UN Secretary Generals video message on the Synthesis Report

March 22, 2023

This is pretty straightforwardly a reproduction of the original with a bit of abridgement and reformatting.

If there is a copyright issue please let me know in the comments, and I will remove it.

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Dear friends,

Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast. 

As today’s report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) details, humans are responsible for virtually all global heating over the last 200 years. 

The rate of temperature rise in the last half century is the highest in 2,000 years.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least two million years.

The climate time-bomb is ticking. 

But today’s IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb.

It is a survival guide for humanity. 

As it shows, the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.

But it will take a quantum leap in climate action.

This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe.

In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once. 

I have proposed to the G20 a Climate Solidarity Pact – in which all big emitters make extra efforts to cut emissions, and wealthier countries mobilize financial and technical resources to support emerging economies in a common effort to keep 1.5 degrees alive.  

Today, I am presenting a plan to super-charge efforts to achieve this Climate Solidarity Pact through an all-hands-on-deck Acceleration Agenda.

It starts with parties immediately hitting the fast-forward button on their net zero deadlines to get to global net zero by 2050 – in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.
 
Specifically, leaders of developed countries must commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040, the limit they should all aim to respect.
 
This can be done.  Some have already set a target as early as 2035.

Leaders in emerging economies must commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2050 – again, the limit they should all aim to respect.

A number have already made the 2050 commitment. 

This is the moment for all G20 members to come together in a joint effort, pooling their resources and scientific capacities as well as their proven and affordable technologies through the public and private sectors to make carbon neutrality a reality by 2050.

Every country must be part of the solution. 

Demanding others move first only ensures humanity comes last.

The Acceleration Agenda calls for a number of other actions.

Specifically:

  • No new coal and the phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries.
  • Ending all international public and private funding of coal.
  • Ensuring net zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world.
  • Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas – consistent with the findings of the International Energy Agency.
  • Stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves.
  • Shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition.
  • Establishing a global phase down of existing oil and gas production compatible with the 2050 global net zero target.

I urge all governments to prepare energy transition plans consistent with these actions and ready for investors.

I am also calling on CEOs of all oil and gas companies to be part of the solution.

They should present credible, comprehensive and detailed transition plans in line with the recommendations of my High-Level Expert Group on net zero pledges.

These plans must clearly detail actual emission cuts for 2025 and 2030, and efforts to change business models to phase out fossil fuels and scale up renewable energy.

This acceleration has already started in some sectors, but investors now need crystal clear signals.

And all governments need the assurance that business leaders will help them deliver on extra efforts – but governments must also create an enabling policy and regulatory environment.

Shipping, aviation, steel, cement, aluminum, agriculture – every sector must be aligned with net zero by 2050 with clear plans including interim targets to get there.

At the same time, we need to seize the opportunity to invest in credible innovations that can contribute to reaching our global targets. 

We must also speed-up efforts to deliver climate justice to those on the frontlines of many crises – none of them they caused. 

We can do this by:

  • Safeguarding the most vulnerable communities, and scaling up finance and capacities for adaptation and loss and damage.
  • Promoting reforms to ensure Multilateral Development Banks provide more grants and concessional loans and fully mobilize private finance.
  • Delivering on the financial commitments made in Copenhagen, Paris and Glasgow.
  • Replenishing the Green Climate Fund this year and developing a roadmap to double adaptation finance before 2025.
  • Protecting everyone with early warning systems against natural disasters in four years.
  • Implementing the new loss and damage fund this year.

The longer we wait on any of these crucial issues, the harder it will become.

…..

The transition must cover the entire economy.

Partial pledges won’t cut it….

We have never been better equipped to solve the climate challenge – but we must move into warp speed climate action now.

We don’t have a moment to lose.

Thank you.

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IPCC: Summary of 2023 Synthesis Report

March 21, 2023

Most of this is quotations from The Synthesis Report Summary.

Optimism

Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades, and also to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years (high confidence).

The rate of growth in emissions between 2010 and 2019 (1.3% year) was lower than that between 2000 and 2009 (2.1% year).

Maintaining emission-intensive systems may, in some regions and sectors, be more expensive than transitioning to low emission systems [however the question for business is, which is the most profitable on the whole, and which loses the least already made capital investment?]

The Situation with GHG Emissions

Global net anthropogenic GHG emissions have been estimated to be 59±6.6 GtCO2-eq in 2019

In 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations (410 parts per million) were higher than at any time in at least 2 million years (high confidence), and concentrations of methane (1866 parts per billion) and nitrous oxide (332 parts per billion) were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years (very high confidence). [we are headed towards a non-human world.

Emissions reductions in CO2-FFI [from fossil-fuel combustion and industrial] due to improvements in energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, have been less than emissions increases from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings.

If the annual CO2 emissions between 2020–2030 stayed, on average, at the same level as 2019, the resulting cumulative emissions would almost exhaust the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C (50%), and deplete more than a third of the remaining carbon budget for 2°C (67%). Estimates of future CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructures without additional abatement already exceed the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C (50%) (high confidence). [It is logical to assume that no new gas and oil sources are needed]

[Bad news is that at current rates of reduction ie policy failure we are locked-in for between 2 and 4 degrees increase. The higher ends of that is catastrophic.]

