[LINK] Your warming world

[Frank O'Connor]

I have problems with the 'no-growth' part of that equation for a couple of reasons:

1. Nothing is gonna or should constrain the aspirations of two billion people trying to lift themselves out of poverty into a lifestyle that they'd like to become accustomed to.

2. All our current economic models assume/rely on growth.

Rather I'd say that good business is, and always should have been, reliant on efficient and effective energy consumption rather than indiscriminate use of energy, and in particular fossil fuel energy sources. 

Industry lobbying, tax and industry incentives, political corruption and a comical, an almost chronic lack of creativity, and research and development in alternative energy sources and technologies have seen the fossil fuel industry dominate our technologies long past its ostensible use by date. I mean, the internal combustion engine was developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and coal powered the steam age and Industrial Revolution  in the eighteenth century. The fossil fuel resources these technologies rely on, aside from polluting our environment and causing greenhouse warming, are also in short supply in an age of rocketing demand, and getting ever more expensive and harder to extract.

I mean capitalism is supposed to be a driver of efficiency and inventiveness .... but for two hundred years we've operated on the twin assumptions that fossil fuels provide an unlimited source of cheap high octane transportable energy, and that there's no alternative but to use it up like there's no tomorrow whatever damage it does to our environment and climate. And nobody in our schizoid society is encouraged to question these assumptions (that, I'd argue' are mainly in place to promote the interests of the narrow industrial and economic base that benefits economically from concentration on fossil fuels to the exclusion of all else).

Capitalism is supposed to develop by creating efficient technologies that are more cost effective and presumably energy efficient, than what has gone before ... but we've been stuck in a 200 year old ideological/religious rut I'd argue of a religious origin. Hey, if Carl Weber (he of 'The Protestant Work Ethic' fame) was right, capitalism originated in Europe founded on a religious neurosis that comes from both an 'idle hands' warning and the fact that there were no guarantees in the new faith that the faithful would get to Heaven ... so it was best to keep busy and occupied, and spend all that excess capital keeping busy and productive so you didn't spend it on sinning and therefore go to Hell. (Roman Catholics with their sacrament of Confession and Papal Dispensations didn't need to be so neurotic - hey, they could make heaven by having a last minute change of heart.)

We've been assuming (based on faith and ideology, I'd argue, rather than reason) that we are the paragon of biological development, built in the image of God, and that every animal, resource, environmental feature or even remotely valuable aspect of nature is ours to have and take advantage of and use to whatever extent we feel is necessary to make us rich (it used to be 'happy and productive', but 'rich' became the motivation once capitalism seriously got going). We assume that the munificence of nature has no boundaries, we don't value it on our balance sheets ... it's just there, given to us by God - and we can use it as and when we like. This was our Industrial Revolution ... and we're still in that mindset. Two to three hundred years later.

Well, over the last 50 years we've found that there are limits to the supply of fossil fuels, that there are environmental disadvantages to using them indiscriminately, that there are other uses for fossil fuels that make them too precious to waste in fuelling our technology and providing our energy needs (e.g. as key ingredients in plastics, fertilisers and other long chain carbon based technologies) and that we better investigate both alternatives, and a far more efficient/effective use of fossil fuels in the existing technology if we want to survive in the new more complex limited and closed environment that we've discovered.

Now for me ... those efficiencies are what capitalism should all be about. It's what it is naturally 'designed' to do

I like technology that is designed to use energy more efficiently than previous generations of technology. I like technology that uses less energy to provide the same or better levels of performance than previous generations, that uses less material in its construction and is hence smaller, more elegant and less obtrusive than previous generations of the same products, I like the idea of technology that provides more brute power for less material and energy investment (e.g Moore's Law), I like design principles that align design and function efficiently and elegantly. I like product that has multiple uses embedded in its design (e.g. smart phones) and that is easier to use with each new generation.

I don't like continued use of obsolete, high energy, low efficiency, environmentally unsound technologies (like big V8 internal combustion engines, 1940's and 50's smokestacks and brown coal power generation etc) ... that's the self interested fossil fuel industry appealing to the low intellect 'hoon' sector of the market with essentially low tech but single use high visibility obsolete product that somehow validates them and their lives, in much the same way as the NRA goes after their demographic in the US.

I like the idea that we continuously research and develop, cheaper, more effective and efficient, lower cost alternative technologies and energy sources (and processes) for use in industry.

That's 'growth' and capitalism ... not this corrupt stuck-in-a-300-year-rut, protect-incumbent-industry and government-pay-for-play (even when the industry doesn't pay) alternative that we've had for the last 100 years or so. We naturally think of our times and lifestyles as super advanced, but in reality the 20th Century was basically an industrial and technological holding pattern rather than a time of great creativity and inventiveness ... technologically speaking and with few exceptions (IT being one of them) we simply lived on the shoulders of the giants of the 19th century.

Just my 2 cents worth ...
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On 26/01/2013, at 2:03 AM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:

>>> Kim: http://warmingworld.newscientistapps.com/
>> 
>> "The Doha Declaration on Climate, Health & Well-Being"
>> 
>> http://dohadeclaration.weebly.com
> 
> 
> 
> Good business is now  no-growth, low-carbon, eco-business. 
>