Debt Rattle August 8 2022

[Dr. D]

Yes, we often cover the separation of economics and ecology, but there’s an underlying tide where they are aligned. “Pollution” is just waste. “Waste” is throwing away, having to pay to dispose of things that could be sold or not wasted in the first place. So there’s every incentive not to have to use the wrong thing, not to have to dispose of it, or to collect and sell it on to some profit. Which is efficiency. That “efficiency” is ecological.

Obviously we have problems when we do that, as all processes have waste heat and waste matter, but how can we make use of the waste products? Like manure and compost on the farm? I recall a Norwegian power plant, they had ash to dispose of, and added it to drywall, as it’s cheaper to supply the already-ground ash than it is to mine gypsum from under the rocks. No harm, no foul.

This is also true for power: “Heat” is just “waste”. Inefficiency. Remember all the cooling towers over every factory? Heat and vibration means something can be better made, saving fuel, extending the life of parts. Build a more efficient system and you get less heat, but you can also use the heat, as secondary steam cycles do, co-generation plants, steam pipes to nearby buildings, greenhouses from your power plant. French reactors have heat? Why aren’t there 50 acres of greenhouses on top of them before watering in the river? That’s serious lost opportunity, or lost “profit” if you want.

And thus his Canadian fertilizer. You think we just like spending money on fertilizer for no reason? Um, no. You’d be bankrupt right quick. We’re using as little as we can every day, but within the limits of convention and Science as that narrative has developed over 100 years. Other things can be done, but they have expensive infrastructure and need to be scaled. (Like human tilling or manure).

Politicians are lawyers who are in the habit of thinking if they decree a thing on paper, it just happens, like speed limit laws. So they decree we will shut everything off, but create, deliver, and sell all the same goods anyway. That is, I want all the good things, with none of the bad things. Why not? Isn’t that what everybody wants? They were just not as brilliant and devilishly handsome as I am and never thought to pass a law decreeing “Only good; no bad” before. See how smarts I is?

As everyone made government strong enough to take everything away by making it big enough to give you everything, and as everyone got in the habit of following laws that harmed them and holding no one to account, we’ll all be lucky to survive it. But we will; or someone will.

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