{"id":34633,"date":"2018-05-31T09:23:44","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T14:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34633"},"modified":"2018-05-31T09:23:44","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T14:23:44","slug":"the-massive-hidden-costs-of-the-fossil-fuel-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34633","title":{"rendered":"The massive hidden costs of the fossil fuel\u00a0system"},"content":{"rendered":"

The massive hidden costs of the fossil fuel\u00a0system<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

Two stumbling blocks on the road to regeneration: externalities and subsidies<\/strong><\/p>\n

The prevailing opinion among today\u2019s 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 \u2018there is no alternative\u2019 and we should adapt to it as best we can.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s global economy are externalities <\/em>and subsidies<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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<\/a>, has put it succinctly:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is suffering from the perverse incentives of \u2018unnatural capitalism\u2019. When people say \u2018free market\u2019, I ask if free is a verb. We don\u2019t have a free market, but a highly managed and often monopolized market.\u00a0\u2026we have banks and companies that are \u2018too big to fail,\u2019 but in truth are too big not to fail. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The massive hidden costs of the fossil fuel\u00a0system Two stumbling blocks on the road to regeneration: externalities and subsidies The prevailing opinion among today\u2019s 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 \u2018there is no alternative\u2019 and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[19822,2384,14602,20289,328,4651,6113,4944,1052],"class_list":["post-34633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-dr-daniel-c-wahl","tag-elite","tag-externalities","tag-fossil-fuel-system","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-globalisation","tag-insurge-intelligence","tag-regeneration","tag-subsidies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34634,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34633\/revisions\/34634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}