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Heal the Planet for Profit – Redux

February 17, 2021

Heal the Planet for Profit – Redux


Giorgione The Tempest 1508
“Mankind’s only chance to not destroy its planet lies in diverging from all other species in that not all energy available to it, is used up as fast as possible. But that’s a big challenge. It would, speaking from a purely philosophical angle, truly separate us from nature for the first time ever, and we must wonder if that’s desirable.”

I wrote that 4 years and 2 months ago today, and I’m still thinking about it. It came to mind again, along with the article it comes from, see below, when I saw a few recent references to climate change, and to how any policy to halt it should be financed. It’s all painfully obvious.

Bill Gates, while on a virtual book tour, says governments should pay. In particular for the innovation needed. We’re going to solve it all with things we haven’t invented yet. That kind of thinking never fails to greatly boost my confidence in people and their ideas.

Overall, Gates’ words feel like a stale same old same old been there done that tone. But one thing is changing. Since Joe Biden became the most popular US president ever, according to his vote count, there is now a climate czar at the US Treasury, and a climate change team at the US Fed. Progress! At least for those seeking to use your money to solve their problems.

Bill Gates: Solving Covid Easy Compared With Climate

Mr Gates’s new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, is a guide to tackling global warming. [..] Net zero is where we need to get to. This means cutting emissions to a level where any remaining greenhouse gas releases are balanced out by absorbing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Capitalism Killing Us?

August 18, 2018

Is Capitalism Killing Us?

Ecological economists, such as Herman E. Daly, stress that as the external costs of pollution and resource exhaustion are not included in Gross Domestic Product, we do not know whether an increase in GDP is a gain or a loss.

External costs are huge and growing larger. Historically, manufacturing and industrial corporations, corporate farming, city sewer systems, and other culprits have passed the costs of their activities onto the environment and third parties. Recently, there has been a spate of reports with many centering on Monsanto’s Roundup, whose principle ingredient, glyphosate, is believed to be a carcinogen.

A public health organization, the Environmental Working Group, recently reported that its tests found glyphosate in all but 2 of 45 children’s breakfast foods including granola, oats and snack bars made by Quaker, Kellogg and General Mills. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/16/weedkiller-cereal-monsanto-roundup-childrens-food

In Brazil tests have discovered that 83% of mothers’ breast milk contains glyphosate. https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazil-Poisonous-Agrotoxin-Found-Over-80-of-Breast-Milk-Samples-in-Urucui-20180809-0008.html

The Munich Environmental Institute reported that 14 of the most widely selling German beers contain glyphosate. https://sustainablepulse.com/2016/02/25/german-beer-industry-in-shock-over-probable-carcinogen-glyphosate-contamination/#.W3XKtC-ZOGQ

Glyphosate has been found in Mexican farmers’ urine and in Mexican ground water. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5486281/

Scientific American has reported that even Roundup’s “inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/

A German toxicologist has accused the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and the European Food Safety Authority of scientific fraud for accepting a Monsanto-led glyphosate Task Force conclusion that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/17307-german-toxicologist-accuses-eu-authorities-of-scientific-fraud-over-glyphosate-link-with-cancer

Controversy about these findings comes from the fact that industry-funded scientists report no link between glyphosate and cancer, whereas independent scientists do. This is hardly surprising as an industry-funded scientist has no independence and is unlikely to conclude the opposite of what he is hired to conclude.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The massive hidden costs of the fossil fuel system

May 31, 2018

The massive hidden costs of the fossil fuel system

Two stumbling blocks on the road to regeneration: externalities and subsidies

The prevailing opinion among today’s political and economic elites is that economic globalisation is in some sense inevitable, perhaps even the summit of human achievement. The oft-repeated mantra is that ‘there is no alternative’ and we should adapt to it as best we can.

Rather than being inevitable, economic globalisation is, in fact, the result of a number of carefully chosen policies. Paradoxically, as we shall see, many of these directly contradict the basic tenets of classical free market economic theory, from which the proponents of economic globalisation draw much of their inspiration and authority.

By understanding the key reasons why the global economy behaves as it does today, we will be in a better position to discern the core patterns underlying economic behaviour and, if we choose, to change them. Two key drivers of today’s global economy are externalities and subsidies.

