CO2 and Drawdown technology

January 11, 2020

There is lots of new drawdown technology, which claims to be able to make plastic and fuel out of CO2 extracted from either the air, from coal power, from cow farts and so on. I’m not being sarcastic about the cow farts, that is apparently a real claim (although I doubt it is functional).

The argument seems to be that as this tech exists, and people seem to keep demanding new electricity, we can happily extend, or increase, the use of fossil fuels and be ok with any ‘temporary’ increase in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

To me there seem to be a number of problems with this approach.

1) We seem to be perilously close to massive tipping points. This is vitally important:

  • If we get a run of summers like the one we have just had in Australia (and there is no reason to assume that we will not, as the trend for average temperatures has been increasing steadily over the last 20 years), then, we will have little surviving natural bush, we will have no place for the bush fauna, and we will lose a large number of our farmers, for economic and fertility reasons. We have almost certainly lost some normally non-inflammable rainforest forever.
  • The fires have come close to increasing Australia’s carbon emissions to 175% of normal.
  • The fires have significantly reduced our natural extraction of CO2. We hope that regrowth will compensate, but regrowth could be problematic and slow (See previous post).
  • Rivers and creeks will continue to breakdown and dry up. The water supply situation will get worse. Fish and other fresh water creatures will continue to die. Local food supplies for people outback will decline.
  • It is highly probable, that large numbers of Aboriginal people (and other outback based people), will no longer be able to live on their land, or maintain their ways of life.
  • Other countries are likely to follow a similar course. Australia is just more sensitive to global warming than most other places, we are a country of erratic weather, droughts, floods and storms.
  • The permafrost is melting elsewhere in the world, due to global heating. There is thought to be a large amount of methane and other green house gases stored in the permafrost. If so, there will come a time when this gas starts to leak. Some reports suggest this is already happening. When it does, climate turmoil will accelerate even more rapidly than it is doing. It is extremely likely that the resulting weather changes will affect the world disastrously.
  • There are other effects which will accelerate as well, but you probably already know this.

Summary: We cannot afford to increase the amounts of Greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere.

If we increase GHG emissions we are heading for destruction. It is that simple.

We need to lower emissions now and we need drawdown of CO2 from the atmosphere now. Technological drawdown is a great idea in principle. Whether it is currently useful is another issue.

2) Historically, drawdown technology has not eventuated, but the promise of drawdown technology has been used to increase GHG emissions: “Soon we will be able to extract all this, and fossil fuels will be clean!”

In Australia, the government has given the fossil fuel industry significant amounts of money to build this technology.

  • The coal industry largely used the money for dinners and promotion of coal. No vaguely working extraction and drawdown technology emerged. Naturally they did not have to pay the money spent on parties and promotion back.
  • Some gas companies did some work, but this was primarily to use extracted CO2 to push more gas out of wells. The successes in extraction, or storage, were minor, or significantly less than the increased emissions, arising from the use of the field.
  • No commercially useful long term, non-propaganda, successes were reported, or implemented outside the test sites.

3) It is possible that the empty promises of drawdown tech are not essential to the talk about it any more. We may even have working tech. If so, the basic conditions for acceptable working tech are:

  • If it is making fuel, then the total amount of energy consumed is considerably less than the amount of energy emitted (ie it has an Energy Return on Energy Input greater than 1).
  • If making plastic or any other substance, then it has to have significantly less emissions than the normal production of the substances, and it has to be economically competitive with recycling and normal production. If it is massively more expensive, then it will not be deployed, or be deployed as a novelty, or demonstration of capacity to be discontinued when the costs do not come down.
  • If we are storing the extracted CO2, then we have to be able to test the stored CO2 for escape into the atmosphere. If such tests are impossible then storage should not be undertaken. Theory of success is not enough.
  • If extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere, then the technology has to be able to deal with the small amounts of CO2 in real atmospheres and again not be dependent, in any way, on GHG emitting sources of energy.
  • It should be competitive with reforestation, regenerative agriculture, or education of women, over the long term, otherwise let’s use an existing (simpler) working technology.
  • Technical data and the results of experiment has to be freely available. In most of the sites dealing with the new tech, the technical data seems to be mainly hype, based on assumptions of success. They rarely tell you current data. Sometimes there is no technical data at all. This may not be the case about every product, but it is common enough that we cannot assume it is not the case in advance.
  • Independent testing is needed before we risk the technology’s use for GHG reduction.

Summary: We cannot assume, without thorough investigation, that the hype about drawdown technology is accurate, and the technology is ready for commercial or effective layout now rather than in some distant future.

4) Given these issues, if we are to increase the amount of fossil fuels we use, for whatever reason, then we need to be sure that:

  • We reduce the use of other fossil fuels so that the amount of GHG emissions does not increase.
  • If the drawdown technology is being used to extract new fossil fuels, or otherwise unviable fossil fuels, then the total levels of emission (including those from burning the fossil fuels extracted) has to be zero or less; otherwise we are increasing emissions.
  • Drawdown tech has to be installed, thoroughly tested, and shown to be viable, before any new emissions get released. AND we measure the drawdown accurately, and make sure there is no escape.
  • We increase the fossil fuel emissions by less than we are actually drawing down through tech now, so the emissions trend really is downwards.
  • We do not increase the fossil fuel energy supply, or GHG emissions, to power the drawdown technology.

