Posts Tagged ‘Social change’

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entropy again

November 20, 2024

The simplest form of what gets called entropy, is the dissipation of energy that occurs every time energy is directed to do some work. Energy gets lost when it is used.

Some, to all, of this dissipated energy cannot be regathered or reused without even more energy use and dissipation. It is not worth the effort.

This means that a system without an ‘outside’ source of energy (eg. a human body without food, the Earth without the sun), will eventually run down. No system can generate enough energy to keep itself going forever, it must take energy in from outside itself. This is why there are no perpetual motion machines.

As all organisms, materials and machines which use energy or direct energy to work or movement, or action etc. dissipate energy, wear out, suffer friction or accidents, do not replicate correctly etc, the idea of entropy is also applied to overall dissipation of ‘order’ or ‘functionality’ in the system or in relationships between participants in the system. Growth and development occurs when there is enough energy available for functional participants to build (often increasingly complex and) functional patterns and relationships.

‘Things’ and systems break down because it eventually takes more energy to maintain them than they can gather or direct to repairs, or there is no easy-enough access to external energy. It points to the idea that if ‘processes’ or things are not maintained and repaired they will eventually fall apart, or otherwise change from their ordered or functional relational states. However if the input and direction of energy can be maintained this is less likely, but accidents and breaks in relationships usually accumulate. Participants can end up building an order which is hostile to them and undermines their attempts to maintain and repair the system to which they belong.

It seems habitual for human organizations to become so complicated and complex as they grow that they expand beyond the ability of humans or machines to maintain or repair the functional relationships between participants (not enough energy or time) and head into collapse or decay, or to some new emergent order (if there is enough energy).

It is in some sense possible that the USA is more likely to breakdown through overwhelming infrastructure (bridge, roads sewage, water supplies, electricity cables, etc) breakdowns and misconnections, than from stupid politics. But stupid politics will not help maintain functional relationships, or will direct energy away from the problems.

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‘Historical Materialism’

September 26, 2024

This is a (hopefully) fairly simple explanation, rather than the full deal, and like most simplifications probably has major failings

Historical materialism

Historical materialism is the theory that history is primarily driven by material forces rather than by ideas or ‘great men.’ The theory that history is the working out of ideas alone can often be called something like ‘historical idealism’

Marxism asserts Ideas arise out of the human conditions of life and are generally spread by ‘class representatives’. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”. The ideas of the ruling classes get promoted and distributed, whereas other ideas tend to be persecuted or ignored. However, in conditions in which the ruling class is destroying itself, or a new class is rising, alternative ideas can arise out of existing class conflict. Hence Marxism itself was supposed to be able to challenge capitalist ideology, through the rise of the working class and through expressing their understandings and experience of life.

It seems to have failed dismally as, nowadays, most people have no idea what Marxism stands for or argues, they simply know what their rulers and the rulers’ representatives tell them about it 🙂

Important factors in history

Important factors in material history include the ways that people gain survival through the “organization of the means of production.” So the fundamental questions for a Marxist are:

  • How do societies produce food and other products?
  • How do they distribute or trade food and other products?
  • What groups of people does this organization allocate control over the distribution?
  • Who does the system allow to accumulate more than other people?
  • How is this inequality preserved?
  • How does this organization protect itself and enforce itself?
  • How does this organization undermine or destroy itself? These ways of self-destruction are usually called “contradictions.” Marxism implies that contradictions are binary (the “dialectic” because of Hegel :), but there is no reason to assume this is correct. Contradictions could involve multiple forces acting at the same time.

In capitalism, capitalists (deliberately?) confuse capitalism with exchange and trade, which are universal. For Marxists capitalism is a particular set of forms of organization of production, technology, labor, trade, distribution, allocation of prosperity, power and so on. Capitalism is not trade in itself. Otherwise bureaucratic state communism would have to be classified as capitalism, which is not useful, even if both are oppressive in often different ways.

Example: the history of capitalism

The capitalist idea of history is that people become rich because they, or their ancestors, worked hard, were virtuous or brilliant having great ideas. This set of ‘ideologies’ (ideas justifying a particular social organization) feels right to capitalists and makes capitalism ‘good’ which is pleasing to them. It is well known and well distributed. Every American, Britisher, European, Australian has probably heard this ideology repeated over and over until it sounds like common-sense.

Marxists would tend to argue that capitalism arose through violent theft of land by those in power (aristocrats), and through expansion of the aristocracy in the UK to include people who owed their wealth directly to the crown through services they performed. Many of these people used that land to accumulate capital, and start investments in newly invented operations like corporations. These people had the military power and technologies to continue their plunder throughout the world, moving on when they had destroyed land, stealing valuables like labor (slavery), gold. silver and other resources, often with the co-operation of other powers (such as local rulers).

This process of dispossession and investment, created a working class in the UK and elsewhere, who could no longer support themselves through their own food production and farms, craft or traditional labor. The self-reliance of the people was destroyed by capitalism and turned into reliance on transactional capitalist bosses. Eventually traditional aristocrats had to move into business or marry into business, because their lands no longer brought in enough income to live at the level required by their culture and forms of social power.

The State acted to support the rising capitalists and enforce this dispossession and impoverishment. This allowed the workers to be exploited in factories often with working and living conditions so bad, that capitalists were also stealing the health and lives of the workers as they were with slavery.

Eventually this similar experience lead to the working class unifying and struggling against bosses who extracted riches from them, and forming unions, fighting for political rights, political participation and decent working and living conditions

Marx expected these processes to lead to revolution and the abolition of capitalism and its State. There is no capitalism without a capitalist State. Marx rather naively seems to have thought that Communism without the State, would have few contradictions.

However, the processes in the West first led to the post war semi-socialist welfare State, as a defense against the possibilities of revolution, but capitalists fought back, and restored their dominance, as their control of wealth production enabled them to support ‘free market’ ideas through sponsored think tanks, fund politicians, persuade the State to make union life much harder and to repeal the taxes which allowed the welfare state to exist.

This set of pro-corporate political and economic actions is often known as ‘Neoliberalism.’ Some say this counter-revolution happened because capitalists were still afraid of workers’ revolution or the political influence coming from the new freedoms of people to participate politically, or because capitalism had become less profitable. I don’t know what is the case.

Liberty for ordinary people, collapsed and we are now living in a capitalist in plutocracy which is slowly destroying itself by impoverishing the people, destroying the competitive market, and destroying functional ecology. The only ‘solution’ being proposed for current capitalist contradictions seems to be authoritarianism, suppression of dissent and keeping people exhausted at work. Similar solutions were previously tried in the 1930s and did not work that well. There is no reason to assume they will work now.

However, information has been shown to be important. In my experience, many people still believe that the Mueller Report cleared Trump, did not find anything wrong with his behaviour or was a fraud. That Trump is being conspired against by the establishment and the FBI. That Putin is scared of Trump and campaigns for Democrats. That Harris slept her way to the top and is a communist who organised the assassination attempts on Trump, and that a vote for Trump is a far safer and more sensible than a vote for her. This may well give the US election to Trump and have massive effects on world history and the rush to collapse. The relationship of ideas and social forces, may ultimately depend on material forces, but ideas can give victory, although a pure materialist could point out these pro-Trump ideas are driven by corporations. However other corporations oppose them.

Conclusion

Historical materialism claims the main driving factors of history are material ones: material conditions, material and social organization, the possibilities of technology, and the allocation of violence. Ideas are largely secondary to these processes. History is not the expression of Spirit, great men, or God’s will.

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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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The Republicans in the 1950s

October 18, 2022

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

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

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

August 20, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The individual is of supreme importance.

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

America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.

Government must have a heart as well as a head.

Courage in principle, cooperation in practice make freedom positive.

To stay free, we must stay strong…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

We also propose:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recreation, parks and wildlife.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A New Energy Crisis???

December 22, 2021

Probably most people remember the recent UK energy crisis, with extremely high energy prices, the collapse of at least 25 UK energy companies between September and December 2021, and increased numbers of people facing energy poverty. There was a lot of popular dispute about how bad the situation was, and what caused it [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] but problems occurred. Similar, if less intense, energy problems appeared in Europe, especially for countries dependent on Russian gas, which was likewise possibly constrained by domestic need and production factors. China boosted its coal supplies and consumption to help provide heating for winter [7], [8], [9]. The previous year power had crashed out in Texas because of massive sudden demand, and a failure to invest and protect the grid and gas pipes against cold weather [10], [11], [12]. Texas also appears to have suffered from profiteering by electrical generation companies [13]. These events, are not just local, but part of a world wide energy crisis, [14]. The Northern winter is not yet over, hopefully it will pass ok, but we cannot be sure.

I shall suggest that these crises arise out of at least five interacting factors.

  • A background of climate change and ecological destruction
  • Increase in demand over supply, producing volatile prices;
  • Lack of necessary investment in energy;
  • Disruption from and to renewable transition; and
  • Civlisational collapse.