Some Effects

In all regions increases in extreme heat events have resulted in human mortality and morbidity (very high confidence). The occurrence of climate-related food-borne and water-borne diseases (very high confidence) and the incidence of vector-borne diseases (high confidence) have increased. In assessed regions, some mental health challenges are associated with increasing temperatures (high confidence), trauma from extreme events (very high confidence), and loss of livelihoods and culture (high confidence).

Economic damages from climate change have been detected in climate-exposed sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy, and tourism. Individual livelihoods have been affected through, for example, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and loss of property and income, human health and food security, with adverse effects on gender and social equity.(high confidence).

In urban areas, observed climate change has caused adverse impacts on human health, livelihoods and key infrastructure. Hot extremes have intensified in cities. Urban infrastructure, including transportation, water, sanitation and energy systems have been compromised by extreme and slow-onset events, with resulting economic losses, disruptions of services and negative impacts to well-being. Observed adverse impacts are concentrated amongst economically and socially marginalised urban residents.

[increasing drought, fires, infectious diseases, floods, displacement, glacier retreat, ocean acidification]

Challenges

There are widening disparities between the estimated costs of adaptation and the finance allocated to adaptation.

Climate finance growth has slowed since 2018

The IPCC still thinks Carbon Capture & Storage is required. which basically blows any optimism for me.

[However they recognise this problem]: Implementation of CCS currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological, environmental and socio-cultural barriers. Currently, global rates of CCS deployment are far below those in modelled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C to 2°C.

The report also says over-reliance tree planting and biomass crops paired with CCS, can have adverse socio-economic and environmental impacts, including on biodiversity, food and water security, local livelihoods and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, especially if implemented at large scales and where land tenure is insecure.

Net zero CO2 energy systems entail: a substantial reduction in overall fossil fuel use, minimal use of unabated fossil fuels, and use of carbon capture and storage in the remaining fossil fuel systems; electricity systems that emit no net CO2; widespread electrification; alternative energy carriers in applications less amenable to electrification; energy conservation and efficiency; and greater integration across the energy system (high confidence).

The press release also states: The pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change.

Consequences of not acting now

The higher the magnitude and the longer the duration of overshoot, the more ecosystems and societies are exposed to greater and more widespread changes in climatic impact-drivers, increasing risks for many natural and human systems…. Overshooting 1.5°C will result in irreversible adverse impacts on certain ecosystems with low resilience, such as polar, mountain, and coastal ecosystems, impacted by ice-sheet, glacier melt, or by accelerating and higher committed sea level rise

The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years (high confidence).

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Ben Shapiro: Atheism Is Morally Bankrupt, Religion is Order

January 21, 2023

Right wing intellectual, Ben Shapiro, appears to try and avoid the challenges of social chaos and complexity by implicitly arguing that morals require the uniformity and imposition brought by religion.

[This style of text is Shapiro, as I understand him]

  • [This style of text is a comment]

Shapiro’s argument seems to go:

Atheists accuse religious people of being immoral and argue that if religion inculcated goodness then religious people would be good. They argue “if religion is good, why are religious believers often so bad?”

  • That is a common argument made by atheists. They say that religious belief does not guarantee morality in believers. Therefore there is nothing particularly wonderful about religious morals, or religion in inculcating morals. If we are discussing morals, this is a point to be considered.

However, Shapiro responds to this point by writing, “Of course, one could ask this about any philosophy – most people are in fact sinful and wicked, and have the capacity for good.” 

  • So he appears to dismiss the question of whether religion is a good source of morals, by saying nothing is. He will forget this as he goes on, but let’s agree and make the proposition: ‘There may be no philosophy, the holding of which will guarantee that the holders will be good.’ If this is true then it applies to religion (as Shapiro is doing here) as well as to non-religion. It does not justify religion as a sources of morals, it excuses it.

He continues by arguing that atheism cannot establish a moral framework, and hence that atheism cannot guarantee people will be good.

  • We have already agreed with him that no philosophy will guarantee those who hold it will be good. It is as true of atheists as of religious people.
  • However, I have never heard an atheist claim, in the way that religious people can make claims, that only atheists can be good or that religious people are all morally dead, or that all religious people should be killed. It is not a general part of atheist philosophy. So his argument is completely irrelevant to the initial point that religion does not guarantee morality, and does not display any indications that there is anything supernaturally beneficial about religious morals.
  • His argument does not claim that religious people are generally more moral than atheists, or that religions give an infallible basis for morals, or even that religions provide a moral moral framework which is good, and which works. He does not try to. Indeed he asks:

“how we are supposed to judge whether the religion is promoting something morally good or bad without another frame of moral reference.”

  • This is another extremely important question, which he ignores, and he asserts:

“atheism itself can make no self-sustaining moral claims on human beings.“ 

  • I agree again to an extent. But that is not the point of atheism. Atheism is not about establishing moral claims. His argument also ignores atheist philosophers who have made coherent moral systems with claims on people. David Hume for example.
  • Even if it is correct that atheism makes no self-sustaining moral claims on human beings, that does not mean that all, or even any, religion is promoting something necessarily good. That some set of ideas cannot do something well, does not mean that another set of ideas it attacks, will necessarily do that something well. We can return to the principle that ‘There may be no philosophy, the holding of which will guarantee that the holders will be good.’
  • However, atheists do make an implicit argument that ‘if you do not embrace truth and reality, you cannot be moral’. I think this is a valid argument about morals, and not to be ignored as Shapiro does.
  • The atheist position implies that if you accept the absolute morality of beings who torture people forever, commit genocide, or demand people’s deaths for eating shellfish or being gay, or whatever, then you will have a dangerously warped moral sense. And indeed we can see this throughout history. People driven by their religious beliefs can do things, which I, and often other religious people, judge to be immoral and not to be praised, but which are covered up or celebrated by the religion. Rape of children by godly men, is the obvious example, and appears to occur in most organised large scale religions.
  • Atheists may also argue that different religious systems have different moral systems and promote different laws. Hence there is nothing obvious about religious morals, other than the authority being claimed for them and the punishments threatened for disobeying them. How do we know those particular morals are moral? This is another important question when we consider the morals of religion. To requote Shapiro: “”how we are supposed to judge whether the religion is promoting something morally good or bad without another frame of moral reference?”

