Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Oil & Socialism

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

      What is really amazing is that even though
the Kyoto Protocols were structured so as to
provide this nifty loophole for the US to avoid
doing anything too drastic, there remains this
absolute and overwhelming opposition to them
in the US.  Was it not the case that the US Senate
voted 98-0 to oppose the Protocols unless the LDCs
were made to "pay their fair share," (especially
China and India), whatever the hell that may be!
     Gag me with an oil derrick.
     BTW, I agree with Jim Devine that the pollution
issue vis a vis fossil fuels is a bigger problem than
any looming absolute scarcity of said items.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa & Ian Murray <seamus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, November 16, 2000 4:59 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:4507] RE: Re: RE: Re: Oil & Socialism


>
>
>  IMO, total nonsense.
>
>  norm
>
>***************
>
>Well I shudder to learn what you think of this great prediction, then...
>
>"If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be less crowded (though
>more populated), less polluted, more stable ecologically, and less
>vulnerable to resource-supply disruption than the world we live in now.
>Stresses involving population, resources, and the environment will be less
>in the future than now...The worlds people will be richer in most ways than
>they are today...[and] life for most people on earth will be less
precarious
>economically than it is now." [Julian Simon & Herman Kahn, 1984]
>
>
>It seems that the tougher question is one of whether or not we can produce
>the knowledge needed to tap energy in ways that are ecologically benign,
not
>just for ourselves, but for beings like the phytoplankton, the frogs, the
>birds etc. The issue of sources and sinks will not go away irrespective of
>whatever forces and relations of production obtain in the future.
>Additionally, another looming question is the relationship of knowledge
>production and distribution to democratic systems of governance [which is
>totally anemic at this point in history]. The concentration of
>knowledge/power in the hands of the few who then treat the majority with
>disdain and contempt when they attempt to hold the "experts" accountable
for
>their errors, is every bit as dangerous as the concentration of wealth;
>indeed the two go hand in hand, as does the current cultural allergy to the
>very idea of accountability. We see this in both the current election
fiasco
>and the debate on global warming.
>
>
>Published on Thursday, November 16, 2000 in the Guardian of London
>The Great Climate Sell-Off
>by George Monbiot
>
>The privatisation of Britain's air traffic control systems is rather like
>the Millennium Dome. First the government backs it, then it tries to figure
>out what on earth it is for. Ministers' attempts to explain the
inexplicable
>have not been helped by an unequivocal promise the Labour party made in
>opposition: "Our skies," it announced, "are not for sale."
>The government is clearly trying to beat its own egregious record, for in
>one week it is planning to break this promise not once, but twice. It is
>currently trying to sell not only our flight paths, but also the sky
itself.
>The world's weather is on the brink of being privatised.
>
>The original purpose of the climate change negotiations taking place in the
>Hague this week was to cut the amount of greenhouse gases the world
>produces, in order to avert more catastrophic weather of the kind Britain
>has suffered over the past few weeks. But corporations have discovered in
>the world's disasters a marvellous opportunity for making money. Thanks to
>their lobbying, the climate saving talks have been turned into a surreal
>discussion about how the atmosphere can be bought and sold.
>
>Under the Kyoto protocol on climate change, countries are allowed to reduce
>their emissions through something called "flexibility mechanisms". Instead
>of cutting carbon dioxide at home, they can either buy "carbon credits"
from
>countries which have exceeded their own targets for cuts, or invest in
>carbon-reducing technologies elsewhere in the world. At first sight, this
>looks like a fine idea. It places a financial premium on cleanliness, and
>encourages the transfer of environmentally-friendly technology to the
>developing world. In practice, it promises to exacerbate both climate
change
>and inequality.
>
>Flexibility mechanisms could enable countries to trade in hot air. A
>nation's entitlement to pollute depends upon how much carbon dioxide it was
>producing in 1990. Since then, heavy industry in Russia, Ukraine and
>Kazakhstan has all but collapsed, with the result that they have
>accidentally achieved far greater carbon cuts than anticipated. The United
>States is hoping to avoid cutting its own emissions by buying unused
>entitlements from these countries, thus making no net contribution to
carbon
>reduction.
>
>The UK wants to engage in a similar scam, by selling the carbon dioxide we
>would have produced if we hadn't shut the coal mines. The government has