If drawdown technology is ready and functional, then these conditions should seem fairly straightforward. If these conditions seem onerous, then the drawdown technology is not ready, and we need to stop increasing GHG emissions now. The easiest way to stop increasing emissions is to stop increasing fossil fuel based power.

5) We should spend the limited amounts of money, and energy available, primarily refining technology we already have that works to reduce emissions now. If that includes drawdown tech that meets the criteria above, then great.

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Bushfire Regeneration

January 11, 2020

We are having incredibly intense and widespread bushfires in Australia. Figures suggest that the fires have been much bigger than those in the Amazon, earlier in the year. Some sources say the area of land burnt is equal to 10.7 million hectares which is 26 million acres, 107,000 square km, or 41,000 square miles. I’ve seen maps comparing the size of the areas burnt to Ireland or Belgium. The fires are still burning and not yet over. [Figures a few weeks later suggest burning of over 17 million hectares, when we include the Northern Territory. Over a billion animals may have died. More than 700 species may now be extinct.]

Everyone knows that bushfires are part of the natural cycle in Australia. Some plants need the fires to re-germinate and so on.

My question, because I don’t know the answer, is a simple one. Is it possible to have a fire so intense and widespread that it destroys this capacity for regeneration and new plant growth?

It seems reasonable to assume that if the temperature is too great for too long, seed pods and buried seeds could be killed, or just burnt up. Trees whose canopies might be normally expected to survive the fires, are burnt and their seeds along with them.

Ash can also seem to harden into a solid which covers the soil, and may protect it from blown in seeds, and remove the circulation of molecules between air and soil. I’ve seen this form of ash in fire zones before.

Birds spread seeds through their excreta. If most of the birds die in the fire (and I think they may have, because normally in bush fires the city is colonised by bush birds and I have not seen this happen this year), then this cannot happen.

Animals also spread seeds, and disturb the earth and the ash cover. They eat excess seeds thinning the forest and clear the leaf litter and lower the fuel load, by burrying it in the soil. Normally the soil in Australian forests is turned over, made soft, permeated by water (when available) and made full of nutrients by the activities of small mammals.

these mammals punch above their weight. A digging mammal can shift around 1.8-3.6 tonnes of soil per kilogram of body mass in a year. A woylie – a bettong from Western Australia – creates between 20 and 100 diggings per night while foraging, while a southern brown bandicoot can excavate over 3.9 tonnes of soil per year.

Fleming 2013

The loss of these mammals to intense fire, or to an influx of feral predators (before or after the fires), is likely to slow, or event prevent forest regeneration. Certainly these animals will take a long time to breed to normal levels in a hostile low nutrition environment.

Insects, native bees and so on, which can normally keep out of the fires, may not have been able to. In which case pollination is not going to happen, and any surviving plants will not reproduce. Certainly they will not reproduce rapidly. Termites, ants and so on which are vital to the ecology, as they decompose fallen timber, may also not survive, and take a long time to recolonise the burnt areas. It is possible for termite mounds to bake solid.

Fertile soil is composed of dead things, plus micro-organisms (plus rock dust etc). It is the micro-organisms that generally make it ‘work’, without those micro-organisms it is just dirt and dead things. The system of micro-organisms is generally quite complex. If they die in the heat, then the soil can be less fertile, more like a desert. I’ve no idea what it takes for bush soil to support larger forms of life, but it could be affected by severe enough fire.

Ecologies are systems, and all the parts of the ecology have a part to play in maintaining (and sometimes disrupting) that ecology. If a whole section of the ecology is dead, then regeneration may be far more difficult, as the system is no longer working in the same way.

This level of disruption of the bush breeding cycle, or resilience cycle, may mean that invasive species, at the margins of the bush, may get a massive hold on bush fire zones, before anything else can grow back, and Australia’s ecology could change for ever.

Changes in climate, if they continue (and there is no reason to assume they will not), will alter the potential and dynamics of ecologies. We may not be able to replace what we have lost. Other arrangements of flora and fauna could be encouraged by the new weather patterns and, if so, then everything will be different.

If any of this is so, then I suspect it may be dangerous to just leave the areas to regenerate by themselves. As a friend of mine said we might have to aim “at creating pockets of sustainability for the bush and wildlife,” so life forms can spread out from these pockets to produce the bush we used to know.

Hazzard reduction burning, even traditional burning, by itself, without a working ecology of other creatures will likely disrupt the process of regeneration, and may even produce greater hazards.

I don’t know.

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Energy crisis

January 8, 2020

Another big update of an earlier set of comments about an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the Energy Crisis, which is at the place of the original article. Basically, the article seems determined to excuse the Coalition, or sidestep around their political commitments to fossil fuels, and the author ignores the ecological crisis which is both largely caused by the energy being used, and impacts on our problems with energy.

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A failed theory

January 8, 2020

I’ve said similar things before, but neoliberal, supposedly free market economics, has not delivered the liberty, prosperity, general well-being or efficiency and responsiveness, that was promised and is still promised.

We have had 40 years of neoliberalism, and the world is getting worse. As a theory it has failed completely.