These factors feed into each other. Climate change and ecological destruction is the background against which this all plays out (and is not discussed in any detail). The volatility of pricing, or attempts to keep profit high, disrupts energy investment. Lack of investment helps disrupt the renewable transition – the renewable transition is also affected by a lack of renewable energy to power the energy for transition. The lack of renewable transition feeds civilisational collapse through societies causing ecological and climate damage. Corporations and free markets will not save us; neither will the governments that they control. Collapse produces further uncertainty and defensiveness, which affects people’s ability to deal with the problems other than in the standard way of causing more problems by staying with what has worked, and refusing to change habits, organisation and world view.

Finally, it is suggested that models of psychological breakthrough hold some hope for system breakthrough, provided people are prepared to venture into the unknown. This essentially is yet another way of discussing the Toynbee cycle, of civilisations facing challenge and overcoming them through change of worldview and habits, or collapsing because they (or the dominant people) are incapable of abandoning a worldview that has previously brought success. To get around this may require individual and community level innovation, and the expansion of that innovation throughout the society.

The First Problem: Price and demand increase

The IMF recognised this crisis and blogged:

Spot prices for natural gas have more than quadrupled to record levels in Europe and Asia, and the persistence and global dimension of these price spikes are unprecedented…..

Brent crude oil prices, the global benchmark, recently reached a seven-year high above $85 per barrel, as more buyers sought alternatives for heating and power generation amid already tight supplies. Coal, the nearest substitute, is in high demand as power plants turn to it more. This has pushed prices to the highest level since 2001, driving a rise in European carbon emission permit costs.

Andrea Pescatori, Martin Stuermer, and Nico Valckx Surging Energy Prices May Not Ease Until Next Year

The return to coal and its pollution, does not bode well for solving our major problems of ecological destruction and climate change. Lurion De Mellon of Macquarie University also wrote in October about the increase in prices apparently leading to increased emissions:

the world is entering a new energy crisis the like of which hasn’t been seen since the 1970s…. [see footnote below on the oil crisis]

European and Asian gas prices are at an all-time high, the oil price is at a three-year high, and the price of coal is soaring on the back of energy shortages across China, India and Germany…..

The crunch in the gas market is forcing countries to revert to coal for electricity generation and for industry. 

Lurion De Mellon Suddenly we are in the middle of a global energy crisis. What happened? The Conversation, 12 October 2021

The Economist reported similarly:

the first big energy scare of the green era is unfolding before [the eyes of people preparing for COP 26]. Since May the price of a basket of oil, coal and gas has soared by 95%. Britain, the host of the summit, has turned its coal-fired power stations back on, American petrol prices have hit $3 a gallon, blackouts have engulfed China and India, and Vladimir Putin has just reminded Europe that its supply of fuel relies on Russian goodwill…..

Editorial The first big energy shock of the green era. The Economist, 16 October 2021

The crisis is not confined to one area, and events in one country, or set of countries, have effects in others.

The Economist goes on to imply that the intermittent nature of contemporary renewables, may also destabilise the energy market and make it more vulnerable to shock. This could be especially so if the system has been geared towards continual supply, and if modern economies are dependent on non-disruptive weather for predictable trade and production, during a period in which climate change is kicking in.

Others imply this shortage happened because of the Covid reprieve of September to November of 2021, which led to a massive increase in production and demand. This may be being terminated by the Omicron chaos of December 2021, but it is too early to tell. The explosive demand is usually said to be higher than supplies of a great many products, which were wound down due to lack of demand during Covid.

However, Bridgewater states, in a somewhat self-contradictory report, that supply is not really the problem, but is the problem for, at least, energy and metals:

This is not, by and large, a pandemic-related supply problem: as we’ll show, supply of almost everything is at all-time highs. Rather, this is mostly [a policy] driven upward demand shock….

real goods production [in the US] is now higher than it was pre-COVID…. 

there’s not enough energy to power economic activity given the current levels of demand…

[Likewise] Metals prices have risen sharply since last year, as demand has far outstripped supply….

The gap between demand and supply is now large enough that high inflation is likely to be reasonably sustained, particularly because extremely easy policy is encouraging further demand rather than constricting it.

Greg Jensen, Melissa Saphier, Steve Secundo It’s Mostly a Demand Shock, Not a Supply Shock, and It’s Everywhere. Bridgewater, 19 October 2021

For whatever reason, demand for energy appears to be exceeding supply, and capitalist economics is possibly not experienced in deliberately trying to reduce consumption growth, which might be essential when we are dealing with an over-consumption and over-demand crisis. High prices may cut back demand, but they may not. Growth seems to be an inherent demand in the system. Politicians campaign for growth in GDP, and companies which do not grow in size and profit, are often thought to be in decline. That system demand seems to be present in people’s world views and habits.

On top of this temporary (?) lack of supply and ongoing demands for growth, it will eventually be the case that fossil fuels will reach a practical limit, when the energy needed to extract them becomes greater than the energy released through burning them, and there is little surplus energy other than that produced by non fossil fuel sources. That is, fossil fuels will reach depletion, or stagnation of production. Rather than simply pushing prices up to match demand, this may cause price volatility, as markets adjust spasmodically. Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute argues that shortages are already happening.

There has always been some volatility in fossil fuel markets. But as depletion continues, price spikes and troughs are likely to grow in amplitude, and to become more frequent. And that’s precisely what we are seeing….

Without depletion, there would still have been price variation—just as there would still be extreme weather events without climate change. But, like climate change, depletion is a slowly accumulating background condition that widens the envelope of day-to-day or year-to-year extremes….

Market volatility makes fossil fuel companies wary to expand operations, as new projects are often many years in development, and the comparatively few remaining prospective drilling sites are unlikely to yield profits absent stable, high prices.

Heinberg Museletter #345: How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis is Due to Depletion?

In a volatile situation, investment is slow, as there is less certainty of profit, especially if there is a fear of stranded assets. It is may be easier to make money on money markets, than in production, and this will slow useful investment further.

Second Problem: Lack of investment in transition

The Economist continues:

The panic has also exposed deeper problems as the world shifts to a cleaner energy system, including inadequate investment in renewables and some transition fossil fuels, rising geopolitical risks and flimsy safety buffers in power markets. Without rapid reforms there will be more energy crises and, perhaps, a popular revolt against climate policies.

Editorial The first big energy shock of the green era. The Economist, 16 October 2021

The BP 2020 Review of Primary Energy Consumption states that, despite the first decline in energy consumption since 2009, in 2020:

  • Oil provided 31.2% of the energy mix
  • Coal provided 27.2%
  • Methane (‘Natural Gas’) provided 24.7%

In this calculation, fossil Fuels provide a total of 83.1% of energy supply. The rest is made up of Hydro 6.9%, Nuclear 4.3%, Renewables 5.7% (although this category includes biofuels which are not always green-renewables), and presumably traditional sources of energy.

The preponderance of fossil fuels, the precariousness or failure of fossil fuel supply together with the failure to replace and phase out fossil fuels would seem to be make the energy crisis primarily a crisis of fossil fuels, not a renewable problem. However, the tiny amounts of renewables may add stress to a stressed system, as there is not enough of them to compensate, and unlikely to be enough of them, soon. Not enough constructive investment in energy is happening. The Economist claims that investment is running at half the level needed to reach net zero by 2050, and argues that energy transition:

will require capital spending on energy to more than double to $4trn-5trn a year. Yet from investors’ perspective, policy is baffling. Many countries have net-zero pledges but no plan of how to get there and have yet to square with the public that bills and taxes need to rise. 

Editorial The first big energy shock of the green era. The Economist, 16 October 2021

Resistance to necessary change, resistance to dealing with the new, or a desire not to risk relationships with powerful corporations, can be expressed as confusion, and policy confusion may not help people to organise to defeat problems. This essentially comes down to refusal to challenge existing worldviews, habits or organised power structures.

It should be easy to agree that:

The green era, for all the talk and promises, hasn’t yet begun. The world’s energy sources in 2021 are little changed from the late 20th century. We are still deeply dependent on fossil fuels.

Editorial This isn’t the first energy shock of the green era. It’s the last energy shock of the fossil-fuel age. The Globe and Mail 18th October

Third Problem: Lack of Renewables

The previous section argued that there is not enough investment in renewables, and that volatility, and lack of policy clarity, may not mean enough renewables are produced. As suggested earlier, it seems easier to default to coal. However, countries and companies cannot keep expanding fossil fuel use to solve this energy problem if they are concerned about the serious problems of pollution, ecological destruction, and climate change. The more fossil fuels they produce the greater the problems.

The IEA adds to concerns by remarking that:

For all the advances being made by renewables and electric mobility, 2021 is seeing a large rebound in coal and oil use. Largely for this reason, it is also seeing the second-largest annual increase in CO2 emissions in history. Public spending on sustainable energy in economic recovery packages has only mobilised around one-third of the investment required to jolt the energy system onto a new set of rails…

Getting the world on track for 1.5 °C requires a surge in annual investment in clean energy projects and infrastructure to nearly USD 4 trillion by 2030. 

IEA Executive summary World Energy Outlook 2021

To make the point yet again, it seems emissions are increasing to fix energy supply problems (increasing emissions is a habitual default position) and governments and corporations are not generating enough renewable energy to avoid this problem.