He then appears to avoid these issues about morality, by claiming that atheism is bad because atheist governments have been murderous: they “have been far more murderous and tyrannical than any religious theocracy in history.”

  • I’m not sure Nazism was atheist. Hitler definitely talks about his guidance by metaphysical concepts. Jewish people had been condemned and murdered by Christians for a long time so the Holocaust may exist because of religion, and the Nazis approved ‘Aryan Christianity’. Mussolini generally had a good relationship with the Catholic Church. However, religious governments are also murderous: inquisitions, pogroms, brutal punishments for sinners, and religious wars do happen. All European wars and conquests have been backed and justified by churches. So far the religious haven’t had the technology of mass murder down to the art it reached in the 20th Century under Nazism, but if they ever get into total power again, it is not unreasonable to expect that the full technology of death and suffering will be used to purge the world of sin and disagreement.

He asserts: “Atheism promotes a vision of mankind entirely at odds with the building of a productive society: it suggests materialism, which means lack of free will; it undermines the unique value of human beings, which undermines liberty and rights; it dismisses the value of tradition in favor of a reason it cannot defend on its own terms.” In another place he argues:

“a Godless world is a soulless world…. Transcending biology and our environment requires a higher power — a spark of the supernatural” (2). 

  • It is amazing that he is apparently unaware of the idea that God being all-powerful and all-knowing has determined or determines everything that happens or will happen. This also gives a lack of effective freewill.
  • Materialism does not have to back determinism, any more than religion does. Materialism nowadays should embody complexity, and challenge the fuzzy boundaries between mind and matter. Materialism is not necessarily in opposition to consciousness. While materialism may undermine traditions based on religion, so does capitalism, and he is not attacking that for some reason.
  • He presents no evidence for the idea that we can only make moral choices because of ideas like soul, or that morality involves transcending biology – perhaps the ability to learn a morality is part of out biology, like the ability to learn language, or the need to socialise and form social groups.
  • This is an undemonstrable assertion not an absolute truth, and quite possibly asserts that non monotheisms, and that religions which don’t promise an afterlife are immoral as well.

His major implied point here seems to be that many major religions demand behaviour they call ‘morals’. They tell us what to do, and threaten punishments for those who don’t do it, and therefore form a good basis for the State (or at least an authoritarian state).

  • It seems to me (but I won’t insist on it) that Shapiro is implying that if the population is ‘brainwashed’ by a religion, then they will all have the same morals and think the same way, and this will bring about social harmony and agreement. In this way religion builds order out of chaos and protects against chaos. This may be correct (although I suspect it leads to a lot of murder of deviant thinkers and a lot of blowback), but if so, it might seem he is in favor of authoritarianism, and of people who are violent arbiters of morals. This may not require religion, as he has argued above with respect to atheist governments, it just requires a passionate and thorough intolerance of dissent or questioning – which may equally lead to social breakdown, social distrust and fracture as people struggle to assert their innocence, and show how good they are by accusing others.

He also implies that as atheism does not tell us what to do, (apart from asking us not to believe in falsity, undemonstrable propositions, or in incoherent gods, theologies and religious morals) it, perhaps, asks us to think and question, and is BAD. “As a system of thought, atheism cannot be the basis for any functional state” (2).

  • Even if atheism could never be a basis for a functional state, that does not prove that religious morals can deal with the complexity of modern life, do not have unintended consequences, are a real basis for a functional state, or are moral.
  • It apparently does not matter if the morals taught by a religion are ethical, coherent, beneficial, cruel or even if they do always provide the basis for a ‘productive society’, as long as we are all told what to do, and can stop thinking or questioning those morals, and we agree on what is moral on fear of death or God’s displeasure. That is all.
  • Religion just functions to declare morals and produce order by enforcing those morals. It makes things simple and generally agreed. This makes it good. Whether this order and uniformity allows us to deal with complexity, or not make mistakes, or be moral is irrelevant.
  • To make this argument, he needs to ignore the questions of ‘what is morality,’ ‘do religions all have good morals’ ‘how do we decide whether a system of morals is good’. He raises these issues to ignore them immediately. He implies that it is enforced order which is good and justifies morals being enforced.
  • This implicit praise of any order as long as it can be called ‘religious,’ seems, to me, to be an immoral basis for morals.
  • It could be suggested that he is not really a friend to religion and that his position is morally bankrupt.

References:

Unless specified the arguments come from

https://www.facebook.com/officialbenshapiro/posts/776862607128379/

(2) indicates they come from:

https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2008/12/18/why-atheism-is-morally-bankrupt-n734917

https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-debunking-atheism

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Problems with, and potential necessity of Geoengineering

January 6, 2023

If businesses and States, do not reduce GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and do not stop destroying ecologies, then it is possible that the only way of keeping completely wild weather in check will be through geoengineering (GE).