The Results

Neoliberalism has delivered:

  • massive taxpayer support for wealthy corporations;
  • tax cuts for wealthy people;
  • suppression of unions and workers’ representation;
  • cutbacks in government services to ordinary people;
  • the purchase of politicians and policy by wealth;
  • alienation of ordinary people from political processes, as their input is largely ignored, unless it can be made to support the power of wealth;
  • growing inequality of wealth distribution with lower amounts of GDP going to workers, and more going to the very wealthy;
  • wealth inequality reinforces dominance of politics by wealth and alienation of people from participation;
  • massive military spending provided by taxpayers;
  • privatisation of publicly owned property and loss of control or protection over that property;
  • privatised services which are less helpful and more punitive;
  • corporatised bureaucracy with no freedom for lower levels to actually help people;
  • economic instability and crashes;
  • larger and longer term unemployment;
  • increased insecurity of work, with longer working hours, and more vulnerability to the employer’s whims (market discipline for workers, subsidies for large corporations);
  • a precarious middle class which may well see its children being worse off than they were, and;
  • a tendency for business to become monopolies.

It has also delivered corruption of truth, as information gets dominated by corporate PR, deception and hype.

Corporately funded ‘science’ is not independent of profit drives and thus announces findings which supports that profit, and suppresses findings which do not, thus building distrust in independent science and increasing uncertainty.

Its Successes

Neoliberalism’s main success has been to further plutocracy and the rule of wealth and misinformation, rather than rule by the people.

Wealth can buy, or shape, all other sources of power such as communication, information, laws, politicians, violence, organisation, religion, culture, rules of the markets, and so on. It does so in order to control citizens for the benefit of the powerful.

Neoliberalism limits the response to problems, as the only solution that neoliberals have for any problem is more neoliberalism, or ‘freer markets;’ more of the same which has generated our problem and which will probably make things even worse than they are now.

Given that neoliberals find it difficult to justify the results they have achieved in terms of their predictions and promises, they have to blame others and start culture wars to build loyalties, and prevent discussion.

Neoliberals seem incapable of taking responsibility for any of their actions, which is not surprising as the corporation has been designed to avoid responsibility, starting with limited liability and finishing with massive bonuses for apparently incompetent CEOs. There prime action is to always blame other (usually less powerful) people.

Neoliberalism is one reason we have not dealt with climate change, because action threatens the profits of powerful and profit-driven fossil fuel corporations.

Conclusion

The neoliberal experiment has been a complete disaster almost everywhere it has been applied. If these are the results of 40 years of application, we can assume that the theory has been applied, tested and found wanting.

However, as it benefits the large corporate sector and the very wealthy and, as they now control the political system and the media, it is improbable that it will be discarded, until complete social breakdown.

In order to change neoliberal destructiveness, we would have to destroy corporate power or the power of wealth, but that of course is illegal, and many people will tell you immoral. But if you don’t then you will remain governed, rather than governing.

Destroying the State, or reinstating the power of the people, without destroying the power of wealth would seem impossible.

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Thunbergs are go! 06

January 5, 2020

I’ve just been sent another document about Greta Thunberg, arguing against “this teenager who had the audacity to reprimand others!!! – rather hypocritical of her!”

I should probably begin by stating that I do not know why a teenager should not reprimand adults. How many people never complained about adult politics when they were young? Are adults sacred or something? What on earth is hypocritical about criticizing other people, their actions or ideas? Is it hypocritical to criticize a teenage girl for accepting help?

Anyway, the author makes a number of points against Thunberg, but one problem is that, in the version of the post I have seen, they give absolutely no evidence for their assertions at all, so let’s just see if the arguments hang together.

1) “She is backed by a number of Swedish/Swiss venture/vulture capital funds focused to investing in green technologies.“

If true, so what? Denial is sponsored by large companies interested in preserving fossil fuels. There is massive amounts of evidence about this. Would you not expect other corporations to join in the discussions and throw money at it, as well?

2) “She was chosen from a number of young Swedish girls to represent their interests, trained and given information to start espousing.”

Again, no evidence and again, so what? Personally I would not choose someone on the Autistic/aspergers spectrum to train and manipulate because, knowing specialist teachers in this field, I know this is bloody hard and the results are highly unpredictable; she is likely to get annoyed and reveal all, for one. ‘People on the spectrum’ also tend to wind people up and annoy them, which Thunberg does. Lots of people tell me they don’t like her manner, or her tone, (again so what?). Not a good object choice for a conspiracy.

There is also no evidence that she could not find information herself. After all, its not that hard to find real scientific reports, or comments on those reports, no matter how difficult this seems for those commentators who prefer anonymous youtube videos.

3) She got an audience with the UN through a high powered marketing campaign, but “the 500 scientists, from around the world, who sent a letter to the UN did not gain an audience.“

This is perhaps the most significant point. The UN will not listen to scientists. The UN did have a panel of young people, and Thunberg was an obvious choice for that panel as she is well known, people would comment if she was not there. You don’t need a marketing campaign to do this.

4) “She slammed my generation and generations previously. We stole her childhood. A script written for her by the German marketing firm. Her childhood is like it is because of the sacrifice of a previous generation, many of whom lie buried in fields in Europe.“

Most of the generation who lie buried in the fields of Europe would be in their 80s and 90s if they were alive, which I think demonstrates the point here. This person is not reliable even for facts we all know. Most of the people in power are younger than mid sixties, they were not participants in the war. They may not have sacrificed particularly much.

No evidence is given that her speech was written by a marketing firm, and the idea of generational conflict is widely promoted by the media, probably in an effort to diffuse the idea of class conflict, or the conflict between the hyper-wealthy corporate sector and everyone else. So it is not inconceivable that she thought of the generation idea herself, without deliberate help.

