Incredibly janky port of comments from my old WordPress site:
BlueState Uncle
2019-09-09 at 10:57 am
And now a word from The Uncle.
In 1976, I supported and campaigned for Mo Udall in the D primaries – for whom this was his number one issue. (Carter won the nom, because who wanted to think about the environment?) Udall’s private position was that a market-based capitalist democracy would be incapable of dealing with sufficient intent to confront and ‘deal with’ this situation. In the years since, I’ve seen exactly what he means.
The reason is that the problem is not one of technology, but of political effectiveness. And if you wonder why the Russians hacked our elections, consider that it’s a collapsing political enterprise based on an extraction economy – they are (barely) propped up by oil prices. But I digress.
As our technology improves – and as the author above correctly points out – the technology has massively improved. Have you noticed that as energy efficiency improves, that our houses are bigger (and air conditioned), our cars are bigger, our refrigerators are bigger, our stoves now have two ovens and six burners? The rise of Uber and apps has put 10% more cars on the road in major cities (at the expense of mass transit).
I could go on, but it’s at this point I recommend you Google “Jevons Paradox.”
As to our improving tech, there is a huge carbon down payment in all of it, so far. Elon Musk won’t and can’t save us. What will, short of a network of worldwide autocracies, is when climate change starts costing the capitalists money. Now this could be done with taxes, but as Brown University professor Mark Blyth observes, it won’t happen until Naples FL is under water and half of Miami Beach is washed away (along with all the money invested there).
ProfitGreenly, keep up the drumbeat. We desperately need better tech (especially to wring the embedded carbon out of it). I have no doubt visionaries like yourself can and will get that done.
But the problem is not technology – it’s the vice grip of human nature and governance that is squeezing us all.
I think Udall’s stance made more sense in the 70s when solar cost 100x more than it does now. Adding a price to carbon will help speed along the transition to renewables, but the low price of renewables alone will eventually win in a market based system. Udall, just couldn’t forsee how lucky we would be to actually end up with renewables being the cheapest form of energy.
I do hear you on the Jevon’s paradox, and it is certainly something we should think about. Not everyone is living bigger though, it’s mostly just old/rich people with young people living much more modestly. That being said, after we get to the point where we’re using 100% renewable energy increasing energy use will not increase global warming in the same way that it does now. Yes more energy use will add heat to the planet, but that is much more benign than adding insulation to our planet in the form of greenhouse gases. It may also bring us to a point where we start to run low on various raw materials, but again I’d much rather have a raw material shortage then worldwide climate change.
Young people are living modestly because they are forced to – a future that awaits us all. Climate change is a force that can’t be wished or politicked away, but I am indeed a pessimist. (your aunt and I both have been heavily engaged on this issue since our college days, and it’s gotten much, much worse. Note that Carter was an environmentalist, and had he won a second term, and gotten the solar panels on the White House roof, we’d all be passive energy assisted today., Instead, he lost his re-election bid to an oil driller. And you may want to notice how our GDP and employment markets track 1:1 the growth in fracking. So it’s unlikely (if not delusional) to think we will act until the climate has begun the frontal assault on the capitalist economies, all of which are in (still-) temperate zones. At that point it will be a two-front war – because billions, not hundreds of thousands – of people will be living in uninhabitable parts of the world, and looking for habitable land, most of which is to the north.
To my mind, we are in the Lend-Lease phase, analogous to the secret build-up to WWII which every politician could see coming but wouldn’t prepare for because of an isolationist population. (Sound familiar? FDR started secret development a decade prior – and that’s what we need, our second great president.)
I mean the whole point of this blog is that people (young, old, middle aged, whatever) can live “modestly” and be happy, healthy and wealthy. It’s true that many people still do believe that consumption will bring them happiness, but don’t discount the significant subset of people who have rejected this. Heck go check out http://www.mrmoneymustache.com for a whole community of people who are reducing their consumption even though they have lots of money in the bank.
Incredibly janky port of comments from my old WordPress site:
Dan Alters
2019-09-09 at 1:23 pm
Even though it is easy to be pessimistic about anything connected to a healthy environment under the callous tRump administration, we should not need to endure this for much longer. Sane people in our Congress and a responsible administration will reverse the onerous dictates and get us and the rest of the world back on a healthy course. Reversing climate change is a difficult task, but we can do it.
Incredibly janky port of comments from my old WordPress site:
BlueState Uncle
2019-09-09 at 10:57 am
And now a word from The Uncle.