GE is engineering the ecology and climate itself, to lessen climate change. The most usual projected method is to reflect solar radiation back into space, through the release of reflective particulate matter high in the atmosphere, or through mirrors in space etc…. I doubt huge mirrors in space will be used as they are too expensive and they may move out of orbit.

The problems with GE should be obvious.

  1. Ecologies and climates are complex systems.
  2. If we can’t alter complex human systems, to prevent climate change, what hope do we have of changing the world’s own complex systems and their multitude of interactions in a controllable or beneficial manner? We also have to somehow control human reactions to make it work. For example – no increasing emissions because we are now ‘safe’ etc.
  3. It is impossible to predict exactly what will occur when we start GE.
  4. It has been suggested that some areas will loose or gain rainfall dramatically. Some areas may lose plant cover etc.
  5. If we leave it too late then the Earth’s weather patterns may have changed so much, that we have nothing to work with in terms of predicting effects, and little ability to tell the effects of GE from climate change chaos.
  6. It is possible that some business and nation states would attempt GE independently with no co-ordination. This could have deeply difficult results.
  7. Some nations may protest about their losses, and there will be losses from either climate change or GE, and we may not be able to tell the difference.
  8. Nations may accuse other nations of conducting climate war against them. They could conceivably be right. This is likely to produce international tensions, and interfere in the governance and application of GE.
  9. As GE by itself does not reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions, the planet’s oceans will continue to absorb CO2, and become more acidic. This may kill much plankton and other marine life. Ocean Death would be a major ecological calamity.
  10. To understand what GE we should perform, we need accurate computer models. We have good computer models of global weather systems, but not yet good enough. Once we start interfering, then there is no baseline, we no-longer know ‘for sure’ whether we are doing the right things or not. This can possibly be overcome by intensive research projects working with models and their prediction capacity – but again we are working with complex systems and human political factors. There could also be large numbers of others factors we won’t know about until they hit us.
  11. if we suffer a world economic set back or a world war, then the GE would probably stop and, unless we had reduced emissions considerably, then we would likely experience an even more rapid climate change, as the controls would be released.

GE is a really bad idea. However, if we do not push for action now to reduce fossil fuel and other emissions, we may have to try it.

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Climate change and new paradigms

January 3, 2023

‘Paradigms’ are typical patterns of thought, acceptance of thought, together with research practices. They provide guides for people. In his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which gave the term its current common meaning, Kuhn defined scientific paradigms as: “universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners”.

One question that arises quite often is whether climate change is simply a paradigm that will be abandoned, or whether it will be stable. The basic theory that CO2 and other greenhouse gases can act as a blanket (or greenhouse) holding in heat, and causing warming, has stood for well over 100 years. The observations indicating global warming have been going on for about 50-70 years, so climate change is as well established as a fact as any science can be. Almost certainly the paradigm and the interpretation of global warming will change and grow with more research and modelling, but that does not mean it is wrong, or that it has not contributed shifts to thought, producing new paradigms, already.

In my opinion, a major paradigm shift has happened over the last 40 years largely due to climate studies.

Many people nowadays understand weather, climate and ecologies (and societies) as complex/chaotic systems, which have particular properties, which were previously unexpected.

For example, while these systems normally function under an unstable equilibrium, changes and stress in the system can build up, so that the systems can rapidly change state, even in human terms. In retrospect we call these places which begin the rapid change ‘tipping points’. We can predict that there will be tipping points in climate change when methane is released from the ocean, or the currently frozen tundras or the ice caps melt. Other tipping points may emerge when forests turn into net carbon emitters and so on.

While previously we thought significant climate change (without a massive accident such as meteorite collision) happened slowly in human terms, now we know it can happen quickly. We also know more about the conditions of ‘great extinctions’ and ‘ocean death’ and so are aware that we are building the conditions towards these kinds of events.

We also know that it is extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to predict the state of a complex system in the future. The further into the future the less likely we can predict its state. Consequently all we can predict is increasing climate turmoil, droughts, massive bush fires, storms, flooding, changes in temperature and so on. It is hard to tell people in, say, London, they will experience this kind of weather, this kind of temperature change etc. The gulf stream may drop away due to global heating, and the weather may get colder in London. All we can really and truthfully predict is that the change will hurt people more, and cause social instability.

This lack of accuracy in prediction is something that is often used to deny climate change, (“they said it would get hotter and dryer, but its flooding”). However, it’s hard to predict the weather 3 or 4 weeks in advance, and we are now dealing with constantly changing weather patterns, moving into situations we have not encountered before, so prediction gets more difficult – and the more the system departs from its previous equilibrium states, the worse this will get.

People have also been looking more at the social dynamics of climate change, as that is a major factor in what will happen. So far we can say, governments and businesses are nearly all failing dismally to deal with the problem, and have been since the 1990s. This is probably because of the amount of propaganda issued by powerful corporations and their hangers on, telling us the science is uncertain, or that remedies are too costly.

We are discovering the truth of many previous theories of social collapse – basically the dominating classes want to hang on to their habits, riches and power and the only way they think they can respond is by continuing the situation which has brought them riches and power – to hell with everyone else. As a result society is stuck with solutions to old problems. These old solutions cannot deal with the new problems and make those new problems worse. Societies can be maladaptive systems – however it is also possible that changes in the base (amongst ordinary people) could change social trajectories.