Again people often complain about the emotional deadness of her speeches. They do not seem to have been written by marketeers who know more about humans and what is persuasive. Furthermore, she basically never gives ‘solutions’ which you would expect her to do if she was a passive tool of a conspiracy.

5) “She then gets used again by political leaders for photo op’s. Shame on our political leaders. The fact that she got face to face time should be abhorrent to countries.”

Sorry, but how is the fact she gets used for photo ops by some leaders her fault, or evidence of conspiracy? Some politicians abuse her and ignore her, is that similar evidence of something foul?

And why is it abhorrent that a relatively ordinary person gets face time with leaders and talks to them? Is it being claimed a person should be a billionaire, or a massive celebrity before any face to face contact, or that they should do it in secret because they represent some fossil fuel company?

6) “She leads schools protest march another photo op for greedy politicians, take part. Her ability to protest rests solely with the sacrifice of other generations.“

She occasionally participates in or inspires school marches which leads to greedy right wing politicians and media pundits calling her names, and abusing her pretty continually for the publicity it gives them. That is more realistic.

These right wingers, try to discredit the school (and other) protests by saying they are all organised by Thunberg and a few tech billionaires, and implying that there is no anger against their refusal to act on climate change from real people – its all manipulated, and we can keep on nannying fossil fuel companies and miners.

Again, so what if her ability to protest depends upon the sacrifice of previous generations? Isn’t that what the author is implying they sacrificed their lives for? Are we only supposed to protest in support of established power?

The author also berates her for travelling by yacht and for the crew taking planes back. This is a good point, but Thunberg does not control the crewing arrangements of yachts. That is the owner’s responsibility and planning. For what it is worth, Thunberg “has renounced at least one award and numerous speaking invitations to reduce her own carbon footprint” according to wiki. So go easy on the fact she travels.

Not a particularly coherent lot of criticisms, but it does show how threatening she can appear to be to some people.

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What could the ALP have done better

January 2, 2020

OK. Someone said to me, its easy enough to criticize Joel Fitzgibbon, but what do I have to say that is constructive? Here are seven points, where Labor seems to have failed, and some simple fixes.

1) Too many policies. We should have learnt from the Right by now. Have a strong central narrative, and do not give details. Return to the strong central narrative, whenever you are questioned about details. This is what sticks in peoples’ minds.

Labor did not have a strong central narrative. Partly because of points 2 and 3, below.

2) Too many policies that seemed incoherent. You are going to fight climate change and promote coal and fracking? This does not make sense. It means both those who support coal and support climate action, think you are half hearted, and probably lying about something. Choose one side or the other, preferably climate action. Point out there are few jobs in coal. Point out that the Adani mine will use, and pollute, lots of water in a drought. Point out the Adani mine will very likely damage the great Artesian Basin, and thus damage agriculture and jobs all down the East Coast. Point out that Adani have already polluted the Great Barrier Reef. Etc. Etc. Point out climate change is not just an inconvenience but deadly and that, yes, some sacrifices might be required to fight for our children. Put forward policies to guarantee good jobs in mining areas for miners and their children. Make it clear there are good jobs in Renewables under Labor, and that people will not be abandoned.

Job and income security is important, and is not threatened by going green, but it is threatened by climate change.

3) Don’t fight an election on policies no one understands. Franking credits? No tax rebates on tax not being paid? Great idea, but how many people understood what you were talking about? Almost nobody. The majority of people were easily convinced you were somehow likely to take their pensions away, or start taxing them harshly. This made the Coalition’s day. They could lie continually, and you had no defense, because hardly anybody knew what you were talking about, and those who did know where probably not going to vote Labor anyway. I still hear people, in the media, say that you wanted to abolish tax-free earnings on shares.

You did not need this policy. If you have policies like this, introduce them when you are in power, and have the time to explain them carefully, and see what happens.

4) It does not matter what you say, the Murdoch Empire will attack you. So don’t worry about it. Give up trying to please them. Go for a coherent and memorable message.

5) Moving to the Right will not save you. Even if you vote with the Coalition 100% of the time, the Murdoch Empire will still brand you as ravening socialists or Nazis, because they like confusing the two. Moving to the Right will only loose you votes, as people move to independents or Greens. Moving to the Right, also serves to confirm that the Right are right, so people might as well vote for a real committed Right-wing party, not you.

You even have an allegory for what will happen. Malcolm Turnbull, continually gave into his hard-right Murdoch inspired acolytes, and never won their acquiescence or support. He simply received stronger demands, and their contempt, until nobody knew what he stood for or even if he stood for anything. The Empire will always behave like this. Accept it, and steer around it.

Remember the Right are fundamentally wrong, and make this point repeatedly.

Move to the Left if you want, it will help distinguish you from the others.

6) Its ok to attack the Coalition – they will attack you. You let the Coalition get away with 7 years of incompetence, stupidity and corruption. You did not even try to remind people of the continual scandals and idiocies that they brought forth. This allowed them to pretend that they had been a good government. Their narrative won, because there was no counter narrative, and because they kept blaming everything wrong on Labor. They stayed with their strong coherent (lying) narrative that Labor were high taxing and economically incompetent, something reinforced by point 3. You cannot expect, like the Coalition can, that the media will remind readers of your opponents’ stupidities (see point 4 again), so you have to make the points yourself. Repeatedly. This is not being nasty, this is trying to save Australia from more of these people.

We now have Scott Morrison who is worse than Tony Abbott, unbelievable as that seems, partly because you refused to remind people of what the Coalition are like.

