2009

I should probably add that, at least according to the people I’ve discussed these issue with in business, local councils, community energy and so on, the main obstacle to renewable energy in NSW is not lack of subsidy and not the supposed cheapness of fossil fuels, as renewables are said to be relatively cheap to build and supply, but government regulation which favours the fossil fuel and established power companies, and makes doing supposedly simple things like having solar power on one roof power a building over the road, or on a new piece of property, more or less impossible.

The grids are also not where the renewable power stations are due to be set up, the private grid owners generally see no reason to help their competition, and the Market regulator is cutting new business off until the late 2020s. So if we want to lower costs, let’s get rid of some of these restrictions, or start an infrastructure program to extend and refurbish the grid. We might make a significant path into that project for much less that the pointless and polluting Westconnex thing.

He says, correctly, that we also need to “to develop medium-term solutions to climate change,” but he then goes back to discussing how bushfire is not really a problem, and cutting emissions is “not going to do a thing.”

However, as well as ignoring the consequences of emissions again, he is silent on one of the real problems with the fires, namely that the Federal government would not even listen to people telling them there were likely to be intense fires because of climate change, and that the NSW government cut back the staffing in parks and wildlife so it was harder than usual to prepare for the worst. There was no political will to make:

better building codes, mechanical thinning, safer powerlines, reducing the potential for spread of lightning-caused bushfires, campaigns to reduce deliberate ignitions, and fuel reduction around the perimeter of human settlements.

There is, as far as I know no attempt to research these processes, or other processes, such as returning carbon to the soil to help moisture retention, changing patterns of agriculture so that paddocks and fields don’t burn, providing tree shade in paddocks to shelter animals and retain some more moisture, not logging forests after burning and disrupting soil carbon intake and regrowth and so on.

All of these processes might need research to see if they are effective, but as its the Murdoch Empire we must attack the Greens, and these problems were not mentioned.

We can probably guess that those people who decide that climate change is pure politics, will not want to respond either by preparing for the worst, or doing research into green technologies. Consequently, we probably will not put money into green energy research, or danger abatement research, without a change in government at the Federal level, although the State coalitions in SA and Tas seem to be moderately sensible about this.

Then if we are looking at costs, as a supreme factor, we need to look at the costs of not reducing emissions, and not preparing to respond. I have no idea what these will be, but we can assume they be massive. For example the Australian Tourism Export Council estimates via a survey that its members will lose $4.5b this year cf [1], [2]. This effect will be exaggerated by the Coronavirus – that may have nothing to do with climate change, but it is an example of how crises can magnify each other, and that will happen under climate change.

With the runs of days over 40 centigrade, people will have to move out of the outback and we will start losing food supply as well as water. I’ve repeatedly heard farmers talk about this.

Antarctic temperatures seem to be rising in summer; they hit 20 degrees C this year, a few days after breaking previous records, and that will certainly lead to more ice melting and hence significant sea level rises, and this will probably form a feedback loop; more ice melts, warmer temps, more ice melts.

Torrents of meltwater pour from the Greenland ice cap, sweltering under a 15°C temperature anomaly. Daily ice losses on this scale are 50 years ahead of schedule: they were forecast by the climate models for 2070. A paper in Geophysical Research Letters reveals that the thawing of permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic now exceeds the depths of melting projected by scientists for 2090.

George Monbiot 12 August 2019

Another piece of research, reportedly states that the “polar ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s” which matches the worst case scenario for climate change.

I have heard scientists suggest that we are probably locked into 2 m rises already within our lifetimes. If so, this will be devastating and extremely costly all over the world. Coastal cities will become non-functional. But I guess there will be people who say, if we are locked into it, then we shouldn’t bother doing anything about it, and there are others saying that futures are unpredictable and so we should hope for the best and still not do anything.

One of the reasons that “if Australia were dramatically to change its climate policy overnight, the impact on fires would be effectively zero” is because people, such as Mr Murdoch, Mr Lomborg and the neoliberal right, have been pretending for the last 30 years we can keep increasing emissions forever. And the world has increased its emissions dramatically over the last 20 years. So they have been succesful.

Whatever the article implies, few people on the ‘climate change is real’ side, are saying we should not prepare for the worst and be ready to adapt. As I’ve said, quite a number of people think we have already passed tipping points, which have locked in change to weather patterns and water levels already. However, if we don’t cut back emissions more or less now, and stop planning to increase emissions in the future, the situation will almost certainly get worse and worse, and they strangely object to that…..

Getting worse and worse will increase the expense of dealing with the problems, will destroy living standards, destroy wealth, destroy political stability, destroy national standing, provoke refugee movement and so on. All of which people on the right might be thought to find objectionable, but apparently do not.

Australia has to reduce emissions to help political action to slow emissions elsewhere, as we are one of the highest per capita emitters in the world (even without counting our fossil fuel exports), and who will reduce their emissions if wealthy countries like use will not?

If we pollute more than the planetary ecology can process, or take more from the earth than it can replenish, then we end up harming our country. This is simply reality, and Lomborg simply ignores it.

The next post looks at Lomborg’s rhetoric.

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Carbon Capture and Storage, Yet Again

March 10, 2020

A slightly abridged form of this blog was posted at John Menadue’s site.

Despite the jaded history of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in Australia, the Government has announced it will fund it rather than Renewables. CCS is costly, and faces numerous unsolved problems, while renewable energy would not produce the emissions that CCS is supposed to diminish.

The Federal Government, through the Energy Minister Angus Taylor, has proposed that taxpayers’ money should be invested in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) research, rather than in aiding the supposedly now ‘developed’ renewables sector.

A Climate Council press release responded to Mr Taylor’s speech:

The Federal Government has signaled a move away from investing in the solutions we already have at our disposal – wind and solar – to technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS)….

‘Carbon Capture and Storage is incredibly expensive. It is not a climate solution, but an attempt to prolong the role of fossil fuels in the energy system’.

The Government’s slogan is “technology, not taxes” as “humans have an extraordinary ability to innovate.” However, that ingenuity does not mean every conception is viable in time, either in terms of financial cost, technological development, effectiveness of results, or safety of operation.

CCS is not the Government’s only plan for investment in research; hydrogen, lithium, livestock feed supplements, and biological sequestration are also named. But CCS is amongst the most dubious of research areas.

The previous history of the research is valuable in judging its potential.

The first Australian geo-sequestration project, the Otway project in Victoria, was proposed in 1998. It appears to be still in development after at least a cost of $100m. The Howard Government promised “$21.8 million… for [a] new Co-operative Research Centre on CO2 that will build on work already carried out to place Australia at the leading edge of geo-sequestration technology.” The Minister David Kemp made it clear that CCS and other supported technologies would safeguard the use of Australia’s “vast reserves of low cost brown coal.” That Government’s clean energy white paper also mentioned a “low emission technology fund” which was to have $700m to spend on many ideas including CCS. It is hard to see how much was spent in that area.

The Rudd and Gillard Governments continued the approach with more CCS funding, launching the “Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act” and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, promising $2b for CCS under the Clean Energy Initiative. All this money generated a truly remarkable lack of interest from the coal industry. On the whole, we can say the coal industry used the presence of funds and some low grade projects to promise clean coal in some fantasy future. They did almost no research at all. Therefore, there is little evidence to suggest that new funding will significantly reduce coal emissions.

Nevertheless, research into carbon extraction is needed. If we wish to keep temperature increases below 20, then as well as stopping emissions, we need to remove greenhouse gases (GHG) from the air. 88 out of the 90 scenarios in the IPCC’s report assume some level of net negative emissions. IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees says:

Different mitigation strategies can achieve the net emissions reductions that would be required to follow a pathway that limits global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot. All pathways use Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), but the amount varies across pathways, as do the relative contributions of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and removals in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector

And

In modelled 1.5°C pathways with limited or no overshoot, the use of CCS would allow the electricity generation share of gas to be approximately 8% (3–11% interquartile range) of global electricity in 2050, while the use of coal shows a steep reduction in all pathways and would be reduced to close to 0% (0–2% interquartile range) of electricity

The longer we emit GHG the more we need to remove. However, technological (as opposed to aided biological) carbon removal has three fundamental problems:

1) Carbon extraction requires quite of lot of energy generated of top of what we already use. Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University claims that his “research finds that [CCS] reduces only a small fraction of carbon emissions, and it usually increases air pollution” because of the energy needed to run it. As I understand it, the second law of thermodynamics implies that you cannot remove the carbon for less energy than was released in its burning. In nature CO2 is removed by the action of the sun on Chlorophyll in a biological context. If done artificially, we need to be aware of the amounts of energy required, and how much this adds to stress on the energy system. Furthermore, this energy must not add more GHG pollution to the atmosphere, or it is pointless.

2) What do you do with the carbon once you have removed it? Carbon is common, and generally not very valuable. Some people suggest it should be returned to the soil in bio-available forms, or used to make bricks, or converted into fuel, or used to extract the last drop of oil or gas from old wells, which is somewhat counter-productive. CCS proposes that the extracted material is useless and should be stored underground, usually in old gas or oil fields.

3) Carbon dioxide exists in pretty low atmospheric concentrations, so a large amount of air has to be processed for worthwhile levels of removal. According to one estimate, assuming 100% efficiency, “to get a ton of CO2, we’d need to filter it out of about 1.3 million cubic meters of air”. This adds to the energy consumption of the process. The usual solution is to carry out the removal where there are heavy emissions, such as at coal fired power stations. However, no known carbon removal process is 100% effective, so emissions will be released.

The IEA remarks that they would like:

a cumulative 107 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt CO2)… permanently stored in the period to 2060, requiring a significant scale-up of CO2 storage from today’s levels.

One of the world’s largest storage systems, the Chevron gas Gorgon facility in Western Australia, will, at best, store between 3.4 and 4.0 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. So far, this project is storing CO2 extracted from its gas production. So while it may have reduced emissions, it is hardly lessening overall emissions from burning gas, and is far less effective in reducing emissions than lowering the amount of gas being burnt.

Added to this, the storage option of CCS has to be ruled as unproven and difficult for the following reasons.

