Category: Economics

Matters of money

Obama’s climate legacy

The New York Times reports this as a section from President Obama’s farewell address:

Take the challenge of climate change. In just eight years we’ve halved our dependence on foreign oil, we’ve doubled our renewable energy, we’ve led the world to an agreement that (at) the promise to save this planet.

(APPLAUSE)

But without bolder action, our children won’t have time to debate the existence of climate change. They’ll be busy dealing with its effects. More environmental disasters, more economic disruptions, waves of climate refugees seeking sanctuary. Now we can and should argue about the best approach to solve the problem. But to simply deny the problem not only betrays future generations, it betrays the essential spirit of this country, the essential spirit of innovation and practical problem-solving that guided our founders.

Going right from “the challenge of climate change” to “halved our dependence on foreign oil” draws our attention to the weird dynamics of climate change politics.

U.S. oil and gas production has exploded because of fracking during the Obama years, but it’s dubious to claim that this is good from a climate change perspective. Huge new fossil fuel production is not good news.

Wilderness and non-violence

The battle for the future is precisely between those who are willing to engineer every organism for our convenience , who will countenance the radical change of our climate rather than risk any damage to our cosseted and swaddled Economy, and those who are willing to say there is something other than us that counts. Wilderness and Gandhian nonviolence were the two most potentially revolutionary ideas of the twentieth century, precisely because they were the most humble: they imagine a whole different possibility for people.

McKibben, Bill. Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape. St. Martin’s Press; New York. 2005, 2014. p. 103 (paperback)

LED bulbs

LED bulbs are dramatically more efficient than incandescent or halogen lamps, and beat out compact fluorescent bulbs in terms of how quickly they turn on and avoiding toxic contents.

These bulbs, which are now widely available in large hardware stores, plug directly into a socket that would previously have taken an incandescent bulb and include all the electronics necessary to run the LEDs.

Two things to watch for: if you have any dimmer switches or if you’re wiring or electricity supply are a bit unreliable, make sure to get bulbs that are advertised as dimmable. Others will buzz at you and may die rapidly, whereas ordinarily LED lamps should last for five years or more.

In addition to how much light they put out (expressed as lumens or watt equivalents) and the colour temperature (roughly how yellow or blue the light looks), make sure to check the color rendering index for the bulbs. I just replaced some buzzy old 100-watt equivalent LEDs with four of FEIT Electric’s 800 lumen / 60W equivalent “enhance” series bulbs. Perhaps on account of their 90+ CRI rating, they give the room a more natural look.

One other thing: I would really avoid ‘smart’ lightbulbs that connect to the internet. These are multiple serious indications that they are desperately insecure and may compromise your home network.

Google’s AdWords suck for internet security AND content generators

Having ads on this site is pretty awful for several reasons.

The site is plugged into Google via both analytics and advertising. For people not running an ad blocking plugin, this often leads to ads which are unappealing and often offensive.

If you don’t want Google to know everything you (or everyone with access to your machine) do online, you’re going to need to make a big effort and do a lot of research into, like, cryptographic and technical means of confounding state surveillance.

If you would pay one cent a year or more to support an ad-free site, please leave a comment.

“We won’t stop using fossil fuels tomorrow”

Sometimes paired with the fallacious argument that only people who use no fossil fuels can legitimately oppose fossil fuel development is the statement: “We won’t stop using fossil fuels tomorrow”.

The logical error associated with using this statement to defend new fossil fuel infrastructure like fracking wells and bitumen sands pipelines (as well as new fossil fuel vehicles or power plants) is so obvious that it may seem unnecessary to state, but the quip is so popular among those trying to delay adequate action on climate change that it requires a quick rebuttal.

It’s true that human society is dependent on fossil fuels, and not only for discretionary activities that people can legitimately be asked to give up. That said, it’s now entirely evident that climate change threatens human civilization if unchecked, to say nothing of the profound damage it’s already doing to non-human nature. Preventing the worst impacts of climate change requires a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, and that is fundamentally incompatible with building new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Under contraction and convergence, it is plausible that some poor places can legitimately build a modest amount of additional fossil fuel infrastructure. This is most defensible in places that have low per capita emissions, low historical emissions, and where new fossil fuel use will address basic human needs instead of luxuries. None of these conditions apply in Canada or the United States, where per capita and historical emissions are both unconscionably high, and where most citizens routinely make heavy use of fossil fuels for trivial purposes.