It is difficult to expand renewables if there are powerful vested interests resisting their expansion, if the necessary levels of renewables cost more than companies and governments are prepared to pay, the policy settings are confusing or otherwise not helpful, and if there is not enough energy to build renewables.

It takes energy to make solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and all the rest of the technology that policy makers propose to replace current fuel-burning infrastructure. Most of the energy that will be required for transition purposes, at least in the early stages, will have to come from fossil fuels….

If fossil energy prices are going haywire during the transition, that makes an already arduous and perilous process even more so.

Heinberg Museletter #345: How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis is Due to Depletion?

Rystad Energy also argue that price volatility in manufacturing, materials and shipping, is affecting renewable energy:

The surging cost of manufacturing materials and shipping could threaten 50 gigawatts (GW) – a staggering 56% – of the 90 GW of global utility PV developments planned for 2022, a Rystad Energy analysis shows. Commodity price inflation and supply chain bottlenecks could lead to the postponement or even cancelation of some of these projects, impacting demand and consumer pricing for solar-generated power.

Rystad Most of 2022’s solar PV projects risk delay or cancelation due to soaring material and shipping costs. 26 October 2021

So, apart from not being able to hook renewables up to the grid in some places [15], there is another problem of price increases in renewables resulting from the current economic turmoil and possibly profit decline as collapse increases.

It can also be suggested that increased energy efficiency may just add to demand for energy, and new energy technology may not lessen the demand for old energy technology. Renewables have so far been built on top of coal, oil and gas rather than replacing them. Some societies might not have enough energy at the moment, but they may still have more than they did and it does not satisfy demand.

To me these seem primarily problems of government and scale, magnified by corporate domination, corporate habits and corporate power.

One thing that seems to have been conclusively demonstrated is that free markets and sensible investment will not save the world, neither will governments that are embedded in promoting those markets. Contemporary market led civilisation has failed to deal with its primary set of challenges of climate change, ecological destruction and emissions reduction. Indeed it has if anything tried to suppress awareness of those challenges. This will lead to civiliational collapse, unless there is a massive ‘rebirth’ driven by people outside of government and the corporate sector – not people pretending to be outside, and aiming for fascism.

The Fourth Problem: Civilisational collapse

There are some who argue that Contemporary Western Civilisation was generated by fossil fuels and depends on cheap and plentiful fossil fuels, and on cheap pollution, for the continuing growth (of the new technologies, material goods, profits and military strength) that it requires. Real renewable energy, and ecological care, may not be able to substitute for this ease of growth. If so, then emissions targets, emissions prices, and energy transition could lead to collapse.

Even if this is correct, habitual expansion almost always requires increasing energy use, to maintain that expansion (against resistance), and to maintain the added complexity that expansion adds to the organisational form which is expanding. So the continued workings of the current system may generate not a stable replacement of ‘bad’ energy sources with better, but demand an ongoing increase of energy supply (and disruptive pollution), especially if ‘developing’ countries are to ‘catch up’. That ‘need’ for energy expansion is further destabilising of transition processes.

We are in a period in which the processes which generate this dominant form of ‘civilisation’ also appear to producing the hottest years in recorded history, massive and apparently unprecedented forest fires, the increasing sparsity of ocean life, massive deforestation, massive decline of insect populations which will undermine pollination and food chains, and the flooding of ecologies with new chemicals of which we cannot yet know the synergies and consequences. The maintenance of any society depends upon maintaining its ecologies, adapting to their change, or at least the cessation of excessive destruction.

Some hope that economic growth/expansion can be ‘decoupled’ (separated) from environmental destruction and climate change. According to the European Environmental Bureau there is no evidence that such a position is possible.

not only is there no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown, but also, and perhaps more importantly, such decoupling appears unlikely to happen in the future.

Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability

On top of this, as mentioned earlier, societies may be facing problems of fossil fuel depletion soon, as fossil fuels get used up, and that will also cause problems. These civilisational effects are likely to add to price volatility, as supply chains and production sites get disrupted.

The result is that contemporary Western (and many other) Civilisations are in crisis with their ecology and with the energy available, and will therefore have to change or collapse. So this is a ‘wicked problem‘ with no easy solution, and probably no solution we can agree on in advance. It is a wicked problem, that is easier to deal with by pretending that everything will be ok, and that we can avoid challenges, or overcome them by magic.

However, the reality is that if people in large scale societies continue as they are continuing, then their civilisational collapse will continue, intensify and be even less capable of controlled change. We need change – perhaps more change than just a change in energy supply.

Continued in

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

Footnote: The 1970s Oil Shock

It may need to be said that this energy shock is not that similar to the 1970s oil shock. That was motivated by politics and by a demand for a fair price for oil. The oil shock only affected one source of energy, and was survived by increasing coal, gas and nuclear, and seeking fuel closer to home (North Sea fields etc). This is now largely impossible, without risking further collapse. Nuclear still seems way too slow to solve our problems in time, and again suffers the problem that it could just add to energy rather than replace it.

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Ethics and undecidability

October 13, 2021

I shall argue that ethical questions are vital but fundamentally irresolvable and so the questions become:

  • How do people build and reinforce an ethical system?
  • How does, or to what extent does, that system affect human life?
  • How can we change social ethics?

Social importance of ethics

Let me posit that humans like to be regarded by themselves and others, if possible, as ‘good people’ no matter how ‘good’ is socially defined. A Viking’s idea of what makes a good person, might be radically different to that of Mother Teresa’s, and ideas of goodness might differ in a society with a person’s gender, social role, age and so on. There may be no coherent set of ethical positions across different groups in a society. However, being recognised as socially ‘good’ by some others, often builds status, privilege, trust, influence and sometimes power. Being recognised as ‘not-good’ may increase distrust, fear, the threat of exile and so on.

Sometimes what is socially good, is built up in opposition to a supposed mainstream – thus a ‘good’ criminal (as defined by others), might see themselves as tough, competent and clever, despite the mainstream seeing them as bad. Perhaps they claim to see the reality of human life, while other people are hypocrites.

Arguments about politics, decisions about courses to choose in life, seem frequently underlined by claims that the decisions and positions involve ethics. Even if people can be accused of hypocrisy, they are still making some kind of ethical decision, deciding that the decision they make is the best one, that it is a decision they should be able to live with. So we can still suggest they are being ethical, simply that they perhaps do not expect others to approve.

Ethics is complicated, and hard to demarcate, and understanding ethics seems complexified by several factors such as its lack of a non ethical basis, its connections to cosmology, its connections to group identity and politics, its connection to custom and habit, and finally (but permeating everything) its connection to context.

Lack of basis for ethics

Firstly, it seems there is no basis for ethics which is not an ethical statement which foreshadows the ethical argument that will proceed from it. In general ethical arguments do not have appeal across different forms of ethical arguments, and there seems no way to avoid this problem, despite the apparent importance of ethics for human identity.

For example, if we say it is good to behave in the same way in all situations (the so called “categorical imperative”), that itself is an ethical statement, which can be denied by other ethical arguments such as the assertion that it is our duty to behave with respect to the situation in its particulars, and not suppress those particulars in the general (what is sometimes called “situational ethics”). I would suggest we almost always categorise human events as situations similar to others, because of our intentions. We may want to classify an event as ‘bad’ or ‘excusable’ because of circumstances and context for example – is a killing murder, self defense, occurring in war, ‘crime of passion’, provoked, accidental etc…

Even something as apparently straightforward as acting to preserve the survival of as many people as possible, is already an ethical decision. Other ethical systems could suggest that humans do not necessarily deserve to survive, or that the population (usually of other people) should be culled, or that only elites, or true believers, like us (whoever we are) deserve to survive, that survival should be determined by contest, or that or that material survival (as opposed to gaining spiritual wisdom) is unimportant, and so on.

There is no necessary agreed on basis from which to argue ethics, so ethical questions are always irresolvable, although groups who share similar ethical orientations may agree on the general principles.

If groups do not share some symbolic ethical orientation, then there appears no obvious basis on which different ethical positions can be resolved, other than by different groups resolving to live together irrespective of this difference, different groups splitting or hiding, or uniformity being imposed perhaps by total control of information or through violence. And these resolution positions may also be said to be ethical positions.

We might suggest that ethics is itself revealed in argument over what should be done, and what has been done.

I will argue that to study ethics in action and the way it is built, reinforced and changed, we have to look at the following kinds of factors, all of which help resolve or limit the undecidability of ethics:

  • Cosmologies (the way people and reality works),
  • Established customs or habits – what people do regularly and publicly is supposed to be good. on the other hand changes in custom or habit may make new habits become ethically good
  • Group identities and relations to other groups. A good member of a group appears to express group values.
  • The way group boundaries are constructed and the group is positioned in relationship to other groups.
  • Contest and power relations – the other group is always bad, what we do is good, or at least acceptable in the context.
  • Dominance can become a custom which justifies the nature of the dominance. If wealthy people dominate then wealth marks virtue. If religious people dominate that piety marks virtue. If warriors dominate then boldness in combat marks virtue, and so on.
  • Context, the surrounding events may well alter ethical judgement and decision making. Cosmologies, etc can be considered to be contexts

Ethics and cosmology

Ethics always states something about a person’s cosmology. By ‘cosmology’, I refer to the ways that a person or group, thinks (theorises) that people and the world or cosmos actually work, or the ways that people have to live to survive. Good behaviour should generate ‘good’ results (however they are defined), because that is how things are – even if the good results may manifest after we die. Thus if you think that obeying the written instructions of a God is the basis of ethics, that says something about your cosmology and the way you expect behaviours to be rewarded. If you think that behaving ethically will bring happiness, you may aim to increase happiness, in the way you think that works. If you think the world is a place of endless struggle, then you will probably participate in, and train for, that struggle.