1) No examples exist of either carbon capture or storage working at anything near the volumes required. The research required is significant, and it will take a long time to apply in the real world. To be done quickly, there must be no problems of scale and the technology present now must be adequate to the job. We may develop better technologies, but we cannot assume that in advance.

2) There is the problem of leakage, and the difficulties monitoring those leaks, especially with offshore storage underwater. If the storage site is an old oil or gas field then exit points are often plentiful. Leaks are also possible in transport to the storage place. Leaks undo the whole process.

3) While there is dispute about this, CO2 storage may increase the possibility of earthquakes, increasing the possibility of leaks.

4) Sudden leaks may produce fatalities. Concentrations of CO2 over 10%, even in the presence of oxygen, can be fatal.

5) Leakage and underground flow may produce unpleasant tastes or introduce poisons to underground water supplies. This is particularly problematic given the importance of underground water to Australia.

6) As commentators on the article pointed out there is a lot of carbon emissions. The Centre for Global development, estimates that the Australian power sector emits 226,000,000 tons of CO2 per year. The Government’s Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory states that the emissions from electricity are 180 MT CO2-e (CO2 equivalents). Emissions from the total energy sector that are 380 MT CO2-e or 380,000,000 tonnes. By comparison in 2015-16 Australia exported 37 million tonnes of LNG per year. So we would be trying to store more CO2 in the ground, than we export liquid gas. That is a lot of storage and transport per day, and a lot of infrastructure with no profit attached. Not impossible, assuming no other problems, but costly.

As stated above, CCS requires extra energy, adds to operational costs, and possibly increases fossil fuel consumption.

7) Due to running costs and capital expenditure, CCS is likely to significantly increase energy prices, which is something the Government wishes to avoid. Without massive subsidies, competition may force CCS power stations out of the market.

8) Monitoring and responsibility for discovered leakage. Companies rarely remain solvent forever, and the GHG need to be stored for a long time. Companies are likely to find the costs of policing leaks annoying, and have incentives to be desultory. This leaves ultimate liability with the taxpayers, which gives further incentives for companies to delay reporting leaks.

9) Difficulties in retrofitting old coal power stations for CCS may lead to the building of new coal or gas power stations, locking in emissions.

10) It requires a massive spending on infrastructure. In 2006, Vaclav Smil estimated:

“Sequestering a mere 1/10 of today’s global CO2 emissions [at that time that was 3 Gt CO2] would thus call for putting in place an industry that would have to [transport and] force underground every year the volume of compressed gas larger than or (with higher compression) equal to the volume of crude oil extracted globally by petroleum industry.”

A build of such size is also likely to have significant emissions. So the process seems unviable at the levels we need.

In Australia, Carbon Capture and Storage will likely waste money for insignificant emissions reductions. However expenditure on improving the grid will lead to more investment opportunities for working low emissions technologies while removing the need for CCS to reduce current emissions.

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Nuclear Costs

March 6, 2020

An article from RenewEconomy gives some costs for nuclear power in Australian Dollars, but gives no sources for these figures at all. I’m checking into its rough accuracy. We need to note that this investigation is into failed projects, or projects with cost overruns, this may not be normal – but it usually seems to be.

The cost of the two reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia has doubled and now stands at A$20.4‒22.6 billion per reactor. In 2006, Westinghouse said it could build a reactor for as little as A$2.1 billion ‒ 10 times lower than the current estimate….

RenewEconomy (all references to the article linked to above)

These must be referring to Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4. According to the new builders they use:

the Westinghouse AP1000 advanced pressurized water reactor technology. This advanced technology allows nuclear cores to be cooled even in the absence of operator interventions or mechanical assistance. The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Georgia Power

Note this is not a fabled Gen 4 reactor.

Westinghouse was originally doing the build but went bankrupt, and other companies took over. There are a number of different prices for the project circulating, although the price has clearly increased and the build has been delayed, and it is not yet (Mar 2020) finished.

The two new reactors were expected to cost a total of about [US]$14 billion when the expansion was approved by the PSC in 2009, but the latest estimates from analysts put the current cost at [US]$27.5 billion. Units 3 and 4 originally were expected to come online in 2016. The current timetable calls for one reactor to enter commercial operation in November 2021, with the other following in November 2022.

Powermage 19 Feb 2019

Costs have ballooned from an initial budget of about [US]$14.1 billion…. [it] has doubled in price and is running more than five years behind schedule

Alabama.com News 6 Mar 2019

The estimated total price for the project is expected in the [US]$18.7 billion range. 

Construction Equipment Guide 26 Dec 2019

Obviously there is some conflict over the cost. The project has been heavily backed by taxpayers in the form of loan guarantees. Reactors don’t seem to be buildable without heavy public financial risk – and remember one major US company, Westinghouse, has already gone bust over nuclear projects. And this taxpayer cost, or heavy loans, may increase the general price of electricity.

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry… announced… another $3.7 billion in financing guarantees… on top of $8.3 billion in earlier loan guarantees made during the Obama administration, for a total of [US]$12 billion in guarantees backed by taxpayers. 

In addition to safety concerns about Plant Vogtle, critics have assailed the project’s future hit to customers’ wallets in Georgia. Already, typical residential customers of Georgia Power have paid hundreds of dollars over recent years to cover financing costs and company profits on the project….

Unit 3, the first of two new nuclear reactors, was supposed to be finished and operating almost exactly three years ago. Instead, it is now projected to be in service in November 2021. The second reactor, Unit 4, is slated to go in service a year later, in November 2022.

A project that had been underway in South Carolina [also being built by Westinghouse] using the same new reactor design was canceled in recent years as costs soared.  

Atlanta Journal Constitution 22 March 2019

The organisation ‘Taxpayers for Common Sense’ remarks:

If the Vogtle co-owners default on their DOE-guaranteed loans, the loss to taxpayers would be 24 times greater than the $500 million DOE lost on the now-defunct solar power company, Solyndra.

[The] latest estimate means the project is [US]$14 billion over budget and more than 5 years behind schedule….

Taxpayers for Common Sense 21 Mar 2019

There is a cheerful promotion piece from the US Department of Energy, which does not discuss the costs.

The successful completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4 will set the tone for what could be a nuclear resurgence in the United States….

The new units are the first new reactors to begin construction in America in more than 3 decades.

Energy.gov No date

This last fact alone, clearly indicates nuclear has not been popular with power companies, and the company building the reactors obviously has second thoughts about building more of them..

It probably will be in the 2030s or 2040s before Atlanta-based Southern Company attempts another nuclear construction project, Southern CEO Tom Fanning told analysts Wednesday.

Atlanta Journal Constitution 1May 2109

Further, there is a class action against Georgia Power, accusing them:

of overcharging customers millions of dollars in “cost recoveries” associated with the nuclear expansion project. The lawsuit charges Georgia Power has artificially raised municipal franchisee fees that appear on customers’ monthly bills based on the costs of the nuclear expansion.

Powermage 19 Feb 2019

There is a simple history of the project at Powermag 24 Sep 2018

Back to the RenewEconomy article

a twin-reactor project in South Carolina, was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$13.4 billion. Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy soon after, almost bankrupting its parent company Toshiba in the process.

RenewEconomy

This is presumably referring to the South Carolina reactor mentioned above, which helped Westinghouse go bankrupt. There are also allegations of corrupt processes.

Westinghouse bought thousands of hand-machined nuts that cost $114 each, rather than sturdier, off-the-shelf nuts that retailed for $2.20, according to The Post and Courier. There was a reason for that: Westinghouse got to charge 15 percent overhead on everything it spent. Every thousand nuts meant $17,100 in revenue for the company, rather than the $330 it would have collected if it used the cheaper version….

An audit by Bechtel Corp. two years ago found that the construction plans and design were faulty, and that the project was poorly managed. As one legislator put it, the entire project was “built to fail.”

Governing.com Jan 2018

It is obviously unlikely it was ‘built to fail’. This is more likely to have to do with the way public projects are carried out nowadays, with the aim of making as much profit, or cutting as many costs, as possible, rather than building the best that is possible, or being prepared to adequately deal with the complexity required of nuclear builds. Anyway, as stated previously Westinghouse went bust during this project, and we cannot assume that was deliberate.

South Carolina, in a bid to expand its generation of nuclear power in recent years, dropped [US]$9 billion on a single project — and has nothing to show for it…..

It started in 2008. SCE&G and Santee Cooper announced plans to add two nuclear reactors to the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville, South Carolina, and contracted Westinghouse Electric Company, owned by Toshiba, to handle construction. The state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the plan in early 2009, with construction slated to begin in 2012, and the first reactor set to begin operating in 2016…..

Documents released as the project unraveled show that both SCE&G and Santee Cooper were well aware of shortcomings, mismanagement, and lack of oversight that eventually made the reactors impossible to complete, years before Westinghouse declared bankruptcy and both companies pulled out….

Thanks to a state law passed in 2007, residents in South Carolina are footing the bill for a massive failed nuclear reactor program that cost a total of $9 billion. Analysts say that corporate mismanagement and poor oversight means residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program —  which never produced a watt of energy — for the next 20 years or more.

The Intercept 6 Feb 2019

Customers have already been billed some $2 billion for the reactors. Under current regulations, the utilities continue to collect $37 million per month. That means the average ratepayer is paying an additional $250 per year, or 18 percent of the bill. This could go on for 60 years. 

Governing.com Jan 2018

So failed projects can increase electricity bills, as can successful ones…

former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Gregory Jaczko [spoke to] The Intercept… New plants, Jaczko said, take too long to build for the urgency of the climate crisis and simply aren’t cost effective, given advances in renewable energy. “I don’t see nuclear as a solution to climate change,” Jaczko said. “It’s too expensive, and would take too long if it could even be deployed. There are cheaper, better alternatives. And even better alternatives that are getting cheaper, faster.”

“They were allowed to charge the customers for all the money that they spent, plus a return,” Jaczko explained. “Even though they failed to deliver the project.”

The Intercept 6 Feb 2019

As with the Georgia reactor, there are a number of court actions trying to get the money Ratepayers have lost back. Plus court actions from shareholders and workers alleging gross mismanagement.

