Debt Rattle Sep 26 2014: Can Money Save The Climate?
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Harris & Ewing Staircase in the Capitol, Albany, New York 1905 So PIMCO was going to fire Bill Gross over the weekend, and he chose to leave on his ow
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle Sep 26 2014: Can Money Save The Climate? ]I am sure that we’ll get a comment or two about no climate change going on. If that’s so, the ocean acidification will get us instead.
I’m sure a hefty carbon tax will save Central Planning. And certainly help it afford much better financed wars.
‘in the end man him/herself is the bogey man’
It feels so true. I red an essay about this: capitalism, socialism, …In The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo traces the evolution of human society and suggests where it is headed. In The Ideal of Human Unity, he examines the possibility of the unification of the human race.
You can download the whole book as PDF (a rather interesting and …100s pages .)
https://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/writings.phpIlargi – You continuously condemn all humanity as inherently bad when humanity is simply ACTING badly. Acting a certain way in certain circumstances is called behavior. Behavior is elicited by environmental conditions, i.e. the situation. In other words it is possible to elicit any kind of behavior that humanity is capable of simply by controlling the dominant situation surrounding humanity. This dominant situation is …No Money = You Die!
Simply ignoring this harsh reality and telling people to “Pursue truth, not money.” is naive beyond measure. Get real! Until we reject the concept that without money you must die while at the same time money is given freely and in very large quantities to a select few, nothing positive is ever going to be possible.
Unless by stating “Pursue truth, not money” you are advocating the rejecting of this heinous system we have evolved into by any and all means possible in which case I would recommend you be more clear.
“I don’t think you can argue that capitalism itself is the issue. This is about the erosion of checks and balances, laws and regulations, the erosion of a society’s ability to hold people responsible for what they do, whether they operate in the political field or in private business.”
I’d take it one step farther – this is about the erosion of Western society’s morals, ethics and integrity. We lost those long ago, and now only pretend to have them when it’s socially unacceptable to act otherwise.
Sadly, even we TAE’ers here are likely just as morally corrupt, as I don’t really believe one can exist in the society we live in without being somewhat tainted by fast-and-easy money and the Western standard of high-energy living. The only difference may be that we see how corrupt/tainted our society is (as opposed to putting our heads in the sand or screaming denials until we’re blue in the face) and point out its shortcomings, perhaps as some sort of pennance for our own subconscious guilt.
I’d also point out that you don’t have to be a billionare like Mr. Gross to feel shallow/hollow – I think most people would feel that way if they were forced to stop and really consider their own existance. Thus why there are so many distractions (i.e. circuses) to keep us preoccupied, as who would ever want to subject themselves to the horrors of introspection? Yikes…
Ho hum. That’s enough depressing/cynical thoughts for one day.
-GBV
@ Jeff Jelton and Variable81
“Pursue truth, not money” works.
Wherever your heart lies, will be your treasure also…
We all work in various contexts, and allocate energy and resources to what seems most worthy.
We pursue what we see as most important, and deal with the rest as is necessary/practical.
The last new car we bought was a minivan in 2008, when the kids were little.
13 year old Toyota Corollas in good condition are what we look for, now.We have to engage with all the valid points being made about capitalism, and high-energy lifestyle, and our own responsibilities and options. It’s like sorting through drawers when you move. It’s 100 times slower than anticipated, because every little detail is magnified in consciousness, paralyzing us.
We can move, but like digging up the rows in the garden, it takes soo much looonger than anticipated. Things that seemed clear a few years ago are vastly more complex and engaging than I thought, and take years full of seasons to figure out.
We are actually effective on the scale of tending a garden, but it is so much more complex and engaging, because it is the scale we are really suited to.
I got my Fall garden in before the cool snap and rains, here in central Texas.
The plants are all happy. The magic is working. I’m engaged. The universe is helping.
I have to do the work, but the plants grow.Money can not stop climate change. And yes; capitalism is the problem. Unregulated, irresponsible, western style capitalism. Easy, yes; too easy? That depends.
Human nature is the real problem, IMO. I’m tempted to blame western humans, but that wouldn’t be wholly fair. Native cultures did their share back in the day, but lacked the technology that gives us westerners the leap ahead on destructive power. Give us power, any kind of power and we’ll use it until we abuse it; guaranteed! It’s our nature. It’s not learned and I don’t believe it’s cultural; primordial is far more likely.