7) The Greens would like to be friends. But you keep hitting them. It is easy to think you hate the Greens more than the Coalition. This goes back to point 4 – the Murdoch Empire will attack you for being green no matter what you say. So you might as well say you are the ‘sensible Greens’ or something, and demonstrate it, but yes be open about it. You are probably more likely to ally with the Greens than One Nation; at least everyone, on your side of politics, would probably hope this is true. By attacking the Greens as much as you do, you either look small minded or hypocritical. No one on the Right will believe you are not Green allies, whatever you say, so get over it. The Greens are not your party, and they won’t always agree with you. Get over that as well. Be prepared to negotiate, which you were not in 2009.

Remember it was the CFMEU and Clive Palmer, not the Greens, who actively campaigned against you in Queensland.

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Joel Fitzgibbon on the Australian Labor Party

January 1, 2020

Joel Fitzgibbon has a piece in the Herald today, as part of the debate in the Australian Labor party about what it should do to win back government, after its amazing loss. It does not seem to be particularly well thought out, and is probably based on the massive swing against him in an electorate with a big coal industry, which he has blamed on the party being too green.

He starts by mentioning the difficulty of satisfying traditional voters and the “more recently arrived progressive followers.”

By more recent progressives, he presumably means the people who voted for Whitlam in the early 1970s, or even earlier. These people are not recent. They are not an add on, by any normal measure. That he thinks they are, is rather strange in itself.

He is “against a creep to the left,” a creep which seems improbable, given the party’s steady move to the right from the Hawke and Keating days onwards, and the steady loss of union power.

The centre is now what would have been called centre right in those days. Even the Conservative Menzies would be considered a rabid left-winger if people approached his writings without preconceptions, as he thought that people had a right to social security without harassment.

Fitzgibbon wants to win back blue collar workers, which is fair enough – if he had evidence that Labor lost significant numbers of blue collar voters anywhere other than Queensland, where a union was fighting against them.

Some data on Blue collar workers… Randomly picked, and a little old, so I need something better, but…..

29% of people in the labour force are blue-collar workers. This is not much of a base to base your hopes on, when you have close to 100% of all working age and older people voting.

Blue collar workers are apparently under-represented in social service groups, cultural groups and school groups. So they are probably not party members of union members. So they will be hard to get loyalty from. If they are relatively low wage, they will want some wage security, which is not something he mentions as important.

He thinks it is important to reject the Greens, despite the Greens’ firm alliance with Julia Gillard, and their general alliance with Kevin Rudd. It was not the Greens fault that Rudd was deposed, or that Gillard was deposed. It is not clear, why if climate is a priority, then more intensely separating from the Greens than Labor currently does (which is pretty intensely), should also be a priority, unless Labor had better climate and environmental policies – which I doubt it has.

One way of keeping both blue collar and professional voters might be to be separate from the Greens, but make it clear that the Greens are potential allies, and that Labor will not allow greening to diminish jobs; even though there is actually little evidence that being green would lower either jobs or wages. At the moment, anyone with any concern about environment is not going to give Labor their first preference – especially not given his leader’s ongoing promotion of coal and Fitzgibbon’s next proposals

He seems to think that refusing to support increasing oil, gas and coal mines and exports and incidentally killing water supplies and fertility, is the same as “turning our backs on resources-sector workers”, but it is not. It would be if you did not have plans to replace jobs with equally high paying work, or if you did not realise that mining jobs are in decline in any case. As I’ve said before, there are almost no mining jobs in the mega-Adani mine.

I guess this refusal to go against mining corporations is Labor’s official position but it does not have to be. We do not have to destroy our ecology in order to give people good work, and interestingly the survey above states “blue-collar workers gain less meaning from their work than other people gain from theirs.” So they may not be enamoured of their jobs, just of having work and income. It may not be sensible to defend jobs which are both boring and dangerous.

Again, part of Labor’s problem may be that the workforce does see that Labor abandoned them when it introduced the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 90s which may well have led to stagnant wages, house price increases, increasing inequality, cut backs in services and so on. Certainly I could imagine that people might not think Labor had any solutions to these problems. His idea that “Hawke and Keating proved Labor can promote and defend these causes without walking away from our traditional base” is probably delusional.

He then promotes religion: “People of faith worshipping in Eltham expect the same respect and freedoms as those worshipping in Everton.” Strangely the survey quoted above reports blue collar workers are even less religious than most other Australians. So you may put your supposed base off by becoming more overtly religious and granting religious people privileges to interfere in other people’s lives on the grounds of religion – which is what the religious freedom debate seems to be attempting to do.

Finally “Labor has the policy wit to remain a leader on climate change policy while also supporting our coal miners and those who work in the petroleum sector.” Unfortunately this is just an aspiration; he gives no evidence for this assertion, and no inkling of what policies might be involved. He doesn’t even wave his hands about. This is a particular failing given the Black November/December fires, and it puts him on a level with the PM.

Labor needs to show that it understands the ecological precariousness of agriculture and water in this country, and how these are repeatedly threatened by mining, and how Labor is going to act without threatening numbers of jobs or incomes, and by providing new jobs.

Perhaps it could start trying.

Continued in What could the ALP have done better?

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Neoliberals and Nuclear Energy

December 31, 2019

When discussing climate change with people on the political Right, you commonly get two responses.

The first is “You hate private enterprise and want to get the State to interfere with our lives and destroy our freedoms”

No I want people to be able to choose that they have a future, and that they do not have to be poisoned and disempowered by corporate profit seeking, and neoliberal politics.