As an addenda, when looking for info on South Korea, I came across this causal remark about an earlier ‘successful’ venture:

The US’s $6.8 billion Watts Bar Unit 1 reactor in Tennessee had taken 23 years to complete, and cost more than 18 times its original $370 million price tag. 

MIT Technology Review 22 April 2019

Back to RenewEconomy Again.

The cost of the only reactor under construction in France has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$20.0 billion. The cost of the only reactor under construction in Finland has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$17.7 billion. The projects in France and Finland are both 10 years behind schedule, and still incomplete.

RenewEconomy

One independent Academic news report states, that, for the French case, Flamanville-3:

Construction started in 2007, with the final cost estimated at 3.3 billion euros. On October 9 the plant’s operator, EDF, annonced new delays, with costs now estimated at 12.4 billion euros and the opening pushed back to 2022 

The Conversation 28 Oct 2019: Stéphanie Tillement & Nicolas Thiolliere

The French Reactor Builders have recently made what seems like an unlikely claim to justify cost increases. If it is to be believed, quality control was almost non-existent:

Electricite de France SA said repairs of faulty welds at a nuclear plant under construction in western France will boost the project’s cost by 14% to 12.4 billion euros ($13.6 billion), adding further financial strain to the cash-strapped atomic power giant…..

EDF has increased its estimated bill for the project by 1.5 billion euros in the latest assessment, it said Wednesday in a statement. The almost-completed plant, which is already seven years behind schedule, won’t be able to load nuclear fuel before the end of 2022 as EDF needs to repair 66 welds, it said….

The budget for Flamanville-3 has more than tripled since construction started in 2007. The repeated setbacks, which have forced EDF to sell assets to curb debt in recent years, contrast with tumbling costs for solar and wind projects…..

The French government has asked EDF to prove by the middle of 2021 that it can build competitively priced nuclear plants to replace some of its 58 aging reactors. Competition from other clean-energy sources is stiff. France, like Britain, is working to step up the pace of building offshore wind farms.

Bloomberg 9 October 2019

Even before this, state environment agency ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Énergie) said

Building new nuclear reactors in France would not be economical…, contradicting the government’s long-term energy strategy as well as state-owned utility EDF’s investment plans…..

“The development of an EPR-based nuclear industry would not be competitive,” ADEME said, adding that new nuclear plants would be structurally loss-making.

Building a single EPR in 2030 would require 4 to 6 billion euros of subsidies, while building a fleet of 15 with a total capacity of 24 gigawatt-hour by 2060 would cost the state 39 billion euros, despite economies of scale that could bring down the EPR costs to 70 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), ADEME said…..

The gradual increase of renewables capacity could reduce the pre-tax electricity cost for consumers – including generation, grids and storage – to about 90 euros per MWh, compared to nearly 100 euros today….

EDF – which generates about 75 percent of French electricity with 58 nuclear reactors – declined to comment.

Reuters 11 Dec 2018

The prospects for Nuclear in France does not look good with the recent announcement that:

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s CEA nuclear agency has dropped plans to build a prototype sodium-cooled nuclear reactor, it said on Friday, after decades of research and hundreds of millions of euros in development costs.

Confirming a report in daily newspaper Le Monde, the state agency said it would finalize research in so-called “fourth generation” reactors in the ASTRID (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration) project this year and is no longer planning to build a prototype in the short or medium term.

“In the current energy market situation, the perspective of industrial development of fourth-generation reactors is not planned before the second half of this century,” the CEA said.

Reuters 30 August 2019

The Finish Reactor called Olkiluoto 3

The EPR reactor in western Finland is already more than a decade behind schedule and had been due to start producing electricity in January 2020.

RenewEconomy

in October 2003, TVO announced that Framatome ANP’s 1600 MWe European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) was the preferred reactor on the basis of operating cost. Siemens was contracted to provide the turbines and generators. TVO signed a €3.2 billion turnkey contract with Areva NP and Siemens for an EPR unit in December 2003, with commercial operation expected in mid-2009…..

The [new 2018] agreement states that the supplier companies are entitled to an “incentive payment” of €150 million “upon timely completion” of the project. At that time the schedule was for grid connection in December 2018, and commercial operation in May 2019 – some 10 years behind schedule…. In April 2019, the target date was pushed back again to March 2020, and in July 2019, it was moved to July 2020….

The Areva-Siemens consortium was claiming €3.52 billion against TVO in relation to the delay and cost overruns of the project. The claim included payments delayed by TVO under the construction contract, and penalty interest totalling about €1.45 billion and €135 million in alleged loss of profit. TVO counterclaimed costs and losses of €2.6 billion to the end of 2018, having revised its loss figure from €1.8 billion to the end of 2014. 

World Nuclear Feb 2020

This again implies that costing is complicated, and companies cannot agree on what each other should pay towards it.

There were initially two power plants proposed for Olkiluoto, but:

TVO decided not to proceed, since “the delay of the start-up of Olkiluoto 3 plant unit … [makes it] impossible to make significant Olkiluoto 4 related decisions necessary for the construction licence application within the current period of validity of the decision-in-principle.” “Olkiluoto 4 is important for us and therefore we will be prepared to apply for a new decision-in-principle.” In June 2015 TVO shareholders resolved not to proceed with plans for unit 4.

World Nuclear Feb 2020

There is also a Russian design reactor to be built in Finland. The processes were agreed in 2010 but beginning production has been delayed again to 2028.

Back to RenewEconomy:

The cost of the four reactors under construction in the United Arab Emirates has increased from A$7.5 billion per reactor to A$10‒12 billion per reactor.

RenewEconomy

There are a lot of articles pointing to the dangers of nuclear energy in a politically unstable region and people have already fired missiles at them. I cannot find anything about cost increases. Most reports say that they are predicted to cost, in total, US$25b or currently about A$37.6b, not quite A$10-12 billion per reactor. It is possible the original cheapness arises from corruption on the side of the Korean builders.

South Korea ‒ which is supplying the UAE reactors ‒ is held out to be a model for the global nuclear industry. But South Korea is slowly phasing out its nuclear reactors, its nuclear industry is riddled with corruption (the courts have dispensed a cumulative 253 years of jail time to 68 offenders), and its business model clearly sacrifices safety in order to improve economics…

RenewEconomy

wikipedia reports on faked documents and certificates for components. Yes you really want fake parts for a reactor.

Korea is dismantling its nuclear industry, shutting down older reactors and scrapping plans for new ones. State energy companies are being shifted toward renewables.

South Korea’s reactors… are mostly packed into a narrow strip along the densely populated southeastern coast. The density was a way of cutting costs on administration and land acquisition. But putting reactors close to one another—and to large cities—was risky…. there are four million people living within a 30-kilometer radius of the Kori plant alone.

On September 21, 2012, officials at KHNP had received an outside tip about illegal activity among the company’s parts suppliers. By the time President Park had taken office, an internal probe had become a full-blown criminal investigation. Prosecutors discovered that thousands of counterfeit parts had made their way into nuclear reactors across the country, backed up with forged safety documents.

KHNP insisted the reactors were still safe, but the question remained: was corner-cutting the real reason they were so cheap?

MIT Technology Review 22 April 2019

Safety additions which came in after Chernobyl were abandoned. This helped the speed of the build, and partially explains why the Korean estimates for the UAE reactors were half the price of the competitors.

One informant told Technology Review:

“You’d have a group of white-haired executives from competing firms sitting across from each other, playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would take certain contracts.” Dummy bids would then be supported by fake documents, doctored to ensure that the designated loser would fail.

“I personally knew of around 300 cases where those [load] transformers caught on fire. They’re incredibly unstable.”

MIT Technology Review 22 April 2019

Earthquake surveys had not been properly carried out, and there were earthquakes in areas of dense reactor concentration.

In May 2012, five engineers were charged with covering up a potentially dangerous power failure at South Korea’s Kori-1 reactor which led to a rapid rise in the reactor core temperature. The accident occurred because of a failure to follow safety procedures…..

[In General] The Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety reported:

# A total of 2,114 test reports were falsified: 247 test reports in relation to replaced parts for 23 reactors, an additional 944 falsifications in relation to ‘items’ for three recently commissioned reactors, and 923 falsifications in relation to ‘items’ for five reactors under construction.

# Results were ‘unidentified’ for an additional 3,408 test reports ‒ presumably it was impossible to assess whether or not the reports were falsified.

# Twenty-nine of the forgeries concerned ‘seismic qualification’, and the legitimacy of a further 43 seismic reports was ‘unclear’.

# Over 7,500 reactor parts were replaced in the aftermath of the scandal…..

The situation in South Korea mirrors that in Japan prior to the Fukushima disaster ‒ i.e. systemic corruption

Wiseinternational 23 Sep 2019

In total, 68 people were sentenced and the courts dispensed a cumulative 253 years of jail time. Guilty parties included KHNP president Kim Jong-shin, a Kepco lifer, and President Lee Myung-bak’s close aide Park Young-joon, whom Kim had bribed in exchange for “favorable treatment” from the government.

MIT Technology Review 22 April 2019

Casual attitudes to safety seem to persist:

an incident at the Hanbit 1 reactor on 10 May 2019 [when t]he reactor’s thermal output exceeded safety limits but was kept running for nearly 12 hours when it should have been shut down manually at once.17 The thermal output rose from 0% to 18% in one minute, far exceeding the 5% threshold that should have triggered a manual shutdown.

Wiseinternational 23 Sep 2019

The Korean government now seems in favour of a slow faze out of nuclear energy, and not to build any more reactors.

The Kori nuclear plant, north of Busan, has already had one of its four reactors decommissioned in June 2017, with the other three facing closure between the years 2023-2025.

Other nuclear plants facing decommissioning are Yonggwang 1, formerly known as Hanbit in 2026 and the Wolsong nuclear plant, which will be retired by 2022. Nuclear plants are also being put on hold or cancelled altogether: the Cheonji nuclear plant, formed of four reactors, was cancelled by the current government in June 2018, while the expansion of Shin Hanul from two reactors to four was delayed from May 2017 to February 2019 due to government policy.