There is, for example, some evidence that believing in neoclassical capitalist economics is correlated with more selfish behaviour. Which way the causality flows is uncertain (believing in classical economics generates selfish behaviour, and selfish behaviour reinforces a belief in those forms of economic theory), but it may form a positive feedback loop. The behaviour and cosmology reinforce each other.

Sometimes behaviour and cosmology may not appear to reinforce each other, but they still set off a particular ethical dynamic. For example may believe that God is both love and an eternal torturer, this may set off a dynamic of using torture and violence to express your love and concern – which may drive guilt which drives more torture and less love, and so on. Perhaps people eventually came to think that this message was inconsistent and this helped drive the decline in Christian dominance?

Custom and habit

Anthropologists who studied traditional people often expressed surprise, when they asked the people “why do you do this?” and received the answer “because we have always done it,” or “our ancestors did this.”

The point is that if some process is familiar it can seem that that is the way of the universe, or the way things work, or are. You may not like it (individually), but most people will go along with it, because that is how the world is, and perhaps little thinking seems required. Custom and habit suggest ethical acceptance, or else they might change. They reinforce cosmologies. If it is the custom to sacrifice your first born to the gods, then while you might have personal doubts, most other people in your group will support the action, and will probably try to make you perform it – perhaps to avoid the anger of the god. If it is necessary to find a job to survive, then getting a job will seem moral. If it is customary for the Aristocracy, or the wealthy, to rule, and they seem relatively good at ruling, then it will seem good that they rule. If people get married as a mark of maturity, people may seek to get married. If a society and its habits had depended on fossil fuels for a long while, it could seem immoral to try and change, and to risk those habits that have grown up around that technology – new habits might seem impractical, unpragmatic or just wrong.

A change in habit can produce challenges to cosmologies…

Ethics politics and difference

Ethics is always political and revealed in conflict, disagreement and argument. Politics usually involves some kind of ethical appeal, even if the appeal appears pragmatic, because in some views ethics is primarily pragmatic, but what is pragmatic is also an ethical decision. Whether it is ethical to run a country either by increasing corporate profit, benefitting the people materially, or keep the ecology functional, is a matter of ethics. People often justify what they want to do by an appeal to ethics, cosmology or politics.

As political, ethics can be perceived to be part of the social relations of differences between groups and their social categories and identities. This is a context in which ethics works, and social identities are constructed. Identities often come with ethical positions, in which it is implied that exemplary members of the category will behave in particular ways, and exhibit particular virtues. One obvious basis for ethics, is that everyone we respect in our group is doing it, so we had better do it. This seems to work because of the lack of a basis for ethics

People’s ethical judgment of the behaviour of people on ‘their side’ is often more lenient, and trustful, than it is towards people on a socially defined other side. A person who seems to be a good exemplar of the groups you identify with, will probably seem to be virtuous. A person who seems to exemplify, to you, the groups you oppose, will probably seem non-virtuous, or more prone to corruption and evil. Likewise, people can justify their group’s narrow political interests while claiming it is for the greater good, or the good of all. People seem to more easily see the bad in another group than in their own, or even invent that bad in the others through some kind of shadow projection. Social categories are important for ethics. Mistreating, or ‘mastering,’ some people of certain social categories may be a requirement of virtue

The way the boundaries between groups and social categories is constructed is also important, because empathy and concern is also strong between people who are defined as similar, and who can be put into a wider category. This is similar to the ways that Benedict Anderson suggested that Nations where constructed out of popular media; the media grouped people together as worthy of concern, as sharing the same stories and the same identity, so that distance was relatively unimportant. In this case, different people were constructed as different, but still belonging to the wider notion of the nature, and for some people of humanity. However, categories can be constructed as opposed, in which case the connecting empathy may be significantly weakened, or even broken all together. We can see something like this happening in the US. Once not that long ago, people who identified as Republican or Democrat could see each other as different, but also as fellow Americans who worked together for their country and who could co-operate for the greater good. That stage now seems over. Republicans see Democrats as evil hypocrites, and Democrats see Republicans as conniving and stupid people who deny reality. There has been almost no co-operation between the parties, except for a co-operation in name calling, hostility and building polarities, for the last 12 or so years.

As a result, the US is probably in danger of falling apart, or falling into decay. There is no common story and identity group cosmologies are growing apart. The split is driven by ethics, ethical identity and group relations, and seems to be becoming a custom or habit, and hence part of practical cosmology.

Context and Framings

We can define ‘context’ as the events around (or ‘framing’) a specific event, or which the event is embedded within. Changes in context changes the meaning of an event, just as a different context can change the meaning of a text, or anything else. Framings can be conscious or unconscious. Using the term ‘framing’ is meant to suggest that the context of an event, does not have to be ‘real’ – people can bring their own framings to an event, and different groups may have different framings, so they perceive and interpret what is happening quite differently. Cosmologies can provide context. Wide scale, or local, politics can provide context. Ecologies can provide context.

If the context involves charged relationships between particular groups such as a challenge to authority, then the condemnation of a person in the opposed group might intensify and the defense of a person in a supported group might also intensify. In a war, the side committing war crimes will probably ignore them, or defend them as honorable, or aberrations. If a custom is breaking down, then those who offend against it may be excuses or more severely condemned, depending on other parts of the context. If a cosmology changes enough then it may provide a context in which the old ethics does not appear to work or make sense. In the case I will eventually get around to studying, one important context is the relationship of Governments to fossil fuel companies – this governs a lot of what is easy to happen, and what is difficult to happen

It appears to me that the somewhat precarious role of coal at the present, because of climate change (a change in context and cosmology), has not yet rendered fossil fuels completely bad, but it does seem to render other people’s coal bad, and our coal ok – it is cleaner or something.

This is one reason why it seems important to fossil fuel companies to deny climate change, deny human responsibility for climate change, find a model of the world in which burning fossil fuels is not harmful, or fantasise about technologies which would fix the problem, but don’t exist yet.

The problems of socially defining and enforcing Justice (which is an ethical position), particularly across culture and rivalrous nations, may make climate justice arguments ineffective in promoting climate action.

Conclusion

This suggests that ethics arises in making (or justifying) decisions, in conflict over those decisions, in supporting or criticising established behaviours, and within power relations. So ethics enters into human life and politics almost immediately. A wide view of ethics could easily suggest it is central to human life and to human identity.

All of the arguments above means that ethical argument may not be persuasive to others, unless you use their form of ethics and are a member of their social group, and perhaps not even then. In general there seems little to resolve ethical struggle, between people with different ethics and different ethical identities, other than violence, threat of violence, exclusion of people from discussion, or apathy.

However, ethics, in practice, seems more social, contextual and political than absolute. It may be that pointing out the incoherence, or changing the contexts, customs and cosmologies of ethics, or perhaps pointing to exemplary people in the group being targeted who are slightly closer to the desired position, is more significant than attacking the basis of the ethics.

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Climate change in the Marshall Islands

July 20, 2021

Recently a colleague suggested I read Peter Rudiak-Gould’s article published in 2014. “Climate Change and Accusation: Global Warming and Local Blame in a Small Island State”. Current Anthropology 55(4): 365-386.

This is a wonderful article. It might be out of date now but it suggests how we can learn from the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands in terms of their response to Climate Change. There is far more to the article than I am going to cover, so read it yourselves if you can…

Rudiak-Gould begins by pointing out there are two traditions of climate change blame in the West:

  1. Some are more at fault than others, usually the industrialised or industrialising world
  2. Everyone is to blame. Humanity is self-destructive. With the implication there is not much we can do alone.

The Marshall Islanders are clearly not to blame for Climate Change. They contributed 0.0002% of world CO2 emissions in 2008. Yet it is (was?) common for the Islanders to clearly take on the blame. People rarely mention the culpability of other nations for their severe climate problems, and insist they have to do something about their own problems before facing the world. One person, for example, says

“How can we ask the bigger nations for help, when we are [also] a contributor to climate change?”

p.368

While they agree they make a contribution to climate change, they don’t think they have much ability to affect climate change in total. Rudiak-Gould writes:

“It is never suggested that Marshall Islanders can stop climate change, only that they contribute to it…”

p.371

They don’t have delusions of grandeur, and the idea is not a defense, against action.

Rudiak-Gould explains this situation, by seeing it as related to a wide spread realisation of a decay in traditional life, which they see as the fault of the Islanders themselves: “We follow American culture;” “we have too many things from outsiders… We don’t grow our food anymore.”

