[Marxism] Looming Danger of Abrupt Climate Change
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here is another quote from chapter 7 of Capital: Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from the labor-process, yet other use-values, products of previous labor, enter into it as means of production. The same-use-value is both the product of a previous process, and a means of production in a later process. Products are therefore not only results, but also conditions of labor. Since Marx overlooked earlier that every production process not only produces products but at the same time also produces waste streams, it is not surprising that he overlooks here the important fact that not only the intended products but also the waste streams of one production process can be used as inputs into different production processes. The earth is not a closed system but it receives a steady flow of high-grade energy from the sun. Because of this it is possible to design systems of production processes which do not irreversibly degrade the environment but which clean each other up. Biological systems do this all the time, but the possibility and necessity to apply similar principles to production has not been recognized until very recently. In some of his writings, Marx seems aware of this, but in chapter 7, in his general analysis of the production process, he overlooks it. If we read Marx today we must be aware of the things he overlooked so that we can apply his theory correctly to the present time. Hans. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Socialism of retreat
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The section about Utilization of the Excretions of Production in chapter 5 of Capital III is very interesting. Here is a link. http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch05.htm Here Marx describes some of the discoveries of his time, how certain waste materials were unexpectedly found to be useful, and how capitalism led to production processes unnecessarily wasteful of natural resources, or how certain potentially useful waste products were not used, or were used for the production of inferior products. How should this evidence be integrated in Marx's theory of the production process developed in chapter 7 of the first volume? Environmentalists today know that the use of waste products in production is not a curiosity but must become the rule. Production which uses waste products from other production processes is not second best. On the contrary, today we must consider production which uses certain low entropy ores as second best and to be phased out. More details in the Rockstroem article about planetary boundaries. Only production that recycles waste products is sustainable and we must actively search for such technologies. If there is a production process which generates waste that cannot be integrated in a circular process then it must be phased out as well (I would consider nuclear power as one of those). Production which injects sequestered carbon into the active carbon cycle must be phased out very quickly, this is a true emergency. This gives strict constraints on which technologies can be used, and it will mean quite different life styles than those living in the rich nations have come to expect, although the quality of life can still be quite good. If we, i.e., world society with all its diverse class and national interests, do not manage to make this transition/retreat deliberately it will come anyway, more abruptly with more hardship and more injustice. Although I don't consider this way of looking at things to be incompatible with Marx, I don't think Marx put the puzzle pieces together in this way. To me, the question to what extent Marx knew all that is not as important as the question whether the things I tried to summarize from modern environmentalist knowledge are guidelines which socialists should adopt. Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] socialism of retreat
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thank you for giving me the last word. I'll make it brief. There is no time to make a socialist revolution first and then tackle climate change. The world economy must be decarbonized under capitalism. The only way this can happen quickly enough is through the demand side. A cultural shift and grassroots movement is needed where those who have more income than they need (the middle class) everywhere on this planet voluntarily reduce and decarbonize their own consumption and force their governments to regulate capitalist energy production. If you say this is not likely to happen I agree, but there is growing consensus that this is the only way a profound enough change still could happen at this late time. I recommend to listen to the radical emission reduction conference in London Dec 11/12 2013 at http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/communication/news-archive/2013/radical-emissions-reduction-conference-videos-now-online Hans. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Looming Danger of Abrupt Climate Change
have given humankind more degrees of freedom to organize production sensibly in a sustainable way. Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Looming Danger of Abrupt Climate Change
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shaun asked me for precice references. A book with good information about the Soviet Union's efforts to modify nature for human benefit is Paul Josephson's Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology Island Press 2002, Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Industrialized-Nature-Technology-Transformation-Natural/dp/1559637773/ My first Marx quote is the second paragraph in chapter 3, section 2 a http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#S2a In so far as the process of exchange transfers commodities from hands in which they are non-use-values to hands in which they are use-values, it is a process of social metabolism. The product of one kind of useful labor replaces that of another. Once a commodity has arrived at a place where it can serve as use-value, it falls out of the sphere of exchange into that of consumption. Only the sphere of exchange is of interest to us here. The translation used by marxists.org says social circulation of matter. The German says gesellschaftlicher Stoffwechsel and I think whenever Marx uses the word Stoffwechsel one should translate it with the same word metabolism. My second quote is in the 7th paragraph of chapter 7, section 1 http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm#S1 Here is what I quoted in the earlier email: That which in the laborer appeared as movement, now appears in the product as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the product is a forging. Here is the entire paragraph: In the labour-process, therefore, man's activity, with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked upon. The process disappears in the product, the latter is a use-value, Nature's material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in the labourer appeared as movement, now appears in the product as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the product is a forging. I think it is wrong to say that the process disappears in the product. Along with the product, every production process also generates a stream of waste. This waste stream is as essential for production as the materials entering the production process. Marx talks about the material object of the labor process but not about the waste stream. It is exactly this stream of waste which makes us sick today and which suffocates us. We are overusing the planet's capability to absorb our waste products, especially our greenhouse gases. My next quote is at the same URL, search for rusts: A machine which does not serve the purposes of labor, is useless. In addition, it falls prey to the destructive influence of natural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted. Living labor must seize upon these things and rouse them from their death-sleep, change them from mere possible use-values into actual and effective ones. Bathed in the fire of labor, appropriated as part and parcel of labor's organism, and, as it were, made alive for the performance of their functions in the process, they are consumed but consumed with a purpose, as constitutive elements of new use-values, of new products, ever ready as means of subsistence for individual consumption, or as means of production for some new labor-process. Marx's systemic and relational view of society is exactly what is needed to understand today's paralysis in front of climate change etc, it is much more fruitful than modern methodological individualism. Marx has already seen at his time the beginnings of the contradictions that engulf us today. Therefore we can learn a lot from him. But he was only human, he did not get everything completely right. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Textbook example how damaging bogus solutions can be
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sep 12, German TV had a 7-minute segment about the increased use of the very dirty bituminous coal (Braunkohle) in Germany. The story told there to a broad German audience shows clearly how damaging bogus solutions can be. Higher energy prices associated with the German Feed-In Tariffs have caused some mothballed extremely dirty coal power plants to start up again. In theory, cap and trade should prevent this, but the carbon price on the EU ETS is extremely low right now due to an over-issue of permits, and politicians catering to the coal industry block reforms which would raise the price again. Germany does many things right and in may respect their energy policy must be upheld as shining example for other nations, but here they are as bad as the Koch Brothers in the US -- with the difference that the German Politicians supporting their local dirty coal pretend to be green since they are supporting the EU ETS as a market-based clean energy policy. This TV segment exposes one such bogus solution as a Trojan horse designed to roll back the advances made by the Feed-In Tariff system and the switch away from nuclear energy in Germany. The late Herrman Scheer had it right when he said such a cap and trade system turns the minimum into a maximum. For a week after its broadcast, all German TV transmissions are available on line. I.e., for the next few days you can watch this segment (in German) at http://www.ardmediathek.de/das-erste/panorama/energiewende-rueckkehr-der-schmutzigen-kohle?documentId=17077424 Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] World's tallest dam approved by Chinese environmental officials | Environment | guardian.co.uk
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Lou Proyect forwarded a link with the comment: We are doomed as a species. Time to make your bucket list. There have indeed been many news items recently describing from various angles how precarious the situation is and how urgent it is to take action now if we want our children and grandchildren to have a future. A common thread of most of these environmental disaster stories is that humankind has the knowledge and technology to avert this disaster, the only obstacle is our social relations. Social relations exist only in our actions and are reproduced by our actions. The byline should therefore be that we must learn to act in ways which do not reproduce the social relations dooming our species, but foster the needed change -- and maybe a discussion of those initiatives which most deserve our support (such as Bill McKibben's international power shift). Instead, Lou's joke conjures the inevitability of the destructive path which our present social relations have in store for us. Marx calls this commodity fetishism, the view that our own social relations are inevitable natural forces. Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] EU conference in Durban Framework: Informative Video Stream
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == An important result of the 2011 Climate Change Conference in Durban http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference is the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. This framework for international climate negotiations eliminates the distinction between Annex I and Non-Annex I countries. Instead, its goal is to draft an international climate agreement by the year 2015, to go into effect in 2020, which ensures the highest possible mitigation efforts by *all parties*. I always thought the Durban framework has two shortcomings: (a) 2020 is too late. (b) by ignoring the historical debt of the rich countries it places too much burden on the poor countries. But I'd like to start a discussion here whether activists world wide, environmentalists, socialists, and ecosocialists, should support the Durban framework anyway. As part of its preparations for this climate agreement, the European Union organized a so-called stakeholder conference on April 17, 2013. The Conference Web site http://ec.europa.eu/clima/events/0073/index_en.htm has a link to the videos and slides of all talks. The first speaker is John Schellnhuber, giving an overview of the latest science and a preview of what is going to come in the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC which is due next year. Climate deniers try to make a big deal from the empirical fact that world-wide atmospheric mean temperatures have not risen much since 1996. This does not mean global warming has stopped. But right now all the excess heat goes into the oceans. Schellnhuber said that this pause in atmospheric warming may last another decade. Although the heating of the oceans is dangerous itself, I have the impression this gives us a little more time. This is relevant for my objection (a) to the Durban process. Perhaps it is not too late but has some chance of success. I try to be realistic. Being realistic not only means seeing the dangers but also seeing the opportunities. Regarding point (b), Schellnhuber says here, but in much more detail in a teaching video http://www.wbgu.de/en/trafoseminar/1-interview/ that soon, the majority of the affluent people, whose consumption of meat and cars wrecks the climate, will live in the global South. Therefore it is no longer going to be OECD countries against poor countries, but affluent consumers everywhere against poor people everywhere. If this is the real issue, then ignoring the historical debt of the OECD countries does not do terminal harm to international negotiations. The second speaker, Connie Hedegaard, the EU Commissioner for Climate Action, gives an overview of the political issues. Then there is a panel discussion and also audience questions. A young person in the audience asked whether the Durban framework was going to represent the interests of the youth. Schellnhuber answered that, in order to have their interests heard, the youth has to organize. Although the majority of the youth affected by climate change are still in diapers or are not yet born, those who are old enough should indeed organize. I think this video shows that there are people in responsible positions who see the danger and are trying to save the climate. They need support from a world wide mass movement. Due to the internet, such a mass movement is possible. The elephant in the room which nobody really could talk about was of course the US. Criticizing the US would have been counterproductive, because it would have given the US an excuse not to cooperate. Therefore the US was mentioned very little. If the younger Bush wrecked the UNFCCC process, Obama may become known in history as the president who wrecked the Durban process. The pressure is on us, citizens and activists in the United States, that this is not going to happen. This video stream is several hours long but very informative, I can recommend it highly. Hans G. Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Geoengineering