These two factors heavily skew market prices in favour of large-scale industrial goods and services and against small-scale and locally-based economies. These two drivers are further reinforced by the type of money systems that are dominant in today’s global economy that create a structurally dysfunctional growth imperative and wealth disparities with devastating impacts on health, social cohesion, as well as, national and international security. Kenny Ausubel, co-founder of Bioneers, has put it succinctly:

“The world is suffering from the perverse incentives of ‘unnatural capitalism’. When people say ‘free market’, I ask if free is a verb. We don’t have a free market, but a highly managed and often monopolized market. …we have banks and companies that are ‘too big to fail,’ but in truth are too big not to fail.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Energy Externalities Day 4: Nuclear Power

March 23, 2018

Energy Externalities Day 4: Nuclear Power

It’s now day 4 of the Energy Externality Game. Diesel generators were next on the list, but I decided to skip over that for the time being and to move on to the more exciting topic of nuclear power. Nuclear power has a long supply chain and needs to take into account U mining, ore processing and upgrading to yellow cake; enrichment and fuel manufacture; construction of enrichment facilities, reactors and power stations; operation of the foregoing; decommissioning and waste storage.

The Externalities of Energy Production Systems (Day 1 Coal)
Energy Externalities Day 2: Gas-fired-CCGT
Energy Externalities Day 3: Biomass-Fired-Electricity

I am proposing to use 12 metrics to measure costs and benefits:

  • Fatalities / year / unit of energy produced
  • Chronic illness years / year / unit of energy produced
  • Environmental costs not covered directly by the system operators
  • Foot print of energy system per unit of energy produced
  • Energy system costs where energy source transfers costs to the transmission system
  • Energy system benefits where energy source provides a service to the transmission system
  • Environmental benefits derived from energy system operation
  • Taxes raised / year / for total energy produced
  • Subsidies paid / year / for total energy produced
  • Tax free cost of energy
  • EroEI
  • Resource availability

For the following 12 electricity generating systems

  • Coal-fired (Monday 19 March)
  • Gas-fired (Tuesday 20 March)
  • Biomass-fired
  • Diesel
  • Nuclear
  • Hydro electric
  • Wind
  • Solar PV
  • Solar thermal
  • Wave
  • Tidal
    • barrage
    • lagoon
    • stream
  • Geothermal

I then go on to provide qualitative assessments of each measure for each electricity system. I have then developed a game whereby we assign a score against each measure on a scale of 1 to 10 where.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The Externalities of Energy Production Systems

March 19, 2018

The Externalities of Energy Production Systems

The economics term externality is a cost or benefit accrued by a third party from the actions of others where the third party did not choose to acquire said costs or benefits. The term has been widely adopted by the environmental lobby to describe negative impacts of energy production systems. What is all too often overlooked are the externalised benefits the same energy production systems provide. This post aims to summarise both internal and external costs and benefits of 12 electricity production systems employing 12 different measures.

[Inset image: The proposed Swansea Bay tidal lagoon power station. The proponents of the scheme were keen to emphasise the external recreational benefits offered by an afternoon stroll around the 9.5 km wall of the lagoon and sailing and boarding in the sheltered waters. But what about the environmental costs to migrating sea trout? And to changing the hydrology of the coastal ecosystem? How do you begin to compare the costs and benefits of a scheme like Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon with a nuclear power station?]

In the environmental impact of energy systems, the term externality is used to describe harm done by the combustion of fossil fuels, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. The argument goes that the fossil fuel producers and consumers do not currently pay for this harm and should do so. The inevitable consequence of adopting these measures will be higher energy prices that spread energy poverty and hold back economic growth. It is therefore very difficult to understand why many OECD governments are preparing to introduce measures like a carbon tax that will simply impoverish their citizens and national economies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Heal the Planet for Profit

December 18, 2016

Heal the Planet for Profit


Parisians duck down to evade German sniper fire following Nazi surrender of Paris, 1945
If you ever wondered what the odds are of mankind surviving, let alone ‘defeating’, climate change, look no further than the essay the Guardian published this week, written by Michael Bloomberg and Mark Carney. It proves beyond a moonlight shadow of a doubt that the odds are infinitesimally close to absolute zero (Kelvin, no Hobbes).

Yes, Bloomberg is the media tycoon and former mayor of New York (which he famously turned into a 100% clean and recyclable city). And since central bankers are as we all know without exception experts on climate change, as much as they are on full-contact crochet, it makes perfect sense that Bank of England governor Carney adds his two -trillion- cents.

Conveniently, you don’t even have to read the piece, the headline tells you all you need and then some: “How To Make A Profit From Defeating Climate Change” really nails it. The entire mindset on display in just a few words. If that’s what they went for, kudo’s are due.

These fine gents probably actually believe that this is perfectly in line with our knowledge of, say, human history, of evolution, of the laws of physics, and of -mass- psychology. All of which undoubtedly indicate to them that we can and will defeat the problems we have created -and still are-, literally with the same tools and ideas -money and profit- that we use to create them with. Nothing ever made more sense.

That these problems originated in the same relentless quest for profit that they now claim will help us get rid of them, is likely a step too far for them; must have been a class they missed. “We destroyed it for profit” apparently does not in their eyes contradict “we’ll fix it for profit too”. Not one bit. It does, though. It’s indeed the very core of what is going wrong.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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