RG writes, that for the Islanders Climate change is “the final proof of modernity’s folly, [and] a powerful inspiration to revitalize older ways.” By saying they are responsible, they reassert cultural continuity and distinctiveness, and a course of action.

They are using recognition of their responsibility for climate change to help themselves, not just trying to solve the problem.

Taking responsibility is not an “empty performance.” Islanders try to reduce dependency on foreign oil through solar; restart traditional shoreline management practices; stop throwing plastic onto the beaches and into the sea, and aim to take control over their society’s cultural future.

Taking responsibility says they have a right to speak to each other and to the world. It champions local citizen action, and challenges the dominance of the state, high tech and elite high science, all of which assume people know little and cannot act by themselves.

Taking responsibility also undermines assumptions that a nation cannot act, through ‘people power’. It shows even a small nation can act for itself, and by itself, without any constricting fear that action will ruin the economy or destroy a people’s way of life – it even assumes that a way of real and desirable social life can be revitalised and improved by climate action.

Finally, it challenges common ideas in the rest of the world that pacific islanders are the victims of others. They assert they can help the world and themselves, even if they cannot solve the problem completely, and their action sets an example others might follow.

Taking responsibility and acting the best we can casts doubt on the supposed necessity for a top down solution driven by State or business occurring first. It asserts climate change can be affected by people taking on their own responsibility in a practical way. We do not have to wait for the State or for business to get on board and act.

In a relatively large State, like the ones most of the people reading this will live, this local responsibility and action is possibly the only way that the State will get the message that the people care enough for it to take on the forces that oppose action.

The Marshall Islanders set forth an agenda we can all learn from.

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More considerations on decarbonisation

August 3, 2020

What I’m trying to do, however badly, in the previous comments is to figure out what are some of the more important eco-social systems in play in decarbonisation, and the ways they interact. It is impossible to specify all such factors in advance, so these are limited, and could be discarded. The main point is to avoid reduction of reality to the two blocks of ‘society’ and ‘ecology’ although I’m limited in my ability to do this because of lack of ecological knowledge.

When I use the term ‘eco-social systems’ I’m deliberately placing ecologies first. Humans do not exist without ecologies, while ecologies can and have existed without humans.

The eco-social systems selected out here, are:

  • Energy,
  • Waste/pollution
  • Extraction
  • Information
  • Planetary boundaries, and the limits of ecological functioning or resilience.

Energy system

This is obviously based in eco-physical functioning. The ecosystem itself can be considered to be a system of energy release/generation and transformation.

I’m suggesting Labour is part of the directed energy system, but no longer should count as the major and only significant part of that system, as in Marxism or classical economics for example, due to the bulk of directed energy coming from other than human sources.

It is useful to explore the dynamics of the limits and stresses of the energy system, and its transformation. For example, we have the possibility that renewables could simply become an addition to the continued use of fossil fuels, unless we have a specific programme to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Waste/pollution system

I think it is useful to specify a conceptual difference between ‘waste’ and ‘pollution’ (waste is re-processable by the economy or eco-system, and pollution is not), because the ecological feedbacks, and eco-social consequences are different. It suggests how eco-social activity can overpower ecological resilience even through such apparently harmless action as the production of CO2 – the CO2 waste becomes pollution after it passes certain levels, and the more the ecology is destroyed the more waste becomes pollution.

I also hope naming this system reminds people that the manufacture and distribution of renewables may produce pollution. We need to cut this pollution down, but it seems that renewables are relatively non polluting after installation (before decommission), unlike fossil fuel energy, which only functions through continuing pollution. However, waste and pollution are not removed from the system.

If renewable energy, after the initial costs, is almost free, until the installation reaches the ‘waste/pollution’ stage, that has a large disruptive capacity in itself.

The Extraction System

The eco-social extraction system can damage itself, through ecological ‘revenge’ effects and feedback. There is obviously nothing unusual about asserting this, although it does not seem to be recognised in orthodox pro-capitalist economics.

The damage does not have to be gradual or linear. It can be abrupt and excessive as systems breakdown.

Extraction systems do not have to be harmful – they can pay attention to ecological information, and moderate themselves as needed. However, largely, unconstrained extraction/destruction, pollution, and expansion (or what is usually called ‘growth’) have historically been part of both capitalism and developmentalism, and are the main factors which seem to produce the current eco-crisis. Capitalism and Developmentalism also tend to suppress, downplay, or ignore information about ecology. We can also note that pro-corporate neoliberals tend to remove limits on extraction, pollution and expansion, as soon as they can.

Given this, we can raise the question of ‘how we can transform the energy system without continuing a damaging extraction system?’

If economic growth is linked to increasing extractive destruction, then either growth has to go, or we need to find new ways of extraction. This may cause ‘climate justice’ issues if growth remains our main solution for poverty.

The Information system

This is how humans generally recognise eco-feedback. However, the information system can be distorted by organisational, economic and political processes.

It seems useful to have some idea of how this distortion occurs, and where it is dangerous, and maybe how to diminish it .

Planetary Boundaries and the limits of eco-social resilience.

This is pretty crude but, that is because of a lack of ecological knowledge. However, it does place constraints within the model.

Firstly we need to consider the physical layout, geography, climate, and spatial configuration of a place. This can effect the possibilities of the renewable energy being used, and the way it is deployed. Changing the environment can produce the experience of people being ‘unhomed’. Land not only shapes human activities but is shaped by them. Possible uses of land depend on political struggle and sometimes violent displacement of those originally occupying the land.

As well as this the world’s systems are effected by what people call planetary boundaries, which are themselves systems. The formal planetary boundaries and the eco-social systems which encapsulate them are:

  • Climate stability,
  • Biospheric integrity (balance between species, rates of extinction etc),
  • Water cycles,
  • Biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles etc),
  • Ocean ph (acidity or alkalinity),
  • Particulate levels,
  • Ozone depletion, and
  • Novel entities (new chemicals, microplastics etc.).

We can think of these as essential planetary geo-bio cycles – they are necessary to human functioning, and to the functioning of the planet. They can be broken, and appear to be being broken at this moment. Adjustment will eventually happen, but there is no reason to think that this adjustment will automatically be friendly to current human societies, or even to humans themselves.

It seems that capitalism and developmentalism, both seek to avoid limits, and claim they can transcend those limits, usually though innovation and new technology. But this is likely to be a fantasy. Going by the evidence so far, it is a fantasy – however consoling it might be.

Even if we have massive unexpected technical innovation in the next twenty years (say, fusion power), then it still may be too late, and we still have to stop pollution and ecological damage from other sources.

It almost certainly will not hurt more to stop breaking the geo-bio cycles, than it will hurt to continue breaking them.

Further comments

All of the above systems are obviously interconnected, but specifying them out, might help us factor them all in to our analysis, all the time.

I didn’t particularly bother about the class system and its political dynamics (plutocracy) at this time, because I figure I’m unlikely to forget that, but it affects all of the above. Likewise the political system and its patterns affect all of the above.

Politics can affect the energy system. People can encourage and hinder certain forms of energy. They can forcibly ignore the consequences of energy production and so on.

Politics can affect the waste/pollution system such as the kinds of pollutions accepted or banned. Who is allowed to pollute. Where the pollution is dumped. What kind of penalties apply, and so on.

Politics affects extraction. Who can do the extraction. What kind of royalties are paid. What kind of property is made. What kind of limits to extraction exist. What local benefits arise.

Politics affects what kinds information are promulgated. The kinds of truth standards to are applied. The modes of distribution of information. The suppression of information and so on. What kinds of people who are ‘trusted’ with respect to information. The kind of information is accepted by different groups?

In later blogs I’m planning to try and incorporate the property/accumulation system, and the class/plutocracy/group-categorisation systems into the analysis.

Decarbonisation

Decarbonisation seems obviously affected by all of these factors:

How do we generate the energy to decarbonise, without disrupting ecologies, through waste/pollution and extraction processes? How do we decarbonise without harmful growth?

How do the information systems work to recognise, or not recognise, what is happening? how do they play out through the political and economic processes? Is it possible to improve them?

How do ecological limits affect decarbonisation pathways when they are not in good shape. We face doing decarbonisation in an era of compounding eco-social crises, which increases energy expenditure as people attempt to control them. This adds to the difficulties of decarbonisation.

To reiterate: we cannot successfully decarbonise, without generating enough energy to decarbonise. It also seems we must generate this energy at the same time as cutting pollution, ending extractive destruction, ending growth, refining information, and protecting ecological resilience, etc.

Conclusion

If there are any points that I would really like people to take from any of this it is that:

  • It takes energy to ‘release’ energy – and usually leads to waste or pollution somewhere in the cycle. Pollution must be minimised to keep geo-bio cycles functional.
  • In this sense, no energy is completely free.
  • If it takes more energy for humans to make energy than energy is released then, over the long term, the human system will collapse.
  • Human action is limited by available energy. It is also limited by the amount of destruction, and damage to the geo-bio cycles produced by the energy system.
  • The Information System and its confusions, is not an addenda to the other systems, it is vital to any analysis.
  • Human energy, extraction, waste/pollution, information and other systems, interact with planetary geo-bio-cycles or planetary boundaries, and if the human systems disrupt those geo-bio cycles, they will be limited and disrupted in turn – probably violently.

