On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Pen-l, on environmental blogs, in pundit pronouncements, carbon pricing > and massive technological investments dominate the discussion. > > Even if any and/or all of that would work to prevent runaway global > warming (and it won't) we'd have, most likely, business as usual with clean > energy. > > Why the single perspective on technology? Even carbon pricing depends for > results on a technology change. > > There is a trick here. "Technology change" is often confused with "invention". But it can just as easily mean "doing things we already know how to do but are not doing now". And when economists talk about technology change, they formally mean the latter while treating it as the former. According to standard economic definitions, weather sealing and insulating a poor insulated home is technological change. It was not being done before, but is being done now. And most economists will admit this if challenged, and then go right back to talking about "technological change" or "innovation" as though it mean't finding an energy schmoo. Innovation is of course a broader term than technology change since it can describe process changes as well as technological changes. It occurs to me that a reduced work week would fall under the classification of process innovation. > Why do we need more energy? Why do we need as much as the world now uses? > In the US maybe we don't. But most of the poor nations people really want stuff that takes more energy. Some want to replicate the U.S. lifestyle, some don't. But they damn well indoor plumbing, hot and cold water, refrigeration, space heating, lights at night, gas or electric stoves - all of which will need more energy than used now . So worldwide energy use needs to increase. The US is going to see continued population increase during the next two decades. And while we do a lot shit that does not benefit the majority of USAIans and is even worse for the rest of the world, we also fail to do a lot of shit we need to do. We need to build trains, and bicylces, and tracks and bike paths for them to run on, and solar panels and wind generators, and more efficient refrigerators. We need to manufacture more insulation and more weather sealing material and hire and train people to install them. And a million other things. Outside of energy we need to hire more teachers and more firefighters and more nurses and and and. So I'm agnostic as to whether US energy consumption should go up. We need to do the things we need to do (though we don't) and we should psend the energy that takes. We have plenty of wind and solar potential in the United States, so if you are talking about radical change - cut the work week, make the things we need and build the wind turbines and solar cells it takes to supply the energy to do those things. > > A NYTimes essay today, "Sign of the Times | Look Out, It’s Instagram Envy" > > > Instagram has created a new kind of voyeurism — in which you can look > into the carefully curated windows of the rich, famous and stylish — and a > new kind of lifestyle envy. > > > > “The department store is the last promenade for the flâneur,” wrote > Walter Benjamin, the German critic, whose impossible project — “The Arcades > Project,” more precisely — documented street life in Paris after the > Industrial Revolution. He wrote of gleaming wants, windows gazing back at > him, shoppers and wanderers alike becoming reflections of their desires. > “The crowd,” he wrote, “is the veil through which the familiar city beckons > to the flâneur as phantasmagoria — as a landscape, now as a room. Both > become elements of the department store, which makes use of flâneurie > itself to sell goods.” > > Full article at: > http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/sign-of-the-times-look-out-its-instagram-envy/?hp&_r=0 > > Pen'L's own Sandwichman has been on this flaneur thing big time. > > Green House Gas (GHG) emissions won't be curbed, let alone reduced, until > consumption is reduced. Which is to say, income is reduced. > > You say this, but there is no reason to think it is true. It is quite true that under reactionary capitalism that is the only way. But you yourself don't think we can solve our problems under reactionary capitalism. The problems can be solved in a revolution or maybe as part of radical reform. We should struggle for what we need and see what happens. I don't think either reform or revolution will happened centered around carbon-free energy. But I strongly suspect that the struggle for carbon-free energy is an important part of any larger movement. > Which, if addressed through aggressive reductions in working hours in the > North, can be accomplished without hardship and with economic justice. > There will be no environmental justice without economic justice and no > stopping global warming without both. > > How high a reduction are you talking? Also are you talking about struggleing for a reduction i working hours without struggling for massive changes in income inequality? Because if you talk about an absolute reduction in income with increased population then it would not be enough to gain some changes in income inequality. To avoid absolute poverty any serious income reduction in the US