It is true I don’t want to surrender the future to the corporate elite and their political representatives, but if business wants to come along and help save both the economy and ecology they function in, they are more than welcome to join in, and many businesses are. In many states in Australia, the renewables transition has been led by business and local councils, in the face of government opposition or intransigence. I can’t stop them, and don’t want to stop them.

Despite the neoliberal Right’s ongoing claims that the only options are to do nothing, or to accept massive government interference in our lives; this is not true. That is just their attempt to politicise the issue, so as to save profit, at the citizens’ expense, and make doing nothing, part of right wing self-identity by suggesting that only left wingers believe in climate change and all the solutions are evil, and worse than the problem should it exist.

The second response I get is “Nuclear power is the solution but you won’t let us have it“.

Nuclear power is an option, although there is little evidence that many people, including the neoliberal Right, actually want it.

From what I hear from people in the UK, the price of the power reactors produce has blown out, and they are slow to build safely.

To make [the Hinkley Point] project viable, the U.K. pledged to pay EDF [The company involved] 92.50 pounds for every megawatt-hour of electricity it produces, more than double the current market price, for 35 years. 

Bloomberg

Let us reiterate the obvious position here. Hinkley Point is only going ahead because of government interference in the market, by guaranteeing an electricity price.

It is also probable that it is able to go ahead because the Government is providing tax-payer funded indemnity as private insurance companies will not cover the complete risk of accident.

I don’t understand why a government would offer this, as once relieved of the burden of responsibility for accidents the company building the reactor has an incentive to cut costs on safety to increase profits. And as safety problems are likely to happen years in the future when the high level executives and their bonuses have all disappeared, or the company may not exist, there is even less incentive to make sure it is safe.

So for some bizarre reason neoliberals support nuclear energy even though it appears unable to operate in a free market. They frequently argue that renewables cannot survive in a free market and therefore should be penalized, although this is not as obvious. The position is not that consistent. It must be because tax-payers’ money is being directed at the established corporate sector.

As far as I can tell, Gen IV nukes which there is a lot of noise about, don’t actually exist as commercially or developmentally ready. Even a supportive site points out that

the new technology will be challenged to expand in the open power market without a guaranteed cost savings [over renewables]. Gen IV will be more likely to expand in state-owned utilities willing to take the technology risk…. Investments to commercialization, continued international cooperation, government support, and multi-years’ worth of effort are needed, but by many indications, Gen IV reactors will be the next nuclear renaissance. [italics added]

Let’s not rely on marketing hype for our future: the tech may never arrive and, if it does, it may not be as good as hoped.

Thorium could be good, but I can’t find any significant present day research on this issue, and it failed in the 1980s in Germany. So we are looking at at least 15–20 years research before anyone starts building, and it may have significant problems anyway.

As far as I can see (which could easily be wrong as things change a lot here), few reputable private companies seem to be building nuclear energy reactors, and few politicians (no matter how much they mumble about nuclear energy being the solution) are keen to have them built in their own electorates.

The reality is that I don’t see any serious agitation for nukes from anyone, including from the political right, other than from nuclear power companies, although quickly forgotten suggestions are reasonably common, as is blaming the left for the lack of nuclear power. I also do not see any decent finished innovations in the field and we still face the possibility that reactors are no longer economic. On top of this, we still have not really solved the waste and insurance problems.

If there was any serious agitation, or interest, given that we live in a plutocracy in which corporations own the political system and the news system, then nuclear energy would probably be happening.

It seems that the establishment is still more interested in subsidising fossil fuels and eco-destruction, than they are in nuclear energy, for whatever reason.

So whatever the regulations are, that might obstruct nuclear energy, they do not seem to be the sole problem. And when things are dangerous, you might hope there would be some regulation, otherwise we just repeat the destroy the environment and poison the people, for profit thing, which is the main cause of our problems.

If all this is correct, then nuclear energy seems a displacement fantasy and a political pretense, rather than a valid solution.

When it comes down to it, I would rather support Renewable transitions which are happening anyway (however hindered by governments), than push hard to get something going which might not happen and probably would be a waste of tax-payers’ money.

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Myths of Climate 04: Prometheus

December 30, 2019

Continues from: Myths of Climate 03: Apocalypse and Millennium

Prometheus brings humans fire which is needed for culture and development, and is chained to a rock by Zeus, with an eagle devouring his liver every day, until he is eventually rescued by Heracles.

The myth of Prometheus encapsulates both the idea that technology can save us, and the counter-position that technology leads to retribution or destruction.

While the two parts of this myth are usually kept separate, it may be useful to bear both in mind simultaneously.

God Like Technology

The ‘technology is always positive’ side of the duality reassures us that technology can save us. Influenced by this myth we tend to be carried away into technological fantasy, into thinking that we have solutions to problems, when we don’t know if those solutions work or not. It often promotes non-existent ‘fantasy’ technology (like clean coal, carbon sequestration, or mirrors in space, portable nuclear power stations, fusion power) as saving us from having to abandon coal fired power stations. Or it may claim potentials for existing technologies that have so far been largely unsuccessful at containing ecological destruction (biofuels, thorium reactors, new hydro power, etc).

Within the myth, we expect technology to arrive to save us, just as part of the natural order of things. Some people even argue that something like this is part of economic fundamentals; if there is enough need, then investment will occur and the technology will be invented and appear. However, this is never guaranteed, and it encourages us to forget the unexpected effects of technology, and to ignore complexity and assume we know all the interconnections in a natural system, which we cannot.