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Considerations on decarbonisation processes

August 2, 2020

Basics

Social life only exists because of ecological processes, and is shaped by those processes.

All economies (modes of production, distribution and consumption) involve systems of energy, waste, extraction, information and ecological limits. [They almost certainly involve systems of accumulation/property, class/plutocracy and regulation/politics, but I’ll leave those out for another blog]

  • These other systems are not necessarily subsumed or determined by economies.
  • If an economic theory ignores the interactions between energy, ecology, waste, information, social organisation and conflict, it is more or less pointless.

It can be helpful to think of eco-social relations in terms of flow or flux, of patterns rather than structures, or of disruption rather than stability, or as guidable but not controllable .

Ecologies and eco-social relations are inevitably what we call ‘complex systems’. Their trajectory cannot be predicted with complete accuracy. If we are working with them, we should be on the look out for unintended consequences and surprise – as these are sources of information.

Every being in the system is interdependent with others, and responding to others. It has the characteristics it has, because of those interactions and their histories.

Energy

All ecologies and economies involve transformation of energy, from the transformation of sunlight by plants, to atomic power.

Transformation of energy, plus effective ecological functioning, is necessary for any human actions to happen. The less effective, or functional, the energy or the ecology, the more restrictions and difficulties.

Labour power is just one form of humanly applied and directed energy. Labour, itself requires energy from the organic transformation, and breakdown, of food into waste.

  • Humans have appropriated animal labour, the flow of water, wind and tides, the burning of biological material, the burning of fossil fuels, the energies inside atoms, and so on. These processes magnify, and transcend, human labour.
  • Once you develop large scale directed energy generation and application, then labour, and the organisation of labour, becomes secondary to the organisation of energy production and transmission in general. This is why energy is so fundamentally important to social capacity and organisation – and why changes of modes of energy generation are so threatening and unsettling to that established order.

Human producing, or using, of energy takes energy. Understanding this is vital.

The more energy is produced by the energy used to produce it, the greater the energy availability and the greater the activity possible. This is what we can call the “Energy Return on Energy Input” or EREI.

  • Fossil fuels have had a very high EREI. It look as though the EREI of renewable energy is much less. However, for most renewables after they are installed, the EREI changes, as very little labour, or energy expenditure, is required to gain an energy output – it is more or less free – whereas fossil fuel energy generation requires continual energy use to find and process new fossil fuels, and continual pollution from burning.
  • It looks as though the EREI of fossil fuels is decaying. Gas and oil sources are diminishing, requiring uneconomic and ecologically dangerous practices like fracking, or they are having to be found in places with increasingly difficult extraction practices – such as being under deep and stormy waters. Extraction of fossil fuels seems to be doing more ecological damage and requiring more energy to obtain. The ‘low hanging fruit’ has been taken and it cannot grow back, as once used it is consumed forever.
    • Coal could be an exception to the decline in EREI, but this may be because contemporary open cut coal extraction processes are much more ecologically destructive than previously, and the energy costs of transport are being ignored.
  • The decline in the EREI of fossil fuels, with the possible exception of coal, means that the energy expense of finding new fossil fuels to provide the energy for fossil fuel power stations is probably increasing in general.
  • It also means that there is less available energy around.

Waste/Pollution

Transformation of materials through energy, or in energy production, produces ‘waste’. The simplest human society imaginable, turns edible material into energy and human excreta (this is an overt simplification).

  • ‘Waste’ is here defined as excess, or unwanted matter which can be used, or ‘recycled’ by the economic or ecological system within an arbitrary, but functional, ‘reasonable’ time.
  • ‘Pollution’ is defined as waste which cannot be so processed in a ‘reasonable’ time.
  • Perfectly harmless waste can become pollution if there is so much of it that the economic or ecological systems cannot process it, and it accumulates and disrupts, or poisons, functioning ecologies.
  • Contemporary Greenhouse gas emissions are wastes which have become pollution because of the volume in which they are emitted.

The more that pollution damages the system, the less waste can be processed by it.

Extraction and ecology

Economies can also extract materials, and life forms, from the ecology in ways that destroy the ability of the ecology to regenerate and, as a consequence, produce eco-social change, minor or large depending on industry wide levels of destruction.

  • Ecologies are not passive, and respond to human or other actions in ways which are often unpredictable in specific.
  • It is possible to imagine an economy in which destruction of ecologies was not standard practice.
  • Indeed the impact of humans on ecologies was, until relatively recently, mostly fairly gentle. Although some human systems appear to have been unintentionally destructive of their ecologies, before the large scale use of fossil fuels, and carried out the destruction fairly quickly.
  • Increasing economic growth, which seems essential in capitalism and developmentalism, nearly always seems to involve increases of ecological damage. Such growth has often come out of destruction.

For decarbonisation, the fundamental question is “how we can transform the energy system without continuing a damaging extraction system?”

It can be postulated that the economic system is not the only cause of ecological destruction. Religious systems can demand the cutting down of trees, the use of plaster which blocks water supplies, as apparently the case for the Maya, and so on. That is another reason why we talk of eco-social relations, and indicates the importance of worldview and information.

Information

Economies require information distribution and restriction. At the minimum, people need to know what to extract, how to transform it, how to consume it, and how to keep the system going. This knowledge may be restricted so that only some people know how to do some tasks properly (through gender, age, class, education, etc.), and the information may be limited, incorrect, or influenced by its role in politics.

The information system is how humans generally recognise eco-feedback.

Any information about complex systems, such as societies or ecologies, is almost always limited and inadequate, because it is inherently impossible to map all the relevant links and exchanges in real time. Any representation, however useful, is a distortion.

  • Not all information is literal, some can be ‘symbolic.’ There is the possibility that symbolic information may be useful in dealing with systems that ‘resist’ ordinary language.

Information distortion is not just a product of the limits of human conception. The information system can be distorted by organisational, economic and political processes.

  • For example, information distortion can result as a normal function of capitalist accumulation. There is the production of opaqueness of pricing to hinder customers finding out the best price (competition through obscurity), the use of rhetorical, or overly hopeful, information as part of market strategy to capture markets and discourage competition, and the use of information to capture, or influence, states.
  • The information needed to know that aspects of the economy, are destroying the ecologies they depend upon, can be ignored or suppressed as part of the functioning (and protection) of that economy.
  • Politics also damages accurate information, through using information as a mode of persuasion, through concealment of information, and through the inability to co-ordinate coherent information in a zone of information excess, such as an information society, when information justifying almost anything can be found.
  • Organisational forms, such as punitive hierarchy, can also distort information transmission. In such a circumstance, people try to give those higher up in the hierarchy than them the information they think those above them require, and hide mistakes to avoid punishment or gain reward. Likewise, those above have incentives not to reveal exactly what is going on to those below them, or to ever admit ignorance, as that implies vulnerability. This situation can be reinforced if the organisation is justified by adherence to a correct dogma which has to be kept safe from challenge.
  • Information has value, and its value to a group may depend on how restricted or how available it can be made, in different situations.

Ecological systems 1: Human Geographies

Before considering planetary boundaries as features of eco-systems, lets first briefly consider geography, climate and landscape.

Obviously, mountain ranges, forests, plains etc may affect the layout of Renewable Energy, or the RE may affect the land, if trees are felled, fields converted etc. Wind may be more geographically more prevalent than sunlight, or vice versa. Wind may be severe, putting a limit on size of turbines, or the angles of solar panels. Winter darkness, or heavy seasonal rain can affect the possibilities of solar power. Weather features such as presence of wind and sunlight, and the presence of water for hydro-electric generation, can be affected by climate change. Distances between centres of population and the areas in which renewables can be deployed, are all important, although cities may need to become renewable centres (there are plenty of wind canyons, and high roofs ). All this means that simple geography, spatial layout and its effects, cannot be ignored.

Landscape and vegetation is also something that people related to, and end up in relationship with. Disruption, or change, of landscape can disrupt and unsettle people and their activities, and often their livelihood, to the extent of them feeling ‘unhomed’.

Unhoming is a common feature of development, which is usually ignored by the established powers and thrust upon people living in that landscape. For some reason it is far more significant when the unhoming comes from renewables.

Ecological Systems 2: Planetary boundaries

All planetary eco-social systems are currently bounded. Exceeding the boundaries leads to the rundown, or breakdown, of ecological functioning, and this breakdown then adds difficulties to maintaining other systems in their previous flourishing.

  • As ecological systems breakdown, they cease performing all of their ‘essential services’ at previous levels.
  • If these levels are to be maintained ‘artificially’ then this requires extra energy expenditure, in addition to normal energy expenditure.
  • It appears that growth, in the contemporary world, is likely to eventually lead to the breaking of planetary boundaries

Capitalism and developmentalism tend to recognise boundaries only to ignore them, and claim that ingenuity and willpower, will overcome those boundaries forever without limit. However, just because a technology is needed and would be profitable, does not mean it will be developed in time to save the system.

