Following is a request for consideration, to a friend who will be delivering a discussion about Copenhagen on Iranian Television today:
Copenhagen is a great ignorant sham. I'm saying this as a campaigner against the causes of climate change. People and their involuntary (ignorant) or voluntary (selfish) support of the monopoly state, in this case via Greenery and Big Fossil respectively. I truly feel there is enough science to make it irresponsible NOT to act on it.
But we are acting currently under false premises. The true cause of high emissions is the monopoly state which gives the free lunch and power to Big Fossil and keeps the clean and cheap stuff out of use. Yet again, another false dichotomy is at play. A battle between the greens and the browns. When the true battle must be between the greens and browns on the one side and monopoly power on the other, if civilisation is to re-establish an advance.
Both the supporters and deniers have foolishly fallen into the trap of climate change theory, in itself a manifestation and twin of Malthusian doctrine: The monstrous idea that population will always outrun the ability of nature to supply it with energy. Therefore population will be either prevented through institutions via birth control or checked positively by nature through deprivation, misery and suffering.
The idea does not bother to consider that unjust social institutions and failed government might actually be the real cause, and blames nature for the ignorance and selfishness of man. It gets monopoly power off the hook very nicely in peoples minds.
A child can immediately see this as preposterous and that there is plenty of energy for every man woman and child in abundance. 150,000 terrawatts of solar energy hits the earth continuously. We only need 15 terrawatts to satisfy total global demand. 10000 times less than the supply! So the question must be at Copenhagen:
"What is stopping us using all this cheap and clean energy, when it "SEEMS" freely available ?"
Its rhetorical. the answer is clear. It is the monopoly rights granted to nation states and fossil fuel suppliers that are withholding the cheap and clean energy, the "fertile land" from use. Because that power allows them to collect the "RENT" in the fossils fuels. In other words, hey are able to collect a larger proportion of the production of wealth, unearned, by keeping the free stuff out of use. And it is this, exactly that is the cause of such high emissions.
What's more, as the fossils run in to shorter supply, they will acquire much greater value in exchange, the margin of production will fall yet further and the rent will rise yet higher. Distribution of wealth will reach an all time low. Need I go on about the consequences ? It makes one wonder what on earth the supporters of another false theory, "Peak Oil", are thinking. They seem joyous that oil will run out and impoverishment will reach a new high.
May I ask you consider this idea when you go on TV ? Climate change is real. Yet talking about how to resolve it is all palliative. The real cause still lies very deeply buried in the ignorant minds of our greatest thinkers. Deniers claim its a hoax through fear of loss of wealth. Supporters claim it is true through sentimental ignorance. Neither can see the true great wrong.
Brgds
Robin.
3 comments:
Energy is but one component of our problem.
The suggestion of almost boundless energy has some merit but energy capture has efficiency losses and we can, in any case, only use a limited area of landmass to capture that energy. Of course way can go out to sea to harvest solar, wind and wave energy but there are resource limitations to be considered, too. It's not just the energy it's the materials that we used to perform that harvest.
We live on a finite planet and have limited access only to those minerals that are relatively close to the surface. Geochemical and biological processes have separated many useful elements into comparatively rich strata but we have been mining these and redistributing scarce materials into
landfill and into the oceans. Now, many are becoming scarce.
Then there is the environmental cost of extraction; it's not just fossil fuel production that causes great environmental damage. If we want to provide battery powered cars equally for all the world's population, can we find sufficient lithium to build the batteries? The political answer has so often been that we will make some technological breakthrough that provides new kinds of energy storage but that thinking owes more to Harry Potter than to science.
The Earth is finite.
Let us not forget biodiversity, either. We out-compete most other life on this planet and the way in which we have continued to increase in number has impacted on other species. Evolution has established a web of life that has been remarkably robust, until, that is, humans got technology and started to use it without consideration for the other inhabitants of this planet. Now we are driving many species to extinction and many if not most or even all of them are important parts of this web of life: the honey bee is one fairly simple example.
There are powerful lobbies trying to derail negotiation but they do not consist simply of big corporates but also the workers, coal miners for example, who stand to lose their livelihood. And, at the bottom of it all, is the failure to understand that, until we can get off this planet, the resources that are found in the thin skin of its biosphere are all that we have. It's not just economics and politics, though they are important, it's also the natural sciences, they are just about immutable.
So calling it all a great sham is an unfair and, I would suggest, facile denial of the honest intent that many have taken to Copenhagen. There is ignorance, of course, that is part of being human. There is also a lot of powerful lobbying. However, your quick denial of peak oil as 'another false
theory' does rather suggest that you are the one guilty of unclear thinking.
www.TransitionNC.org
Of course the planet is finite. The point is we are nowhere near the limits yet, never have been and it looks like we will not get there for a very very long time, all other things being equal. But THEY ARE NOT EQUAL!!!
Children can see this immediately. What is stopping you ?
This is the point. To deny it means either ignorance or an interest in supporting the real cause of the "apparent" limits.
The proof comes from asking ourselves if there is another cause that is greater than the one that is apparent ? What is stopping access to this virtually free source of energy
And yes there is. Big Fossil, because of the power they get from collecting the rent.
Actually, we are all currently using the resources of about 3 planets. The only reason why we are not yet starving is that we have found a way of using stored solar energy from 90 and 150 million years ago: oil and gas.
However, the production of oil has peaked in 2005, has remain more or less steady till 2008 (when if you remember we had a bit of an oil and energy crisis) and 2009 look like being some 2 million bpd lower than the preceding 3 years.
In fact 2009 is very likely to be the first year on the downslope of oil extraction and thus decline in the world economy to perhaps some 40% of what we have now. That will spell a disaster, since we are now so heavily reliant on cheap and plentiful energy. 30 or 40 year long depression in my view.
Read more about it at www.TransitionNC.org, the main pages and the blogs.
Don't worry if you disagree, it is happening anyway. But start writing down excuses to tell your children and grand children.
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