Can you tell? I’m not optimistic. We won’t act until our house burns down and then we’ll find somebody else to blame.To be is to do,
To do is to be,
Dobe, dobe, dobe, dobe…On the walls of the men’s room in a biker bar in Portland, Or. circa 1970’s
Jeff, we live in a world where money is far more important than truth. That’s the pivotal point. It opens our doors to those for whom the truth is a hindrance to getting what they want. Since man is better at lying more than any other ‘quality’, perhaps that’s inevitable, but I still think trying to turn it around is the only hope we have. And no, I don’t think we can switch human behavior off or on by toying with circumstances. We are who we are, and it takes, as I wrote, 24/7 vigilance to keep us from falling into the trap we are by design.
The three Bills are a lot more different than their first names would suggest.
While all three became wealthy, one created something worthwhile, one was a nothing who skimmed fees from the dim, and one was a totally worthless self serving maggot.
Mix and match at your pleasure.I am an avid reader and a fan of Raul’s essays, and I think this one is the best in 3 months. But then again, I am always partial to reminders that self-deception is the greatest threat of all.
WHY THERE IS NO GREEN ENERGY
Our “green” energy hi-tech future requires:
► conflict minerals,
► rare earth elements,
► heavy metals,
► nano metals and graphite.
Search for “rare earth mining in China” on YouTube and see what special hell your solar panels and wind turbines produce in Mongolia. China can do this because they have undercut all the world’s production of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) with low wages, low currency and no environmental enforcement. They can do this because they ignore the radioactive thorium that comes with mining high-value, heavy rare earth elements. Rare earth elements can’t profitably be mined outside of China without using radioactive thorium, the mining by-product found with heavy rare earth elements. We can’t afford to mine REEs while treating thorium as radioactive waste instead of as a profitable energy source. Burning thorium will pay for heavy REEs and provide the low-carbon base power “green” energy requires.
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Graphite is used in all of our so-called “green” powered batteries and is mined in China emitting deadly fine air particles resulting in a lethal smog that washes down from the skies in an ash laden rain that covers crops and water. China recently shut down several graphite mines because of the pervasive smog. Graphene, a nano-material produced for batteries, is water soluble and can cut through human/animal cells. Both graphite dust and graphene are deadly to humans because of their small size. You don’t want to breathe this stuff.
https://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/471651/catch-22-energy-storage
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Solar cell manufacturing produces 3 green house gases that are over 10,000 times worse than C02. They require all kinds of deadly liquid acids to manufacture. Solar panels lose efficiency at the rate of 1% per year lasting 20-25 years. The expensive inverters they require have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years up to 4 times over the life of the panel. The new thin cell panels use nano materials and are even more toxic with shorter lifespans. It doesn’t matter how “clean” the latest experimental solar panels are because existing manufacturing plants will stay open to recoup major investments. Manufacturing just five wind turbines produces 1 ton of radioactive residue and 75 tons of toxic, acidic water used to leach out the required neodymium. Wind turbines only work at 25% of their rated capacity 90% of the time. Over 2 million children died in the Congo for the conflict minerals green energy needs. Thousands of people die in Chinese mines every year for the minerals green energy needs. Prof. Jian Shuisheng of the Jiatong-University estimates the production of just 6 solar panels requires one ton of coal. Since green power is intermittent, it would take at least 10 times the rated amount of “green” energy to displace just one equivalent unit of 24/7 fossil energy because your so-called 100 Watt solar panel delivers zero Watts at night and batteries are heavy toxic $energy hogs. One company in the U.S. cut down 5 acres of trees to build a solar farm to power a plant for the production of plastic bags. Green power will not be enough. Part-time energy and billions of batteries adds up to death to all life on earth just from destructive ecological inertia.Ozzie Zehner explains “Green Illusions”.
Tim Garrett explains why
► one dollar equals 10 milliwatts
► why we can’t decouple growth from emissions.
► why efficiency & conservation leads to more energy growth.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tim+garrett+is+it+possible+to+decouple+economic+wealth+from+carbon+dioxide+emission+rates%3F+part+i
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Did you know that the new $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave desert is a death ray that ignites birds in mid flight? When their bodies fall to the ground, they leave smoky trails in the sky called streamers. These birds are attracted to the bugs who are attracted to the shiny, pretty lights, just like us. It is estimated as many as 30,000 birds per year will die this way during huge migrations at just this one green power plant. Bigger solar plants of the same type are in the works including one near Joshua Tree, next to a wildlife sanctuary. During Ivanpah’s construction, up to 3,000 endangered desert tortoises suffered a temporary loss of legal protection and were allowed to be killed by heavy diesel equipment and materials. Thousands of slave workers die in China’s mines every single year to help produce the exotic minerals used in its construction. This is referred to as the “Green Economy”. If we changed the whole planet to green power, we would kill the earth we call home.
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Civilization is slowly collapsing while the earth is quickly dying. My credentials?
I cut grass in a trailer park in Canada.“I don’t think you can argue that capitalism itself is the issue. This is about the erosion of checks and balances, laws and regulations, the erosion of a society’s ability to hold people responsible for what they do, whether they operate in the political field or in private business.”