In 1976, I supported and campaigned for Mo Udall in the D primaries – for whom this was his number one issue. (Carter won the nom, because who wanted to think about the environment?) Udall’s private position was that a market-based capitalist democracy would be incapable of dealing with sufficient intent to confront and ‘deal with’ this situation. In the years since, I’ve seen exactly what he means.
The reason is that the problem is not one of technology, but of political effectiveness. And if you wonder why the Russians hacked our elections, consider that it’s a collapsing political enterprise based on an extraction economy – they are (barely) propped up by oil prices. But I digress.
As our technology improves – and as the author above correctly points out – the technology has massively improved. Have you noticed that as energy efficiency improves, that our houses are bigger (and air conditioned), our cars are bigger, our refrigerators are bigger, our stoves now have two ovens and six burners? The rise of Uber and apps has put 10% more cars on the road in major cities (at the expense of mass transit).
I could go on, but it’s at this point I recommend you Google “Jevons Paradox.”
As to our improving tech, there is a huge carbon down payment in all of it, so far. Elon Musk won’t and can’t save us. What will, short of a network of worldwide autocracies, is when climate change starts costing the capitalists money. Now this could be done with taxes, but as Brown University professor Mark Blyth observes, it won’t happen until Naples FL is under water and half of Miami Beach is washed away (along with all the money invested there).
ProfitGreenly, keep up the drumbeat. We desperately need better tech (especially to wring the embedded carbon out of it). I have no doubt visionaries like yourself can and will get that done.
But the problem is not technology – it’s the vice grip of human nature and governance that is squeezing us all.
Profit Greenly (Post author)
2019-09-09 at 2:05 pm
I think Udall’s stance made more sense in the 70s when solar cost 100x more than it does now. Adding a price to carbon will help speed along the transition to renewables, but the low price of renewables alone will eventually win in a market based system. Udall, just couldn’t forsee how lucky we would be to actually end up with renewables being the cheapest form of energy.
I do hear you on the Jevon’s paradox, and it is certainly something we should think about. Not everyone is living bigger though, it’s mostly just old/rich people with young people living much more modestly. That being said, after we get to the point where we’re using 100% renewable energy increasing energy use will not increase global warming in the same way that it does now. Yes more energy use will add heat to the planet, but that is much more benign than adding insulation to our planet in the form of greenhouse gases. It may also bring us to a point where we start to run low on various raw materials, but again I’d much rather have a raw material shortage then worldwide climate change.
BlueState Uncle
2019-09-09 at 3:13 pm
Young people are living modestly because they are forced to – a future that awaits us all. Climate change is a force that can’t be wished or politicked away, but I am indeed a pessimist. (your aunt and I both have been heavily engaged on this issue since our college days, and it’s gotten much, much worse. Note that Carter was an environmentalist, and had he won a second term, and gotten the solar panels on the White House roof, we’d all be passive energy assisted today., Instead, he lost his re-election bid to an oil driller. And you may want to notice how our GDP and employment markets track 1:1 the growth in fracking. So it’s unlikely (if not delusional) to think we will act until the climate has begun the frontal assault on the capitalist economies, all of which are in (still-) temperate zones. At that point it will be a two-front war – because billions, not hundreds of thousands – of people will be living in uninhabitable parts of the world, and looking for habitable land, most of which is to the north.
To my mind, we are in the Lend-Lease phase, analogous to the secret build-up to WWII which every politician could see coming but wouldn’t prepare for because of an isolationist population. (Sound familiar? FDR started secret development a decade prior – and that’s what we need, our second great president.)
Profit Greenly (Post author)
2019-09-10 at 1:15 am
I mean the whole point of this blog is that people (young, old, middle aged, whatever) can live “modestly” and be happy, healthy and wealthy. It’s true that many people still do believe that consumption will bring them happiness, but don’t discount the significant subset of people who have rejected this. Heck go check out http://www.mrmoneymustache.com for a whole community of people who are reducing their consumption even though they have lots of money in the bank.
BlueState Uncle
2019-09-10 at 10:21 am
Clicks “like” and goes on about his happy life, lived modestly.
Incredibly janky port of comments from my old WordPress site:
Dan Alters
2019-09-09 at 1:23 pm
Even though it is easy to be pessimistic about anything connected to a healthy environment under the callous tRump administration, we should not need to endure this for much longer. Sane people in our Congress and a responsible administration will reverse the onerous dictates and get us and the rest of the world back on a healthy course. Reversing climate change is a difficult task, but we can do it.