Yet another call for youth to save the planet.
Is it just me, or does that sound like the most lazy, annoying cop out ever? Consider:
… But young people are not cynical or jaded like many adults. They believe they can truly make a difference – and they can. …
This may be true. It had better be true. And the reason it had better be true is because the people who say it have too often given up. So who else is going to do it?
It’s deeply frustrating to me to to hear someone with 20-30 years worth of professional experience, social networking, capital accumulation and political influence say that what they’re really waiting on is for a bunch of people with none of those advantages to come do what they couldn’t manage. In the same vein, I know that leading figures in many activist issue camps, whether elected officials or NGO staff, hope that young people, or bloggers, or ‘local’ activists, really, anyone else, will get out and start rocking the boat so it doesn’t have to be them. I’ve heard some version of this conversation too many times.
So, yes it would definitely be nice if the young people manage to fix the climate problem, and we should try, as should everyone else. It would be great if bloggers could manage all by ourselves to push the boundaries of debate and give cover to NGOs with large staffs and research budgets, or to elected officials with ready access to establishment media megaphones. But hey, a little help, that would make everything go better, right?
Yet time and again, the people who’ve been designated as leaders by the electoral process or getting high level promotions within powerful organizations so often fail to be out in front on important issues like global warming. They come over all Whitney Houston, with the “I believe the children are our future,” (and we sang that song at my 6th grade graduation, to my enduring irritation) and defer actions to some shining white knights of the future whom they fantasize will take the reins when they’re retired or whatever. Thing is, we absolutely don’t have time for this nonsense, but I thought it might be useful to explore some possible reasons for it.
Read this, from The Change Masters, by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, courtesy the Xyleme Learning Blog:
… Though innovators are diverse people in diverse circumstance, they share an integrative mode of operating which produces innovation: seeing problems not within limited categories but in terms larger than received wisdom; they make new connections, both intellectual and organizational; and they work across boundaries, reaching beyond the limits of their own jobs-as-given. They are not rugged individualists — as in the classic stereotype of an entrepreneur — but good builders and users of teams, as even classic business creators have to be. And so they are aided in their quest for innovation by an integrative environment, in which ideas flow freely, resources are attainable rather than locked in budgetary boxes, and support and teamwork across areas are the norm.
… just about all innovating has a “political” dimension, … But I am using “political” not in the negative sense of backroom deal making but in the positive sense that it requires campaigning, lobbying, bargaining, negotiating, caucusing, collaborating, and winning votes. That is, an idea must be sold, resources must be acquired or rearranged, and some variable numbers of other people must agree to changes in their own areas — for innovations generally cut across existing areas and have wider organization ripples, like dropping pebbles into a pond. …”
Think about those definitions of innovation and politics as you read the following, from an essay linked in the same post containing the previous excerpt, about Why Nerds Are Unpopular:
… I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year.
I don’t mean to suggest they do this consciously. Some of them truly are little Machiavellis, but what I really mean here is that teenagers are always on duty as conformists.
For example, teenage kids pay a great deal of attention to clothes. They don’t consciously dress to be popular. They dress to look good. But to who? To the other kids. Other kids’ opinions become their definition of right, not just for clothes, but for almost everything they do, right down to the way they walk. And so every effort they make to do things “right” is also, consciously or not, an effort to be more popular. …
… Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please. …
Popularity, as you’ve probably discovered, doesn’t stop being useful after high school. Certainly popularity competition among adults is somewhat less obvious and in most situations less intense. It generally does not end with the losers getting wedgies or being publicly taunted by a ring of laughing peers. But who you know and how much they like you affects your prospects for every major life goal in adulthood. And politics, the game of figuring out how you get a lot of people to live together and share resources, is driven enormously by popularity and, therefore, by how well someone has learned to please others.
It isn’t the mavericks and eccentrics who normally rise to positions of power, it’s the people-pleasers.
That’s not a terrible thing, but there come times where innovations beyond cost-cutting, streamlining existing structures and fiddling with existing programs need to happen. At those moments, it stands to reason that the people who pleased their way to the top of the power pyramid will be so bound to the relationships and deals they formed in order to get there that a fundamental reevaluation of the way they do business creates an almost existential crisis for them.
If there’s a new system, what place will they have in it? What use will they be? What purpose will they serve?
Make no mistake, these are legitimately scary questions.
When you don’t have a home of your own, a family, or a long roster of social obligations, these questions seem sort of abstract. When you have those things, they resolve into one fundamental fear: how will I earn a living? With power comes constraints, at least, that’s usually the case.
