Here's a quote from one of the smartest (well, richest) people in the so-called 'smartest city in the US":
> "The single biggest problem we have to focus on in this century is how to > get every citizen of Earth roughly the same per capita energy we enjoy in the > developed world. China is developing. India is developing. Brazil is > developing. They all want the Lifestyle we have. The world's energy problem > is about how we expand our energy budget by a factor of 10 or more, and short > of incredible disaster or war, I don't know how we stop that." That's more energy than needed for Gar Lipow's indoor plumbing. The quote is from Nathan Myhrvold, a dot com genius. But here's another way of looking at supplying the world with energy: > "If the poor of the world were to achieve a standard of living similar to > Portugal's," Broecker says, "you would need a billion windmills — and you > need places where they can go." Broecker is Newberry professor at Columbia > University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He won the Vetlesen Prize, > considered the Nobel equivalent for geology, and holds the Presidential Medal > of Science. So, do we bring everybody in the world up to the developed world? If Portugal is in the developed world we'll only need a billion windmills -- but of course that quote from Myhrvold is 2011 so the numbers go up. Gar, of course is not talking about raising the world to a level where all can fly (first class?) on the spiffy new 777X that has already sold units grossing its first $95 billion . But by the time the Boeing owners squeeze the workers AND taxpayers to net the profits out of the 777X, energy consumption in the US will drop because the workers will no longer be fecund and teenager hot showers won't consume as much energy. Yes to Bread and Roses. Gene On Nov 17, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Eubulides wrote: > > On 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. >> >> Why do we need more energy? Why do we need as much as the world now uses? >> >> 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. >> >> 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. >> >> Gene >> > > ============= > > A few non-sentimental points from a dolt hunkered down in the so-called > ‘smartest city in the US’: > > The street corners within the city and the neighboring ones, replete with ADA > compliant sidewalks, are saturated with Sandwichpersons selling everything > from mattresses and medical marijuana to tax advice. > > One of the biggest corporations in the state, if not on the planet, just > sold $95 billion worth of atmosphere wounding commodities while demanding > that the workers who build the planes take, over the next several years, a > major hit to compensation and the citizens of the state effectively subsidize > the ‘wage’ differential between those working in plants located along the I-5 > corridor and those working in a ‘right-to-work-for-less’ state. > > The last time the unnamed state, run by those ever so brilliant Democrats, > paid the extortionists, I [and several others] sent all the subsidies data > off to those wonderful technocrats at the WTO and a food fight ensued over > the beauty of international law and the future of an empire. Alas, I have no > desire to take a vacation to set off another round of said aesthetics > conversations and all I can wonder about in what little spare time I have is > where the biggest forest fires on the planet will happen in 2014, 2015, 2016, > 2016, 2018………. > > The capitalists and their corporate managers clearly have every intention of > reducing everyone’s income but their own; after all everyone who is lucky > enough to have a job is overpaid and underworked. The gods of productivity > must be appeased: > > > Clearly, with different and distinct classes that perform different roles in > the production > activity, the competitive market-price mechanism would not be an > appropriate institutional mechanism for guiding the economic system > towards the realization of the natural wage. > > In such a situation, the market-price mechanism would simply bring > about competition among workers, and would in fact lead to another effect. > Among the classical economists, it is Marx who most clearly perceived this > other effect of the competitive market-price mechanism, as applied to > labour. He gave the clearest picture of what may be considered as the other > extreme (with respect to the one depicted above, when referring to a > uniformly spread entrepreneurship in a pure labour economy) of the > application of the market-price mechanism to the determination of the > actual wage rate. As is well known, Marx (1867) thought that, in a society in > which entrepreneurs form a quite distinct class (in his analysis, because they > own the means of production), entrepreneurs and workers cannot mix; they > are not interchangeable. If then labour is thrown on a market and is traded > as any other commodity, then we can only expect the competitive > market-price mechanism to perform its job with labour precisely in the > same way as it does with any commodity: namely to drive the price of > labour toward its cost of production. In the case of labour, the cost of > production is the subsistence wage rate; this is what the competitive > market-price mechanism would achieve. Therefore the entrepreneurs > would reap whatever is above subsistence ('exploitation'). We should note > the perfectly logical consistency of Marx's arguments. > > [Luigi Pasinetti, “Structural Economic Dynamics” p. 144] > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