>also offered state aid for the privatisation of the climate. In July it
laid
>down £30m to help private companies start bidding for each other's reduced
>emissions. A research institute in the United States calculates that the
>weather market will be worth $13 trillion by 2050.
>
>But the subtler plans are still more hazardous. As a new report by the
>Corporate Europe Observatory shows, they amount to subsidies for northern
>corporations seeking to exploit developing countries. The British
government
>is insisting, for example, that if BNFL builds nuclear power stations in
>China it should be able to obtain a carbon discount for the UK, on the
basis
>that they will emit less greenhouse gas than coal-burning plants. The
>discount could be used to subsidise their construction, thus saving a
>dangerous technology from extinction.
>
>Monsanto is hoping to find new markets for its unpopular herbicide-tolerant
>crops by promoting them as "carbon friendly", on the basis that they leave
>more organic matter in the soil than conventional crops (though far less,
of
>course, than organic farming). A Malaysian logging company is already
>selling pollution permits to an electricity firm in the US, claiming, in
the
>looking-glass world of carbon trading, that it is sucking carbon out of the
>atmosphere by replacing the virgin forests it is cutting with plantations.
>
>Such schemes not only finance environmental destruction; they are also
>grossly unjust. If first world countries can buy their way out of their
>commitments by funding carbon-saving projects in the third world, then
>developing nations will have trouble making reductions of their own, when,
>in the future, such cuts are demanded of them.
>
>Indeed, when the amount of carbon dioxide a country or a company generates
>is used to determine how much it should be allowed to produce, then the
>worst polluters acquire the greatest rights. The greater your right to
>pollute, the more carbon credits you can sell to other people. Those least
>responsible for the problem, in other words, benefit least from the
>solution.
>
>The polluters meeting in the Hague this week claim that they are saving the
>planet. In truth they are selling it.
>
>© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
>
>****************
>
>These neo-Coasian strategies for allocating property rights legitimate a
>curious form of extortion IMO. It is a form of "pay us not to pollute
>because it's cheaper for you to pay us than it is for us to accept
>responsibility for our actions and invest in the necessary changes to undo
>the harm we are causing society and the planet." It is cognitive
>authoritarianism backing up the legacy of a revitalized imperialism that is
>at once ecological and economic-political. On these grounds alone the
>economic values of the US should be totally condemned and every effort to
>get beyond the current economic system should be encouraged.
>
>A further pitfall, which at least did make it onto the issues list provided
>to voters during the election season, is the future of education and it's
>relation to creating the knowledge we desperately need; further knowledge
of
>how to spread knowledge:
>
>"A cautionary note is injected by the research of Derek De Solla
Price...His
>evidence[] leads to the inference that since 1750, scientific efforts have
>been growing at a nearly constant rate of roughly 4.5% a year. Cruder data
>on scientific and technical employment imply similar growth rates. But if
>scientific activity continues to grow at the rates observed since 1750,
>Price observes, in less than a century "we should have two scientists for
>every man, woman, child, and dog in the population." Since this is plainly
>impossible, Price concludes, "scientific doomsday is therefore less than a
>century distant."
>
>"Is there some law of nature requiring that scientific and technical effort
>increase at 4 to 5%  year in order to maintain annual productivity growth
>[and hence, with adjustments for work force participation, real GDP per
>capita] averaging 2%? If so, there is trouble on the distant horizon,
>because the historical R&D growth rates cannot be sustained indefinitely."
>
>[From FM Scherer "New Perspectives on Economic Growth and Technological
>Innovation, Brookings Institution Press, 1999,p. 46-48].
>
>Focusing a little more, we really have to ask if we're putting R&D $$ in
the
>right places. Everyone knows we spend more money on prisons than we do on
>science and engineering, but how does the science R&D get allocated so
>"inefficiently"? The NSF knows that it is wasting taxpayer $$ through it's
>current administrative protocols even as it's budget has been slashed over
>the last 20 years. It needs to be tripled or quadrupled to allow for the
>disbursement of grants for research that have longer time horizons, 8-15
>years, as opposed to 3.5 years as is the current norm. Creating "green"
>knowledge for future production networks designed to serve human needs is
>now just one of the many challenges needed to avert a tragedy that grows
>larger each passing week. Energy is not the problem; knowledge [the lack of
>it] is.
>
>Have a nice day,
>
>Ian
>
>