In this mode, human technological endeavour is heroic, even godlike. No radical change is needed and we can retain the status quo; we can continue as normal with a technological add on. Some writers can even move away from climate change acceptance and any tinkering with the corporatised market, by arguing that ecological degradation has nothing to do with climate change or forms of economics, and that it can be fixed by easily deployed technologies.

In the ‘technology is good’ side of the equation we also tend to think that technology is determinate, and indicates degree of advancement and proficiency – this is something of a contradiction to the technology as add on idea, but it is used in different arguments about technological superiority and usually kept separate. We often mark out history by supposedly technological periods which follow in succession, a kind of “technological ladder”: Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic), Bronze Age, Iron Age, Agricultural Age, Age of Print, Age of Sail, Age of Steam, Industrial Age, Atomic Age, Space Age, Computer or Information Age and so on. Each ‘Age’ is supposedly better than the last, rather than just partly the same and partly different.

This allows us to dismiss any wisdom or knowledge possessed by ‘earlier’ ages, and also makes it hard to see the complexities of reality, such as ‘Stone Age’ Australian Aboriginal people appear to have had complex systems of ‘agriculture’ which are completely different in their ways of working to European systems (see Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe) (Some references to the controversy over this).

Harmful Technology

The counterposition makes science the cause of all our problems. Not only does it suggest Prometheus’ punishment is more primary than his success, but it suggests the Tower of Babel with God striking down human technological presumption, or that our technology will escape and take over the world, destroying us, as we can see in many science fiction scenarios. It implies that technological presumption leads to disaster, perhaps even to the end of the world.

The dark side myth can be used to imply technologist and scientists are evil, as with the “climate change ideas only exist because of a world wide socialist conspiracy” trope. All experts can be ignored, if they don’t agree with positions we already hold.

This view can also be used to imply that people ‘down’ the ‘technological ladder’ had generally much greater wisdom and lives than we do today, which may not always be the case.

At best this side of the myth implies that technology alienates us from something essentially human, even though humans always seem to have used technology of some sort. We often hear people arguing that the internet destroys our capacity to think, or to have an inner life, when (if we were loosing our capacity to think etc) there might be many other reasons – like being fed false information for political purposes, or being so busy and nervous at work that we have no time for reflection.

One writer rebuffs the idea of using windmills to generate electricity as they are a medieval technology and make an infernal noise – reference to the sound of hell is not accidental, even if unconscious, and that implies the possibility of punishment from God. Yet I suspect the writer does not object to other noisier technologies like aircraft. But this does not seem clear to him. To be real, and of the future, technology has to look a certain way, a demand shaped by myth, or at least by films of a great future (do we have those any more?). Likewise President Trump seems somehow aware that building windmills can involve pollution, even if he seems unaware of the pollution from coal mining and burning, or he chooses not to emphasise this. Likewise with bird killing.

In this part of the myth new technology becomes seen as corrupting and inherently destructive of the social, or natural, order, and indeed it may well change those orders.

When technology becomes part of the social order, it does so as a complex system within other complex systems, and unintended consequences are routine. At a simple level it can open opportunities for some groups to consolidate or increase their social power and influence. Although this is usually only considered disruptive if people from lower groups get raised. If people from dominating groups increase their power, this may not be portrayed as a problem.

The Conflict/Paradox

What one side hears as the solution sounds to the other like a charter for further destruction. Technology is simultaneously, saviour and destroyer, potentially part of the solution but currently part of the problem. Which position we choose to argue from determines where we end up, and the alarms (intended or otherwise) we raise in other people.

However, both positions have equal possibility of being true. In this case, it is possible that putting the two halves of the myth together may help us deal with problems of transformation/transition.

Some technological breakthroughs could save us, or at least help us. And we may not have to wait for them, we already have renewable sources of energy. However, it is also true that renewables may not be able to save us, if we wish to keep using more energy, or bring everyone in the world to the energy use of the average Australian or US American. A change in lifestyle and life plans may also be required. Some people may loose wealth so as to stabilize the system, some people may gain wealth to stabilized the system. This could be disruptive and it would be easy to make people fear this change, because who knows where it will end up? We also appear to have the capacities to lower pollution and waste production, but it is difficult because it is not profitable, and profit is what counts in our economic and political system. In this case the technology is being disrupted by the maintenance of other systems.

It is also true that new technologies can be disruptive or harmful, and they may well need to be vetted, but this is not easy.

Ultimately a significant part of the problem with technology comes down, not just to the myth, but to our inability to think in terms of complex systems, and, of unintended consequences as being normal.

We have tended to deal with unintended consequences, just by arguing about them afterwards, or generally ignoring them, as with fossil fuels, with the possible exception of the London smogs. These were solved by government action, information work, and regulation. They could have continued to be ignored, there is no reason why the death of ordinary people should impinge on the souls of those seeking profit alone. Probably enough of them lived in London to accept the reforms, or feared the rise of the poisoned working and middle classes and gave in.

As the consequences of technology are often unintended and unexpected we cannot easily predict them, but part of the problem is that we do not try – we often do not seem to consider this at all.

Exploring the dynamics of unintended and unexpected consequences should be a major research project. All policy, corporate or governmental, should consider the likelihood of unintended consequences, and determine how these consequences will be looked for, and taken into account.