That represents a bit of a change in social theory, which tended to think that the dominant classes were clever and adapted to new situations, and that societies could structure ‘nature’ indefinitely in ways they required.

So global warming is already changing our paradigms, and that changes the data we look for, and all of that data (that I’m aware of) is pretty much pointing to more extreme weather, and more difficult living conditions. It would be sensible to take these new paradigms seriously, and do what you can at a local level as well as a State or business level.

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Ruskin, systems, interdependence. economics and help

December 25, 2022

Life, art and the ‘Law of Help’

Ruskin died a long time before systems theory was formulated and even before Jan Smuts put forward the idea of Holism, so his language is somewhat stretched but he clearly recognised what we might call systemic interdependence and its vital importance for art, ecology and economics.

The clearest exposition of this ‘law’ is in his chapter in Modern Painters vol 5 on The “Law of Help” where he discusses the importance of composition in art.

Composition may be best defined as the help of everything in the picture by everything else.

It is the ‘system’ of the art work, all functioning together, that makes it work for us – perhaps as a form of psychic or social integration, perhaps as a way of pointing towards something which cannot otherwise be expressed…. but that is a different question.

Ruskin argues that in ‘inanimate objects’ atoms (components) do not help each other. This is actually often wrong, especially in compounds, but we can get Ruskin’s point, in simple systems the particles merely cohere or exist together. The edge of a rock may not help the rest of the rock, or the co-existence of components can apparently be random as in dust.

In rocks as opposed to living things:

The removal of one part does not injure the rest. But in a plant, the taking away of any one part does injure the rest. Hurt or remove any portion of the sap, bark, or pith, the rest in injured. If any part enters into a state in which it no more assists the rest, and has thus become “helpless,” [without helping or being helped] we call it also ‘dead’.

The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal’s limb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness — completeness of depending of each part on all the rest.

Intensity of life in a single organism depends upon the helpfulness of all its parts or as Ruskin states:

The highest or organic purities are composed of many elements in an entirely helpful state. The highest and first law of the universe —and the other name of life is, therefore, ‘help.’ The other name of death is ‘separation’.

It is hard to think of a better definition of a system in equilibrium; it works together, whatever the appearance, and if it does not work together then it is on the road to separation or death.

Ruskin goes on to argue that this is an important part of composition in art, when:

everything in the work is thus consistent with all things else, and helpful to all else.

Lack of good composition is when an ‘item’ in the work can be removed, and the other pieces of the artwork would not be affected.

In this sense, composition, where everything in the work is essential to it, is “not only the highest quality of art, but is simply the most wonderful act or power of humanity.”

Training in composition depends on noticing the world as well as observing and feeling into good art.

Look back to the greatest of all creations, that of the world. Suppose the trees had been ever so well or so ingeniously put together, stem and leaf, yet if they had not been able to grow, would they have been well created? Or suppose the fish had been cut and stitched finely out of skin and whalebone; yet, cast upon the waters, had not been able to swim? Or suppose Adam and Eve had been made in the softest clay, ever so neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of knowledge, fastened up to it, quite unable to fall, or do anything else, would they have been well created, or in any true sense created at all?

Like a great artwork, the world is systemic, remove one function and it fails. We may not be able learn pure creative composition, but we can learn to observe it, we can learn to apply it and we can improve. Composition is, however, as vital to our real life and wealth, as it is to art.

I’ve spent much time arguing here that not all systems are purely harmonious like this, and sometimes appearances of disharmony are real and disfunction and conflict cannot be ignored, if we are to treat of real systems in the world, especially of human systems.

However, the point remains, working systems can be disrupted, or even destroyed, by removing some of its parts, or by destroying the capacity for parts to ‘help’ each other. This is important, even if it may not always be immediately clear what is helpful, as when wolves were released back into Yellowstone park, and the ecology began to flourish again [1], [2]. Wolves served a function of help for the ecology as a whole.

Economics

God has lent us the earth for our life. It is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us… as to us. And we have no right, by anything we might do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath… Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard of things that are to come… Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build forever.

So the law of help, which is found in the composition of ecologies and in good art, should also be part of our daily and economic life – we are not only help each other and the earth, but help those who are yet to be born. We do not remove, or over-stretch, parts that are helpful to the whole.

The health, and flourishing, of the systems, that we depend upon, depends on what we do to help to that flourishing or refuse to do to harm that flourishing.

So let us return to Ruskin’s definition of wealth:

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is [wealthy] which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is [wealthy], who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. (Ruskin, 1860 W 17 “Unto this Last”: 105)

In Letter 5 of Fors Clavigera he explains that the material things all beings need for life are clear and ecological.

Pure Air, Water, and Earth

As these are basics, we need to think whether our economic modes of life contribute to these factors or not.

Our potential to help the air is by recognising that our capacity for:

dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere, [this] is literally infinite. You might make every breath of air you draw, food.

But

everywhere, and all day long, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease.

This is true of water:

You might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of the rock; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools; so full of fish that you might take them out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain; and even that falls dirty.

and of earth….

you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter, into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone — with the voice of your brother’s blood crying out of it, in one wild harmony round all its murderous sphere

It might now be clearer what Ruskin intends to suggest. A wealthy economy is one in which help to life is a major principle. This includes help to the whole system of life as best we can.