Power Technology 1 Aug 2019

To the UK.

In the UK, the estimated cost of the only two reactors under construction is A$25.9 billion per reactor. In the mid-2000s, the estimated cost was almost seven times lower. The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for the project will amount to A$58 billion, despite earlier government promises that no taxpayer subsidies would be made available…..

RenewEconomy

I’ve written about the UK reactor before, but to reiterate:

It is currently estimated to cost around 22.5 billion pounds and is still at least five years away from producing electricity.

A document which seems to be from 2013-14 by EDF estimates the cost of the reactor at 16 billion pounds. {It talks about something being created in 2013 as if that is the past, and its earliest appearance in Archive.org is 2014. The document is frequently said to be from 2012, but I cannot see any evidence for this.}

The price tag is expected to exceed £20bn, almost double that suggested in 2008 by EDF Energy, which is spearheading the project alongside a Chinese project partner.

At the time, EDF Energy’s chief executive, Vincent de Rivaz, said the mega-project would power millions of homes by late 2017. He pegged the cost at £45 for every megawatt-hour.

[Now EDF] will earn at least £92.50 for every megawatt-hour produced at Hinkley Point for 35 years by charging households an extra levy on top of the market price for power…. The average electricity price on the UK’s wholesale electricity market was between £55 and £65 per megawatt-hour last year.

The Guardian 14 Aug 2019

This type of reactor has been built elsewhere, and:

“It’s three times over cost and three times over time where it’s been built in Finland and France,” says Paul Dorfman, from the UCL Energy Institute. “This is a failed and failing reactor.”….

British electricity consumers will pay billions over a 35-year period. According to Gérard Magnin, a former EDF director, the French company sees Hinkley as “a way to make the British fund the renaissance of nuclear in France”. He added: “We cannot be sure that in 2060 or 2065, British pensioners, who are currently at school, will not still be paying for the advancement of the nuclear industry in France.”….

[The UK Government] offered to guarantee EDF a fixed price for each unit of energy produced at Hinkley for its first 35 years of operation. In 2012, the guaranteed price – known as the “strike price” – was set at £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh), which would then rise with inflation. (One MWh is roughly equivalent to the electricity used by around 330 homes in one hour.)… The current wholesale price is around £40 per MWh…..

 if EDF abruptly sold a lot of electricity on to the market at a pre-planned time, the wholesale price could drop substantially. The lower the wholesale price, the bigger the difference from the fixed strike price, and therefore the higher the “EDF tax” paid by consumers.

The Guardian 21 Dec 2017

More recently:

The cost of building the UK’s first new nuclear power plant in a generation has risen by up to £2.9bn and the total bill could be more than £22bn….

The Guardian understands that the latest cost increase brings EDF Energy’s internal rate of return down to between 7.6% and 7.8%. The project originally offered a 9% return on investment, which slipped to 8.5% after its 2017 cost review….

The cost of supporting new offshore windfarms from the mid-2020s fell to record lows of about £40 per megawatt hour of electricity last week in an auction for government contracts, less than half the cost of Hinkley Point C.

The Guardian 26 Sep 2019

Here is some new stuff:

The government has confirmed plans for consumers to begin paying for new nuclear reactors before they are built, and for taxpayers to pay a share of any cost overruns or construction delays….

The new funding structure could be used to prop up EDF Energy’s £16bn plans for a new nuclear reactor at Sizewell B in Suffolk, which was left in doubt after fierce criticism of the costs surrounding the Hinkley Point C project in Somerset.Advertisement

It could also resurrect the dormant plans for a £16bn new nuclear reactor at the Wylfa project in North Wales, which fell apart last year due to the high costs of nuclear construction…..

Dr Doug Parr, the chief scientist at Greenpeace, said: “The nuclear industry has gone in just 10 years from saying they need no subsidies to asking bill payers to fork out for expensive power plants that don’t even exist yet and may never.”

“This ‘nuclear tax’ won’t lower energy bills – it will simply shift the liability for something going wrong from nuclear firms to consumers,” he added.

The Guardian 24 Jul 2019

Backers of mini nuclear power stations [SMRs] have asked for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to build their first UK projects, according to an official document…..

the nuclear industry’s claims that the mini plants would be a cheap option for producing low-carbon power appear to be undermined by the significant sums it has been asking of ministers.

Some firms have been calling for as much as £3.6bn to fund construction costs, according to a government-commissioned repor

The Guardian 1 Oct 2018

SMRs apparently have a context which also needs to be built.

No company, utility, consortium or national government is seriously considering building the massive supply chain that is at the very essence of the concept of SMRs ‒ mass, modular construction. Yet without that supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities.

All or almost all SMR projects are either dependent on government handouts or they are run by state-owned agencies. The private sector won’t bet shareholders’ money on SMRs to any significant degree but governments have “a once in a lifetime opportunity” to bet taxpayers’ money on private-sector SMR frolics and to offer SMR developers “full and ongoing Government support”…..

In the US, government SMR funding of several hundred million dollars is an order of magnitude lower than subsidies for large reactors (several billion dollars for the AP1000 projects)…

Of course, it could be argued that government funding for SMR programs is excessive given the strong likelihood of failure. A case in point is the mPower project in the US, which was abandoned despite receiving government funding of US$111 million.

World Information Service on Energy

Back to RenewEconomy

A December 2019 report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator finds that construction costs for nuclear reactors are 2‒8 times higher than costs for wind or solar. Costs per unit of energy produced are 2‒3 times greater for nuclear compared to wind or solar including either two hours of battery storage or six hours of pumped hydro energy storage.

RenewEconomy

The Draft report states:

there is no hard data to be found on nuclear SMR. While there are plants under construction or nearing completion, public cost data has not emerged from these early stage developments.

draft Report p3

[and] nuclear SMR costs are very uncertain due to the lack of public cost data on completed international projects,

p14

If this capital cost reduction pathway is achieved then nuclear SMR is competitive with CCS….. in other scenarios, nuclear SMR capital costs remain high.

p.22

The cost tables are complicated, and not reproducible here, but it looks to me as if the costs of energy of SRMs is higher than solar and wind, but I stand to be corrected on this

Conclusion

It is not sensible to accept the construction times or costs issued by contracting companies. It will likely cost much more and take much longer to build – especially if they are built properly and safely. The construction costs can add massively to power bills. At the moment, nuclear power seems to be more expensive than renewables with storage.

We are also not factoring in the CO2 costs. According to one source: Nuclear construction produces up to 37 times the CO2 emissions of renewable energy sources, some of this because of the mining and refining of uranium. As we know in Australia, Uranium mining is not always safe for the surrounds, being sensitive to floods and droughts. Then we have the costs of waste storage for long periods of time, and finally the massive cost of decommissioning old nuclear reactors. It was this cost which led the Conservative Government of Mrs Thatcher to take nuclear power back into public responsibility. No company would pay the massive costs of decommissioning, and so they figured the nuclear industry would collapse without government and taxpayers’ support.

Can nuclear power get better? Of course, everything can get better, but will it? At the moment this seems unlikely to be the case in time to help reduce climate emissions in a way that counts. And no one seems particularly interested in lowering decommissioning costs.

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Rationality defines the unreasonable?

March 3, 2020

I come from a world in which people who call themselves ‘rational’ can dimiss the experiences of others as ‘irrational’ largely because they do not understand how such experiences work, they can explain the experiences away, or they think the experiences are inherently implausible by their standards of rationality.

Likewise I meet people who see rationality as a curse that is leading us to destruction and actively attempting to destroy all the things that matter, and shatter our relationship to that which ‘is‘ (the cosmos, nature, ‘spirit,’ imagination, feeling etc.)

Personally I see this cultural opposition between rationality and experience as destructive. Rationality is only ever as good as its axioms and evidence gathering techniques.

Thought systems highly influence (and limit) the way we can see the world and the way we experience the world. They often lead people to seek self confirmation, and can become a prison, whether we call them rational or irrational.

If reality, experience or the best theories we have say that your rationality is wrong or limited, then it is rational to change what constitutes rationality, although it is often thought not to be.

Newtonian mechanics overturned the rationalist objection that ‘action at a distance’ was occultism. Newton also proposed the (at the time) irrational argument that he had no conceivable explanation of why gravity worked (“I make no hypotheses”) and this did not matter. Eventually, people adapted and got use to the idea his mechanics could only explain the patterns of gravity’s working, and that was good enough (for the moment).

Obviously relativity theory, non-Euclidean geometry and quantum mechanics all threw out what had previously been considered rational axioms. In discovering and explaining more experience, these theories broadened and overturned what became seen as a limited rationality, which impeded investigation. Rationality adapted.

What people call rationality is often used to simplify or delete experience, thus removing complexity from the world, when complexity is vital to understanding the world.

At the moment there is a long fight going on in popular philosophy and in science to insist that what we call Mind is emboddied and not abstract, and that we do not understand the supposed limits or potentials of Mind (partly, it seems to me, because we tend to separate it from matter, or reduce it to what we think of as matter). Because of our history it is hard not to fall back into something resembling a mind body opposition and separation, or to say one is derived from the other, without recognising that this changes ‘the other’.

Feeling and embodiment is part of thought and human recognition of situations, and this has to be recognised. If some people need to be shattered by the grief of what is happening in the world, in order to think about and perceive the world differently, then that is what is needed. It is not rational to deny this, even though some people will claim that such feeling, or action, is irrational, and possibly fear it.

If people need to really realise that animals other than humans have minds and feelings or kinship with humans, in order to relate to those animals, or in order to understand or value those animals and help prevent them becoming extinct, then that is part of reality, and understanding it is rationality in action; dismissing this need is not rational. Neither is it rational to insist that animals do not have minds at all, because their minds might be different. Nearly everyone treats animals they know as if they have minds and feelings, because mindful behaviour in those animals seems obvious.

If dreams and imagination can bring people insights into life, it is not rational to dismiss them as “only” dreams or “only” imaginings. Just as it is not rational to dismiss making symbolic responses to a problem and do nothing; as symbolic responses can motivate ‘real’ responses.

