This report shows the extent of the budget deficit in California and the attendant massive pain for residents as it lurches towards bankruptcy. This has not been helped by The Governator's enthusiasm to dispense laws to drastically reduce emissions of CO2.
Stop generalising. Which laws are they?
ReplyDeleteAre you suggesting that cars and trucks with lower fuel consumption are more costly to buy and run?
State bankruptcy. Sounds like collapse is in the offing, doesn't it?
Hi Tim, it's more than just cars and trucks. Industry is being hit too by extra regulations on CO2 emissions and they are relocating elsewhere to survive, leaving Californians without jobs. If the rest of the US copies California, then industries will not be able to compete with imports. It is sad but predictable.
ReplyDeleteWhat Industry? The US is pretty much a post-industrial economy and manufactures very little. One exception is that they make some poor quality, fuel hungry vehicles that are not selling, but this is mostly in Detroit. The US economy has been driven lately by real estate and finance which have, coincidentally, just crashed - spectacularly in California! It seems unlikely to me that CO2 limits had much influence on the state of California's current budgetary woes. In the rest of the country, even with no CO2 limits and government bailouts jobs are being lost in droves, and states are going bankrupt.
ReplyDeleteBut let's get your hypothetical argument straight. America, the home of innovation and who love their country so much they won't let it fail, can't be competitive (by which I suppose you mean their standard of living must fall and that there are no alternatives to an export driven economy *cough*) unless they are allowed to vent unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Right.
US Industry says this every time regulations are introduced. They resisted the introduction of catalytic converters on vehicles for example. The sky didn't fall.. in fact it became clearer. It happens all too often: http://www.drivingsports.com/site/2009/01/conservatives-cry-wolf-over-proposed-co2-regulations/. As a result of industry's foot dragging and myopia, America's beautiful landscape has been defiled with all manner of toxins and environmental damage.
And tell me, how exactly do CO2 limits impair industry when demand is falling off a cliff? The industry in countries that do not have restrictions are collapsing too. They are supposed to be taking these (now defunct) jobs off poor Western workers too! See China.
It is rather simplistic to describe the USA as a "post industrial" nation. While it is true that there is a shift away from manufacturing, there is still a vast amount manufactured there involving millions of jobs. Fundamental to all industries is electricity which will be very much affected by emissions regulations.
ReplyDeleteFor more on California's dire situation see my later post.
California jobs post coming out on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteWell, you can update the Wiki with your own view, because its entry on Post-Industrial society lists United States, Canada, Japan, and Western Europe as Post-Industrial [1].
ReplyDeleteJob losses do not prove that CO2 regulations had any influence. Correlation does not imply causation [2].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-industrial_society
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
I would not presume to contradict the eminent authors of Wiki, but the fact still remains that whatever way you define the "post-industrial society" there are still millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA today. I guess there is a shift towards this post-industrial society, but it is still far from complete.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it would be good for any large country to stop all industry, both for the provision of jobs as well as for national security. Surely, based on your own views of a locally based society you must agree with this?
I wouldn't sneer too much. Wikipedia is peer reviewed, and you can't stand up to the criticism of one (no need to comment, I'm sure you believe otherwise).
ReplyDeleteSure, there are still many manufacturing jobs in the US. I even said so, and qualified the term with 'pretty much'. My point was that the vast majority of job losses are not in manufacturing (retail, finance, real estate, construction, services, etc.), and the manufacturing jobs lost were more related to the massive contraction in demand completely unrelated to CO2 regulations. Mentioning it as a cause for worry in the same frame of reference as the general contraction is cheap and incidentally makes you sound like a broken record.
Yes, all nations will need to manufacture their own goods in the future, as far as possible, with some international trade. The scale of enterprise, products, and technologies will change, however. They will not be manufacturing many cars, computers, nuclear power stations or iPods. More like durable tools, bicycles (hopefully), shoes, clothing, etc. The trend will also be toward hand made items as new equipment and parts export contract.
I believe your forecast of the future will be way out. Cars are here to stay, whether driven by petrol or electricity or something else. Nuclear power also has a bright future. The other luxuries too will all be in demand as the third world gradually industrialises. The world will move on, not back, whether you or I like it or not.