The line about not giving up fossil fuels tomorrow is rhetorically appealing because it makes the speaker seem like a level-headed pragmatist and suggests that anyone who disagrees is out of touch with reality. In actual fact, our existing dependence on fossil fuels is an argument against new fossil fuel infrastructure, not for it. The media, members of the public, and decision-makers need to accept this.

Piketty on inequality and Trump

In a piece for The Guardian, Thomas Piketty argues that inequality in the U.S. and the failure of governments to address it are the primary cause of Trump’s victory. He argues that:

The main lesson for Europe and the world is clear: as a matter of urgency, globalization must be fundamentally re-oriented. The main challenges of our times are the rise in inequality and global warming. We must therefore implement international treaties enabling us to respond to these challenges and to promote a model for fair and sustainable development.

Piketty’s claim about inequality seems plausible in part because of how mental distortions seem to be central to the social and political consequences of inequality.

I am increasingly open to the view that the two ideas are related, including through the sense of entitlement that accompanies privilege. The terrifying willingness to impose suffering and death on innocent people around the world and on nature in order to maintain a preferred lifestyle is at the heart of the climate crisis.

Related:

What Canada and U.S. climate activists need to work on

For a few reasons, I am trying to reconsider what sort of political activity presents the best odds of helping to mitigate the seriousness of climate change.

I think people are right to target new fossil fuel infrastructure. There is a good chance of delaying or preventing many projects which would otherwise worsen humanity’s total historical carbon emissions. We just need to be careful to move on from tactics which have proven ineffective. I would put big marches and many common forms of direct action into this category.

There also needs to be a sustained effort against complacency within the environmental movement. We can’t fall into a pattern of doing things which are emotionally fulfilling to us, but which aren’t advancing a clear external purpose. “Raising awareness” doesn’t count.

We need to be working on cross-ideological alliances.

We need to keep developing alliances with other social justice movements, but make sure to try to do so strategically. Just because a clause is laudable doesn’t mean it’s prudent to engage in allyship automatically.

We need to be developing an alliance with what remains of the unionized labour movement: at a minimum to support the development of training programs for fossil fuel sector workers, and more ambitiously to support the emergence of an electable political ideology that calls for the transition away from capitalism intent on endless growth in consumption.

We need to keep pushing climate solutions justified in other ways. If people in some jurisdictions or social groups are more interested in renewable energy because of energy security reasons, it’s worth working with them on the deployment of climate-safe energy. Shutting down coal plants because of their appalling toxic pollution is just as desirable as shutting them down because of their damaging GHG emissions.

Other ideas?

Anti-capitalist environmentalism

I have generally been skeptical of anti-capitalist environmentalism for two main reasons: the added difficulty involved in changing our economic system and the possibility that an alternative economic system might not be more sustainable.

We have a tough enough fight on our hands, trying to create a sustainable world, even if we aren’t also trying to overcome the obsession of politicians and the public with endless economic growth and ever-increasing personal consumption. Indeed, criticism of either is so far outside the political mainstream that it raises questions of what kind of political program could succeed.

Furthermore, among 20th and 21st century political and economic systems, I don’t see non-capitalist economic systems that are clearly more sustainable than consumer capitalism. The clearest alternative – communism as practiced in Russia, China, and elsewhere – seems similarly ecologically destructive: maybe less capable of producing consumer goods, but even more cavalier about environmental contamination by heavy industry.

Reading Peter Dauvergne’s Environmentalism of the Poor has been another reminder of the plausible argument that the root of our environmental problems is unsustainable consumption, and only societal reforms that somehow counter that can succeed in keeping us from destroying the Earth and ourselves. If that’s true, we really have a lot of difficult political work ahead. The odds of success seem to depend on how humanity as a whole deals with the rising stress that will accompany trends like climate change and nuclear proliferation. If a growing recognition of crisis opens up political discourse and lets us challenge things like the assumption that economic growth is good, we may have a chance. If people respond instead by focusing ever-more on their own personal material interests, with less and less consideration for others, we may be on a trajectory to destruction with no means of course correction.