As many people know, sometimes new ideas which help us understand things arise from dreams, from images, from what we call intuition. This arising can appear irrational, but it is irrational to ignore it.

Some people have what they call spiritual experiences, sometimes these do seem irrational, or even faked to gain fame, power, influence or money, but it is irrational to dismiss the whole class of these experiences, or their effects and possible effects on the world. Those people who fake rationality do not discredit rationality and those who fake spirituality do not discredit real experience. Such experiences are probably fairly normal (at least according to surveys and my experience of others), and given their normality, surprisingly under-investigated. Psychologists, such as Jung, who have been interested in such experiences have persistently been accused of irrationality or occultism because of the interest. Yet it is part of life, and should not be condemned if we wish to understand humans.

We will never dispose of religion, even if some of really want to, and it seems fatal to abandon it to power-hungry abusers or fanatics.

Those people who have these experiences may fear their experiences will not survive investigation, but perhaps that means the tools we have used for investigation are not useful.

Sometimes people appear to get wound up in defending the emotional or felt truth of their axioms against the evidence. In which case we can say the axioms are acting as defence mechanisms rather than truth mechanisms. Some say that science strips away the poetry of the universe, but in reality science is another, slightly more coherent, poetry.

Sometimes I am told that some research shows that rightwing politics tends to be more ‘rational’ than left, and I’m usually confused by this, as a lot of (but not all) rightwing politics seems to involve shouting, name-calling, threats, irrational discrimination, assertion of falsehoods, and avoidance of complexity. Non of which seems particularly rational. (See “Trump 2020 Hurting Your Feelings Isn’t a Crime” sweat shirts and “Liberal Tears” coffee mugs). However, it does tend to deny empathy, concern or tender feeling for others (while making harsh, or purely competitive, feelings ok) and I suspect that is what makes it seem ‘rational’ to those who think it is. If humans are feeling creatures, and base their relations to others on feeling, then it is not rational to deny it. The fact that this kind of rationality is so irrational in its behaviours, implies its ‘reason’ is a defense against gentle feeling, and this defense might be useful to survival in a neoliberal society.

To reitrate: rationality which does not recognise reality is not rational, and needs to change, and change what it defines as irrational.

As a mode of thought, rationality conditions what people see in the world. Hopefully, if it is disrupted enough, then we can chuck aside non-working axioms and evidence procedures and start again with new ones.

The processes which lead to new ideas and paradigms are generally going to differ from, and produce ideas outside, established ‘reason’ and its axioms. These insights are inherently going to be seen as ‘irrational’, because they do differ from previous rationality and its axioms. This does not mean all insights are useful, they need to be tested in practice against reality, and modified or abandoned as required

This adaptation and exploration is rational. It is not always what people who claim to be rational do.

Rationality also needs defence.

Firstly, while people often say ‘science is leading us to destruction’, this is simply not true. It is because of science that we have known for 40-50 years we are heading for ecological destruction. Scientists have been warning us repeatedly but we, and our leaders, have not listened or have refused to listen.

Secondly, it is not remotely rational to pollute more than the environmental ecology can process. It is not rational to poison the ecology and think we can get away with it. The planet is finite, it is not rational to think in terms of endless planetary extraction. It is not scientists, or rational people, who are telling us its ok to pollute or ignore ecological destruction and climate change. It is not scientists, in general, who have campaigned to keep fossil fuel corporation profits high. Some may have done so, but by doing so they foresook their calling and their rationality in favour of continuing paychecks.

Our society is not destroying itself because it is too rational, it is destroying itself through certain forms of irrationality, hope and the power relations that enforce those irrationalities because they seem essential to a particular class of people. Our politics is not rational and it aims at overcoming scientific-ecological rationality, in the name of neoliberal economic and sometimes spiritual thought.

Rationality works to improve and systematise what we know, and to work out test points for that knowing.

Rationality also offers tools for making arguments, refining arguments, and testing argumenets. If the tools are not adequate for what you need to do, then make new ones, which seem rational. This is what we had to do in the social sciences and humanities, and we will never know if any adequate tools are possible. The tools need to be relevant to the task.

Rationality is useful. The understandings provided by science, are useful to us. It is easy for humans to self-deceive, rationality provides some tools for easing self deceit, and for communicating experiences to others.

There is no necessary collision between rationality and experience, or rationality and survival. Retreat from science will not help us any more than retreat from human psychology and spirituality will help.

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Based on Alan Smithson’s Kairos

March 2, 2020

I’m not really sure where I am going here, but this is the start of an exploration of Alan Smithson’s ideas in his book The Kairos Point. I’ve occasionally changed the vocabulary and the emphasis. It starts in a different place because I think that this new beginning is clearer.

This is not him, but it would not exist without him. Occasionally I point out what I think are differences, but I may have selected incorrectly, and misunderstood important points. Hopefully I have got some of the important points right, but there is much more to explore.

Introduction

Thinking in terms of one principle alone is reductive, and usually leads to ignoring data, or contradiction. The paradoxes around the idea there being one omnipotent and omniscient God come to mind. We end up with other principles to explain what happens: a principle of evil, or a principle of free will or something. All of which implies that God is not omnipotent, omniscient etc.

Thinking in terms of two usually leads to opposition.

Thinking in terms of at least 3 principles opens the field of thinking up.

The Two and the Three

The two can be thought of in at least three ways

1) Opposition. The two principles negate each other: matter and anti-matter. Thesis and antithesis. predator and prey.

2) Differences of degree. The two are both similiar and statistically and/or categorically different. By some, of multiple, measures they can look similar, and by others different. It may vary with individual examples (Male and female).

3) Binary. The two do not share anything in common. Logical operators, A and Not-A.

Once we have the three we might, as happened with me, get another way of seeing two, such as:

4) Complementary. The two need each other and influence each other, or emerge from each other. They form an ongoing process. Predator and prey. (Smithson got this straightaway)

We might collapse this into the triad:

  • Difference; opposition; complementarity.

The Three opens things up beyond dyads, it forces us to look for other factors, and interactions. It suggests the possibility of multiple interactions, modifications and the spill of one category into another. It is, I hope, useful for talking about ecologies and climate change, although I will not be talking about climate change in this part of the exposition.

One of the differences between myself and Smithson is that he tends to talk of a duality between ‘nothing’ and ‘one’ or ‘wholeness’. I tend to think in terms of the triad:

  • Nothing; One; Many.

Wholeness may not be harmonious in any appearance. Looking for the disorder, the unincluded, the ignored, the many, the conflicting is as useful to understanding as looking for the harmony, the co-operation and the oneness. Through this triad we are reminded that the ecologies we exist within are complex, and complexity has consequences.

Minds and Matters

Mind and matter are usually thought of as an opposition, or a binary. But it might also be possible to think of them as complementary, or as differing in degree in some set of qualities, or as also part of a triad: Mind; local ecology; Matter, or as part of a many pointing triad: Minds; local ecologies; Matter(s). I use the term ‘local ecologies’, because we have experience and live in a local ecology with ongoing processes, history, movement and change, rather than an abstract total whole (which we also exist within, but which implies another level of analysis, and can imply static-ness). If you prefer the singular triad Mind; Absolute Whole; Matter, then test it and see what happens.

In human reality we never observe mind without matter, or matter without mind. We never observe outside of some ecology or context – that is we rarely, if ever, observe outside of time and process. We function in (at least) the triad. We also observe what looks like multiple minds – of other people and things. We may notice what appear to be different types of matters, water, air, fire, flesh, wood, stone, metals, etc. We have previous learnings and experiences, which colour our present experiences, feeling and thinking. Minds involve feelings and bodies.

What we call Minds and Matters are part of (or partitioned out of) an apparently ‘durational’ Local ecological whole we do not understand. We might want to give one of our duality priority over the other, saying (all or some) matter emerges from mind (say the mind of God at creation), or (all or some) minds emerge from matter (as in conventional evolutionary theory), but the reality is that we observe both at the same time, as part of some processes in the local ecology, and we cannot observe one without the other, outside the ecology. Observation implies minds doing observation, and some ecology they exist within.

We don’t exist as minds without observation and interaction of ‘matters’ or of something else which appears not to be us (such as other minds). We think about minds using metaphors from matter, and vice versa to some extent (as in alchemy). We live amidst matters and other minds; again within the local ecology. We live amidst an interactive realm of feeling, even when we deny it, or name it as matter. We are never completely alone, completely without the context of the local ecology.

If we still want to think of ‘matter’ and ‘mind’, we can think of the interaction between them as circular, without obvious end, within the ecology which allows the circle to exist. If there was an end, there would be no observer and/or nothing to observe.
Mind -> Matter -> Mind -> Matter or
Matter -> Mind -> Matter -> Mind
and so on

To repeat, what we observe is at least a triad:

  • Mind; Matter; Local ecology (or Reality).

Without local ecology there is nothing that we can call mind and matter. Mind involves that feeling and embodiment.

Reality pictures

There is also no mind without “reality-pictures” which are not the same as reality, but which emerge from that reality, and give “reality for me” and/or “reality for part of a culture”. ‘Mind’ is itself such a reality picture as is ‘matter’ or ‘local ecology’.

Reality pictures may be made up of thought and feeling patterns etc., or they may be partially made up by biological and material properties and interactions.

Reality pictures are real and have an effect. They may be what we call ‘accurate’, they may not be accurate, they may be partially accurate, or they may be accurate-enough to get by, but they are convincing at a certain moment to particular people in culture, history, place and ecology etc. They seem to affect how we behave, and thus have consequences.

Realising that the idea of ‘mind’ is a reality picture, complementary to the reality picture of ‘matter’ (and possibly deleting large amounts of reality, or the local whole or ecology, allows us to look at some of the confusions in the term and in the triad.

Confusions?

When we think of a ‘whole’, we tend to think of integration and harmony, rather than simply “what is,” “what exists,” or “what is happening”. We tend to delete the interactions within what exists.

However, there is no reason (other than this bias) to not think of reality as a interacting, confusion, with multiply (‘multiplee’) opposing, different, binary and complementary etc forces, acting. Animals feed off other animals and plants, one person’s interest may not agree with another, an exploding star may have dire consequences it never ‘intended’.