accompanied by population increase would have to have close to perfect income equaliy. And that is for something along the line of a 25% or 50% reduciton in income. To reduce emissions by 80% or 90% even that degree of reduction would have to be accompanied by decrease the carbon emissions used to produce a unit of stuff. Also you have to understand that a lot things that make life better while decreasing footprint still end up creating measurable increases in GDP. For example, a massive increase in light rail that reduced automobile use would show up as an increase in GDP because of the cost of building trains. Maybe over the long term it might show up as a decrease cause train tracks depreciated slowly. But in the first ten years of massively building out railbeds it would show as in increase. Wind farms and solar panels show up as increases in GDP too. Also another problem for you. Air pollution massively reduces labor productivity as conventionally measured. If we reduce air pollution to close to zero either through reduced consumption or through substituting wind turbines and solar cells for coal plants, and especially if you eliminate the burning of hydrocarbons for electricity production and for most transport, the result will be a massive increase permanent increase in conventionally measure productivity - about 4% according to most studies. I suspect a reduced workweek would also lead to increased productivity. Another 4% perhaps? I'm not as familiar with literature on that, but probably you are. At any rate a one time productivity boost of between 4% and 8% that never goes away is going to provide a huge long term boost on long term GDP. Another thing to consider: I am against the massive overemphasis on price by liberals and neo-liberals when discussing the climate crisis. But there is one reason to support it as reinforcement for whatever else we do - the rebound effect or the Jevons paradox. A high carbon price rebated back equally to those who pay it, helps neutralize that rebound effect, so that as coal stops being burned in power plants its price does not drop to the point where its use for steel making and cooking and home and hot water heating increases massively. Also there is the macro rebound effect to consider. In the current liquidity trap, a drop in working hours might lead to an *increase* in GDP. In more normal circumstances it would not not, but it would create some amount of conventional economic growth less than that it eliminated. In the former case you get a 100% "growth" rebound, in the latter some percentage less than 100%. An emissions price increase helps ensure that that "growth" rebound does not become an emissions rebound that, the increased economic activity is in low or zero carbon activity. Lastly, when we talk about energy of course most of the conversation is about energy. And it remains true that we can make stuff while using less energy per amount of stuff and have the energy we use come from sources like solar and wind energy. (I emphasize them because there are only three energy sources that with today's technology can provide the energy for even a minimally decent standard of living for seven billion people without carbon emissions - let alone nine or twelve. Those three technologies are solar energy, wind energy and nuclear fission. Of those three nuclear fission is (IMO) too dirty and too expensive. Even with massive efficiency increases and large scale reductions in real incomes (the latter of which I oppose) it remains true that only those can provide energy on the scale needed. Other source like hydro and geothermal and wave, are limited to a tiny percentage of real needs. In some cases it is the resource that is limited. In others it is the resource we can tap with the technology we have. But with today's population, and today's technology, even with massive efficiency improvements and a left austerity program that reduces income to minimally basic needs, those three technologies are all we have, and for various reasons I think fission is a wrong choice - which leaves solar and wind energy for the overwhelming majority of our energy needs, with things like geothermal and hydro providing a trickle. Given that, and given the huge wind and solar resources available worldwide, why should a left program be left austerity? "Bread and roses" used to be a left wing standard. Why shouldn't something on those lines remain our demand. There a Mary Chapin Carpenter song I still like. Country so those who hate country please avert your eyes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TCMpA5TfHc Is it too much to ask I want a comfortable bed that won't hurt my back Food to fill me up And warm clothes and all that stuff Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have all of this, and Passionate kisses Passionate kisses, whoa oh oh Passionate kisses from you Is it too much to demand I want a full house and a rock and roll band Pens that won't run out of ink And cool quiet and time to think Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have all of this, and Passionate kisses Passionate kisses, whoa oh oh Passionate kisses from you > Gene > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com
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