Capitalism downplays any limit to growth, and any fundamental role to the world ecology. This is one reason it is currently so destructive.

The main planetary eco-social systems which form these boundaries are:

  • Climate stability,
  • Biospheric integrity (distribution and interaction of organic life forms),
  • Land layout (geography),
  • Water flows and cycles,
  • Biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles. The possibility of ‘Metabolic Rift’),
  • Ocean acidity or alkalinity,
  • Particulates,
  • Ozone levels,
  • Novel entities such as new chemicals, plastics and microplastics.

All of these factors should at least be glanced at.

To emphasise again: humanly propelled destructive extraction and pollution are the main current disruptors of these boundary systems.

Capitalism and developmentalism

Capitalism and developmentalism have been incredibly successful at increasing standards of material life for many people. This success means that changes to their processes are likely to be resisted, at many different points in society.

So far, this success has involved refusals to live within ecological (or planetary) boundaries and processes. The eco-social relations of these systems seem doomed.

Capitalism and developmentalism, run a several pronged attack on ecologies. They a) emit pollution, b) destroy ecologies through over-extraction, and c) attempt to grow themselves to increase their ‘benefits’ (such as profits, development, spread, production, consumption and extraction). They attack planetary limits, and produce compounding destruction.

  • Dumping pollution and poisoning without cost is defined by these systems, as an ‘externality’, and helps to increase business profit. This means that pollution escapes being ‘accounted’ for (or noticed) by members of the emitting organisation.

There are no ‘externalities’ once we accept society and ecology always intermesh, and that there are boundaries to the planet and its functionality.

  • To reiterate: organisational structure can limit the observation, and conscious processing, of feedback and useful information. It is involved in creating patterns of ignorance or unaccountability. It is likely these patterns of ignorance also hide other information vital to the general survival of the organisation.

Capitalism leads to the classic tragedy of the commons, in which individuals and organisations acting independently, in their apparent self-interest, over-exploit and over-pollute a resource destroying the common good.

By diminishing ecological functioning as part of their own functioning, capitalism and developmentalism, suffer from what Engels called the ‘revenge effects of nature’.

Climate Change

One of these ‘revenge effects’ is climate change. Climate change is a subset of the consequences of the ecological damage produced by capitalism and developmentalism, as should be clear through looking at the list of planetary boundary systems. We probably should not ignore the other ecological problems we are facing at the same time.

All the systems I have been discussing, are bound into a shared set of eco-social processes, and as they are all active (although not coherently or harmoniously), any change in the relationships, or interactions, produces further changes in eco-social relations.

  • Ecological damage probably always portends some change in eco-social relations. The greater the damage the more likely the greater the change.
  • This is summarised in the concept of the Anthropocene, in which it is recognised that human activity can influence planetary activity, and vice versa.

Climate change disrupts the possibility of a smooth continuance of the established eco-social relations. This means change, whether voluntary and planned, or otherwise. There is no necessity the change should be beneficial.

Accelerating social breakdown produced by climate change may render all forms of transition more difficult.

Energy Systems and Transformations

Through the introduction of new energy systems and a simultaneous ongoing reduction of pollutions and destructions, the global greenhouse effect could be diminished and climate disruption ameliorated.

  • It needs to be emphasised that an increase in renewables without a cut back in pollution (especially from burning fossil fuels) and a slowdown in destructive extraction (which will probably need to be connected to a slowdown in growth etc.), will not generate stability and the eco-climate crisis will continue.

If establishing a new relatively stable set of eco-social-energic relations is successful, then social relations will have changed – and probably unpredictably.

As energy systems influence the capacity of a society’s ability to act (to produce, consume, struggle, invent, extend itself, produce information, or promote dominance of various groups and nations,), a change of energy system will cause political eruptions, and unpredictable change, which potentially threatens losses for powerful sections of society, not just fossil fuel companies.

  • For example:
    • cheaper energy might threaten the capital accumulation of energy companies of all kinds; it may even threaten capital accumulation itself.
    • Cheaper energy might increase eco-destruction, as more damage can be done at low cost.
    • More jobs may threaten economic platforms which depend on maintaining a “reserve army” of unemployed labour.
    • With localised energy production, nations may be able to break up with greater ease.
  • Our solutions to poverty have so far depended on increasing energy supply, emitting cheap pollution, destroying ecologies and economic growth. If we stop these practices to save the world, do we know how to reduce poverty in the short term? I suspect not. If those in favour of transformation are in favour of what is loosely called ‘climate justice’, then this is a problem they have to face.
  • Unintended consequences are possible everywhere and should be expected.

Any energy transformation depends on the production of energy to power and build that transformation.

It may not be possible to provide all this energy immediately from other renewables, or non-greenhouse-gas emitting sources. Without care, the organisation of transformation could lead to a catastrophic increase in the use of fossil fuels to ‘temporarily’ provide the energy for the transformation, which would then appear to ‘lock-in’ the use of those fossil fuels for some time.

  • As stated earlier, the EREI of fossil fuels seems to be declining, which could mean there is both less energy available from them and the harm of using them increases.

A program of transformation may also generate heavy pollution from the manufacturing, and installation, of the new energy system.

If the old forms of social organisation remain, then renewables may be used to allow increasing energy supply on top of fossil fuels, rather than replacing energy supply from fossil fuels.

  • This would be a so called ‘Jevons effect’ in action.

The energy costs of transformation, when added to the power of established fossil fuel industries, may lead to state and business encouragement for locking in fossil fuels.

  • Potential conflict between the state and capitalist accumulation, may lead to the state abdicating its role in the transformation, to the extent that its governors depend on corporate subsidy for their campaigns or for other forms of income.
  • The energy transition is largely occurring because of recognition of climate change, not through normal socio-political reasons such as increase of profit for already powerful people, or increase of state power, or the dangerous increase in the EREI of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel energy production is still relatively cheap, efficient (for certain values of efficiency) and is an established and understood technology. Transformation can be seen as an unnecessary cost, with little benefit for the already successful.
  • Accepted behaviour that previously generated wealth and power, now generates (disputable) harm – in the sense that any information can be disputed. Recognition of this problem, could produce an existential crisis, which may well lead to people lowering their anxiety by enforcing familiar ways of problem solving.

Cost, lack of co-ordination among, and between, capitalists and states, and presence of competition between business and states, is likely to increase problems of freeloading and non-cooperation.

  • It may seem beneficial for an organisation to allow other organisations to bear the cost of transformation, or catch up later assuming that costs will have decreased.

Every country has possible excuses for why it should be exempted from action and allow other countries to have the primary expense of conversion.

  • In Australia it tends to be argued that we are an exporting nation, contribute relatively little in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, or that we are large country which needs to burn fuel for transport etc.
  • It also tends to be argued that we should only change after others have done so, so we do not lose out through: a) the higher competitiveness of nations which retain or boost fossil fuels; b) loss of coal sales; or c) through the greater cost of early transformation.
  • We also tend not to be informed of the steps to transformation that are happening elsewhere. Even the success of Conservative British Governments in reducing greenhouse gases tends not to be reported here, or skated over. That India has a carbon price is almost completely unknown.
  • Information is hidden or lost, probably by ‘interested parties’ to reinforce inertia.
    • Australians also have to deal with an extremely confusing, and hidden set of energy regulations, which vary from state to state. There is no apparent co-ordination of energy legislation or regulation.

“How do we overcome organisational inertia and freeloading within a state and capitalist framework that puts local profit first?”

Renewable Energy

Renewable energies can be presented as:

  1. a simple technical fix,
  2. a retro-fit of the existing system,
  3. an ‘energy transition’,
  4. a wide-scale ‘energy transformation’
  5. a wide-scale social and energy transformation, which makes either radical break with the present or for continuing change,
  6. the inevitable process of societal decarbonisation under climate change,
  7. a co-ordinated socialist plot to increase government control over daily lives,
  8. a false hope – too little too late. Or even,
  9. the end of civilisation and a reversion to barbarism with a return to “living in caves”.

The information presented about renewable energy is not always entirely positive, and analysts should not pretend otherwise, or claim that a transformation will inevitably occur. Transformation to renewable energy involves social struggle, partly because we do not know the consequences of the transformation, and imaginations of the transformation involve, and produce, politicised information geared at social persuasion.

Transformation also involves technical and organisational difficulties.

  • According to some estimates, the amount of fossil fuel energy we need to replace is truly massive. Real renewables (not biofuel, not hydro) currently compose less than 3% of the world’s total energy requirements, according to the IEA. Other estimate seem more optimistic, but we are still, once biofuels are removed, talking about 5-7% of the world’s total energy usage.

To make incursions on the non-electrical energy system we have to electrify these other uses of energy (diesel in Australia). This requires even more energy use to build.

The technical difficulties of achieving this replacement, without producing further ecological destruction or pollution, is huge, especially given that energy needs to be highly available to make the transition. It is a problem which has to be faced.

Transition to renewables also faces powerful political opposition. This renders the imposition of renewables upon people through standardised neoliberal non-consultative planning processes, which do not benefit local populations, even more harmful than usual. Renewables may face difficulties not faced by more established industries.