Smithson finds it necessary to remind people mind is real. Jung had to proceed likewise. I find this hard to understand. Surely people know their mind is at least as real and unreal as matter? Let us take it for granted, that minds are real, but we may not understand them remotely accurately, and our conceptions of minds may be wrong, as they may be of anything. For example, Western culture tends to delete feeling from mind saying feeling is irrational or beyond rational (part of soul?), thus helping to make mind seem like pure thought without interconnection. It is easy to talk of mind in this way, even when you are aware of the other view.

When we talk about ‘mind’ we tend to ignore minds. As if all minds where one mind. Which they might be, but they might not. Animals seem, to me to have minds, or feeling minds, which could be both different to human minds and share some features with human minds. They are are at least Differences of degree. It is also conceptually possible some types of minds are completely different, in ‘opposition’, binary or complementary etc. (Perhaps the minds of cephalopods). To Descartes and orthodox Judaeo-Christian-Islamic thinkers animals do not have minds – because mind comes from soul which marks human uniqueness – which may or may not be true; but it is certainly limiting. This limit makes us think there is only a singular binary (mind and non-mind). Their reality-picture of mind does not recognise the ecology part of the triad, nor the importance of previous experience or process to the formation of minds.

Mind-worlds and the whole

Likewise, thinking of ‘Mind’ tends to lead us into the Popperian position of there being a “world of mind” (not world of minds) which can be throught of as a huge library of knowledge, art, culture etc, and is (yet again) opposed to the world of singular matter.

However, it could seem the minds world is never completely independent of the ‘matters world’. The local whole or ecology, is never completely available to the parts, and the parts share different and often incompatible parts of these ‘worlds’. The singular ‘mind world’ idea does not immediately point to the diversity of mind worlds, or their distributed and shared natures, or to the multiple effects of ecologies, or even the availability of language, interpretation, storage and availability. Smithson tries to get around this by thinking of the mind word as holographic, but I’m not sure that helps.

Again mind does not exist apart from the possible confusion, mess and multiplicity of the ‘local-ecologies.’

Anthropologists tend to use the word “cultures” for something like “mind worlds,” and that plural reminds us that mind worlds do not exist as “one”, and they are supported by, and grow out of, varied customs, habits, feeling patterns, and interactions of people with the reality-wholeness from which they emerge (including other people). To some extent cultures are part of a ‘local ecology’ within ‘Absolute wholeness’. Cultures are material, and involve practices, and interactions, as well as conceptions.

Cultures are also not static they are processes undergoing change, like ecologies and minds; they do not merely accumulate stuff in a library: later work can change the meanings of past work. Australian culture is not identical to US culture, and is not identical to Australian culture of 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, even it if shares features and continuity. Neither of these older cultures can be said to be the real culture, even by precedence, as earlier cultures precede whatever we select, and all cultures tend to be influenced by other cultures.

To restate, cultures are time using (historical) processes, collaborations, competitions, incorporations and rejections of events, among other things.

One set of reality-pictures may obscure the presence and understanding of another set and vice versa.

More to come.

Summary

It is useful (but culturally hard) to think in threes to open up our thought beyond patterns of the one and the binary.

Wholeness may not be harmonious in any appearance, or in reality.

What we call Minds and Matter(s) always exist in an ecology (which includes other minds).

Mind, matter and ecology are themselves appearances arising through “reality pictures.”.

“Reality pictures” may be more or less accurate given a particular ecology. Reality pictures influence interactions with local ecologies or reality, and produce consequences, intended or otherwise

Western reality-pictures of Mind tend to ignore feeling, and time, interaction and development processes

Minds may differ from each other in different ways.

Cultures are not singular or simple ideas in Minds, even if they don’t exist without Minds. Cultures are material and interactive. They use time and change.

If we take change seriously then we can perceive reality is fluxing over time. We don’t have to look for a fixed or static whole to find reality, or think such wholes are harmonious or ‘one’. Our Minds and Matters also flux. Impermanence is part of life. Impermanence is changing.

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Baroness Thatcher and the Moment of Climate Retreat

February 28, 2020

All Baroness Thatcher’s realism had gone by the publication of the 2002 book Statescraft, which she reportedly recognised was her last book. She was, sadly, becoming increasingly fragile and unwell. However, there is little mark of this fragility on the writing style or the forcefulness of her arguments.

This section of my exposition, includes more comment on the Baroness’ arguments than previously. This is because they need to be challenged, and because they seem incompatible with the positions she took while PM.

The section, “Hot Air and Global Warming” comes in a chapter defending capitalism from its critics.

Her main focus in the surrounding section is on refuting prophecies of doom:

the better things are and the greater the reason for optimism, the louder the voices prophesying doom seem to become… taking the longer perspective, global gloom is out of place… Was there ever an age when children had better prospects, all things considered, than those born into the world today?

p.444

She argues capitalism and liberty are responsible for this success. We might wonder if capitalism and liberty are always, and indelibly, joined even by pointing at British History (certainly the path is not straightforward, and has a lot to do with the militancy of the working and middle classes, and their suspicion of capitalism), but she argues:

We should be very wary indeed of turning aside from the path that has made us rich and free, simply because some group of experts or a collection of NGOs advise it

p.445

She argues Malthus, who suggested that the direction of humanity was towards mass death because population always increased faster than food supply, was simply wrong. This is despite her earlier warnings about population increase as being a problem, and the obvious fact that certain levels of human population (200 billion??) may be unsupportable by the planet in nearly all circumstances. Indeed population increase in non-western countries seems to have become one method the contemporary right has developed to blame climate change on other people.

Thatcher argues that people like Malthus, underrate “mankind’s ability, given the right framework to invent and adapt” (p.447) Indeed, but it is still theoretically possible that there may be times in which the speed of the problem-increase overwhelms people’s invention and adaptation. TThere is no guarantee we have not reached, or will never reach, that point. We may not have, but that is a hope not a certainty. In her words the “right framework” may not be present or even possible.

She generalises her response to Malthus to the problem seers of today:

Today’s doomsters have broadened their attack. It is not just population growth by economic growth… that they dislike…. Many of the gloomiest warning were associated with a group of international experts calling themselves the Club of Rome

p.447

This pessimism was supposedly a dominant force in the years leading up to the 1980s. This may be something of an exaggeration: if it was dominant, surely people would have done more to face the problems?

Only when Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office did we hear an alternative, optimistic message – that our free-enterprise democratic system had the moral, intellectual and practical resources to overcome any challenge.

p.448

Again this is a hope, not a certainty. It is not proven for ever, and cannot be proven in advance. And why should our “moral, intellectual and practical resources” not include Government policy and direction? After all, neoliberals seem to recognise the rights of governments to direct people to keep the neoliberal system going, all the time.

She rightly emphasises that cutbacks, through policy, are not the only methods:

we are constantly assailed by warnings that we cannot go on consuming. But we hardly seem to reflect upon the extraordinary way in which we get more and more out of less and less…. Less farmland is producing more food. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of famines.

p.448

there are, of course, still natural disasters. But it is by scientific and technological advance that we predict them, plan for them and cope with them. That advance occurs in free-enterprise capitalist societies, not in sclerotic socialist ones

p.448

So government planning for disaster is not impossible, and we can use science to predict such possibilities.

Before opening her section on global warming she remarks:

We should, therefore:
Recall how wrong the doomsters have been and take comfort from the fact.
Learn the lesson that as long as a free political system, a free society and a free economy are maintained, the ingenuity of mankind is boundless

p.449

That human ingenuity has been very great, does not mean that it is “boundless”, can solve all problems through uncoordinated profit driven action, that such profit driven actions can solve the problems in the time available to avoid mass suffering, or that these actions will not have unintended consequences, which require more action to remedy.

The section on global warming opens with a long footnote refering to various books and articles which she has read on the matter and which have persuaded her. Non of these writings are by climate scientists, or from scientific publishers, or scientific journals. They are all from corporately sponsored neoliberal think tanks, such as the Reason Public Policy Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Centre for the New Europe, and the Institute of Economic Affairs.

These are ‘research’ establishments, who’s results and opinions can be predicted in advance. They largely appear to say what their sponsors require. It could be suggested that these documents serve primarily propaganda purposes, and aim to oppose ‘action on climate change’ to ‘capitalism’, and suggest any planned climate action must represent dictatorial socialism. They do this to defend the established corporate profit of their sponsors. It is, perhaps surprising, that the Baroness decided to listen to them, rather than to scientists in the field. But, these neoliberal thinkers are her primary in-group, and if it was possible to stop her identifying with scientists and get her to completely identify with neoliberalism then that would make science less persuasive to her.

“The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.

p.449

There is no reason to assume that while global action might provide a “marvelous excuse” for socialism, it could not also provide an equally marvelous excuse for encouraging transnational capitalism to work its supposed magic – unless one of the prime directives of neoliberalism is liberty for the transnational corporation from any form of responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

She gives some examples of exaggeration.

President Clinton on a visit to China, which poses a serious strategic challenge to the US, confided to his host, President Jiang Zemin, that his greatest concern was the prospect that ‘your people may get rich like our people, and instead of riding bicycles, they will drive automobiles, and the increase in greenhouse gases will make the planet more dangerous for all.

p.450

While all Chinese driving petrol fueled cars does present a real problem, the actual remark seems unlikely and her source is an article in the American Spectator rather than any government record. But rather than dismiss recognition of the problem as foolish, we should wonder what the solution might be, or at least wonder how we might avoid the problem. Previous versions of Thatcher might have recognised this as a problem requiring governmental help to overcome.

She then refers to Al Gore saying:

‘I believe that our civilisation is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.’ And he warns: ‘Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilisation and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.’

p.450

This is possibly true. It looks more likely to be true now, than might have done then, but the statements are not that incompatible with statements in Thatcher’s own speeches. She was, at one stage, able to wonder if all economic activity was compatible with survival.

The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes.

p.450

These comments do not seem that ridiculous, or to be dismissed on the word of some pro-corporate think tank, without further evidence.

