Carbon emission reduction: News and technology

[Svartalf]

Yeah. Greens are commies!

I suspect they are even crazier than garden variety commies (hardline leninists, stalinists or maoists)

[pErvinalia]

Well the Greens in Australia are the only progressive/social democratic party here. Labor is neoliberal lite. If the Greens are commies, then the Labor party of the 70's and early 80's were commies.

[Svartalf]

not sure it's much difference than here... once you're out of the right wing (more or less extreme) territory, you have the so called center left which covers the various green sensitivities, and the so called socialist party (which pretends to be on the left but has been a right wing party in disguise since 1971)... and left of that you got the crazies

[JimC]

In Oz, at least it is clear that it would be environmental madness to vote for the coalition. They don't believe in climate change, they hate renewable energy and they love fossil fuels. Labour might be light weight on the issue in some ways, but in comparison, they are at least heading in the right direction. Last election, the coalition was hammered...

[pErvinalia]

To be fair to them, Labor is the most left wing it's been since the early 80's. Aside from war hawk deputy Marles. Economically, though, they are still neoliberal lite.

[Brian Peacock]

That's a big issue. Although the price of a KW/h of renewable energy has been cheaper to produce than fossil since c.2015, the profitability of fossil far outstrips that of renewables. If one of your basic political principles is that protecting profit is broadly good for "the economy" then even socially progressive liberal centrists are going to be predisposed to maintaining the economic stability that fossil energy both provides and depends on.

I don't think there's a massive conspiracy here, we've just created systems that prioritise profit in circumstances where decision-making about energy production, distribution and use are being made by people beyond our democratic reach - by "the market" as it were. I can't see a soft fiscally-conservative-socially-progressive political party wanting to change that - even if they're not climate deniers.

[pErvinalia]

The pull of money is too great. It's a tragedy of the commons. We are disadvantaging ourselves if we don't mine the shit out of fossil fuels while we still can.

[Brian Peacock]

The pull of money is too great. It's a tragedy of the commons. We are disadvantaging ourselves if we don't mine the shit out of fossil fuels while we still can.

That suggests to me that we need to have a public discussion about values; about the value-systems that are sending over an environmental cliff edge in the pursuit of profit.

The tragedy of the commons occurs when an agent is allowed to monopolise a common resource for their exclusive gain, and does so to the detriment of the community, so the democratisation of resources and their use has to be a prerequisite for addressing the causes and impacts climate change. "The market" is clearly not concerned with planning for the long-term sustainability of necessary resources like water, energy, food, housing, transport, etc - it's primary concern is with the profitability of resource exploitation for short-term gain.

Anybody talking about that kind of thing over there?

[pErvinalia]

The tragedy of the commons occurs when an agent is allowed to monopolise a common resource for their exclusive gain, and does so to the detriment of the community,

That's not how the tragedy of the commons works. Monopolisation isn't involved. The hint is in the name - "commons". It's a shared resource. In the short-term the rational approach is to exploit a common resource as much as you can. Acting with consideration to the long term sustainability of the resource puts you at a disadvantage to your competitors and is thus irrational. Without a broad enforceable agreement, the resource will be destroyed anyway, so you are harming yourself by not acting in rational short-term interest.

[macdoc]

Nash destroyed that misconception. Adam Smith was wrong.

[pErvinalia]

How did he destroy it? It applies very well to climate change. Was exact behaviour in fisheries. It was initially a biological principle. Didn't exist in Smith's time.

[Brian Peacock]

The tragedy of the commons occurs when an agent is allowed to monopolise a common resource for their exclusive gain, and does so to the detriment of the community,

That's not how the tragedy of the commons works. Monopolisation isn't involved. The hint is in the name - "commons". It's a shared resource. In the short-term the rational approach is to exploit a common resource as much as you can. Acting with consideration to the long term sustainability of the resource puts you at a disadvantage to your competitors and is thus irrational. Without a broad enforceable agreement, the resource will be destroyed anyway, so you are harming yourself by not acting in rational short-term interest.

OK. I used 'monopolise' imprecisely - probably should have said exploit, or over-exploit.

Before the historical period referred to as the Enclosures in the UK the common resource of land had been and was managed by the people whow lived and depended on it for thousands of years. The Enclosures saw common land sold to the wealthy by the Crown, who then lent military support to the new landowner to enforce their ownership and exclusive use of that resource. In Scotland the Enclosures led to the social calamity referred to as the Clearances. The point is, an agent can only over-exploit a common resource when the community lacks the power to safeguard it.

There's nothing rational about pissing of the other members of one's own community by over-exploiting a commonly-held or shared resource. There's nothing rational about destroying a necessary resource through over-exploitation.

However, that becomes 'rational' when one engages a value-system which elevates the gains derived from the enforceable ownership of a resources over the well-being of those who depend upon that resource. The assumption, of course, is that this kind of over-exploitation is something everyone would do if they had the chance - that it's somehow normal or natural for people to want to bleed their resources dry. Which is to say that everyone will always prioritise their own gains and well-being over the well-being of, and the gains for the communities or societies which support them.

The tragedy here is that necessary resources are not managed for the common-good of the community or society that relies on them; the people who have a direct interest in their long-term security and viability - in their sustainability.

I guess the point I'm staggering towards is that the democratisation of common, necessary resources is a prerequisite for addressing climate change and global heating, and that the owners of the primary drivers of climate change and global heating--the profligate polluters of the fossil sector who are systematically destroying the biosphere upon which we all depend, and will always depend--are making decisions about energy production, distribution and use beyond our democratic reach.

[pErvinalia]

Remember we are talking about capitalism here. Competition for scarce resources is the name of the game. And as you mentioned, we've all got to pay our rent. Cooperation is a laudible goal, but realities can undermine that.

As you say, the body politic needs to wrest back control of our resource use and politics from the rapacious mega corporations. I'm not particularly optimistic.

[Brian Peacock]

Nash destroyed that misconception. Adam Smith was wrong.

The metaphor of 'the tragedy of the commons' belongs to Hardin (a metaphor he created to justify eugenics by the way) not Smith. What is the misconception, and how did Nash destroy it? Nash's ideas may suggest that the tragedy of the commons represents a system in a kind of equilibrium, or a set of circumstances in which no individual agent can gain more by changing their own strategy and the situation always plays out the same way, but this presumes i) that there are no cooperative strategies, and ii) that the operating principles of the situation are a fixed given and cannot be amended or altered, surely?

[pErvinalia]

Mac doesn't like it because it implies capitalists are selfish and rapacious. Mac might not be a selfish capitalist, but a hell of a lot are.