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Australian philosopher Clive Hamilton, who has written *Affluenca* and *Requiem for a Species*, just published a book about Geoengineering, called *Earthmasters*. I haven't seen it yet. In *Requiem for a Species* Hamilton says: since it is becoming increasingly clear that climate change is going to accelerate out of control, geoengineering is going to come. Preparations are made behind closed doors, and a public discussion about it is necessary. (Ptrdumsbly this is why the book about geoengineering is his next book after *Requiem*). Hamilton makes a striking comparison: climate mitigation is expensive, has long lead times to show effects, and needs international cooperation. geoengineering is cheap, has immediate effects, and can be done by one nation or even one wealthy individual. In Hamilton's view, an international treaty regulating geoengineering is urgently needed. Assume hot and dry Australia starts spraying sulfates in the stratosphere and causes the monsoon rains in India to stop, so that many more people in India die than are saved in Australia. Or some billionaire nut case is trying to save the world. Many other conflict scenarios are possible. Hamilton's book is at http://amzn.com/1364913866 My view is that of course, in the long run, geoengineering is not cheap. Instead of the human race coming to understand their place as part of the biosphere, it is the ultimate effort of humans to dominate nature. This will necessarily fail because at this point we don't know enough about the earth and neither have the economic resources nor the global governance for the kind of intervention necessary to regulate the planet. The capitalist system, which is threatened by climate change, tries to reassert itself in its ugliest form by geoengineering. The question is: do we want a comparatively slow (decades) and possibly more egalitarian death for most of our children and grandchildren, or do we want to try to maintain the illusion of normality for another decade or so and then, when geoengineering hits its necessary limits, have a much faster breakdown (years or months) in which those with money will survive longer than others, since they have built fortified communities in Alaska and Antarctica? I vote for the slow way, because it has better chances for us to get rid of the capitalist system in the process, for the human race not to go entirely extinct, and perhaps even to learn from the experience. Hans Ehrbar P.S. here is the book blurb for Hamilton's book: This book goes to the heart of the unfolding reality of the twenty-first century: international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have all failed and before the end of the century Earth is projected to be warmer than it has been for 15 million years. The question, can the crisis be avoided? has been superseded by a more frightening one, what can be done to prevent the devastation of the living world?. And the disturbing answer, now under wide discussion both within and outside the scientific community, is to seize control of the very climate of the Earth itself. Clive Hamilton begins by exploring the range of technologies now being developed in the field of geoengineering - the intentional, enduring, large-scale manipulation of Earth's climate system. He lays out the arguments for and against climate engineering, and reveals the extent of vested interests linking researchers, venture capitalists, and corporations. He then examines what it means for human beings to be making plans to control the planet's atmosphere, probes the uneasiness we feel with the notion of exercising technological mastery over nature, and challenges the ways we think about ourselves and our place in the natural world. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Global Warming Projections by Climate Scientists
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Correction: when Russia's carbon emissions declined by 5% per year for ten years, its GNP *fell* by half. (My previous email said grew.) Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Re. Question
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == what is the *specific* mechanism for the imperative on the part of capitalists to accumulate, i.e. consume productively, (some of) their surplus-value as new capital I don't think you should look for a specific mechanism, you should look for the underlying systemic necessity which will be realized in many different ways. According to my understanding of Marx, the real definition of capital cannot be that it generates surplus-value, because then you have a false distinction between capital and surplus-value. The real definition of capital is value in motion, value that generates more value out of itself, not just once but indefinitely. I think modern systems theory calls this an autopoietic system or an auto-catalytic system but I am not well versed in this, I just throw it out there if you want to look up these terms. Capitalism can only function if it expands, and its functioning promotes its expansion (at least until it hits the planet's resource constraints which Marx did not consider enough). If you look at the Accumulation chapter you find several such autocatalytic causal chains, such as: capital accumulation leads to bigger firms leads to more economics of scale and therefore faster capital accumulation. Interestingly, there is no competitive mechanism prescribing how much of surplus-value should be converted into capital. Marx says in chapter 24 that this is the decision of the capitalist. I think this should be read to mean the decision of the capitalist class. If wages are too high, they can collectively decide to accumulate more slowly to make wages lower again. Here is one example how this plays out in practice: in the 1950s faced with strong UAW demanding higher wages, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to keep the interest rate high, forcing the auto companies to grow faster and therefore forcing them to collectively deny the wage request of their workers which they easily could have paid for, the profits were high enough. Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shane made an eloquent case that we can continue to grow if we switch to renewable energies. I reproduce his essay below because he sent it three days ago. My answer is: energy is *the only* resource where our planet receives a new supply every day. In every other respect, the earth is a closed system. Therefore only that production is sustainable in which every waste of one production process is the raw material for a different production process or can be used as food by some life forms, and for sustainability it can only use inputs which are waste materials from other production processes or living organisms instead of depleting the finite store of low-entropy ores. Modern industrial production does not meet this test, on the contrary, it literally makes a mess of our planet. Modern industrial production is like an elephant in a porcelain store which gets bigger every day and smashes more and more porcelain every day and is about to drown in a sea of porcelain chards. For instance the nanofibers which Shane wants to introduce into the environment on a large scale cannot be broken down by living beings; they form long microscopic needles which destroy life on a cellular level similar to asbestos crystals or alpha radiation. Most of our technology fixes one problem by creating a different problem. We are far away from technology which integrates into the earth system in a sustainable way. In this respect I am a technological pessimist: we are not gods who can make nature subservient to us, we are part of nature and we must learn to live in harmony with nature. The fossil fuel bonanza has given us the illusion that we are omnipotent, it is time to wake up from this dream. Hans On Jan 16, 2013, at 2:40 PM, ehr...@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu wrote: The times of cheap and abundant energy are over and climate change is starting to make everything more difficult and expensive... But are they? I say not. Far from over, the times of cheap (virtually free) energy have yet to begin. But they are literally in the process of beginning. The sun, powered by an absolutely inexhaustible energy source, delivers to our planet much more energy than a world population twice our size could conceivably utilize. It is merely a matter of capturing that energy and restoring it to its original form, electricity. That is what solar photovoltaics and aeolian turbines are all about, And far from everything being more difficult and expensive we are seeing rapid and accelerating declines in the cost of energy captured by these techniques and of the necessary equipment itself. This without the many more advanced technologies now being developed and disclosed constantly all over the world. And without any of the conceivable and likely scientific/ technological advances yet to be made. Now more than ever in history scientific/technological pessimism is utterly stupid. Raw materials are absolutely no constraint when carbon nanofibers can be made into substitutes for every metal that are superior to the original in every respect. Scientific progress (based on information technology) will obviously go on accelerating as long as Moore's Law applies (doubling the information-processing ability of a single computer chip every three years or less). Three-D printing is already widespread, even in homes. Robotic technologies are displacing labor all but entirely when applied. If growth is conceived as continual increase in humanity's material abundance there is no constraint to its indefinite continuation. The utopian socialists, Fourier and Saint-Simon most notably, really did anticipate this evolution. Their great successor, Marx, demonstrated the social conditions for its realization. But also how a social order based on private profit and the preservation of capital values stifles and ultimately destroys the very possibility of not only progress but even survival itself. A century ago the Great War demonstrated, in Trotsky's words (in War and the Second International) the revolt of modern productive forces against the narrow bounds of national sovereignty and capitalist social relations. This contradiction has now reached its breaking point in the form of global heating. That means the only politics worth anything is the struggle, *within political institutions tied to the capitalist social order*, to abolish all use of fossil fuels and to replace them with solar-derived electricity at as close to breakneck speed as can be imposed. The primary political demand has to be the imposition of a really big carbon tax to be substantially increased every year until the world's coal, oil, and gas industries have been totally
[Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I wrote: Even the mainstream is coming to the conclusion that there are conditions making growth possible that we do not understand very well. Ralph asked me to elaborate and to explain better why I thought this was a summary of Lou's blog post. Textbook economics has growth models with capital and labor, with technology determining the growth rate. This is what I call a model which takes growth for granted. All we need is living labor and past labor (capital) and somehow increases in technology will fall like mannah from heaven and the economy will grow. Technology does not create unemployment but, since it leads to growth, increase overall labor demand. Marx attacked the so-called theory of compensation, which was the version of this theory in classical economics, and more recently Hermann Daly attacked the version of this in neoclassical economics (Solow's growth models and derivatives). Daly says there is a third condition for growth, namely natural resources, which puts increasing constraints on growth, and much of what is mistaken as the effects of technology is really the effect of cheap energy and increased extraction of natural resources. There has been a trickle of papers about this, but recently more and more mainstream papers and books discuss this issue. They look in detail at periods of growth in the past in order to understand what drove these spurts of growth and when and why they petered out again. There are also papers about growth and energy etc. The times of cheap and abundant energy are over and climate change is starting to make everything more difficult and expensive. I think Lou's blog addresses some of the symptoms of it without probing the underlying conditions causing these changes. This requires a rethinking of economic theories which only worked during the exceptional times of the fossil fuel bonanza. It also requires different tactics for the class struggle. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Ralph gave a succinct and helpful summary of a couple of the many Marxist theories of an impending doom of capitalism and asked me what (I) counter-pose specifically from (my) reading in the economic literature. Thank you for asking, here is my answer: Doomsday theories are a long tradition in Marxism, we all are in some ways inured to them. Therefore it may be difficult to appreciate the importance of the recent fact that since about 2004 there has been a rising chorus of mainstream theorists, first earth systems theorists and then also economists, promulgating doomsday theories too. I am enclosing one of these warnings by non-Marixsts at the end of this message, just as illustration of what I am talking about. The difference between these warnings and the familiar warnings of Marxists is that the new mainstream doom theories are based on far more specific data and a huge body of literature from the natural sciences. The approach or the catastrophe can be measured, with the verdict that we are much aurther ahead on the way to catastrophe than it may seem. The reason for this catastrophe is the overuse of the planet's resources by human production and consumption. More and more of the systems theorists concerned about the limits of growth and climate change are also coming to the conclusion that capitalism plays a role in this and we need a different system. This is a big movement not led by Marxists. There should be discussions among Marxists to better understand this movement and to make a positive contribution to it. By writing a blog post titled Limits to Growth which does not mention the finiteness of the planet's resources, Lou did not promote the kind of discussion I think is necessary. Hans. Here is an example of a recent prediction of doom, one of many. I found it odd that nobody on the Marxism list brought it up: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/01/experts-fear-collapse-of-global-civilisation/ Inter Press Service January 14, 2013 Experts Fear Collapse of Global Civilisation By Stephen Leahy UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 11 2013 (IPS) - Experts on the health of our planet are terrified of the future. They can clearly see the coming collapse of global civilisation from an array of interconnected environmental problems. We're all scared, said Paul Ehrlich, president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. But we must tell the truth about what's happening and challenge people to do something to prevent it, Ehrlich told IPS. Global collapse of human civilisation seems likely, write Ehrlich and his partner Anne Ehrlich in the prestigious science journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society. This collapse will take the form of a gradual breakdown because famines, epidemics and resource shortages cause a disintegration of central control within nations, in concert with disruptions of trade and conflicts over increasingly scarce necessities, they write. Already two billion people are hungry today. Food production is humanity's biggest industry and is already being affected by climate and other environmental problems. No civilisation can avoid collapse if it fails to feed its population, the authors say. Escalating climate disruption, ocean acidification, oceanic dead zones, depletion of groundwater and extinctions of plants and animals are the main drivers of the coming collapse, they write in their peer-reviewed article Can a collapse of global civilisation be avoided? published this week. Dozens of earth systems experts were consulted in writing the 10-page paper that contains over 160 references. We talked to many of the world's leading experts to reflect what is really happening, said Ehrlich, who is an eminent biologist and winner of many scientific awards. Our reality is that current overconsumption of natural resources and the resulting damage to life-sustaining services nature provides means we need another half of a planet to keeping going. And that's if all seven billion remain at their current living standards, the Ehrlichs write. If everyone lived like a U.S. citizen, another four or five planets would be needed. Global population is projected to increase by 2.5 billion by 2050. It doesn't take an expert to conclude that collapse of civilisation will be unavoidable without major changes. We're facing a future where billions will likely die, and yet little is being done to avoid certain disaster, he said. Policy makers and the public aren't terrified about this because they don't have the information or the knowledge about how our planet functions, he said. Last March, the world's scientific community provided the first-ever state of the planet assessment at the Planet Under Pressure conference
[Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Charlie asks: Which overused resource do we know to be irreplaceable now and forever? Here is an article about those resources which humanity is overusing: By Rockstroem and many other authors: Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity Ecology and Society 14(2) 2009, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32 They say: climate change, chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, biodiversity loss, land system change, global freshwater use, phosphorus cycle, nitrogen cycle, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shane writes: Fossil fuels are not at all overused--the reserves of all of them would outlast the human race even if we go on using them at present rates for another century. I agree, they will not run out soon. We have to stop using them long before they run out. Bill McKibben in his Do the Math tour said: Proven oil and gas reserves, if burned, will produce 2,795 gigatons of CO2 while our carbon budget (if we want to stay below 2 degrees celsius warming) is 565 gigatons. I.e., 80% of the proven oil and gas reserves must stay in the ground. More at http://math.350.org Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Immanuel Wallerstein on US Elections
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I am sending this to the list because of the following paragraph, which I consider a plausible explanation of Obama's failure to push environmental issues. Obama has been a big disappointment to that large group of his supporters who are motivated by environmental and ecological concerns. He has talked a good line but has done rather little. One reason is that another group of supporters - the trade-unions - have been arguing in the other direction because of the risk to jobs. Obama has waffled, and he will probably continue to waffle. I must say I have never heard this before; have I been deaf or is this issue being hushed up, or is it so wrong that nobody discusses it, or is it so obvious that everybody knows and it does not need discussion? This analysis, if correct, underscores the necessity for the environmental movement to build alliances with the labor movement. Hans. == http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/ Permanent URL: http://www2.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/archive-2012/341en.htm Commentary No. 341, Nov. 15, 2012 Obama Won: What Will Happen Now? Obama won the U.S. elections with a significant margin both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. The Democrats won every closely contested seat for the Senate except one. This relieved the Democrats, who had been worried, and astonished the Republicans, who had felt certain of victory. Now the whole world wants to know what this means for the immediate future of the United States and the world. The answer is not simple. Let me start with foreign policy. The U.S. government still wishes to pursue an imperial policy throughout the world. The problem it faces is very simple. Its ability to do this has drastically declined, but the elites (including Obama) don't wish to acknowledge this. They still speak of the United States as the indispensable nation and the greatest country ever known. This is a contradiction that they don't know how to handle. As for the ordinary U.S. citizen, an exit poll that asked what motivated the votes of those polled found that only 4% said foreign policy. Nonetheless, most ordinary citizens still believe the mantra that the United States is the world's golden example. We can therefore expect that Obama will continue to do what he has been doing: talking tough, but acting in fact prudently vis-a-vis Iran, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, China, Mexico, and indeed most countries. This of course exasperates most other countries and all sorts of political actors across the world. Whether he can continue to walk this narrow tightrope without falling off is not at all assured, especially since the United States can no longer really control what most other actors will do. Obama is almost as helpless regarding the economy - the U.S. economy and the world-economy. I doubt that he can seriously reduce U.S. unemployment, and in 2014 and 2016, this will help the Republicans rebound. The crucial issue at the moment is the so-called (and misnamed) fiscal cliff. The real issue here is who is going to bear the largest burden of U.S. economic decline. On these issues, Obama was elected on populist promises but actually is pursuing a right-of-center position. He is offering the Republicans a deal: higher taxes for the wealthy along with significant cuts in health and maybe pension expenditures for the majority of the population. This is the U.S. version of austerity. This is a bad deal for the vast majority of Americans, but Obama will pursue it vigorously. The deal may nonetheless fall through, if the Republican right wing stupidly refuses to go along with it. The business elites of the United States are putting pressure on the Republicans to accept the deal. The trade-unions and the liberals (inside and outside the Democratic Party) are pushing against the deal. But thus far, the liberal anti-deal push has been far weaker than the business elite pro-deal push. This is essentially a class struggle of a very traditional kind, and the 99% do not always win these struggles. On so-called social issues, which were a true divider between the Republicans and Democrats in this election, the U.S. voting population defeated the troglodytes hands down. Gay marriage won on the ballot in four states, and the shift in public opinion indicates this trend will continue. Even more important was the absolutely lopsided vote for Obama and the Democrats by African-Americans and by Latinos. It seems that the ferocious attempts by Republican governors to impede voting by these groups stirred a backlash, in which even more of them voted than previously. For Latinos, the key issue was immigration reform. And major figures in the
[Marxism] NYT sponsoring reactionary bs from Germany
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has just published an article based on a conversation with Hans Werner Sinn which gives as analysis of the Greek situation which is very convincing to the lay person but from a Marxist or progressive point of view is completely wrong. It is written for non-experts and published in the famous cultural section of the paper not in the business section. I only have found it in German, it is http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/hans-werner-sinn-renoviert-das-bad-und-werdet-muendige-buerger-11783018.html If someone finds it in English, please let us know. He says that the Greeks bought German cars with the money borrowed from Germany instead of making their economy more efficient. Therefore Germans are financing the lazy Greeks, instead of consuming so much they must save more and increase their productivity. He also says having a trade surplus is bad for Germany because more wealth flows out than flows in. Even from a mainstream economics point of view it is wrong because he assumes full employment and he assumes that a nation as a whole can save. From a Marxist point of view it is doubly wrong because he starts with the opposition Germany versus Greece instead of the opposition capitalists versus workers. I think one can also criticize it from the point of view of unequal exchange. The high-use-value German cars are the bait which extracts exchange-value out of Greece, and the German workers are given a few crumbs from this booty. This is only visible if you distinguish use-value and exchange-value. Most reader's comments are completely taken in by Sinn. Only about 1 in 20 or so have something intelligent to say, for instance Paul Rabe's contribution on 2012-06-13 17:48. Maybe there are one or two others, I did not go through all of them, but sometimes you find gems. If someone could write a convincing counter-argument from a Marxist point of view, this would be great. The fate of Greece and maybe even the Euro depends very much on how flexible Germany can be, and this article probably makes a big contribution towards making public sentiment in Germany more inflexible. I think we are observing here the blowback from the fact that mainstream economics is an ideology posing as science: the ideological dimension makes it very difficult for the capitalists to manage this crisis, it induces them to make the crisis worse instead of better. Hans. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Glow in the dark sushi
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thank you DCQ, this is well written and well reasoned! I'd like to point out some of the things science did not know sufficiently when it was generally thought that small amounts of pollution are ok: (a) bio-accumulation. If the water has barely measurable or unmeasurable levels of pollution, fish living in it can still be highly polluted. Once the radioactivity is in the ocean, its effect on humans is determined by a race between how quickly it decays and how quickly it bio-accumulates. Some of the more long-lived isotopes, whose effects are right now masked by the more short-lived isotopes, may cumulatively be the more damaging ones for humans. (b) effects on unborns. Today's babies are born pre-polluted by the pollution ingested by their mothers. There are timeseries showing a correlation between nuclear testing in the USA and lowered IQ levels of babies born at that time. (c) Time lag of regulation. The gravity of the effects of air pollution have only be discovered in the last 15 years or so. Regulation is years or decades behind the quickly advancing science. There is so much we don't know that it is prudent to avoid levels of pollution which are safe according to the regulations. Hans. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Germany: Left Party and Energy Turnaround
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Germany has been in the News mainly because of Greece, but other interesting things are happening there too. At the bottom of this email is an informative email about the Left Party. I can recommend the link to the Victor Grossman article in MRZine But in my view, the most important thing happening in Germany right now is the Energy Turnaround (Energiewende), i.e., the switch away from nuclear and later also fossil fuels to renewable energy. No other country, with the possible exception of Japan, is doing this. Germany is the world pioneer, and the success or failure of its ambitious program means a lot for what what will happen in other countries. Interestingly the energy turnaround happens under CDU/FDP leadership. Angela Merkel is somewhat an outsider in her own party, and there are many in CDU and FDP who wish it would fail. The former German minister of the environment, Norbert Roettgen, has just been fired by Merkel. Roettgen tried to pretty much dismantle the German Feed-In tariffs, but he did not succeed because of opposition of the states in the former GDR for whom renewable energy is the lifeline. There was speculation whether Merkel thought Roettgen did not push the Energiewende vigorously enough. It is hard for me to see from afar, others even say she fired him because he pushed it too vigorously. The new minister of the environment is a close ally of Merkel but not an expert on the environment. This weekend it became clear that Merkel herself wants to take leadership for the energy turnaround (she used to be minister of the environment before becoming chancellor). I like what she is doing: (a) There will be regular bi-annual meetings with the Ministerpraesidenten of the states (what in the USA would be the governors). Merkel says that some states pursue a policy of energy autarky which is out of place. (b) Merkel is introducing legislation which gives the Federal Government more authority to build an electric transmission grid. There are not enough transmission lines to bring the wind power from the North to the industrial regions in the South. Transmission lines are always difficult, nobody wants them in their backyard. (c) Merkel is working on a tariff structure so that the owners of fossil fuel power plants can make money for just keeping their capacity available in case the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow. Renewable energy has priority, they will be used first. But at the beginning, as long as energy storage has not yet been developed sufficiently, fossil fuel power plants must be used as backup. The owners of these plants however threaten to shut down their plants if they are not allowed to run at full capacity. It remains to be seen if they are satisfied with this temporary bridge-role as long as they are paid for it. I see these profit guarantees as a gambit by Merkel which forces them to show whether they are willing to cooperate or whether they will more openly fight to keep their own dominance. Hans Here is the email which was orginnaly forwarded by Sid Sniad to Rad-Green: --- forwarded email --- From: Ingo Schmidt Date: Sat, May 26, 2012 at 12:36 PM Subject: Germany's Left Party in Crisis Dear friends, you may have heard about the crisis of The Left Party in Germany. Mainstream media presents it mostly as an cabal among power-hungry individuals struggling over leadership positions. Frustrating as these struggles are, the crisis developed over quite some time. More precisely: It started to unfold when the Great Recession hit. Contrary to hopes and expectations on the left, and not only among Left Party folks, increasing unemployment, wage pressure, and austerity policies did not trigger the kind of fight back that we have seen in Greece and Spain. And, so far at least, no electoral left turn, as recently in France, happened either. Instead, approval rates for The Left Party nose-dived while politically indeterminate discontent helped another new party, The Pirate Party, to establish themselves as a player in electoral politics. One of the reasons for this new German 'Sonderweg' is the capacity of Germany's ruling class to unload the burden of the economic crisis on other countries, namely the deficit and debtor countries on the European periphery. Aggressive beggar-thy-neighbour policies buy, for the time being at least, social peace at home and make The Left Party look as something not really needed in a country priding itself as world champion of exports. Under these conditions tensions that existed in The Left Party from its beginnings in 2007 unfolded slowly until they erupted in the current heated leadership debate. The bitter irony may be that The Left Party ruins itself just before the austerity policy the German