She remarks she was active in the anti-chloroflurocarbons debate, and successful. But the greenhouse gas effect “was a more difficult issue, because the science was much less certain.” As we have seen, she had always recognised this uncertainty worked both ways. By 2000 the climate science was far more certain, but perhaps she had not read it, becoming more interested in defending neoliberal capitalism than in the science?

I was more sceptical of the arguments about global warming, though I considered that they should be taken very seriously…. there was, in fact, rather little scientific advice available to political leaders from those experts who were doubtful of the global warming thesis…. By the end of my time as Prime Minister I was also becoming seriously concerned about the anti-capitalist arguments which the campaigners against global warming were deploying…

p.451-2

That some “other side” is facing a problem by advancing their own arguments in their normal fashion does not seem an excuse to argue the problem is not real. It should give people an opportunity to present better policies, and to defeat that other side yet again.

the choice might appear to be between preservation of the climate and preservation of prosperity. This is, of course, how left-of-centre opinion wished and still wishes to portray it

p.451

“Might appear” is not the same as “must appear.” Does she have to accept this supposed left-of-centre opinion as the only possible approach? Again why not recognise the problem and present better arguments?

Personally, I’m inclined to wonder if the issue was not politicised by the neoliberal think tanks, who wanted it to seem like the political action of defending capitalism and capitalist ‘liberty’ was incompatible with the political action of dealing with climate change. If so, then they succeeded, but there may be no necessary incompatibility; that would have been a possible approach, if you were not primarily interested in preserving fossil fuel corporation profits.

She moves on to illustrate the bias of anti-global warming arguments and their anti-capitalism.

When President Bush anounced the US would not sign the Kyoto Protocol.

“The French Environment Minister said, ‘Mr Bush’s unilateral attitude is entirely provocative and irresponsible’.
[While the EU Environment commissioner] issued dark if unspecified threats against US business [and] Britain’s own Environment Minister.. described the American decision as ‘exceptionally serious’ [but ruled out sanctions].

p.452

Whether you believe in the perfections of capitalism, or not, these comments seem pretty mild. They didn’t involve much more than an expression of disappointment that the President of the world’s biggest economy was going to put the possible future of the world on hold and thereby disrupt the pretty minor global action and promises required by the Kyoto Protocol. There is nothing necessarily anti-capitalist, or unreasonable, about objecting to this.

Kyoto was an anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project

p.453

This is an assertion and no evidence is presented. The US was then the world’s biggest economy and, both at that moment and historically, was the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Given this, it does have more responsibility than other relatively low emitters, and this means, that it has more actions to take and more wealth to take those actions. Kyoto is only anti-capitalist to the extent that neoliberalism supports capitalism without responsibility or honour.

in matters of public policy it is as important to recognise what we don’t know as what we do… The golden rule is: all government interventions are problematic, so intervene only when the case is fully proven

p.453

We do not know for sure, it is not fully proven, that Capitalism can solve this problem. The passage of events since Statescraft was published implies it cannot, yet we still do not act. Previously Thatcher recognised that the results of global warming could be worse than predicted; we are by its very nature, going into uncharted territory and do not know exactly what is going to happen.

She argues, referring to “some experts,” that the long term trend of warming is “not relevant to current concerns” (P.453). Presumably these are experts from the think tanks, not climate scientists. Again this case is not proven. However what Thatcher did not say is also significant, in terms of contemporary denial. She did not say that scientists were part of a conspiracy, that the science was being faked, or that the science itself was biased by leftist politics.

Secondly, CO2 is not the only greenhouse gase “so exclusive concentration on CO2… is bound to mislead.” (p.454)

This position is probably true. However, it means we should deal with all greenhouse gases, not just CO2. We should in fact return to Thatcher’s earlier position that there is a general systemic issue with ecological destruction and change. Climate change is not the only problem.

Third

There is now, as always, nothing that the liberal intelligentsia likes to believe more than that ‘we are all guilty’ But are we? The facts are unclear.

p.455

So what if this is true? And it is not proven. This does not change the problem. That the problem may harmonise with biases in some intelligensia (clearly she is not talking about the neoliberal think-tank intelligensia here) does not mean it is necessarily untrue. It does not mean we should stop research, stop looking at the latest research or try to mock research by real scientists, that you disagree with.

She remarks that the IPCC report “is a great deal more tentative than some alarmist assertions” (p.455). Previously she could admit that getting scientists to agree on a general proposition was difficult. The reports are likely to be tentative, by their nature.

Carbon dioxide levels have increase as a component of the atmosphere by nearly 30 per cent since the late eighteenth century, probably because of past deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. But in any one year most CO2 production is not related to human beings

p.455

The question is whether this issue of the smallness of yearly human production of CO2 is relevant. Essentially, she mentions the importance of the cumulative effect of emissions since the late eighteenth century to dismiss it.

In fact, less than 5 per cent of the carbon moving through the atmosphere stems directly from human sources – again mainly: burning fossil fuels and deforestation….

p.455-6

She previously understood that small persistant changes can have complex consequences. Now she apparently does not. Things become simple and linear.

“The more closely one examines specific proposals to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere by emission controls alone, the more costly and economically damaging they become.

P.456

In that case, the sensible thing to do is to suggest better procedures. She has been prepared to engage in economic distortion and taxpayer subsidy when she considered it useful in the past, so why not now? Cost is never an excuse to do nothing. Surely we can rely on the ingenuity of capitalists to deal with the costs? Perhaps it will spur them into action?

The problem of acceptable costs, is acceptable to whom? Is people being driven from their homes by rising sea levels, drought or unbearable temperatures an acceptable cost of keeping profits high?

it will be be necessary to resolve many remaining uncertainties before risking action that makes the world poorer than it would otherwise be by restraining economic growth…

p.457

Apparently, for her, there is no imaginable paradigm in which capitalism could flourish without growth, and so we must be completely certain before acting against something which would likely cost economic growth. What would allow such certainty is not described.

Climate change doe not “mean the end of the world: and it must not either mean the end of free-enterprise capitalism”

There is no reason it should – if pro-capitalists are prepared to engage with the problem, or with other people.

Once her allies suggested to her that her beloved free-enterprise capitalism was being challenged by ‘socialists’ because of the problem of climate change, the Baroness appears to have suffered a major failing of confidence. She was previously famed for not backing down when she thought she was right. Here she did.

Her back down was so complete that she did not advance the case that free-enterprise should be encouraged to face up to the problem, and she did not propose non-socialist measures to deal with the problem. When faced with socialist opposition to many of her actions as PM, she continued; she did not say, “oh well we can’t do anything”.

However, faced with the apparent choice proposed by the think tanks of either pro-capitalism or action on climate change, she collapsed and allied with her mentors and supporters.

Therefore her path brings up the issue of whether it is possible for neoliberalism to actually deal with climate change or other problems, at all. At one stage she could, but the more she listened to neoliberal think-tanks the more this became impossible.

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Baroness Thatcher and Climate Change: The Beginning of Problems

February 26, 2020

I have shown that, for at least three years, Baroness Thatcher had a consistently pro-active, public approach to climate change. This needs more elaboration by reportage of her behaviour in Parliament, and through the legislation she supported, but it could be possible to argue that her position got stronger as she went along. Despite uncertainties in our knowledge, she stated that: it was better to be precautionary; it was wise to listen to scientists; governments had to act and make policy; economic action should not destroy the environment and the future prosperity of our grandchildren; economic growth could help fund the changes; we all had to act together, and; prosperous countries had to help less prosperous countries avoid the mistakes ‘we’ had made.

However by her 2002 book Statescraft she had retreated from all these positions. The problem is to explain the path she followed.

This post will start to study the transition by briefly mentioning a few speeches from the period after her Prime Ministership, and then look at her 1993 autobiography The Downing Street Years. Another post will consider Statescraft, as this post is long enough, already.

The general argument is that she was becoming concerned that environmentalism and climate action was socialist in orientation, and that rather than propose a neoliberal and non-socialist solution, she began to retreat away from plans for action, into a hope that largely unregulated markets would solve the problem. There was to be no inhibition to economic growth or corporate liberty. This was not the only response she could have taken.

In the long run, it appears that neoliberalism cannot deal with environmental catastrophe, without losing its prioritising of corporate liberty and support for established corporations. The theory is so restrictive that it does not have enough ‘solution generating’ capacity for the neoliberal world to survive.

Some Post PM Speeches

A speech the ex-prime minister gave to the South African Institute of International Affairs, is short, but clearly presents one problem for the later Thatcher’s relationship to environmental policy, namely the issue of economic growth. She begins by acknowledging the importance of international action and the reality of climate change. She is not yet dismissive of this. But there is another more important reality to be acknowledged.

There is much to be done to tackle the causes of climatic change and to curb pollution. And it requires action at the international level. At least as important, though, is for individual countries and communities to take pride in and conserve their own particular environmental legacies and treasures.

Perhaps the most important truth we should bear in mind, however, is that conservation of whatever kind is costly: and so wealth must be created to pay for it. It is, therefore, a romantic myth—and indeed a dangerous falsehood—to claim that economic progress must result in environmental destruction. 

22 May 1991

It is perhaps surprising, then, not to hear claims that representative governments must regulate to ensure that ‘economic progress’ and wealth creation is not destructive to the environment we need to survive, or is compatible with such environmental survival. Such a point seems to have been more amenable to her in the past. But if her neoliberalism is biased towards maintaining corporate liberty to do whatever they like at any cost to others then perhaps it is not.

A post-autobiography speech in San Paulo, Brazil, makes a similar argument, even diminishing Brazils efforts to conserve what have been called the ‘lungs of the world’:

It is our task to help people out of poverty to a more rewarding and fuller life. And impressed as I am by the efforts that Brazil is making to conserve its ecological heritage and indeed the world’s environment through effective management of the rain forest, I am not one of those who thinks that we have to give up on growth and dash the hopes of those who depend on it for a better future.

16 Mar 1994

The speech goes on to attack wealth redistribution which

involves high taxation and sometimes confiscation, both of which penalise the very effort and talent that we need to build up more business, thereby providing more jobs and creating more wealth.