We also appear to have significant time constraints. If we keep delaying the transformation, climate change and eco-social destruction will become more severe and make the transformations far more difficult.

  • As the ecological crises get worse, we may well require more energy use to keep eco-social relations stable, or repaired, after more frequent, and compounding, disasters
    • (such as covid and intense storms, which spread the virus because people cannot keep clear of each other, which lessens the energy available to deal with the problem).
  • The crises may possibly take energy away from transition, or require still more energy generation.
  • Organisational breakdown resulting from climate turmoil will also impede the transitions and add to the energy expenditure.

Conclusion

We cannot successfully decarbonise, without generating enough energy to decarbonise. It also seems we must generate this energy at the same time as cutting pollution, ending extractive destruction, ending growth, refining information, protecting ecological resilience, dealing with compounding problems, and fighting political wars etc.

Energy transformation is not easy, and is being rendered more difficult, by the current forms and dynamics of eco-social relations, and our ways of problem solving.

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The UN has failed Climate: What Next?

February 1, 2020

This post is based in two insightful posts by Richard Hames from 2012. [1], [2] I think it is important to summarise them. All the good bits are his, the rest of it is mine. The unsourced quotations come from the blogs just referred to.

We all know the assertion that

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

which was apparently written by someone from Alcoholics (or Narcotics) Anonymous in 1981. It was not Einstein. It is also not quite correct. If you practice a musical instrument you would hope you would get better at playing from doing the same thing over and over, indeed you learn through repetition. Anyway let’s change the cliche to “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, failing to improve every time, and expecting different results.” Not as neat perhaps, but it makes the point…

Pedantry aside, we have been hoping that UN sponsored Conference of the Parties would help us solve climate change and come to an agreement since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

They haven’t. They have not delivered better results and, by now it should be clear, that even with increasing disruption from turbulent weather events, they probably won’t.

When something fails repeatedly that is part of its pattern and existence. And the pattern cannot be ignored, without retreating into some kind of inability to deal with reality, or simply wasting energy which could be better expended elsewhere.

So let us propose that the UN Conference of the Parties, nowadays, primarily exists as an excuse for those parties not acting ethically or responsibly. Parties can always use the UN to find someone to blame for their own failure, so as to deflect criticism from a task they never took up whole heartedly in the first place, or that they expected others to solve without them having to sacrifice anything significant.

Not everyone has to refuse to take the conference seriously, and use it as an excuse for not acting, but if enough do, then it will fail. Consensus, of any other kind than ‘it failed again’, is unlikely.

What is the primary dynamic behind this? Hames suggests the Nation State.

Nation States are geared to compete with other Nation States, and to defend themselves against other Nation States. This goes back a long way, but it was reinforced by Colonialism and Developmentalism. Colonialism basically showed the importance of superior military technology and organisation, steel manufacture and highly available cheap energy from coal. The British were leading the world in the mid to late 19th Century and other countries emulated their processes, both as a mode of gaining resources and enforced markets (from colonies), and as a mode of defending themselves from British (and then European) power and dominance. The leaders of the Communist Revolution in Russia saw the development of Russia in terms of survival; they had been attacked and just managed to defend themselves: electrification and the coal to power it, was vital. After World War I, the US slowly shifted into dominance using the same kind of techniques, and lack of concern about environmental destruction, even if they set aside areas to be protected.

With the decline of colonialism, most of the ex-colonial states, no matter what their political system, embraced development and the implied rivalry behind it. Part of this embrace means embracing ‘GDP’ growth driven by cheap fossil fuels.

The Nation State:

defends and protects those citizens who choose to live within its borders , in return for which its citizens compete with those in other states for resources, territory, influence and wealth.

Hence the difficulty of any state giving something up which will perhaps weaken them and empower others.

The problem the UN faces is that there can be no losers, other than generous or unconcerned losers, if they are to preserve unity.

Hence the targets they issue are aspirational, and they have no enforcement mechanisms. Few States will voluntarily give any sovereignty to the UN and their potential enemies. This is why we have the security council and the power of the historically most important States to veto anything. The less “important” states are already afraid of less sovereignty, so they also resist. Not only do the numbers of negotiators, and their lack of authority or responsibility, inhibit negotiation, but a significant percentage are driven by Nationalist and Developmentalist loyalties.

So far most of the desperation and loss of life produced by climate change has appeared in the poorer States, and this is ignored by States with most of the power and producing most of the pollution. Recently, we have learned the wealthy states are quite capable of ignoring massive destruction in their own territory, if they choose. So the pressure to do something declines, as the results of action gets worse.

As the targets are aspirational, they tend to be pleasing and “possible” rather than based in our changing knowledge of what is actually required. They also tend to be manipulable, and interpretable in different ways, rather than fixed or meaningful. As a result the emissions from planetary industries have not declined, although they may have declined in some countries.

The UN is not geared towards producing alarm, for fairly obvious reasons of trying to keep the peace and status quo, so its warnings tend to be couched in vague terms, its science tends to be tilted towards conservatism.

This, as Hames notes then translates into the language used in the proclamations of the COPs.

Any effective communication, such that conveys compelling ideas or provokes collective action, is deliberately avoided or understated. Almost all briefing documents, reports, pledges, commitments, protocols, conventions and records of the meeting, supposedly intended to expound and inform, are invariably bogged down by a babel of weasel words – ambiguous, tortuously verbose or deliberately vague. This results in a weird kind of bureaucratic etiquette where nothing meaningful is said. Indeed the art of drafting these documents is to avoid saying anything explicitly that could cause offence to anyone at all.

The prime way of imparting information at the COPs is through instructional documents written by experts, according to the above restraints. But instruction does not necessarily result in new learning nor lead to behavioural change. It may just get people’s backs up, and reinforce their resistance. The documents fail on all levels, but do so in order to avoid complete dismissal as politicised. Not that it works.

The aim of consensus becomes impossible, and the aim may inhibit action. It allows any ‘recalcitrant’ State to blame others. For example:

  • “If the US does not reduce its emissions to zero immediately, it is not fair to ask us to reduce emissions at all.”
  • “If the Chinese can’t reduce emissions, neither will we.”
  • “We are only a small country, and acting would destroy our economy. Others need to act first”
  • We cannot reduce emissions without sacrificing our people to poverty

You all know the excuses and the blame game.

The most obvious other problem is that climate change is an unintended consequence of what are supposed to be beneficial acts, working through complex systems.

Consequently Nation States can be particularly reluctant to give up what they consider to be beneficial acts for themselves, in order to benefit other people in general. The costs of giving up the supposedly beneficial acts are obvious, the benefits of giving them up are not. Especially the benefits of being amongst the first to give them up. Its obviously better to let other people give up first. And if everybody waits for everyone else to give up first, then very little will happen.

As I have suggested previously, Climate Justice merely bogs us down in this fairness paradox, while climate generosity may free us to act in our and other people’s best interests, without waiting.

Suggestions

So we may need to recognise:

  • The UN is not the place for climate action.
  • People competing for advantage and past benefit are unlikely to act. Ever.
  • Nation States cannot all reach agreement, because of their nature and history.
  • A treaty is currently impossible.
  • We need to be doing something else.

What has been successful are things like the climate cities movement, in which cities compete to become more climate resilient, and to ameliorate their affect on climate. Of course such cities have faced attack from their federal governments, because it makes the government’s inaction look a little odd. In Australia, for example, despite confusion at the federal and state level:

nearly 40 per cent of the surveyed local governments had made commitments to reach a zero emissions target by or before 2050 for their community emissions – that is those generated by residents, businesses and visitors. ….

The report also found that 58 per cent of assessed councils had set targets to bring their own operational emissions to zero by 2050.

One Step Off the Grid

These moves are also acts of generosity, because they doe not expect others to act first. It allows people to take responsibility for their emissions now.

While there are conferences outside the conference in which history and power relations are explored, these secondary conferences seem to be kept isolated from the main proceedings – perhaps because the nation state is less important, and the conferences are less driven by wealth and power. International NGOs have also participated in such acts.

However, in the model proposed, we start to ask what can people at these conferences do without waiting for their Nation States to act, or to recognise their acts, or waiting for other places to act..

The Nation State, and the UN, cannot save us, so we have to stop expecting them to do so. We have to take action at the local level, or wherever we can act, and start building new institutions which will express our collective interests and enable us to co-operate to build local solutions, and to oppose local pollutions.

This is not easy, but it is also not impossible.

We further need to understand the history and dynamics of our position. As Hame writes:

“You must know where you have come from, where you are now, and where you want to get to,” to get there.

This knowledge seems more likely to happen at the local level or at the ‘secondary conference’ level than at the UN or the State level.

We also need a change in our psychology and our understanding of systems and complexity. In particular we need to attend to the notion that what we do may not just have the effects we are hoping for, we have to explore all its possible effects, and be prepared to change if our actions do not produce the results we expect.

Solutions to problems in complex systems cannot be worked out completely in advance, they must be discovered, at least in part, as we proceed, and that again is easier at the local level, where people have their senses and their direct concerns.

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