ReplyDelete"Cars are here to stay, whether driven by petrol or electricity or something else." It's lazy to prognosticate that when you've lived with them for your entire life. Circumstances change and hidden costs and limitations are eventually realised. The future is not simply an extrapolation of the past.
ReplyDelete"Nuclear power also has a bright future." Dmitry Orlov made a great post about this kind of assumption here:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48208
"The other luxuries too will all be in demand as the third world gradually industrialises."
I think you'll find demand for luxuries will wane as the essentials for life become in short supply. It's equally unlikely that the third world will continue to industrialise. Already, millions of Chinese and Indians are losing their industrial jobs, and tens of thousands of factories sit idle. There's massive overcapacity in industrial production, a huge quantity of unsold goods, and a surging second hand market. It's foreseeable that this can be worked out and growth resumes, but you have to believe that peak oil is far away or irrelevant and there are no other serious constraints (e.g. water), for which there is little evidence.
"The world will move on, not back, whether you or I like it or not." Who are you to decide what is moving on or moving back? Do you think that human progress is an arrow that only goes in one direction and we are unable to make serious mistakes? Do you think members of civilisations past felt any different?
Of course I am not trying to forecast hundreds of years ahead, just the next20 or 30 years. After that, who knows? We may have our own personal aircraft. From the earliest times man has had some form of transport from the horse to the car. I don't believe man will stop wanting to travel in his own individual transport. I will leave the reader to decide what is forward or back.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that civilisations in the past have collapsed, and it is possible that ours could do the same, but it will take some unforseen catastrophe for it to happen. The daft thing is that even now there are people who are forecasting catastrophe on the flimsiest pretext.
"I don't believe man will stop wanting to travel in his own individual transport."
ReplyDeleteWhat man wants and what man gets are frequently different things. Didn't your mother teach you that?
"I will leave the reader to decide what is forward or back."
Obviously the reader can make his own judgement, but you are clearly pushing the view that rebuilding an economy without the personal transport and conveniences we are used to is a step backwards, and imply that this is a matter of fact and generally known.
"it will take some unforseen catastrophe for it to happen"
Why is it necessarily unforeseen? The primary causes of collapse in prior civilisations were depletion of critical resources (especially soil) and climate change. These are happening to us now. Denial runs deep.
Modern day society is far more adaptable than earlier civilisations. We can even make deserts fertile if need be. We are far better at adapting to climate change, should it be necessary. In any case most of the planet is not experiencing significant climate change. We have experienced a 0.6C rise in temperature over a century. That is trivial compared to the range of temperature at which man can comfortably cope. In fact it is hardly measurable - insignificant.
ReplyDeleteAt the time of writing this there is no catastrophe - it's all hype. I am not saying that we could not have a catastrophe tomorrow, about which we are unaware, but that will always be true. If it happens then we will have to respond to it. Today we are very fortunate in living at such a benign period, when we have such a good climate.
The real danger in the longer term is not global warming, but global cooling. It is the return of an ice-age that is the most likely fate for our descendents, and I am only thankful that I will not experience its worst effects.
Our civilisation's adaptibility is dependent on prodigious amounts of resources that are depleting. Once the flow is not enough to satisfy maintenance of the complex systems that have evolved, it will cannibalise itself. We may have the technical capacity to make deserts fertile - I've shown you that myself - but there are institutions and general momentum that prevent practices from changing rapidly. There is also denial and a lack of honesty to deal with. Most people have your attitude: there are no serious problems, we can just continue using strategies that have worked in the past. Instead of making deserts fertile we continue to degrade arable land. To me, that does not imply adaptability, but rigidity. Moreover, the vital systems that we have evolved are extremely brittle. Our financial system has just demonstrated this, but it will really hit home when our food production and distribution systems fail.
ReplyDeleteYou talk about average temperature changes being insignificant, but ignore the conditions on the ground. Farming zones are being redrawn because the climate is shifting and making crops untenable. Precipitation patterns are changing. California is suffering a dramatic water shortage due to a reduction in snow melt. This has been developing for years, but no solutions appear to be helping, and now agricultural irrigation is being cut off. Desalinisation plants only increase the consumption of other limited resources. In my own country, Australia, some places are in an almost permanent state of drought, and water tables are rising, salting agricultural land.