[Marxism] The Art Justifying Unconventional Fuels
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yesterday I attended the unconventional fuels conference organized by the Institute of Clean and Secure Energy (ICSE) of the University of Utah. This Institute should better be named Institute of Dirty and Dangerous Energy because it researches clean ways of mining and burning fossil fuels. Utah is the epicenter of tar sands and oil shale development in the USA. (I wish they would try to be the epicenter for solar and geothermal, but they have found a different area where to excel.) The State of Utah has an employee with the title manager of unconventional energy development, whose job is to help everyone working in unconventional energy in Utah. He is joking that his job could be called the most unconventional state job in the USA because no other state has such a position. One of my research goals when attending the conference was to understand better what the scientists, business people, and state employees promoting tar sands and oil shale do so that they can sleep at night. Because these people are of course smart enough to know that what they are doing is making the planet inhospitable for future generations. Here are 5 strategies: (1) The main strategy was not to talk about it, leave it out as the big elephant in the room. For instance geochemist David Pershing, a member of the ICSE who just recently has become President of the University of Utah, expressed how happy he was about the ICSE. He did mention the environment, he said it was one of their core concerns, namely (a) contamination of aquifers (b) seismic issues Obviously he was referring to the well known issues of fracking. When asked about the main environmental issue, global warming, he said that natural gas has a lower carbon footprint than coal. He ignored recent literature according to which this is far from certain due to fugitive emissions of methane, and he also did not mention that tar sands and oil shale have much higher carbon footprint than coal. One firm which does oil shale says that the carbon footprint of their method has a lower carbon footprint than other methods. This is the second denial strategy, namely (2) find someone who is even worse. (3) The entire conference was part of their denial strategy. The conference had the explicit purpose to open the work of the ICSE to public discussion. They said they welcomed the comments of people concerned about what they are doing, and I believe that they meant it. In this way they can redefine the global warming issue as a matter of debate and tell themselves they are open to debate. (4) They even used the argument that Utah is too little to matter. Responding to the question whether they were afraid that Utah would experience similar social and environmental disruptions as Alberta, the answer was that Utah tar sands is only 1% of the extent of the Alberta tar sands. This person conveniently forgot to say that the energy content of Utah Oil shale is about 100 times that of Utah tar sands. Oil shale is the big price businesses are lusting for in Utah, not tar sands. Tar sands is basically a playground for small businesses, with those who manage to develop a viable procedure hoping to be snapped up by one of the big oil companies. (5) In a personal conversation with someone at the ICSE I said: the problem is that you get all the money, much more than the institutes for renewable energy which also exist at the U. His answer was that all the good researchers were going to the renewable energy research, and a good researcher is worth much more than money. I.e., the pariah status itself of this kind of research is now used as an argument so that they don't have to see themselves as prostitutes of destructive economic interests. These are the thought processes so that people can justify making big sums of money or accepting big grants for doing something which is destructive of our future. Nobody wants to say no when offered such an opportunity. It is fairly universal, they all think and say pretty much the same thing, i.e., they have learned from each other how to navigate this dilemma. When someone comes up with an especially eloquent excuse there is general applause. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Art Justifying Unconventional Fuels
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here is literature about fugitive and migratory emissions from unburned methane. Here is a blog post from the National Geographic which gives a good survey of the issue with the basic message that thanks to new regulation it is going to be fixed: http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/2011/07/28/a-move-to-capture-fugitive-natural-gas-emissions/ Here is a study by Deutsche Bank and Worldwatch Institute (which cites an important EPA study): http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/_media/Comparing_Life_Cycle_Greenhouse_Gas.pdf Here is another recent recent study not regarding fracking but coal seam gas in Australia: http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/releases/worley-base-case-baseless-coal-seam-gas-still-worse-coal-120328 I do not doubt that they are trying to fix it, or at least pretend that they will fix it, just to silence the bad publicity. But nobody knows how much is leaking from all the pipelines etc. Industry insiders must have known about this issue ever since it became known how powerful methane is as a greenhouse gas, but they haven't done anything about it until some researchers and the press picked up on it. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Nukes? Who needs nukes?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Lou writes: I imagine that Die Linke has to have an energy policy but Marxmail is not an electoral formation. We are a forum for advanced theoretical and political debate, not a think-tank to help prepare white papers for social democratic parties. Die Linke was one of the inspirations of Melenchon, other inspirations were Latin America and Tunisia. Here is the energy policy platform of Die Linke. http://www.linksfraktion.de/themen/energiepolitik/ It is amazingly good, but since it is German I won't comment on it. But I'd like to say a few things about Rocky Anderson's energy policy, which I also like a lot: http://www.voterocky.org/clean_energy_economy o The government should stop subsidizing research into CCS. Rocky writes if the coal industry wants to remain part of America's energy future, it can pay for this research on its own. I love that. Fossil fuels are the problem, not the solution. o the government should stop subsidizing nuclear energy o Rocky wants to reform national transportation policy to stop favoring highways over mass transit and other clean transportation options. This is big. He is telling US Americans to get out of their cars. o Make the US the most energy efficient industrial economy in the world within 20 years. This is perhaps too ambitious, given how energy inefficient the US economy is, but the intention is right. This is not a social democractic white paper. These are transitional demands. This is a collision course with capitalism. But Rocky does not rely on the working class to get there. Rocky is appealing to the most far-sighted wing of the capitalists, with his first point: o he wants to take back international leadership in the research, development and commercialization of low-carbon energy technologies. By this he makes it possible to discuss something which few politicians in the US dare to discuss, namely, global warming, the most pressing issue of our time. His selling point is to offer himself as a leader in a situation where leadership is necessary but missing. Here we must be clear what this leadership is for. The US capitalists need leadership so that they can regain a leading position in the clean technology race. But on the other hand, global leadership is also needed by humanity to implement the decarbonization of the world economy. Anderson's leadership can therefore be progressive, and if you look at his formulations his proposals have a similar practical radical logic as Melenchon's. Anderson makes it clear he is not going to tiptoe around capitalist interests. In order to ever get to a point where Anderson actually has an influence, he needs a mass movement to back him. Socialists can make a big difference here, and I think marxmail is the right place to discuss this. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Rocky Anderson videos
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I agree with Eli Stephens that Rocky Anderson is not a socialist candidate. He does not run for president in order to promote socialism. Why is he running for president? I think Eli and others on this list misunderstand Rocky if they think Rocky is trying to promote a more liberal capitalism. This is not the only alternative to running for socialism at this time. What I am writing now is my interpretation of Rocky's actions and speeches and trajectory, together with how we in SLC got to know Rocky as our major. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, because I must confess I think Rocky is doing the right thing. As I see it, Rocky's main motivation is climate change. He sees that humankind today are in an almost hopeless situation, that our children and grandchildren will witness a major breakdown of civilization. Since he is a successful politician and good campaigner he thinks his best contribution to trying to mitigate this coming disaster is his election campaign. He wants to make a respectable showing in 2012 and get elected in 2016. He knows the chances are slim, but they are not zero, and they will increase if the mass movement remains strong. Of course climate change cannot be his primary campaign issue. In the USA 2012 nobody can get elected because of climate change. Therefore he wraps climate change together with a number of other human rights issues which are relevant to the voters and which he has been working on all his life: income disparity, immigration, health care, foreign policy (Iran). But he always has climate change or a clean energy economy on his list. He tells the public: we need these things, and we are not getting them because of the power of money. He is campaigning on a platform of restoring the USA as the shining city on the hill by taking away the power of money, he wants to end plutocracy. He wants the USA to be the hegemonic power on earth and use this hegemony to de-carbonize the world economy. Socialists know this is basically a ultra-imperialist platform. Ultra-imperialism is not possible as long as capitalism is firmly in power. I wonder perhaps it is thinkable as a transitional form towards a world-socialist system? Rocky is smart enough to know that even if he got elected he would not be able to do much about climate change without revolutionary support from the masses. But establishing deep roots in the mass movement is a necessity for him anyway, in order to get elected. To get elected, he not only needs support from the left but from all political identifications. That's why he must wage his campaign as a red-blooded American who loves his country and wants it to be special in the world, and that is why he cannot promote and end to capitalism but an end to plutocracy. And he cannot be successful if he does not believe in what he says. I do not know whether Rocky is aware that his primary goal, preventing climate change, is utterly incompatible with capitalism. But I think if Rocky is in a situation where he has to choose between capitalism and effective climate policies, he will choose effective climate policies. Rocky is not going to give up. Rocky is really a candidate without a party. The Justice Party is only a formality. Therefore the ball is in your court, political activists and organizations everywhere in the US! Rocky is basically offering his candidacy to be incorported as part of your strategy. If your strategy is to use public concern about climate change to push capitalism as far as it will go on a clean energy path, and make the push for socialism itself after all possibilities in the system have been exhausted and everyone realizes that this is not enough, then you will not get a more effective ally on the campaign trail and perhaps in the White House. Hans. Eli wrote: On Saturday night I heard him and three other candidates ... Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Nuclear Power: Be Careful what you wish for!,
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == David, you say the studies I quoted are a-historical. I think you mean they do not consider enough what happened in the past. In some sense the authors might even agree: they warn against extrapolating the past into the future. The reason for all this is because no country uses civilian power plants to produce nuclear WMD. They use dedicated, and cheaper, RD reactors to achieve this and specialized enrichment facilities. Even if other ways are cheaper, the transition from nuclear power plants to nuclear weapons is possible, and with power plants come also the experts to do it. The difference between weapons-grade uranium and fuel for power plants is only the time it spent in the centrifuge. And once you have the fuel, building the bomb is relatively easy. The firewall which you see between nuclear power and nuclear weapons has many holes. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons feed on each other, and you cannot kill one without killing the other. You also write A *campaign* for nuclear disarmament has to be created. One historical development both studies point to is that the US will no longer be in the middle of future nuclear proliferation. Syria may react to Iran, and it may get the nuclear resources from Pakistan, etc. This is the nightmare US politicians are talking about. You cannot control that with campaigns. Even the US government may be unable to control this if they wanted. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Nuclear Power: Be Careful what you wish for!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Oops, I meant to say: His policy proposal is to stop subsidizing nuclear ENERGY (I wrote nuclear WEAPONS). Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Rocky Anderson about Climate Change