Under our Neoliberal system, there is no such thing as “society,” there is only a collection of individuals. What you are bemoaning was the primary objective of Neoliberalism: destroy the communistic fiction of classical liberalism that made the individual beholden to the collective and inevitably led to socialism as the excesses of the elites proved the promise of laissez faire capitalism to be a lie. So, actually, capitalism is to blame as this is what capitalism looks like when left unchecked, and it was the capitalists who funded the Neoliberal movement for just that purpose.
@nooboob-“green energy illusions”
Brilliant man, I have seen these stats before but it does no harm to put them out there as often as poss.
I’m no shill for the fossil fuel industry – far from it, but the green energy hoax is insidious.
every wind turbine is a monument to fossil fuel from the goose step to the raspberry and every increment in between in their manufacture, the difference is the FF input goes in up front, there is NO answer to FF and it’s depletion/pollution – none, period, except of course the solution the green brigade will NEVER accept, which is stringent conservation, that is the only way we can navigate the power down that is coming to us whether we like it or not, happy clappy “we can party on as long we do it greenly” wankers have became the bain of my life, (you might have noticed) as I watch my country’s environment utterly destroyed – to save the environment. Risible.Z
“The Terrible Tenure of Eric Holder – Good riddance! Eric Holder has announced that he is leaving his post of Attorney General, which he has sullied and degraded for six years. …it is safe to say that Holder’s replacement, still unknown, will be no better, though given Holder’s tenure it’s also hard to imagine his successor being much worse either.”
@ NooBoob
Civilization is slowly collapsing while the earth is quickly dying.
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Nah, we can’t do that. It’s often said “we’re” destroying the earth.
Nope, can’t do that either.
But, we sure can and are changing it. We are making it toxic for one heck of a lot of the present species, which includes humans.
But the earth? It’ll survive us and naturally go the way of planets. Remember, what’s going on now is as natural as rain…
But, that also doesn’t mean some of us aren’t mad as hell…>>Jeff, we live in a world where money is far more important than truth. That’s the pivotal point. It opens our doors to those for whom the truth is a hindrance to getting what they want.<<
So why doesn’t TAE explain WHO creates the money out of debt and WHAT their agenda is via the writings of their historians like Carroll Quigley and their Technocrats like Zbigniew Brzezinski?
You are exactly right – money is the God of this world… but that God is created by a group of people who use their Debt Money Monopoly in order to push their agenda on a mostly nescient populace.
It is well past time that those who have won the blogging race start to focus on the Debt Money Monopolists and how they are leading humanity over the cliff… while they party large on their yachts while circling their Greek vacation island they bought on the cheap after bankrupting Greece.
Democracy doesn’t exist as long as people don’t get to vote on the nature of their monetary systems and Debt Money is a prima facie fraud. Would someone who only reads the articles posted on this website know that? I think not – the big white elephant in the middle of the room is kept nicely covered up and out of view. This in spite of quite a number of your commentariat bringing up the issue over the years.
@ TheTrivium4TW
So why doesn’t TAE explain WHO creates the money out of debt and WHAT their agenda is via the writings of their historians like Carroll Quigley and their Technocrats like Zbigniew Brzezinski?
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But, but, isn’t that exactly what TAE does?
I know it’s complicated (well above my pay grade), but I know the questions (important) that I have had and found adequate answers within the very dense subject of political socio-economics.
It’s about power. In a sense that’s all one needs to know. And an accurate view of the now should suffice for a picture of today’s realities, and further, ones position within that construct.
CheersWhat Capitalism? All I see here is a hybrid form of Statist sponsored Corporatism.
Capitalism, in the grass roots sense, is each of us trading with one another with mutual benefit the goal. A kind of economic liberty, if you will.
Arnold,
To take it a step more, who “owns” the currency.
There was a time when government had no money, it belonged to the people. But that was back when currency was money, not a Federal Reserve IOU issued in lieu of confiscated wealth.
My, what checks and balances real backing of currency provided, before the State decided it knew more about economic progress than all the world’s market players in all the world’s markets.
Money creation is eminently simple. Bank loans create bank deposits and bank deposits are the repository of most of the worlds money.
Money of course can’t save the climate or the environment. More money may make inadequate rear guard actions to mitigate environmental damage more prevalent but the exploitation will only get worse at the front end. Without more money however the system cannot continue. Even the same amount means death of the system. Enough new money must be created every year, via the expansion of credit, so old debt can be paid.
Something has to give eventually. Plan A is let the environment deteriorate as the results will be evident over centuries. End the credit/money system however and the bad results would be immediate and far worse for far more right away.
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