Ruskin is not arguing for an abolition of competition, even if he argues that competition is death, as he fully intended organisms to eat [I doubt he would have objected strongly to the re-stocking of wolves, especially when the results came in] and he had no objection to artists being ambitious, but the argument is that making our fundamental principle to be competition of ‘all against all’, with casual ignoring of damage, and the celebration of destruction in victory, will contribute to social and system death. He is pointing to the principles of conservation and of co-operation which have been ignored as the basis of society, and which are as natural to humans, and everything else, as competition.

Ruskin is suggesting that the purpose of any economy is to enhance life. This is why economics cannot avoid morals and politics, even before it considers production and markets. If our economic aims are not directed towards life and help, then we are aiming at destruction, and our economics is merely a ‘science’ aimed at getting us to that destruction as quickly as possible, so that some people can become rich and powerful.

As individuals we should aim for our work to help others become stronger, more full of life, and indeed virtue, and for them to be able to help others. This can be done in many ways, through many different types of work and product. It would also appear such action will make the system of wealth stronger.

This is why he contrasts common wealth with those private riches which can arise from the immiseration of others and the destruction of ecologies. His argument is undermined by a lack of system in his vocabulary, but we can easily see what he means

[Riches], unjustly established, has assuredly injured the nation in which it exists during its establishment, and, unjustly directed, injure it yet more during its existence. But… wealth, justly established, benefits the nation in the course of its establishment, and, nobly used, aids it yet more in its existence.

One aim of economics should be to spread the laws of help and interdependence rather than the laws of riches and destruction.

He points out that people defending riches often argue they have improved the market by making products cheap.

Yes: but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake, but fire and earthquake may not therefore be national benefits!

Again the suggestion is that economics ignores damage to make its claims of progress, but if riches come at the cost of destruction, is that helpful or useful in any system we wish to be long term? Ruskin has already pointed to the importance of us leaving the system functioning, or improved, for humanity’s descendants.

It is implicit in Ruskin’s discussion that while we have choice to do our bit to help, the economic system itself is destructive. Modern economies encourage freeloading on the ecology of the world, stripping away more than we can return, poisoning rivers and the air, because it is cheap and convenient, and because if businesses do not do this, they will lose to the competition that does do this destruction. Modern economic systems have been about building riches for some rather than wealth for all life, even when they pretend otherwise.

Its freeloading because it is cheaper to destroy when extracting, manufacturing, and selling, than it is to take responsibility for the destruction and pollution – even better perhaps if you can persuade governments and individuals to clear up after you, so you get even more hidden subsidies and make more profit, and that is what our economics encourages.

This competition for cheapness also affects people who labour, making them slaves to a machine or to business process rather than to their own rhythms, skills or craft.

Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves.

It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to [riches] as the only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men….

to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes—this, nature bade not,—this, God blesses not,—this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

Stones of Venice W vol10 95-6

The resemblance to the young Marx’s unpublished theories of alienation are marked. Ruskin argues that Feudal relationships of command, acknowledgement and training were better than this cheapening of labour and souls. And then:

it matters fearfully what the thing is, which [the labourer] is compelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to produce [good earth], food, fresh air, and fresh water, no matter that his wages are low;—the food and fresh air and water will be at last there; and he will at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy [earth], food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars instead of them,—the [earth] food,[water] and air will finally not be there, and he will not get them, to his great and final inconvenience.

Crown of Wild Olives W18: 391

This again is why economics is about morals (implicitly or explicitly), as economic theory and economic practice is always prescriptive and telling us what to do, such as to not value the gifts of nature (beauty, earth, food, water and air, etc) and go for monetary profit and power. This moral basis means that there will probably never be agreement on economics, just as there is not on morals, but Ruskin’s hope is that if we understand that wealth is common rather than individual, and relies on working ecologies. If we then come to understand the ways that systems act to help each other, and realise that understanding this involves aesthetics as well as morals, then we may be on the way to a functional economy. We may at least slow down our ecological destruction if we realise the economy is killing us, and stripping away life capacity from the planet, far quicker than it is creating long term prosperity for all.

The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction

Unto this Last W. 17: 85

Ruskin’s Question

Ruskin’s important question is: “What is an economy for?”

And surely one possible answer is “not to destroy life, but to support the finding of true help and wealth for all including our ecologies”.

Another point is that if an economy is violating the laws of composition and help and creating ugliness through pollution, trash and ‘alienation’, then that economy is almost certainly destructive of life as a whole.

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Technology and markets

November 26, 2022

It is often suggested that a ‘free market,’ or lots of investment (say within a developmentalist framework), will produce the technologies we need. To me, this seems like baseless propaganda which is harmful to our future.

Technology is not a whim

Firstly, Technology does not come along simply because we need it, would like it, or there is a market for it. There are physical limits to what can be achieved, at a certain level of technical development, at a feasible cost, and within a relatively short time frame. There are plenty of technologies which we need and which there would be a market for, that we don’t have: for example fusion energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which works at a level which makes a difference.

CCS is a perfect example of this, as we need it, it would lower the levels of emissions from fossil fuels, and enable drawdown and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere. There is a market for it, as it would make Fossil fuel companies happy as they would not have to face competition from renewables, it would make governments happy as they don’t have to do anything or fight powerful corporations, and it would allow everyone to keep on doing what they are doing now. The trouble with CCS is that despite 50 years or so of corporate and government investment, it basically does not work, at the levels we need it to work, and there is no evidence of any breakthroughs.