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gar Lipow said on Pen-L: Yes you are right - first that we should not give up regardless of the odds - expecially since we don't really know them. And secondly that there are always degrees of catastrophe. Rocky Anderson said this too: My view is, as long as we are breathing air, as long as we are able to stand up and go out and fight, however we can, we got a responsibility to do it, responsibility to ourselves, responsibility to our nation, responsibility to later generations. He said this on April 1 during a 45 minute interview conducted by Vietnam Vet and activist Don Anderson. Don asked Rocky which topic Rocky found most important, and Rocky, after establishing his credentials and his general principles, started out with climate change. I made a transcript of this interview from 13:42 until 19:00. I didn't find a link to this interview on the voterocky.org web site, it is http://www.blogtalkradio.com/themaryandsallieshow/2012/04/02/the-mary-and-sallie-show-sundays-at-six ROCKY: One area in particular I['d like to] talk about that is climate protection. The need for our country to lead out on energy independence, a clean energy economy, and combating climate change and providing international leadership, because if we don't there is going to be catastrophic consequences world wide and many of these consequences certainly are going to be felt in our country by our children and later generations. We are already seeing a lot of those consequences now, but now the important thing is, now is the only time we can act to have any real impact because if we wait much longer it's going to be irreversible. DON: I have friends up in Alaska, they are native Americans, and they live right on the shore, and they are losing their land. They just had to, fortunately congress allowed them to move their tribal lands into BLM forest area, higher ground so that they can maintain their traditions their families and villiage there. I know that is happening in some of the island nations that might only be two or three feet above sea level, they are already seeing the effects of water in their yards and having to live basically on decks up above the water and in their boats. They are not getting the help they need from the United Nations and the other nations around the world. ROCKY: That is just the tip of the iceberg, to use perhaps an apt metaphor. It is happening in Tuvalu, and we are going to see it more and more along coastal areas, and eventially there are going to be hundreds of millions environmental refugees who displaced from their lands, we are going to see droughts, we are going to see torrential rainfalls wiping out places, we are going to see the destruction, we are already seeing the destruction but it is going to get to the point where because of the melting of glaciers there is not going to be the year-round water resources that people rely upon coming from these glaciers. So the impacts are going to be unbelievable. Something life which we have never seen during human history. People [will] look back and say, wait a minute they knew about this and they didn't do anything about it? And the United States being the biggest polluter didn't step forward taking the necessary measures to provide that international leadership? So we need that, but we also need the kind of leadership that will say no longer do we allow ourselves or anyone else to engage in wars of aggression. We tried people and convicted them during the Nurenberg tribunal for wars of aggression, yet we are doing these exact things right now, and again with disastrous long-term impact, and it is all contrary to our own nation's security let alone the security of literally billions of people around the world. DON: They don't have the resources which we have in the States to even consider combating what they are up against. ROCKY: It all comes down to leadership, Don. We cannot rely on just any one person, or on congress, it really takes people organizing at the grassroots. Every major social movement where we saw progress in this country came about because people at the grassroots organized, they were tenacious about it, they didn't sit back and wait for others to take action, they took on the responsibility, they felt an accountability. As a result, we saw an end to slavery in this coutnry, we saw women's suffrage -- the woman's right to vote, we saw the civil rights movement succeed, we saw the labor movement succeed -- and they were up against a lot of money! These people who were so cynical and resigned and said, oh we don't have any faith in the electoral system any more, we are just not going to vote, we are not going to take part in it any more, they are a huge part of the problem because they
[Marxism] [Ecosocialist] Mass psychology explanations of global warming denial
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Kamran wrote on the ecosocialism list: People lived for 95% of our history as gatherer-hunters where there was no product as such. Good point. I guess my one-sentence characterization of historical materialism must be corrected to read, as you suggest, individuals must live in class societies because they need products. (Of course we socialists want to create an alternative, production without a class society.) This gives me another idea: maybe the need to manage emotions arises not together with society as such, as I said in my earlier post, but with private property? With private property comes envy, jealousy, you better not fall in love with a woman who is someone else's property, etc. It is a long time since I read Engels's Origin of the Family, and I don't have the time to get into this, but perhaps this is something which Engels overlooked when he wrote this path-breaking work? I think this would be an intriguing idea: with private property arises the need to control emotions, which requires self-deception and opens the door to false consciousness. This would be a different entry into false consciousness than Marx's two pillars of false consciousness, the fetish-like character of the commodity and the wage form. Hans. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] [Ecosocialist] Mass psychology explanations of global warming denial
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == If any of you can figure out how any of us can opt out of class society, please share it with the rest of the class. :-) Of course, we all (with the possible exception of Jon Elster) know that we cannot opt out of class society. The question is why? Because we need products to survive, and production can only be done in society. Marx said in the Introduction to Grundrisse Production by a solitary individual outside society---a rare event, which might occur when a civilized person who has already absorbed the dynamic social forces is accidentally cast into the wilderness---is just as preposterous as the development of speech without individuals who live *together* and talk to one another. That is why the relations which individuals have with nature and with each other in the production process are the most basic social relations. This is how I understand historical materialism, and if you disagree with this I would be curious to hear you but this is not the main point I am pursuing here. Class society is something which people are forced into by economic necessity, and for the majority it is certainly no idyllic place. The next question, which Marx or Engels never asked, is therefore, how can people manage to work together and live together if society is an institution in which a small elite rips off the rest? Will they not get so envious about each other and angry at each other that they openly fight with each other, and a civilized living together is impossible? Again, we all know that class societies are possible, we live in one which elicits at least a semblance of mass consensus. But it is still worth while understanding what makes this possible. The answer given by the modern sociology of emotions is that people have learned to manage or control their emotions. This is a tricky affair, emotions are automatic, and in order to manage them, you need to learn the art of self-deception and of denial. Let me repeat. People can only live together in a civilized way in a modern class society because they have learned to keep their emotions in check, to the extent that they do not even feel them any more or that they displace them. This is necessary for the social order to function despite its antagonisms. I think such a theory would still fall in the purview of Marxism although to my knowledge neither Marx or Engels said anything like that. The main point of this exercise is: this ability to banish unpleasant realities from our consciousness has suddenly become a great liability. It has become suicidal, because it hinders mass mobilization to prevent climate catastrophe. We know that many of our childen and grandchildren are going to die prematurely because of natural disasters, epidemics, resource wars, lack of food or water. At least this knowledge is available socially even if many individuals in the US at this point still have shielded themselves from it. Yet we are not running around tearing our hair out, because such a generalized panic would prevent society from functioning and therefore would doom us today instead of in a few dozen years. This is of course not all the reasons but it is possibly one of them. Does this understanding help us to overcome climate change denial? Of course it does. You always know better how to change things if you understand why things are the way they are. Here is one idea how this theory of false consciousness might inform our strategy. This is just brainstorming. Perhaps we must offer a believable organizational framework that promises to channel all that upset and rage into a productive direction before the groundswell mass movement necessary to save a liveable future will arise. While we are waiting that the masses get their act together, maybe the masses are waiting that we are getting our act together. Right now such a believable framework does not exist. Even if climate hawks came into power, they would disagree on almost everything: nuclear power or not, centralized electricity generation with lots of transmission lines versus decentralized generation, the role of natural gas, how to overcome the competition between national economies, what a green development path would look like. These issues are so difficult that we activists ourselves cannot resolve them in detail before we come to power, but we must at least have some overall guidelines how we want to resolve all this. I have some ideas about this, but I know that many of you will disagree. (1) I think we can and should declare already now that nuclear power is not one of the options which we are considering as a solution to the problem. (2) We also could declare already now that in the rich countries we are aiming for a lifestyle with less material
[Marxism] Mass psychology explanations of global warming denial
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == timgli sent the following URL to the ecosocialism list, but I am sending my reply also to the marxism list: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/08/1072330/-Mass-psychology-explanations-of-global-warming-denial This blog seems ignorant of an extensive literature about the sociology of emotions which is very relevant here. The article which was for me personally the most concise and striking introduction into this literature is the book chapter Self-Processes and Emotional Experiences, by Morris Rosenberg, pages 123-142 in the book _The Self-Society Dynamic: Cognition, Emotion, and Action_, edited by Judith Howard and Peter Callero, Cambridge University Press 1991. A more recent collection about these issues is the book _Theorizing Emotions: Sociological Explorations and Applications_, edited by D. Hopkins, J. Kleres, H. Flam, and H. Kuzmics, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt and New York, 2009. Look especially at the contribution by Helena Flam, Extreme Feelings and Feelings at Extremes. None of these articles speak about climate change denial in particular, for this you should read the monograph _Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life_, by Kari Marie Norgaard, MIT Press 2011, http://www.amazon.com/Living-Denial-Climate-Emotions-Everyday/dp/0262515857 It is amazing that capitalism, the home of alienation, has developed such deep knowledge about emotions. I think the original impulse for this research was to better manipulate people through advertising, and the system-transcending potential of this knowledge is an unexpected byproduct of this research. But this is definitely valid and useful knowledge, and if we want to soften up the public's climate change denial in order to promote a mass movement which is rational and not driven by panic and not derailed by all the other unresolved resentments of capitalism, we need to be familiar with this literature. These are not explicitly Marxist theories, but I think the theory of emotions as social glue can be and needs to be integrated with historical materialism. I am thinking of it this way: historical materialism explains why individuals *must* live in society, and the sociology of emotions explains how people *can* live in society. (a) Individuals must live in societies because they need products to survive, and products can only be produced in society. (b) Individuals can only then live in society if they keep their raw emotions in check. This requires self-deception and the ability to keep unpleasant emotions at bay. In the view of Siegmund Freud, denial was always bad and had to be overcome. By contrast, modern sociologists have known for some time that a moderate amount of self-deception is normally a good thing. But in the present truly dangerous situation, denial has become suicidal, and creative ways are needed to break out of this denial without giving up the civilized ways of living with each other which are facilitated by this denial. Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] C. Wright Mills and Marx
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == working on Mills and Marx right now. Adam, In my efforts to understand Climate Change Denial I bumped into the book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling by Arlie Russell Hochschild, 1983. Arlie takes off from Mills and goes into the direction of Marx, dealing with work place issues which were overlooked by Bravermann and Studs Terkel. It concentrates on the emotional labor which flight attendants, bill collectors, hotel receptionists and many other service professions have to perform. It is an amazing book, and I keep thinking: how come I haven't known about it? Do others know this book, and what is your take on it? Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Conference about Climate Change and Global Governance
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This coming Sunday in London UK, organised by the Occupy London Energy, Equity Environment Working Group Interesting conference topics, relevant not only for capitalism but also for any socialist alternatives. If you are interested in the first topic, look at the paper http://planetaryboundariesinitiative.org/planetar/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/stockholm-Rockstrom-2009-research-paper.pdf Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity. It identifies 9 boundaries: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone, global P and N cycles, atmospheric aerosol loading, fresh water use, land use change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution. --- Start of forwarded message --- Please join us and forward to your networks :) Rio+20 Earth Summit - Global Governance or Corporate Cop Out? Sunday 4th March, 2-4pm at Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street (nr Liverpool St tube) This panel event aims to highlight the corporate-friendly nature of the draft agenda for the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June and to look at some of the legal proposals put forward by civil society groups that could be effective in achieving the environmental protection that is a prerequisite for genuine development. Featuring: Peter Roderick - Recognising Planetary Boundaries Joe Hall - Making Ecocide a Crime Ian Mason - Recognising the Rights of Nature Halina Ward - Appointing a Guardian for Future Generations Kate Raworth - Defining a Safe Just Space for Humanity Amancay Colque - Lessons from Bolivia - Bolivia Solidarity Campaign Melanie Strickland - Chair (Occupy Law) The UK's Chief Scientist Bob Watson and other award-winning scientists have said the draft agenda for Rio+20 means it is doomed to fail. The voluntary approach of the first Earth Summit in 1992 is being repeated and the agenda is full of more empty promises with no means to fulfill them. This panel brings together some of the leading civil society group proposals for legal frameworks that could address the multiple environmental crises that the current poorly regulated system is driving us towards. All welcome! This is a free event. Just turn up! Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/328744843842479/ http://www.toynbeehall.org.uk/ Organised by the Occupy London Energy, Equity Environment Working Group. Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/LSX-Occupy-Energy-Equity-and-Environment-Group/283451725018389 and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/occupylsxenvtgp --- End of forwarded message --- Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] help needed - pretty please
