draego454
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Loved the article. Just had one little nit:
>> concluded that spending 1% of GDP would pay for a transition to a clean and sustainable economy.
How can one assess a price tag and guaranteed results from technology that doesn’t exist yet? (wind and/or solar? not with today’s level of technology)
Steven In Dallas.
>> most costly, ventures of its industrial history … project that will consume at least €4 billion ($5.3 billion), but more likely somewhere between €5 billion and €10 billion…a decontamination project that will take 30 years, or longer.
Kind of hard to make a profit when the big picture takes the resulting problems into account – but don’t worry, the initial corporate officers of the techno-corps who push these technologies and guarantee their safety have taken what little profit initially appeared and have made off with it. All that’s left is dealing with the problems, and that part is left to all the rest of us.
Now can one see why I don’t trust Monsanto when they say that their genetic manipulations are perfectly safe and we shouldn’t worry?
Steven InDallas
Preserving a destructive status quo can only be justified if that time is being used (and is needed) to implement Plan B. If it is only to delay, and especially if a delayed reckoning will be worse, then it is criminal – at the very least lying by omission.
My cynical suspicion is that “they” see the cliff approaching, but are able to squeeze a little more profit from the status quo, so are doing so – even though their delay will make things worse for the rest of us.
Hangin’s too good for’em..
>> the court upheld the ECB’s opinion that the documents sought by Bloomberg could damage the public interest and aggravate Europe’s financial crisis.
Any economic “philosophy” for which truth is toxic and deception essential must be purged.
One thing I don’t understand is that in the past, angry Europeans have been more than capable of purging their societies of problematic people. Where are THOSE guys? With their ski masks and their motor scooters? Sigh…
>> massive government spending is diverted into breakthrough technologies, in particular renewable energy like solar, thereby becoming a world leader in such technologies and securing another century of US economic dominance.
One of our many problems, stemming from how we attempt to engage with the global economy, is that there is no business sector which China is unable to take away from us using some or all of industrial espionage, slave labor rates, pegged and manipulated currency, government subsidies, punitive import tariffs, etc. Regarding the promise of renewable energy jobs to betrayed US workers, they are already sliding overseas and out of our grasp.
Until we realize that charges that Protectionism-is-a-dirty-word from today’s whore economists are corporate koolaid to the masses (to get them to accept being eviscerated by globalism), we won’t be able to take steps to protect US manufacturing from predatory practices.
Steven in Dallas
>> It is no use to be well-off yourself if you don’t have a functioning society to be well-off in.
Ethically, I agree with you. But I am exhausted in my soul from trying to figure out how to fit the all Titanic’s passengers into 5 life boats. The math just doesn’t support all of us making it through what I think is coming.
>> and people, if I understand it well, can only be saved if banks are saved first
It just hit me that this is “trickle down” all over again. “Let us move all these jobs overseas and with the money that we save we will be able to create even more jobs…” I think we’ve all seen how THAT works. Trickle down…doesn’t. And by extension, destroying society to save banks will not save society.
Steven in Dallas
And this is where the damage from Climate-Gate rears its ugly head. This is a great article, but a difficult one to digest. Human nature will be to look for valid reasons to reject this uncomfortable message. Climage-Gate now gives them all the justification they need to reject hard messages from those “untrustworthy scientists”.
The more important the message is, the more important it is for the messenger to be beyond reproach ethically.
Steven in Dallas
>> Mr Rubin’s $225 price prediction for 2012 will be looking far more off-base in the relatively near future than it does today.
I’m sad when people who fundamentally understand and accept the concept of Peak Oil get wrapped around the axel on issues of timing. These days, isn’t it rare enough to find someone who at least understands the problem, that we don’t have to work the Us/Them angle on the quality of their timing predictions? And face it, Peak Oil as a discipline – all of us combined – have no ground to go around bragging about the timing predictions that we’ve given to society at large.
If someone even accepts that Peak Oil is a valid theory, then that’s 90% of the battle for me. He could be worse – he could be a Yergin.
Steven in Dallas
PS: My new insult, “Don’t be such a Yergin!”
>> Where national interest become paramount, and the interests of the collective are lost
And this is the great failure of globalism. To allow any critical activity to be offshored to another nation who is supposedly more “efficient” at that activity is begging for catastrophic failure. Nations who once could feed themselves were facing starvation a few years ago during the grain shortages (wheat, corn, rice, etc.). The nation that INVENTED the semiconductor, who relies on this technology for its military defense (and innumerable other critical activities) has allowed primary mfg of semiconductors to be offshored. What happens if there is a disagreement between these two parties??? The examples go on. The only thing that globalism does is make rich people richer and destroy the middle class.
A system that works 99% of the time but blows your brains out the other 1% can not be considered successful.
Steven in Dallas
Ain’t globalism grand! With no borders or boundaries, the sinking tide wrecks ALL ships.
Steven in Dallas
>> as long as we leave the financial industry holding the reins of our societies
Aye, and that’s really the foundation of the problem – isn’t it. Some people said, “If some capitalism is good, then more must be better!”
Capitalism is like fire – they are both tools to be used as needed, they can be beneficial when contained and channeled, but when “set free” they consume everything in their path. Today’s economist’s devotion to unrestrained global free market capitalism is the equivalent of some nut job screeming “Fire Good!” and then setting the crowded theater a-blaze.
Steven in Dallas
As self destructive as it was, the O-man’s election was just to punish the Republicans for not controlling Bush. I can see that they didn’t learn anything. Someone is actually making a compelling case on how it might be better for true conservatives to vote for Obama and not Mitt. At least with such a deadlock in place nothing major should happen (excluding the long-term damage from an Obama suppreme court appointment).
>> bold and decisive measures
Funny – earlier in this macro-fiasco (maybe a year ago), someone called for “bold and decisive”. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now. The reason is that oddly enough, there are still people who are making money off of the status quo (see US Banking Profits); and those are the people who are in a position to implement “bold and decisive” reform. That, or they OWN the people who are in a position to implement bold/decisive. When anyone in this layer of “the system” loses the ability to profit then they have also lost the ability to make changes.
So this is why things don’t change – the only ones who can, won’t, and the ones who would, can’t. As “short-bus” as the whole occupy movement was, it was THIS hard to describe THING that they were protesting.
Steven in Dallas
>> Further favourable treatment for the ECB: ECB and national central banks avoid taking losses on their holdings of Greek bonds but promise to redistribute ‘profits’ from these holdings so that they can be used in Greece.
Woa – sounds like a kickback to me. I guess an unscrupulous Greek politician could be convinced to vote for this package if they are promised some of the “redistributed” funds.