Despite recent minor breakthroughs fusion energy also seems to be a long way off being useful. It cannot be relied upon to save us in the time frame we need it to be available.

Markets are political

Secondly, any market, or form of development, involves politics and the likelihood of capture by existing power bases. Fossil Fuel companies will keep providing fossil fuels until it get uneconomic to provide them. To make them economic they will obstruct attempts to move out of fossil fuels: they will buy politicians, they will buy regulations, they will buy think-tanks to justify the use of fossil fuels and attack action on climate change. This is how markets work. Paradoxically, the ‘freer’ the market the more it seems to get constrained by those who are successful in the market, and the more society becomes plutocratic. So a capitalist free market (which is what people usually mean by ‘free markets’) is likely to be a destructive market, as NOT offloading costs from poisoning, pollution and eco-destruction involves a reduction of profit, and that is bad.

Finitude is important

Thirdly, the world is a relatively closed system for humans, with the exception of energy coming from the sun. We simply cannot keep extracting, over-extracting and polluting for ever without facing severe challenges, whether this extraction comes from business or from state controlled development. Sure we may get planetary colonies in the next 50 years, but that will not save most (or even many) people. and off-planetary environments will be even more hostile to humans than destroyed planetary ecologies. Space colonies will not save the world if we keep on destroying it in order to build them. Capitalist free markets, and development, seem to require growth, increasing extraction, increasing energy, and increasing profits to keep functioning. If this is the case, then capitalism and developmentalism will eventually destroy nearly everything, because of the effective closure of the system, even if they did produce useful technology that delayed the end point.

Conclusion

These factors, along with the idea that the market will produce whatever technology we need, seems to be why capitalist and developmentalist states have spent the last 30 years talking about climate change, and doing nothing.

The ideology has helped the capitalist elites to win, at the cost of you and your children’s future.

This means that if we want to survive,

  • We have to act locally where we have input; local renewable energy now. Preferably controlled by communities looking out for the communities, and providing local resilience for when climate change damage hits.
  • We have to campaign nationally and support climate action and ending eco-destruction, and phaseout of fossil fuels despite the problems that will generate
  • We have to realise that, as they are now, capitalism and developmentalism are not our steadfast friends. Those systems need changing.

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Who wants to ban fossil fuels?

November 25, 2022

I keep reading people on the Right alleging that people on the Left want to ban fossil fuels NOW. I wonder who they are talking about?

Most people who think climate change is a crisis caused by the burning of fossil fuels, seem to want to phase fossil fuels out, to stop the potential destruction of large scale society.

If we banned fossil fuels now, we would destroy large scale society equally as well as they will by burning them. So extremely few people in the world want to stop completely now. I’ve not met any, or heard any, anyway.

The main political questions humans face are more like:

  • Do we need more oil, gas or coal fields?
    • (Probably not, as it seems we have more than enough to destroy us already. So the idea of more new fossil fuels has a lot going for it.)
  • Do we need to keep up taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuel companies?
    • (Probably not. It just encourages them, and postpones the phase out. They are powerful and rich companies and do not need subsidies or bigger tax breaks)
  • How quickly should we phase out fossil fuels, before the emissions make destruction become irrevocable?
    • (We don’t know exactly, but the best estimates are a lot faster than we are doing now)
  • What should we do with Underdeveloped countries who want to reach western standards of military power, and prosperity?
    • (This is very complicated, but trying to help them generate plentiful low emissions energy, rather than trying to sell them more fossil fuels, could be a good start)
  • Do we have to lower standards of living in the West to lower emissions and avoid destruction?
    • (Quite possibly. But maybe not as much as people think – living in the 60s was not that horrible and produced a lot fewer GHG emissions, even other forms of pollution were high. We may need to redistribute some wealth to do this, and that will be bitterly resisted)

So something like these are the real questions.

Saying that people want to ban fossil fuels now, is just a way of escaping these more difficult questions, by proposing something that sounds horrible so people will react by running away, and not thinking.

The proposition acts to obscure reality and prevent action.

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Are human rights and morality real, or social?

November 24, 2022

There is no morality, or rights anywhere written into the universe.

As humans we don’t like this, for fairly obvious reasons. The obvious point is what is to stop someone from killing us, if there is no morality or agreed on rights?

However, the only arguments in favour of human rights and morality, come out of ‘human nature’ and pragmaticism. There are no universal axioms of morality.

‘Human Nature’: Empathy

Basically ‘human nature’ involves competition and co-operation. We appear to have a natural longing for relative equality of treatment, or fairness, as well as a longing to do the best for ourselves (whatever that is – it is not written into the universe either). Most people quickly discover as children, that the opposition between co-operation and competition is not a real opposition. A functional human being normally does better for themselves, and enjoys themselves better, through co-operation. We can compete with others through co-operation with a ‘team’ or ingroup.

This and ‘empathy’ leads to morality. We feel others’ pain, and unfairness to others, and usually do things about it, to fix things up (the more, the better we know the person and like them…) Perhaps we don’t feel others’ pain as strongly as we feel our own pain, but most children feel for others. There are few societies in the world in which what is considered in-group injustice is not condemned, even if secretly because it is too dangerous to do otherwise, and people support their own ingroups’ morality pretty fiercely.

The point is that empathy can be extended or limited by conventions around social categories. Out-groups can be separated from normal morality, as is clearly happening politically in the US where people in the ‘other’ political category receive little in the way of empathy, and much in hostility. Empathy can also be extended or limited by experience of someone’s behaviour and this can also feed into social category separation, as again is happening in the US and elsewhere.