A test cast for cross-partisan climate policy

One strategy adopted by some environmentalists is to try to win over moderate conservative voters to favour climate action by separating it from other social issues and choosing policy instruments which they expect to appeal to conservatives as well, like carbon taxes or cap-and-dividend. Often, the emphasis is on revenue neutral carbon prices, where the revenue is offset by reducing other taxes, rather than spent on additional climate change mitigation efforts or social priorities.

Notably, this is the strategy of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) and climatologist James Hansen.

This week’s episode of The Energy Gang podcast includes a very interesting discussion of a proposed carbon tax on the ballot in Washington State. The logic behind it has explicitly been to forge post-partisan consensus instead of a left-wing coalition. Apparently, it has been rejected by mainstream environmental groups, in part because they don’t think such a coalition can succeed in getting it passed (or perhaps avoid having it gutted by state legislatures when they would be able to amend it in two years). The panel on the podcast call the issue “a civil war within the environmental left”.

They discuss this potential carbon tax in the context of overcoming Republican intransigence in the face of any effective climate change policy, explicitly considering the logic of teasing climate change out as an independent issue and presenting policy solutions that don’t seek to simultaneously advance other agendas.

At least on panelist emphasized the core logic behind cap-and-dividend as a failure in terms of political saleability (which is meant to be its strongest virtue). He claims that nobody likes revenue neutrality – it seems pointless to collect a tax and then refund it somehow. Also, this approach puts the ‘tax’ element forward. He argues that it would be much more effective to spend the revenues promoting a transition to a low-carbon economy, lead the political messaging by emphasizing how we’re investing in climate safe energy, and then put the tax at the back end as an explanation for how it will be paid for.

I would be interested in seeing Hansen and/or the CCL’s responses to this.

Inequality, entitlement, and the breakdown of social cohesion

For the upper echelons in society inequality often morphs into a feeling of entitlement, which can then translate into actions that further undermine social trust and common purpose. Over the past decade, groundbreaking research by behavioural psychologists illustrates how inequality shifts states of mind. In other words, there is a certain psychology to wealth and privilege.

While we all struggle in our lives with competing motivations — for example, whether to take time to help others or to focus on pursuing our own goals — professor of psychology Paul Piff and his team at the University of California have shown that the wealthier people are, the more likely they are to pursue self-interest to the detriment of others. Through dozens of experimental studies with thousands of human participants, researchers consistently found that as levels of wealth increase, feelings of entitlement also rise and levels of empathy and obligation toward others decline. Although there are always notable exceptions to this trend — we can all point to billionaire philanthropists — Piff argues that, statistically speaking, the tendency to “look out for number one” increases as a person rises to the top of the income and status hierarchy. In his experiments, this phenomenon translates into a greater propensity to engage in self-regarding and unethical behaviour — including cheating to increase one’s chances of winning a prize, endorsing unethical behaviours at work, or breaking the law while driving.

Consider two experiments. In the first, drivers of different types of cars are observed at a pedestrian crosswalk. In 90 percent of cases, drivers stop when they see a pedestrian nearing the intersection — except for those driving luxury cars. Piff’s study found that the latter are almost as likely to run the intersection as they are to wait for the person to cross the street (46 percent did not stop). In a second experiment, researchers created a rigged game of Monopoly — in which one player is given more money (resources) and more dice (opportunity) — and watch how his behaviour changes relative to the other player. In game after game, Piff and his team observe that the better-off player develops a strong sense of self — he becomes louder, ruder, and less sensitive toward the other player. He also feels more entitled than his opponent to take from a plate of pretzels that is placed next to the board.

Although greed affects all people, these studies indicate that it is not present equally across all social strata. The greater resources and independence available to those at the top of the economic hierarchy have a distinct effect on their behaviour. Those with greater wealth can deal more effectively with the “downstream costs” of acting unethically, while reduced dependency makes them less concerned with others’ evaluation. This combination can give rise to the positive values of greed and self-focused behaviour. Indeed, this sense of autonomy can manifest itself even in ordinary human interactions: experiments have shown that those in the high economic echelons are more disengaged in social settings — frequently doodling or checking their cellphones — and are worse at identifying and responding to the emotions of others.

…

Those at the top feel more deserving than those at the bottom; having more means you can rely less on others, leading to a reduced feeling that you owe anyone anything. This might help to explain why the wealthy tend to be more economically conservative and object to increased taxation or public spending.

Welsh, Jennifer. The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century. 2016. p. 289-90, 91. Italics in original.

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