Michael Tobis wrote:
At the edge of the snow belt, much as at the edge of the perennial ice,
changes are already large and striking. Even though people like, at any
given moment, to be warm rather than cold, the overall effect is deeply
discouraging and disorienting to regional cultures adapted to circumstances
that are abruptly vanishing.
Also, the ecological impacts remain uncertain but large forest dieoffs like
the one in the Kenai are likely. Measured in money this may not amount to
much. This is why I ask exactly what it is that money measures.
The marketplace optimizes for what it calls wealth already. It seems to me
that to say that an environmental impact of marketplace activity should
remain unconstrained because that strategy optimizes for wealth is a
tautology, and to say it should be constrained because it does not do so is
a contradiction.
This implies that Lomborg is contextually right, and Stern is contextually
wrong. However, it also thoroughly begs the question. It seems to me that
the context in which they operate is not very helpful in environmental
matters.
There is a school of thought which suggests that money and energy are
the same, in a sense. Money flows thru the economy in a direction
opposite that of energy, thus the choices made where to spend money
actually control those energy flows. Those ideas were considered about
the same time the net energy question was raised.
Before humans began intensive use of fossil fuels, wealth was directly
related to the land, especially agricultural land. Agriculture is a
form of solar energy collection, as plants and the animals which eat
them are the products of the sun. As power is the time rate of enrgy
use, the ability to use animal energy is the source of the definition
of "horse power". Military power was often the result of mass use of
man power, i.e., lots of people, and horse power to carry the food and
mounted troops, both of which are solar powered too. Sailing ships
projected military power and brought wealth their owners as the result
of trade or fishing.
As industrial power plants were developed, factories became common and
cities flourished around them. Money was paid to workers for time
spent on the job, thus the workers today tend to think of money as a
time related measure. But, workers are usually replaceable and
"productive work" means getting more done with less human time, usually
by employing energy to run machines instead of hiring more people.
Since the average worker doesn't think of money as energy, the result
is more consumption of energy, especially fossil fuels, IMHO. Economic
growth implies increased consumption of all resources, including
energy.
The net energy problem is that it takes energy to make more energy.
With oil or coal, the input of energy is small for the resulting gain.
With many alternatives, this is not true, thus we may find that we are
in a situation where two steps forward cause one step fall back, much
like climbing a gravel pile. Some energy options, such as corn based
ethanol, may actually consume more energy than produced, with dire
consequences were they to be widely adopted. We might even return to
the days where most people are working to provide food to eat and
energy to cook and heat with, but little else of what one would call
"wealth". It's worth remembering that a large fraction of humanity
still lives on less than $2 per day.
It might be possible to avoid the energy vortex, but only if society
is somehow able to shift the set of values which now pervades the
developed world, particularly the valuation of "raw" land compared to
"developed" property and the notion that the "cost" of fossil fuels is
only that of extraction. Ultimately, we are "eating" the Earth, so it
would seem imperative that this awareness became wide spread in hopes
that people would limit their consumption.
Else, we all are headed for a bottomless pit.
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