The triple bottom line angle is an interesting starting off point.
Historically, capitalism has been focussed like 5:92:3 in terms of people, profit, planet.
What we need is something like 30:40:30.
That is an important distinction. Thank you for pointing that out.
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We are try to agree on a definition. We can’t assume parts of it are agreed upon and seen in this afternoons discussion.
I don’t think this is what is meant my efficient allocation of capital. It’s meant in contrast to centralized methods like communism, dictatorships etc. It’s means the sum of a million smaller decisions, at the level of the firm, will tend to be more efficient at generating more capital than centralized allocation.
I wasn’t arguing. I was agreeing with what you said.
My point was this: I wasn’t trying to ‘define’ anything when I wrote re: relationships. I was just trying to get peeps off of the “who is” tangent.
Ok cool.
So let’s stay off the massive societal reshuffling, as that is where you and I run into trouble.
You are appointed king but your power allows only one change to the current economic system aimed at reducing the impact of climate change. You cannot change the system as a whole.
What is it?
I’ll also point out that being more/less efficient (at profit extraction, or anything else) isn’t useful in the quest to serious-biz ‘define’ things. It’s a purported feature. It implies a metric.
It’s like if I were pushing transportation infrastructure and defined “monorail” as the best way to get somewhere.
Completely apropos, my two professor quips in lecture that have always brought me a smile…
- “You can always change the names of things” (math)
- “When you hear ‘efficient’, ask ‘efficient for who?’” (econ)
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Make the eviction moratorium permanent. Remember: evictions are what was used to remove the Native Americans and allies at Standing Rock.
How does that help climate change?
Resource extraction is a significant contributor to climate change. According to the first result that google returned, which I haven’t read…
The extraction and processing of natural resources (biomass, fossil fuels, metals, and non-metallic minerals) make up half of the global greenhouse gas emissions while contributing to more than 90% of global diversity loss and water stress impacts. In isolation, the extraction and processing of just metals and other minerals is responsible for 26% of global carbon emissions.
One sad article per day. Honestly you start to think where do we even start to make things better. Everything seems fucked up.
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- Make a list of all imaginable options.
- Add the “null” option. Note: this ensures 3+ options.
- Eliminate those that just won’t work.
- Handicap which of the remaining is the best shot.
Continuing on regarding how a certain demographic seems to habitually put the cart before the horse by insisting on vehemently “both sides” every damn thing ASAP. If you don’t mind, I’ll throw a couple of more options on the step #1 list…
- Better consumer choices
- Future Tech Fixes
The purpose here isn’t to imagine that you & me & our fellow UnStucker to “solve” climate change ITT. The purpose is to show how this propensity to “both sides” every damn thing, in general, leads to flawed decision making… and demonstrate one of the ways peeps use to avoid falling into this trap.
So if you wanna throw a token option or two onto the list (without evaluating it just yet), please do… and then I would suggest we prematurely move on to step #2… as we would be just working through an example. And if you don’t GAF, just ignore this post. It’s all good.
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I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t know I have been an environmental consultant for 20 years with a PhD in paleoclimatology. I’m well aware of how extraction is connected to greenhouse gas.
My question is what does any of this have to do with eviction?
If the Standing Rock Native Americans and allies aren’t evicted the resource extraction project that they object to doesn’t go forward.
Squatting is recycling. Every sqft squatted means another sqft doesn’t need to be built. There’s like ~100 years worth of unused buildings. Within the hypothetical, that’s a huge payday.
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Climate change effects different communities in different manners. Communities of color are hit particularity hard. So are our homeless communities. Dealing with climate change isn’t solely about increasing the EV of save the earth… it’s also about solidarity and being allies with communities that are especially at risk.
homelessness and housing unaffordability are already overlapping with climate disasters in disturbing ways. The states where more than half of the homeless population in the U.S. resides—California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Washington—are home to some of the highest housing costs in the country. They’re also among the six most extreme-weather-prone states. When a disaster strikes there, it’s not only a tragedy on a personal level for the people affected, but a crisis of systemic proportions, as it wipes out a portion of already-stretched housing stock for people in need.
So, to sum up: Extending the status-quo regarding evictions, and removing the threat and uncertainty going forward that things could go backwards into the bad old days, would, amount many other benefits, (1) give civil society a way to well regulate the capitalists attacking their communities, (2) have a huge and immediate positive impacted on greenhouse gas emissions, (3) help deal with the humanitarians crises climate change is already causing to communities of color and our homeless communities.
So… how about you? Imagine you are appointed king but your power allows only one change to the current economic system aimed at reducing the impact of climate change. You cannot change the system as a whole.
What do you do?
Turns out some of the countries we call sustainable aren’t that sustainable
Take Sweden, for example. Sweden scores an impressive 84.7 on the index, topping the pack. But ecologists have long pointed out that Sweden’s “material footprint”—the quantity of natural resources that the country consumes each year—is one of the biggest in the world, right up there with the United States, at 32 metric tons per person. To put this in perspective, the global average is about 12 tons per person, and the sustainable level is about 7 tons per person. In other words, Sweden is consuming nearly five times over the boundary.
There is nothing sustainable about this kind of consumption. If everyone on the planet were to consume as Sweden does, global resource use would exceed 230 billion tons of stuff per year. To get a sense for what this would look like, consider all the resources that we presently extract, produce, transport, and consume around the world each year—and all of the ecological damage that this causes—and triple it.
In effect, the SDG Index celebrates rich countries while turning a blind eye to the damage they are causing. Ecological economists have long warned against this approach. It violates the principle of “strong sustainability,” which holds that good performance on development indicators cannot legitimately substitute for destructive levels of ecological impact. The SDG Index team are aware of this problem. It’s even mentioned (briefly) in their methodological notes—but then it’s swept under the rug in favor of a final metric that has little grounding in ecological principles.
In other news China might be spending a shit load on renewable energy but they are also leading the way in building new coal powered plants
Australia not looking to get off the coal soon either
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For change a feel good article:
They pretty much abandoned traditional farming on their poor agriculture land and let the animals take over. I am still curious about the numbers so that this can work out longterm for them but that is also something I sometimes dream about; having land, rewilding it and then use it for teaching, organic meat etc…
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Looks like Exxon is going to do what it can to drive us towards climate catastrophe in the name of profits and growth. These plans were pre-covid so their estimates and goals might’ve changed but it seems like Exxon doesn’t care too much about emissions reduction
Exxon Mobil Corp. had plans to increase annual carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece, an analysis of internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg shows, setting one of the largest corporate emitters against international efforts to slow the pace of warming.
The drive to expand both fossil-fuel production and planet-warming pollution has come at a time when some of Exxon’s rivals, such as BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, are moving to curb oil and zero-out emissions. Exxon’s own assessment of its $210 billion investment strategy shows yearly emissions rising 17% by 2025, according to internal projections.
But the internal documents show for the first time that Exxon has carefully assessed the direct emissions it expects from the seven-year investment plan adopted in 2018 by Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods. A chart in the documents lists Exxon’s direct emissions for 2017—122 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent—as well as a projected figure for 2025 of 143 million tons. The additional 21 million tons is a net result of Exxon’s estimate for ramping up production, selling assets and undertaking efforts to reduce pollution by deploying renewable energy and burying carbon dioxide.
“Exxon has repeatedly shopped for growth over the last 10 years, and their returns have suffered,” said Andrew Grant, head of oil, gas and mining at Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank. “Exxon is explicit that their business plan is informed by their own business outlook, which assumes continued demand growth for fossil fuels.”
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