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gary, if you are working on consumption, here is a non-marxist book which I consider very insightful. You probably already know about it, just making sure you are not missing it: Gill Seyfang, The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption: Seeds of Change, Palgrave MacMillan 2009. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Obama's Natural Gas Strategy
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The environmental movement in the US has been fairly successful in preventing the construction of many coal-fired power plants and perhaps also the Keystone Pipeline. The argument which carried the day was not global climate catastrophe but the pollution caused by coal and the tar sands operations. Energy matters also put the ruling class under pressure because of a prolonged recession: whenever business picks up, oil prices shoot up and suffocate demand. Obama's support of fracking announced in his State of the Union address is a cunning response to this predicament. Obama is promoting fracking not only in the US but everywhere in the world (Poland). The idea is to loosen the world wide dependence on oil from the Middle East or Venezuela and the dirty oil from Canadian tar sands, taking full advantage of the large supplies of cheap and plentiful Natural Gas which have become available due to the fracking technology. US electricity will come from clean natural gas instead of dirty coal, silencing the environmentalists, and many US trucks will run on natural gas. The US will become a net exporter of coal and natural gas and will have to import less oil, which helps the dollar and undermines the power of countries like Russia, Iran, Venezuela. I am indebted for this outlook to Richard J Pierce's presentation at a conference called Electric Power in a Carbon-Constrained World at the University of Utah Law School last Thursday, Feb 9. Pierce is on the faculty of the law school of the George Washington University in Washington DC. Pierce estimates that gas from fracking will last 100 years, and then gas from methane hydrates will take over which last another 300 years. With so much energy available, Pierce thinks adaptation to climate change is possible, and he thinks that carbon capture and sequestration is easier for natural gas than for coal. Pierce is clearly wrong about adaptation. I am not sure whether Pierce has read up on tipping points, or whether he is aware that the greenhouse effect is not the only aspect where modern industrial production bumps against the limits of planetary resources. But in the time frame of the next 5-10 years, the only possible hole I see in Obama's strategy is the question whether the extraction of natural gas can be sustained or whether the yield of the shale gas fields suddenly collapses. Other than this, such a strategy will get Obama re-elected, and the inexorable descent into climate catastrophe will be even more difficult to stop because now it is not based on oil from our enemies or extremely dirty oil from our friends in Canada or Utah, but on clean domestic natural gas and a booming economy in the US. Our response to Obama's strategy must be to oppose fossil fuels not based on the Clean Air Act or too high costs but based on the world wide need to leave all fossil fuels in the ground. The conference was misnamed; our problem is not too little carbon but too much of it. In view of this abundance, market forces cannot steer us away from fossil fuels. Therefore we must be much more vocal about it that a response to the climate crisis is not possible within the capitalist system. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Big wind's inconvenient truth
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Traffic noise = good, windmill noise = bad The CounterPunch article Big Wind’s Inconvenient Truth posted by Lou basically asks: if you are so much for the environment, how can you be for windmills? The answer is: the switch to renewable energy is not an environmental issue, it is a survival issue. I you hear a slight swooshing sound sometimes at night when the wind is right, think of it as elves cleaning up our mess so that it won't poison us. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] privatizing the grid--a local perspective
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I said: The best way to store energy right now is to store heat energy instead of electricity. You can have heat exchangers pump heat out of the ground in winter in order to have an iceball that provides air conditioning all summer. Rod replied that due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, heat can be converted into work only under severe restrictions. This is correct. I am teaching this to my students. If you want to see an introduction into exergy for dummies (economists), use Firefox to visit http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/readings/Entropy.xhtml Firefox is needed because of the mathml on this web site. The main point of this website is: if you use natural gas to heat water for a shower, you are wasting 95% of the exergy, i.e., available energy. You should use the gas to generate electricity and the waste heat from this electricity generation for your shower. But what I meant to say with the paragraph quoted above: if the ultimate purpose of the electricity is to run an air conditioner, given the state of energy storage technology it is better to save the energy in form of ice than in form of electricity. See http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148sid=10631239 video about Kent Udell's project to capture cold in the winter to use if for air conditioning in summer. This is the kind of technology we should be promoting, not nuclear power. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] privatizing the grid--a local perspective
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == David wrote: First, the issue is still over ownership and re-regulation. This is the fundamental Marxian fallacy, that today's environmental and energy crisis can be fixed by a change in property relations. As long as Marxists stay as clueless as they are right now about the real issues, they will not play a role in whatever social transformations are coming down the road. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] privatizing the grid--a local perspective
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark wrote: Regardless of what part of the economy we're discussing, the question's not one of ownership but control. That's a valid consideration, but it doesn't resolve the Fundamental Marxian Fallacy. It is a fallacy to think that, if only the working class gains control or ownership of the means of production, everything will be fine because this is the end of capitalist surplus-value. Egypt is an example for this fallacy. People thought if only the corrupt regime of Mubarak is deposed, everything will be fine. The revolutionaries did not realize that one of the most important reasons why people rebelled was the rise in food prices due to the biofuel programs in the EU and US. This was not Mubarak's fault and any successor regime will have this problem too. The successor regime should have tried to aggressively de-link the Egyptian economy from the international energy and fossil fuel dependence, by promoting the solar breeder program which uses Sahara sand for silicon for solar cells so that they can grow their own food. Otherwise it is only a matter of time until the new regime fails too and power reverts to the old guard. I made the proposal at the time on the marxism list and all I got back was astonishment. How to deal with the present world wide crisis is a highly nontrivial matter. Marxists have the advantage to know a solution must be found outside the capitalist framework. If they were to develop good programs this would make them a very desirable political force because nobody else has a viable international program. But Marxists are too much stuck in the fear to sound like Malthus. And Marxists are afraid to tell people that they have to consume less because they think this makes them the tools of the capitalists. We have to get over this! We should study what Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba are doing to deal with the environmental crisis. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] privatizing the grid--a local perspective
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Your point about the workers of Egypt would only inform the point I made about control if we think the workers in Egypt are somehow demonstrating what control of the energy grid means. As a materialist, I have no evidence that they do. You mean people don't notice the environmental crisis? They do, although they may not be aware that this is what they are up against. In Egypt, they notice it by not being able to afford food for their families any more. In the US, they notice it by their own consumerism and the destruction of nature and their being cut off from nature and their lack of time. Of course they are not saying we need a smart grid but gardening and tending chickens has become very fashionable here in SLC. We Marxists can not only tell them that they ought to have control over the means of production, but also that the destruction of the environment is the largest expropriation in history, and it is going on as we speak. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] privatizing the grid--a local perspective
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I agree that municipally owned utilities should not be privatized, but this is only a small part of the changes necessary in the electricity infrastructure. Right now, this infrastructure is geared towards large centralized generators (coal or nuclear). It must be replaced by an infrastructure able to accommodate small distributed producers and storers of energy. What does this entail? (1) Even though transmission is an essential facility, historically in the U.S.A. it has not had common carrier status. This must change. The use of transmission lines must be opened up, and a smart grid must be built. Regulators must allow the owners of this transmission, usually regulated utilities, to recover the costs associated with this more sophisticated technology and more open access. (2) Utilities must become full service energy providers, intermediaries between o distributed producers of intermittent solar and wind who need access to the grid to sell their electricity and need the grid for backup, o energy storage providers, etc. o consumers who are willing and able to shift electricity consumption to those times when electricity is available, i.e., when the sun shines or the wind blows. o industrial facilities whose waste heat can be recycled Utilities should not be limited to one energy carrier (electricity or gas or district heat) but should be selling a variety of energy products and services, including the services presently provided by Energy Service Companies (ESCOs). Much of the above comes from Joseph P Tomain, see his books Ending Dirty Energy Policy, CUP 2011, or Energy Law in a Nutshell (together with Richard D Cudahy), West Publishing 2011, or the 2008 article Building the iUtility http://www.fortnightly.com/display_pdf.cfm?id=08012008_BuildingiUtility.pdf In my judgment this is the best thinking within the capitalist system. The big issue avoided by Tomain and most others making similar proposals is the impossibility to maintain economic growth which is the impossibility to maintain a capitalist system. But even after capitalism, the regulatory and planning principles developed by these authors will be useful. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] privatizing the grid--a local perspective
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == David writes: There is nothing in the grid sructure that is geared toward the 'centralized generators'. I'm not sure why you write this or what evidence there is of this. The grid is organized like a tree for a one-way distribution of electricity, with the big generation station at the root, and voltage falling and wire diameters falling as it reaches the users. When electricity consumers become prosumers ie producers and consumers of electricity, the network needs a different structure. Here is a paragraph from http://www.fortnightly.com/article.cfm?p_id=728 At high levels of penetration, distributed generation can exceed load at the substation level, causing unusual distribution flow patterns. These can produce high voltage swings, which can be detrimental to customer equipment. High levels of penetration can also add to the stress on electrical equipment, such as circuit breakers, and complicate the ability to operate the distribution system, particularly during emergencies and planned outages. Additional monitoring and new standards for operation, protection, and control will be necessary to enable significant penetration of distributed generation. Of course, circuit breakers etc can be designed for distributed generation, but right now they are not, therefore the utilities say they can only have 10% of their load delivered by intermittent generators. Danmark right now has over 20% and their goal is to reach 50%. Large centralized power stations (undefined by the writer) are efficient because they cost less to run as the technology allows for better conversion of thermal energy into the mechanical energy needed to spin a turbine generator. That his is somehow 'bad' makes no sense except if you are into the small, local is beautiful. The advantages of smaller, cleaner (perhaps gas or geothermal) power plants closer to the cities is fewer transmission losses and the ability to use the waste heat for district heating, greenhouses, etc. The highly efficient large coal-fired power plants in the USA are so far away from the cities that most of their heat is discarded unused. Average efficiency has stagnated at 33% for many years, and theoretically a Rankine cycle cannot go much beyond that because superheated steam at high temperatures is too aggressive for the materials in use nowadays. Nuclear plants are the worst in efficiency, because using the high temperatures they are generating would be too dangerous. David writes: As far back as the late 1990s, transmission lines DO have common carrier status I thought so too but the 2011 edition of *Energy policy in a nutshell* says on p. 274/5: Transmission owners have no obligation to serve all customers. Even though transmission is an essential facility, historically it has not had common carrier status. In other words, absent regulation to the contrary, owners of transmission facilities can price discriminate; they can also favor themselves and their affiliates. What is commonly called deregulation is apparently leaving many goodies for the utility companies intact. David says A smart grid already exists in many parts of the country. The degree of integration of information theory with the grid which is needed for distributed generation, plug-in vehicles, a closer coordination between consumers and producers of electricity, etc., is not yet achieved, there are still obstacles to overcome. Even the standards have not yet been decided in the US (they were decided just last year in Europe). Some utilities have started to install smart meters with the capability to measure electricity at real-time rates, but many others (such as my own) are installing meters that are too dumb for this, and nowhere are real-time rates made available to households. David wanted examples for energy storage providers. Of course pumped storage is one example, but this requires a lake at the top and a lake at the bottom of the turbine, not many opportunities. Another possibility would be compressed air storage, which is best considered as a compressor for a gas turbine whose activity is separated in time from the turbine itself. Windmills have been designed which run pumps rather than generators for electricity. Other energy storage, flywheels, are for stabilizing the phase of the grid. The best way to store energy right now is to store heat energy instead of electricity. You can have heat exchangers pump heat out of the ground in winter in order to have an iceball that provides air conditioning all summer. Energy storage is one of the most exciting areas of innovation right now. It requires big capital investments, but at times of unemployment big investments into clean energy are a win-win situation. The US does not have an