I'm not saying there are no solutions to these problems, but the solutions are unlikely to be found in the thinking which caused the problems in the first place. Following the real solutions may lead to a society that barely resembles the original - and this is what terrifies the people who benefit from the current arrangements.
The climate is always changing. The Sahara Desert was once prime agricultural land. We have to adapt to change. I'm an optimist who believes we will succeed in adapting. We will not return to subsistence agriculture, but we will grow crops on a large scale where it makes best economic sense.
ReplyDeleteYes, the climate is always changing. This does not imply that
ReplyDeletea) We have no effect on it
b) We can adapt to it indefinitely without compromise
Why do you rule out "subsistence"* agriculture when this may be the adaptation we need? Growing monoculture crops on a large scale requires inputs that are unsustainable, and it's very inefficient. You are not demonstrating adaptability! We don't need optimists, we need realists and pragmatists.
In another sense, you are a pessimist. You think living a "subsistence" life must be unbearable and we can't make it enjoyable. You have to deal with the hand you're given, and it seems that if you're not given a Royal Flush you're not willing to play the game.
* Permaculture is not subsistence agriculture. It provides a rich variety of yields with minimal human labor and can address all aspects of human need and want, within the limits of local resources.
There is no evidence to say that we are affecting the climate with CO2. We know that the climate has always changed, sometimes very dramatically. We can only adapt as the climate changes. If we needed to return to subsistence agriculture then we no doubt would, but it is not the most efficient form of agriculture. Man has always specialised with great success. Mechanisation and large scale farming is the most efficient which is why that is the trend all over the world.
ReplyDeleteNo evidence for CO2 changing the climate? That's debatable, but it is not the only pollutant human activities produce. Take the CO2 blinkers off!
ReplyDeletePermaculture can feed perhaps 10 people per acre depending on climate, twice that of industrial agriculture, without any of the high energy inputs.
Industrial agriculture makes work for itself by fighting against nature, using only a fraction of total potential ecosystem productivity, shipping matter vast distances, not recycling nutrients, and using chemicals that cause health problems. How is that efficient, even if it was sustainable? I think you'll find there are other reasons for agriculture's supposed popularity. Have a read of Jared Diamond's Against the Grain:
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-Agriculture-Hijacked-Civilization/dp/0865477132
The reality is that today in the West we have never had so much choice and quality food available to all. This was not true even 100 years ago. No one goes hungry. This is due to modern agriculture, and GM seeds are playing an important part. We can control pests and diseases which in the past have decimated crops.
ReplyDeleteThe same is starting to happen in the developing world. I would not want to go back to only having locally grown produce. In the Uk this would mean no citrus fruits, no bananas, and amny other items.
Please Derek, don't believe everything you hear.
ReplyDeleteIndustrial agriculture is not in the business of providing nutritious food. It's out to make a profit. The best way for it to do that is to produce as few crops as possible to enable economies of scale. This requires artificial fertiliser deficient in micro-nutrients and causing abnormal growth. The fertiliser also contains heavy metals such as cadmium, which causes lung disease. Add to that the toxic chemicals used to control pests and weeds. Then you have instances of GM crops making pigs infertile. Add to that the average of some 1000 miles travelling to lose freshness. Where do you get this quality idea from?
As for choice, the Western consumer regularly consumes an average of about 30 different species [1]. Geoff Lawton has about 400 species in his kitchen garden alone, in addition to his food forests and animals. Industrial agriculture has specific requirements for transport and presentation, so heirloom varieties are not produced, reducing variety.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but people do go hungry in the world, despite a surplus of food. Western cultures also suffer from malnutrition and lifestyle diseases such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer thanks to their poor diet and lack of exercise.
GM crops do not control pests. Predators control pests, and when you spray the pests the predators die or move on, as their food supply goes. When the pests become resistant there are no predators to control them and even more chemicals must be used. It's a vicious cycle.
[1] David Jacke, Edible Forest Gardens.