Technology does not escape myth.

See also: Problems of Transition 02: Technology as Fantasy

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Paul Chefurka’s “Ladder of Awareness”

December 29, 2019

[Re-edit October 2020]

Paul Chefurka proposes a number of stages of awareness of climate problems, with psychological consequences, which might be useful in understanding what we can expect as we ‘progress into the depths’ of the problems and predicaments we face.

Stage 1: The Person sees that there are particular shortcomings in an organization, our morals, our economy or whatever. It’s a matter of changing the rules, or getting more of something that is already there. It’s pretty easy really, if only people saw sense. [In terms I use later in this blog, this is a partly a problem which arises because of the so-called ‘directed mind‘]

Stage 2: There is ONE Fundamental Problem which destroys everything else. Capitalism, Climate Change, government, overpopulation, Peak Oil, biodiversity loss, fossil fuels, inequality, patriarchy, sociopolitical injustice, stupid politicians, socialism, lack of spirituality, etc. If we can fix this problem, or control some other people, then we can fix everything. [This is a form of radical simplification – a refusal to acknowledge social and ecological complexity [1], [2]]

People become activists and keep bringing up this problem to explain everything, and point out how everything could be solved if we really solved this problem.

Stage 3: If we become aware that we cannot seem to solve the big problem, it is possible for awareness of their complexity to grow. Then it seems there are many problems, but the person still might still try to prioritise some problems or resist expanding the ‘problem field’, to keep things under control. They may fear that further new concerns will only dilute the effort which needs to be focused on solving the “highest priority” problems.

Stage 4: Then the person realises that the problems are interconnected and influence each other. It is hard to keep those problems bounded and separate. There is a multitude of problems. The person sees the importance of unintended consequences – a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another. Prediction is difficult, planning seems impossible.

At this stage people may move into small like-minded groups. This can increase learning and insight as the whole set of issues is discussed, in ways in which they cannot be discussed elsewhere.

I would add these groups can also be a retreat from problems, if the people are not careful. The people involved can see themselves as an elite amongst the benighted, and just reinforce their earlier certainties, [or they can become pure and spiritual and risk separation from the world].

Stage 5: Through ongoing discussion, the set of problems can now be seen as a complex predicament, by which I think Chefurka means a condition of existence which may not be solvable at all. We become aware that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. Chefurka keeps this realization as part of Stage 4, but I think that moving into recognition of the predicament is another stage which needs recognition – as that is a different place from the rest of Stage 4. With this realization:

The floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a ‘Solution’ is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.

[We can potentially open up the problem field, and see how problem areas we have kept separate are connected. As well, everything we think we know, may appear even more uncertain.]

Depression is likely at this moment – especially if we are facing the problem alone, and have not managed to form a sympathetic group. If the problems are insolvable, then what will happen to us all?

However, there are two paths which open – although they would seem to have always been open, and this realisation constitutes the stage beyond depression – I would call this Stage 6.

Again, I think it important to accept that stage 6 is also a social event. The groups and connections we have formed are not transcended. They are part of the process.

Path 1. Move into resilience, community-building and local sustainability initiatives. We recognize that the State will not solve the problem, and probably cannot solve the problem. [Big NGOs cannot solve the problem.] The Corporate Sector will not solve the problem either. But we have to help both others and ourselves survive the oncoming crash. Without community, without the ability to work together we are probably dead. At the least, without active community we are stuck, unable to move and helpless. Being alone or with our family, holding out against all comers is eventually barren, even though it could be temporarily useful. Humans, in general, do not live well without other humans. It seems we have to find what strengthens all of us to fight onward, and make a new life, using the insights of the previous stages.

What we have learned is: Life is complex. There is no one problem. We cannot solve, or survive, the mess of problems [and this is a deliberate term], especially not alone. Predicaments interact. Unintended consequences are normal. We cannot depend on old structures. We have to talk, as well as act. We have to change our psychology which was appropriate perhaps for the old consumer life.

Path 2: The Inner path. “Become the change you wish to see in the world,”  “In order to heal the world, first begin by healing yourself.”

This move is not a retreat into established religion and dogma, or to retreat from the world. That is simply pretending there is only one problem again, with one solution – sticking with the dogma and generally, imposing it on others. That is a denial of Spiritual and world complexity. The inner path is a process of attending to oneself as part of the world/creation, of one’s visions and dreams, of one’s feelings, and poetry. Other people help point out depth – our predicament is collective, and so, to some extent, is our inner world.

For me, both these paths are one. To make them separate, and bounded, is yet another denial of complexity.

Without attention to the ‘inner world’, we bring our complexes, resentments, unconsciousnesses, violence and so on to the effort to become resilient. We keep blaming others. We do not withdraw projections. We do not relate to others, and we need the others for satisfaction. We do not behave morally – and whether you want it to be the case or not, a new ethics needs to be born, out of what we find we need to do to survive the predicament.

Without attention to the ‘outerworld’ then we merely talk to ourselves, and get lost in the symbols, the fantasy, the bliss or horrors. We wander around not perceiving what is happening: we believe only what we want to believe, only what comforts us, and pass into delusion. In this solo state, we still require others for building our ‘spirit’, but we do not help them.

We test the inner by the outer and the outer by the inner. We learn the one from the other.

The ‘inner’ is only separated from the ‘outer’, when we are lost in theory. When they come together we get art as well as scientific practice amidst our daily life. And that could be good for all.

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