[Marxism] Wolff and Resnick analysis of the current economic crisis
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == To me, Wolff and Resnick's calculations seem entirely in accord with Marx. If you define real wages as use-value received by the workers per hour worked, and productivity as use-value produced per hour worked, then the rate of surplus-value is constant if and only if real wages rise at the same rate as productivity. Also their description how every part of the surplus-value aids in further accumulation goes together well with Marx Capital I. In chapter 23 about Simple Reproduction, Marx shows how the reproduction of the worker has become a part of the reproduction of capital (it is the reproduction of capital's most valuable piece of machinery), and chapter 25 shows how reproduction of capital is what nowadays would be called an autocatalytic system: more accumulation gives higher productivity gives more surplus-value gives more accumulation. If anything, Wolff and Resnick are too much into Marx and overlook one basic weakness of Marx. Marx did not realize how much the Industrial Revolution was sustained by what Heinberg calls the fossil fuel bonanza. For instance Marx studied the railroad boom and the formation of joint stock companies necessary to amass enough capital for building railroads, but he overlooked the simple fact that without coal England's forests would have been cut down to the last stump before a fraction of the rail network necessary for a modern transportation system could have been laid. Look at E A Wrigley's book *Energy and the English Industrial Revolution*, Cambridge University Press 2010. Marx's oversight is forgiveable, but Wolff and Resnicks's is not. I am flabbergasted how someone as progressive and conscientious as Wolff and Resnick can talk about the critis of capitalist growth today without mentioning the end of cheap energy and the limits of planetary resources. Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] former Salt Lake mayor Rocky Anderson launches presidential campaign
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Jon Flanders and others: If the Wikipedia article says that Rocky got physically assaulted by a city developer, if he got harrassed for hosting guests of the city, etc., this the reaction to Rocky's uncompromising stance in favor of the public interest against business interests. When he was Mayor the city was abuzz with did you hear the latest impossible thing Rocky said or did? And it was always his defense of the public interest and refusal to play nice with business. He could have easily won a third term, he did not want to, because of all the harrassment. But instead of making a national career move he stayed in town and founded his Nonprofit High Roads for Human Rights. HRHR was an attempt to convince the big funders of Human Rights issues that Climate Change is a Human Rights issue and should get their funding too, with no success. This leads me to the other issue why I think Rocky deserves support. Almost every part of the media understates the importance and urgency of the climate issue, and the Wikipedia article on Rocky Anderson is no exception: it does not give full justice to the centrality of climate change in Rocky's politics. Rocky was a member of governor Huntsman's Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change. One of the impossible Rocky horror stories circulating in SLC was that in the first meeting he protested that the Coal Industry should not be represented on this panel and then left, never to return again. After this he always sent staff to take his place. I haven't witnessed it, this is only hearsay, but I can believe that he did this; this was not the only time where he was the enfant terrible telling the truth which nobody wanted to hear. Right after Tim DeChristopher's disruption of an oil and gas auction he was speaking at the Unitarian Chuch in an event that spearheaded Tim's support network. There he said that we need a revolution. I have never heard say it again, before or after, but there he said it, and the context was climate change. Therefore I don't think it's an accident that he announced his candidacy in the wake of the Occupy Movements. Later he had a falling out with Tim because in his view Tim was elitist and did not recognize the continuous patient behind-the-scenes work many others did on the climate front. Last time I talked to him on the phone, it was about a year ago, I asked him to join a coalition against Rio Tinto whose giant copper mine is poisoning the Salt Lake City air and water shed and the Great Lalt Lake. He declined saying that he had to concentrate his energies on a narrower set of goals, one of which was climate change. He has to make allies, this is simply necessary if you want to do politics, and we should not second-guess him on that. We all know that change is under way. This change is not going to come from nowhere but it will come from what already exists. It is not going to come from us, the system has antigens against us. In the sixties when I was part of the new movement, I remember the lack of respect we had for the old communist organizers on whose shoulders we were standing without knowing it. Now I am part of the old guard, and the best we can do is recognize the promising new forces and support them and lend them our experience. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Link between financial and enviromental crisis
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At the end of this email is a description of the present financial crisis by a documentary film maker, David Malone, author of the book Debt Generation. This is a very clear picture, and as an economist I see nothing wrong with it as far as it goes. But it leaves unanswered the question why the ruling class went from productive profit-making to speculation and theft. Marx said that they resort to speculation when their profits in productive capital are squeezed due to overproduction. I think the reason is deeper. The ruling class is resorting to theft because the prospects of productive growth are exhausted due to pollution and resource exhaustion. These two factors are suffocating not only China's growth but the growth of the entire planetary economy. As Herman Daly says, the planet is full, there is no space left for the economy to expand into. In such a situation a one-dimensional market system, which single-mindedly focuses on efficiency, can no longer be a rational or even feasible guide for the economy. The binding constraint for the economy is not efficiency but the limited planetary resources. This is not a situation a market-driven economy can cope with. In the past, whenever the economy ran into a problem, more growth was the answer. This is the market answer which is no longer possible. The turn from productive capital to speculation and dispossession is one phase in the spontaneous process of markets abolishing themselves because they can no longer serve the economy. Instead of waiting for the system to come tumbling down around us, we should be consciously minimizing the roles of markets by reversing the securitisation of everything, re-introducing command and control regulation, carbon RATIONING, abolishing the fractional reserve system, introduction of minimum AND MAXIMUM incomes, etc. Any attempts at systemic variation, as in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia should be welcomed instead of undermined. Hans G Ehrbar http://golemxiv-credo.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-normal.html The New Normal There seem to be to be two broad narratives of our present situation. The dominant, official narrative, is that there was a technical crisis of money flow, precipitated by a bolus of bad debts which then caused a collapse of confidence in the value of several large asset classes. What was required was to show that such assets would always retain their ability to find a buyer and thus their value, even if the buyer had to be, in the immediate term, the public purse. The public purse was duly opened to steady nerves and sales, and massive purchases of whatever could not find any other buyer were duly made. The plan was and is that the purchased assets would be sold by our governments, back to the market once other buyers returned. The dissident narrative is that this was never a technical crisis of money flow - liquidity - but one of insolvency due to the troubled asset classes being, in fact, vastly over valued. The collapse in value and the lack of buyers was not a temporary lack of confidence in an otherwise sound financial system, but a rational shunning of paper assets whose previous value was almost entirely due to the press of gullible buyers who were keen to partake in the buy, flip and buy some more ponzi scheme of speculation. As long as the paper value was never questioned by all the players then no one feared reality intruding. Even those holding the worthless paper were happy as long as everybody else was signed up to the same grand fiction. Banks held the paper assets and used them as cheap 'capital assets' just so long as the lies they were based on remained wholly accepted. But of course as soon as someone defected from the grand lie, then the rational thing for everyone to do was to defect as quickly as possible. This is what every insider tried to do as quickly as they could and why the collapse was as fast as it was and was led by the banks themselves. The end game of such a scenario would have been the ruination of those left holding the worthless paper. And if those holding the paper had been you and me then this is what Wall Street and The City of London would have been happy to see happen. But in this case the collapse was so shockingly rapid and in the preceding euphoria of the bubble so much of the paper had been retained by the banks and super-wealthy that this was NOT going to be permitted to happen. Instead actions were taken to ensure that the worthless paper assets were transferred to the public purse. Should they recover their value they would be re-purchased, but if not then they would be left where the loss would fall on people who were more accustomed to being poor and whose prior poverty has often been seen by the wealthy as an indication
Re: [Marxism] What do Marxists do when labor is no longer the limiting factor of production?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The person whom I quoted, call him Anonymous, wrote: Yes, we need disciplined cooperation, but not to produce as much as possible. We need to maximize our wealth by minimizing our waste and consumption. David replies: Minimising waste is a good notion. Minimising consumption is a ridiculous call for a world where hundreds of millions of people experience privation in their basic needs. rest of paragraph omitted This is a red herring. Obviously Anonymous meant minimizing consumption beyond the needs of a dignified survival, i.e. beyond say $20 a day a person. Also, this has embedded the assumption that human use of resources is always a bad thing, so we have to minimise this necessary evil, Leave out the always. Right now, at this historical juncture, human use of resources is bad because we have grown so numerous that we are triggering a response in the host (the planet) to shake us off which will change everything for us. and that human purposes are somehow less moral than those of nature. It's not a matter of morality, it is a matter of dignified survival. If the human race is too greedy to be content with dignified survival they will lose dignified survival itself. If this sounds like a moralistic fable, it is because the planet is moralistic with us. Mother Earth is telling us: you are so smart, you better learn some moderation, otherwise you are making me sneeze. Protecting our environment is a requirement to survive and thrive, Instrumentalizing the environment to human purposes is something which we will perhaps be able to do in 10,000 years. If we have to consciously steer the ecosystem which right now gives us almost everything for free, this will be very expensive. Right now we neither have the skills nor the produced wealth to do that. Right now, it is better to consider humans as just one link in a highly interdependent planetary system. Yes, we do need to preserve species diversity. We will want to do this even if we have become the masters of the ecosystem. Anonymous: Labor shortage is a quaint theory. Today, we take the wealth of nature with machines, and that makes us all freeriders. Resources and pollution limits are now the limiting factors, the weak links in the chain of production. David: This is pretty obviously misguided. I'd have to recommend a review of the notions of living and dead labour. Regretfully you found this too obvious to elaborate. Had you thought a little more about this I am sure you would have discovered yourself that you are confusing value and use-value. This notion of being freeriders on nature ... is rather peculiar. Nature gives us many things for free. Think ecosystem services, low entropy ores, fossil fuels. But it comes with a caveat. Mother nature is telling us not to get too greedy because otherwise the freebies will disappear. Anonymous's provocative term freeriding on nature is fruitful because it draws attention to this. Planet parasites unite! Don't kill the host. Instead of don't kill the host Anonymous should have said: don't give the host a fever or don't make the host sneeze. David still can't get over it that his beloved humans have turned into parasites: Parasitism is a relation between at least two entities, whereby one of them benefits and the other suffers harm, in terms of fitness. How is the planet a potential parasite host, what is a function of planetary fitness, and how can such a thing even be computed when planets, to my knowledge, do not reproduce? Yep, Gaia theory is involved in this, and I think Marxists should take Gaia theory seriously. Lovelock says that right now Gaia has a digestive system, it does not yet have a brain. Some time in the far future humans will be the brain, but right now we are just a bunch of parasites at the moment of our expulsion from paradise. Being a bit less strict with the metaphor, and assuming it refers to the ecosphere, I still don't see how it is applicable. We're doing what all the other lifeforms are doing: trying to survive and thrive. This is never free from conflict: even plants must compete for sunlight and minerals. Nor is homeostasis ever assured, even without evil humans in the picture. Humans are not evil but they are so smart that they managed to break out of this natural equilibrium. But we are not yet smart or rich enough to consciously steer the ecosystem. This is why we need to be modest. After all, cyanobacteria introduced, merely as a byproduct, but to their benefit (and ours), high concentrations of oxygen in the environment, which at the time, to most life forms, was a metabolic poison. These things happen. Good metaphor. Humans are as poisonous to today's environment as oxygen was to the