16 Mar 1994

In a speech to people at Leningrad State University, while stating the importance of international action, comes down to blaming socialism for the problems.

all the nations of the world have a duty to to tackle the threats to our environment. There is much to be done to deal with the causes of climatic change and to curb pollution. And it requires action at an international level. But we also must observe that it is the socialist countries which geared their industries to meeting production targets rather than to satisfying customers, unfree systems which neither respected human rights nor nature itself, which are the principle culprits. And it will be the advanced technology and the new wealth generated by free enterprise which will provide the means of restoring the world’s environment.

29 May 1991

A talk to Japanese youth, shortly after the speech in South Africa, makes similar points.

It is only in recent years that we have begun to understand how seriously we have together upset the balance of nature. Acid rain, the threat to the ozone layer, global warming—these are problems which have to be overcome by international cooperation. And never has the international community worked together more closely than in meeting the threat to our global environment.

But the point I would most like to make to you today is that sound science, not sentimentality, must be the basis of our approach. And the system best able to develop that science, most willing to apply it and best able to generate the wealth required to pay for it is free enterprise. Green socialism is no more an answer to the world’s environmental needs than was the smoke-stack socialism of Eastern Europe which poisoned our rivers, disfigured our buildings and rotted our forests.

5 Sep 1991

It appears that she is starting to consider that maintaining the neoliberal economic system is more important that maintaining the ecological system, and that the system as a whole will ideally solve its own problems through wealth generation. Science should not clash with neoliberal priorities. This ‘invisible hand’ of God fantasy, is something we have learnt is idealism at best, delusion at worst. Baroness Thatcher appears to be polarising the environmental debate, for her own rhetorical and thinking purposes, so that a complex discussion is reduced to a dispute between: a) total ‘green’ control, and stifling of prosperity (‘smokestack socialism’), and b) leaving the environment to unregulated markets. This is not a logical, practical, or inevitable division. It is certainly not the only position which could be taken. While it apparently makes clarity, it seems to be an unrealistic, or unreal, clarity that obscures reality.

The Autobiography: The Downing Street Years (1993)

Her Autobiography must have been being written in the late years of the her rule and more or less immediately immediately after her loss of the leadership of the Conservatives on the 28th November 1990. It usually takes quite a while to prepare a book this thick, with possible legal consequences, for publication. Consequently, the contents may be earlier than some of the speeches quoted above, and could be more moderate. The Conservatives continued in government under John Major, until Labor gained government in 1997 under Tony Blair. So it was addressed to a still Tory UK.

The relevant section of the book is entitled ‘Science and the Environment.’ It is only a few pages long.

It begins:

“In 1988 and 1989 there was a great burst of public interest in the environment. Unfortunately, under the green environmental umbrella sheltered a number of only slightly connected issues”

p.638.

She separates these issues into four:

1) “concern for the local environment… essentially and necessarily a matter for the local community”

2) “overdevelopment of the countryside” [but this is simple] “If people were to be able to afford houses there must be sufficient amounts of building land available…”

p.638

There is a slight contradiction here, as point 2 does not imply a particular respect for local environments, or for allowing the community to make descisions which conflict with the interests of developers, but it is a difficult position. If you support, what others call over-development, then you cannot support local control. The Baroness sides with developers, does not push the issue, and possibly is unaware of the problem.

3) “standard of Britains’s drinking water, rivers and sea.” [This is actively being remedied as can be seen by the] “return of healthy and abundant fish to the Thames, Tyne, Wear and Tees” and

4) [Atmospheric pollution]

p.638-9

She feels it necessary to separate issue 4 from the others as follows:

“I always drew a clear distinction bewteen these ‘environmental’ concerns and the quite separate question of atmospheric pollution. For me the proper starting point in formulating policy… was science. There had always to be a sound scientific base on which to build – and of course a clear estimation of the cost in terms of public expenditure and economic growth foregone.”

p.639

In this book the Baroness appears to consider the possibility of foregoing economic growth to solve a problem, or cost to the taxpayer – not perhaps as desirable, but as possible. It seems the cost should be known in advance for planning purposes, and to help judge actions, and not because some any cost will be considered too great for action. She is indicating politics is about practicable balance.

She then talks about science in general. There are two problems with science funding in the UK:

1) [Too much funding is directed at defence] and
2) “too much emphasis was being give to the development of produces for the market rather than to pure science… As someone with a scientific background, I knew that the greatest economic benefits of scientific research had always resulted from advances in fundamental knowledge”

p.639

In this passage she appears to be identifying with ‘pure’ scientists, and her past career/education. The example she gives is also illuminating, and indicates her sense of participation in the scientific process.

“It was, for example, the British Antarctic Survey which discovered a large hole in the ozone layer… I took the closest personal interest as the scientific evidence was amassed and analysed.”

p.640

This progresses to the problem of climate change, and the whole passage should be quoted at length.

“‘Global Warming’ was another atmospheric threat which required the application of hard-headed scientific principles. The relationship between the industrial emission of carbon dioxide… and climate change was a good deal less certain than the relationship between CFCs and ozone depletion. Nuclear power production did not produce carbon dioxide – nor did it produce the gases which led to acid rain.. However, this did not attract the environmental lobby towards it: instead they used the concern about global warming to attack capitalism, growth and industry.”

p.640

We here see the beginning of a problem… The science was not absolutely certain as to the intensity of the effect, something she admitted earlier, but then she also admitted the effects could be worse than predicted. However, the environmental lobby was apparently attacking the basis of neoliberalism.

She does not give any examples of these attacks on “capitalism, growth and industry”. The Soviet Union had collapsed so they were not promoting any effective position at all. China would not release its first “National Climate Change Assessment Report” until 2007, and while this needs more research from me, was not interested in the early 1990s – certainly it seems unlikely China would have been interested in attacks on growth and industry. As far as I can tell the attacks are also not coming from Labor in Australia, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in the US, or Labour under Neil Kinnock or John Smith. The so-called ‘Climate Justice Movement’ is usually said not to arise until 1999 or later. Nuclear energy has been a subject of dispute since the 1950s: it is not loved by everyone other than environmentalists. So these attacks, other than anti-nuclear movement (which was usually not an attack on capitalism, but on the use of radio-activity), were not mainstream and they were unlikely to affect policy.

Later in the book she writes about nuclear power and the need for it, and the cost to the taxpayer and electricity customer, with little sign of hesitation.

I felt it was essential to keep up the development of nuclear power. The real cost of nuclear energy compared with other energy sources is often overrated. Coal-fired power stations pour out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and no one has yet put a credible figure on what it will ultimately cost to deal with the resulting problem of global warming.

p.684

Here she can admit a cost for not dealing with climate change. She remarks that using nuclear energy would lead to higher charges for customers, but “This was tolerable if not popular.” The costs of decommissioning nuclear power meant they had to be “removed from the privatization” of electricity, and the costs of the decommissioning born by the taxpayers (p.685).

This shows that Mrs. Thatcher’s neoliberalism can run to interference in the economy and added prices to consumers, if it seems necessary for the nation or, if one is less kind, it is necessary to support an established industry, or the selling off of public goods to the private sector. The point is, that whatever the interpretation, Thatcher did sometimes believe the government (and consumers) can absorb costs if necessary for a project’s success.

Despite these reservations about the possible actions of unnamed environmentalists, she worked on her Royal Society speech for two weekends, and expected significant coverage as it was important. So we can assume that speech reflected her considered views and was meant to be widely heard and discussed.

In her autobiography, she quotes one abridged passage from that speech:

For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself…..

In studying the system of the earth and its atmosphere we have no laboratory in which to carry out controlled experiments. We have to rely on observations of natural systems. We need to identify particular areas of research which will help to establish cause and effect. We need to consider in more detail the likely effects of change within precise timescales. And to consider the wider implications for policy—for energy production, for fuel efficiency, for reforestation…. We must ensure that what we do is founded on good science to establish cause and effect.

p. 640-41.

She removes references to greenhouse gases “creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability,” possible sea rises, high temperatures in the 1980s (now exceeded), the report of the British Anartic Survey, action taken against Acid rains, and “half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere”. But the general message remains.

In the prepared speech, there is a line about the brightness of the TV lights stopping her from seeing her audience. But as she said in her book:

“it is an extraordinary commentary on the lack of media interest in the subject that, contrary to my expectations, the television did not even bother to send film crews to cover the occasion”

p.640

Given that the BBC was a supposedly leftwing black beast; if they did not come, it hardly leads us to think that Climate change was a source of much interest to the left, or the subject of much leftist agitation at the time. This suggests that Thatcher was, to some extent, reacting to a phantom – but this requires more research. What groups had annoyed her or who had warned her of the problem?

Going back to her earlier discussion on science and environmentalism, she concludes that her policy on the global environment:

“went to the heart of what differentiated my approach from the of the socialists… economic progress, scientific advance… themselves offered the means to overcome threats to individual and collective well being. For the socialist each new discovery revealed a ‘problem’ for which the repression of human activity by the state was the only ‘solution’.. The scared landscape dying forests, poisoned rivers and sick children of the former communist states bear tragic testimony to which system worked better, both for people and the environment”

p.641

So without her presenting any evidence of the reality, or social power, of the dire connection of socialism and environmentalism, she was possibly becoming aware that climate change policy could be used to attack neoliberalism and her record. One possible explanation is that she was becoming aware that her record was not showing the success she had imagined, and its attraction was wearing thin, but that is purely speculative.

However, this imagined (?) anti-neoliberal movement presumably could provide neoliberals with an incentive to show how a reliance on capitalist ingenuity and adaptability, could deal with the problem. There was no need for complete retreat. Economies have rules, and realities that businesses have to deal with so we would expect capitalist to adapt to new rules, which might prevent ecological destruction and maintain economic growth. Thatcher’s Neoliberalism still has a way forward to climate action. Why, indeed, should she let these unnamed ‘socialists’ take the high ground, especially if she supported the better system?

She has not yet retreated from recognition of the problem, or the need for a solution, but a pathway of retreat is possibly being indicated, and it comes directly from her assertion of neoliberalism.

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