These dynamics of separation and connection are not stable, and change moralities.

Pragmaticism

Humans have morality for pragmatic reasons; in that societies work better with some kind of morality. Everyone knows what to do. People can co-operate with reasonable security that they will not always be completely ripped off. Hence things appear to function better than they would without it. Societies survive, the more agreement there is that the morality, expresses human nature and has good results.

However, no system of morality can always guarantee that only ‘good’ will result from ‘good’ actions. We live amidst a complexity which can undermine our intentions, so we have to pay attention to results, and sometimes adjust our behaviour.

Conclusion

Human rights etc don’t exist, but they arise from normal human processes and their pragmatic benefits.

This does not mean that all moralities are necessarily ok…. but its hard to have a moral argument which does not rely on either a view of human nature or of the consequences of not having the morality.

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Nuclear is an abandoned tech which might have been useful

November 14, 2022

It is often alleged that people on the left are completely responsible for the decline of nuclear energy. However, people on all sides of politics can be cautious about nuclear energy.

Cost overruns are common.

They are expensive when treated commercially. The UK Hinckley reactor has to be supported by a large electricity price, which of course distorts markets and supports other expensive, and polluting, sources of energy.

Reactors tend to take a long time to build, usually longer than estimated. So people figure, perhaps incorrectly, that they will not cut enough emissions in the time we have left to keep the temperature increase within bounds. We have about 10 years carbon budget left (and after that nothing), if we want to stay under 1.5 degrees.

  • see Georgia Power’s Vogtle project: the cost has increased by 140% since construction began in 2011, and is more than six years behind schedule.

Reactors face problems with heat. They need water for cooling and, in France recently, had to be shut down because the rivers were too low and the water too hot. This is clearly a problem as global temperatures continue to rise.

The small reactors (SMRs) we have been promised for a long time seem uncertain. The Australian CSIRO recently tried to find reliable data on their energy production and cost, and failed completely. I’ve recently read an article which said that they were being used in China, and were wonderful but it had no evidence or references for its position. A report written for the Australian Conservation Foundation states.

The small reactors that do exist are in Russia and China, but these projects have been subject to serious delays and cost blowouts. While there are hopes and dreams of ramping up SMR production, the mass manufacturing facilities needed to produce the technology are found nowhere in the world.

Wrong reaction: Why ‘next-generation’ nuclear is not a credible energy solution 5 October 2022: p.3

I have been told Japan has a working SMR, which uses ceramic coated fuel pellets, and is very safe. However, I have failed to find anything about this. One pro-nuclear site wrote:

Japan’s problem is that it does not have a viable SMR design that is ready to come off the drawing boards. This raises the previously unthinkable prospect of importing an SMR via licensing from a country that has one ready to go.

Japan is behind the technology eight ball in terms of developing  its own SMRs. The Nuclear Regulatory Authority has no policy framework for dealing with them. In addition to being notoriously sluggish in reviewing reactor restarts, so far in its history has not reviewed and approved a single application for a new reactors of any kind or size.

Thorium Reactors failed when people initially tried to build them, and don’t seem to be much better nowadays.

Japan’s PM Kishida Launches a Major Push for Nuclear Energy Neutron Bytes 27 August 2022

The Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis has reported on an as yet unbuilt set of SMRs in Utah (to be completed in 2030) being built by UAMPS (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) and NuScale Power Corporation. It states that the original energy price was to be US$55 per MWh, but recent presentations have suggested it would be between $90-$100 per MWh, despite “an anticipated $1.4 billion subsidy from the U.S. Department of Energy and a new subsidy from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on the order of $30 per MWh”.

However there seems to be lots of government support for the idea throughout the world, and the IEA also states:

In the IEA’s global pathway to reach Net Zero Emissions by 2050, nuclear power doubles between 2020 and 2050, with construction of new plants needed in all countries that are open to the technology. Even so, by mid-century, nuclear only accounts for 8% of the global power mix, which is dominated by renewables.

Nuclear power can play a major role in enabling secure transitions to low emissions energy systems 30 June 2022

Ordinary energy generation reactors lead to the capacity to build nuclear weapons, and we probably do not need more distribution of them – the world is already unstable enough.

As far as I can tell, there is still a problem with the waste, although some people say that problem has been solved, but until these imagined solutions are in standard operation we cannot tell for sure.

While they are mathematically safe and low risk, the problems when reactors do go wrong can be major and long term. The more reactors we have, the more likely we will get a major problem.

Commercial building of reactors, can lead to shortcuts and dangers, to meet deadlines and keep profit.

People generally do not want a energy producing reactor near them, so they have to be built away from residences, and that adds to costs and energy loss. They also seem to have to have water for cooling, so this also restricts where they can be built.

Where I live the Right seems to have become strongly in favor of nukes only after leaving government. This is probably because, while in opposition, they don’t risk having to say where the reactors will be established and alienating voters. While in government they did hold some inquiries which concluded that nuclear was not practicable, but they are clearly free to ignore that when they don’t have power. My guess is that, for them, it is a way of trying to inhibit renewable electricity and keep coal and gas going.

Furthermore it is probable, although I don’t know for sure, that fossil fuel companies agitated against nuclear and slowed down research and improvements, in order to keep their monopoly on energy – this would be another reason why parties heavily dependent on fossil fuel money and sponsorship, did not promote nuclear as much as they might have done.

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