[Marxism] What do Marxists do when labor is no longer the limiting factor of production?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == In response to my are we too nice posting, someone wrote me something I think I agree with (still have to think about it more): Yes, we need disciplined cooperation, but not to produce as much as possible. We need to maximize our wealth by minimizing our waste and consumption. Labor shortage is a quaint theory. Today, we take the wealth of nature with machines, and that makes us all freeriders. Resources and pollution limits are now the limiting factors, the weak links in the chain of production. Planet parasites unite! Don't kill the host. The freerider concept is the problem and it drives the need to produce as much as possible, even though that is way too much. I hope the author of the above doesn't mind me forwarding his text anonymously. I leave it up to him to identify himself if he so wishes. I usually don't send the same posting to several mailing lists at once--I consider it rude--but this time I did. I sent my are we too nice thing also to a mailing list for Utah environmental activists. From them I got a response to which I then responded as follows. I probably risk my reputation as Marxist or even progressive if I show you this, but I got good responses from the Utah enviros and wonder what you in the marxism list say about it. The rest here is my [E1250] posted to the energy list: Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 22:10:42 -0600 To: Renewable Energy Policies for Utah ene...@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Subject: [E2150] Re: Perhaps we are too nice? So what should we do to help the starving people now? Forget about helping others. The emphasis must be on co-operation. This is different than helping. Here are some examples: If you have a job in fossil fuel dependent industries we expect you to re-train for something that does not destroy us all. This is co-operation. We will also fight like hell for a social safety net for those who lose their jobs. If we were in power, such a safety net would exist. But we are not in power. Don't blame us for the class struggles you lost in the past. Co-operation also means: if you have a green technology, we expect you to give it to those in need, in Africa etc. We will not ask those in Africa to pay for it, but we may ask them to introduce birth control--while again fighting like hell for an old age insurance system so that they don't need so many children to secure their old age. Again don't make us responsible if it does not exist. Anyone who wants to take private advantage of the calamity for all is a free-rider or worse. If you co-operate with me then your damage is my damage, not my gain. I don't need to be altruistic to want to minimize damage to you. It is in my interest because it gives me a stronger ally. Even if we co-operate this does not mean we can solve all the problems of the world or can afford paying reparations to everyone harmed by a system not of our making. Co-operation also means: get over what was done to you in the past. Don't think that being exploited made you a better person. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Perhaps we are too nice?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here is a posting from another list which was not only an ah ha moment for Joanna but also for me. People flock to the right not because they believe in their growth fantasies, but because they do not want to have to give their stuff away when things turn rough. What does this mean for us? The alternative to selfish competition is not sharing with everybody who is in need, but the alternative to selfish competition is disciplined cooperation, where everyone has to pull their weight and freeriders are weeded out. --- Start of forwarded message --- Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:59:19 + (UTC) From: 123...@comcast.net To: lbo-t...@lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Krugman: The question then is why. Andy Szasz calls it the politics of inverted quarantine - walling oneself off from as many risks as possible and thus learning and doing nothing about the roots of any or all problems... it's neoliberal consumerism, whatever the valence. ___ I was hanging out with a friend from Paris. He mentioned that the hard right in France is growing stronger and more numerous, and that it is now 25% of the electorate. And I said, why, why is there no reciprocal consolidation and growth on the left. His reply was interesting and I think very close to the mark. He said that what everyone is being told is that there's not enough to go around, that we live in a world of increasing scarcity and that the general population of the West is convinced that sharing with the developing world is not feasable, and that if it were, it would certainly mean less for the rest of us. So the swing to the right is a vote for that party which looks more consistent and more willing to fight the encroaching hoards. This made a lot of sense to me. And maybe I'm the only one on the block who didn't see it, or maybe I just naively think that the feeling of human brotherhood is stronger than it actually is. Anyway. I had an ah ha moment, and I'm passing it on. Joanna ___ -- End of forwarded message --- Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Scheduled Downtime
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There will be a scheduled downtime at the mailing list server starting in 5 minutes. Don't know how long. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Bread riots?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I wrote: Yes Iran is important, and so is Turkey. But both have been in motion for a long time. Mina replied: Thanks for your answer. But there is a movement going on in Iran. ... So, no, it's not just a motion, it's a revolutionary movement ... My answer: Oops, I must have used the wrong word. I meant movement, not motion :) Mina seems to think strongly that my raising biofuels is somehow out of place, that it makes me a racist or someone too green to recognize how red Iranian blood is. I am glad I haven't been called a reformist yet, or a Stalinist who is trying to tell the exploited farmers in the US and EU what to do with their land. Therefore let me try to justify my bringing up biofuels on a Marxism list in the following way: Marx says that under capitalism, value is created by abstract labor. It does not matter which kind the concrete labor is, as long as it is the expenditure of human labor-power it creates value. A society must be quite rich so that they can count all labors the same in this way, so that wealth is augmented equally whether you grow food or fuel or opium. It seems to me that we are exiting this age of plentitude. The era of cheap fossil fuels led to an overshoot of population and now we have to be careful that the world produces enough food for everyone. This is not possible in a market system which only looks at abstract labor. We need some kind of socialism, but it is not going to be the socialism of plentitude, but more a socialism of having a good life under scarcity, as they have had it in Cuba now for a long time. OK, shoot away, call me a Malthusian now too :) BTW the binding constraint does not seem to be availability or fertility of land, but the binding constraint is the water needed to grow crops. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Bread riots?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What is the role of rising food prices in the revolutionary upsurge in the Arab countries? What is the role of subsidies for biofuels and of regulations requiring biofuels to be used for gasoline in the rise of world food prices? Is it our revolutionary responsibility in the US and EU to oppose such biofuel subsidies? These are not rhetorical questions. What do comrades think about this? Hans G Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Bread riots?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes Iran is important, and so is Turkey. But both have been in motion for a long time. I was more interested in the movements which sprang up recently, exactly at the time when food prices skyrocketed. I think I have seen articles claiming that in Tunesia and Egypt the rising food prices played a big role. Are these reports reliable, and is this also a factor in Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, etc? Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] linux for resilience
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == If the authorities shut down the internet or it fails for other reasons, neighborhoods and even entire cities still have the ability to communicate with each other using a mesh network whose nodes are everybody's wireless adapters. But building such a mesh network requires a skilled network programmer. If I understand it right (and the computer gurus on this list please correct me), the integration of the BATMAN software into the latest linux kernel has made such an ad-hoc mesh network much more feasible in the years to come. It will not be immediate, I assume there will be a few years until such a mesh network will be an option which a lay person can select with a mouse click. Just in time for the next climate-change disaster. We can prepare for it already now by switching to linux. I have experiences with the recent Ubuntu Desktop releases, which are really user friendly and easy to install. If you want to make your neighborhood more resilient in a disaster, convince your neighbors now to switch to linux (or at least double-boot their computers), so that their computers can become nodes in such a mesh network when this kernel has entered the main linux distros and the applications for it have been built. Links: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214686/New_Linux_kernel_goes_faster http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_38 http://www.open-mesh.org/wiki/2011-03-17-batman-adv-and-the-penguin Hans G. Ehrbar Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [17391] Re: Today's equivalent of the Aswan Dam
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Nestor asked: I guess we are talking of residential use, perhaps street lights, not of industrial energy, are we not? Europeans use the word prosumer, somebody who produces and consumes electricity at the same time. Residences can be constructed easily which have solar panels integrated in roofs, walls, even windows and which are well enough insulated that year round they produce more electricity than they consume. (If they are superinsulated they need ventilation, which should be done with heat exchange ventilators, etc.) They are best produced as pre-fab modules, and an industry producing pre-fab energy efficient residences seems to be something they could do in Egypt. Everyone with a farm could put windmills up on their farm without interfering with farm operations. Local utilities, maybe co-ops, would buy the excess energy, store it, or co-operate with production facilities to recycle energy. Energy storage is a big industry and we haven't even scratched the surface, there are lots of options. One of the professors at the U of U has a project of pumping the heat into the ground during Summer and extracting it in Winter. Silicone smelting needs lot of heat, and the waste heat can be used for generating electricity, and then the low temperature heat expelled from the steam turbine could be used for area heating or even area cooling. This requires direct cooperation between different production facilities which can be done much better in a socialist system than in an arms-length monetary relation. The obvious third-world applications would be to have solar panels on your home so that you can recharge your cellphone, and also recharge the battery of your electric bicycle (lots of those in China). If every peasant has a laptop they can take telecourses and you can build up a highly skilled workforce over time. But if you live in the Sahara energy is so cheap that you can use it for desalinization of water and agriculture. I could imagine that in the longer run energy-intensive production facilities such as aluminum smelters might relocate into the deserts too where the sun shines. It's a lot of upfront capital investment, but after the initial capital is put in, energy is abundant and cheap. And the options what to do are endless. Hans Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Today's equivalent of the Aswan Dam
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == David wrote: The EU-inspired idea of solar plants in the Sahara is meeting opposition from groups that don't like the idea of their energy sovereignty being mortgaged to European NGOs and energy companies. You are talking about the Desertec project. THe one I am talking about is different, and much less well known. It is inspired by Japan, not the EU, and it does not intend to export the solar electricity but use it locally. Their plan is to do the research in the Sahara with local engineers how to get solar-grade silocon out of the sand and develop all the technologies locally. They want to start with 2 MW generating capacity from solar panels and double this every 2 years until they have 2GW after 20 years. The web site of their foundation is http://www.ssb-foundation.com/ Maybe this particular project won't fly, I just wanted to throw it out there to show that the possibilities of renewable-energy based development are endless. Such possibilities are not promoted much by the industrial centers because they are saddled with an obsolete centralized energy infrastructure and promoting the alternative would show how outdated their own structure is. Desertec is exactly the attempt of the big utilities in Europe to funnel even renewable energy through their centralized transmission systems. Herman Scheer says: consumption of energy is decentralized, and production of renewable energy is decentralized, therefore you should simply produce locally what you need instead of first combining it, then shipping it all over the continent, and then distributing it again. Scheer's latest book has not yet been translated into English, http://www.hermannscheer.de/de/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=727Itemid=103 Hans. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