So we come to it, I think. The advantage of the young isn’t really that they’re less cynical or jaded. The well-meaning person who wrote the editorial I started off linking to isn’t even actually without hope, he thinks there’s some solution available. But when he looks at his peers, he sees their constraints and restrictions more than he sees their power. He looks at politicians, people who’ve become masters at popularity contests, and clearly understands that they’re unsuited to the task of upsetting all the people whose approval they’ve spent their whole adult lives seeking. He looks at younger people and sees, not really an attitude, but that they’ve got nothing to lose by bucking a system that hasn’t rewarded them yet.
This seeming to be the case, the wheel must be reinvented over and over again by each generation of activists as the resources of social capital accumulated by their predecessors sit largely unused. The powerful continue to beseech the powerless to save them from their blinkered bondage.
Folks, it’s time to play another game.
When it comes to climate politics, delay is as deadly as denial. The vast mailing lists, media access, public respectability and political clout of the older generation can’t be allowed to sit on the shelf gathering dust as the ‘youth’ wait for these bequests to be passed on to them. They have to be mobilized now.
The true mission, should you choose to accept it, is far more difficult than saving the planet. If you read a lot about global warming and climate change issues, you probably know that the technical understanding of the problem and its possible solutions isn’t the obstacle, the challenge is the foot-draggers. It would truly be a feat rarely accomplished and more difficult than almost any other organizational problem to force existing power structures and political figures to change course and purpose without needing to be ousted.
Next time you hear someone praising youth activism, consider that they mean well, but be sure to deplore in return the terrible state of activism by the powerful. Because those people have really got to get their acts together.
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I think that some of the “foot dragging” is concern (by some of us old codgers) over the societal change goals taking precedence over the carbon issue itself. Is the issue is changing Exxon to carbon neutral energy or getting rid of Exxon? There would be more allies if there were less of a feel that the carbon issue is being used as an excuse for other social changes that are more controversial.
Great post. Many adults are getting really involved. Mass Power Shift has had a decent involvement of ‘real’ people, but its primarily led by youth.
The NYtimes today had a great op-ed on MLK and his legacy to the larger fight of democracy and the ideals of America. In it the author talks about the interconnectedness of social justice, labor rights and representation in government. In my experience, that interconnectedness of issues is something youth tend to not shy away from, whereas adults aren’t as comfortable with that.
“… Is the issue is changing Exxon to carbon neutral energy or getting rid of Exxon? There would be more allies if there were less of a feel that the carbon issue is being used as an excuse for other social changes that are more controversial.”
Is Exxon investing in carbon neutral energy? Not that I can see. It looks to me like what they’re doing is funding denialists, getting subsidies from the government and enjoying enormous tax breaks that should be funding a transition to carbon neutrality.
Do you want there to be a future, or not? Is the ExxonMobil corporation more important to you than the possibility that we could save our climate.
You’re afraid of the wrong things. You fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
There will be changes because the world simply can’t continue this way. We can’t preserve the sanctity of Exxon’s right to make a profit and make sure that the changes that happen are positive. But that isn’t my fault.
Exxon’s management decided that it was them against the planet. They decided that they were going to take their obscene profits and keep doing what they had always done and give the finger to everyone else. They decided that they were going to continue on a course of action that, if followed, will lead to rampant destruction of the planet’s ability to sustain human life. No one else made them do that.
Exxon is a company. It isn’t alive, it’s a legal fiction. I’m a flesh and blood person, so are you. Neither Exxon, nor any other legal fiction, deserves greater protection of their right to survival than we do.
I want to live. What do you want?
Well, I guess I should have used BP as the example.
Seriously, I personally couldn’t care less about Exxon. I used it as an example that often I hear folks talking simultaneously about the need for immediate change in technologies while opposing the infrastructure needed to make it happen. If we really need to use currently available low-carbon technologies, then we will need wind and nuclear, efficiency and carbon sequestration, etc. We will need those big companies to get this stuff out at a decent economy of scale to be practical. What I often have heard and read is that many are more interested in larger scale societal changes than are necessary to achieve a low carbon economy.
Just because someone is interested in a “minimally invasive” solution does not make them “anti-future”.
“Just because someone is interested in a “minimally invasive” solution…”
Maintaining business as usual for Exxon and Shell is minimally invasive?
Minimally invasive to whom?
The current energy structure, of mass extraction for importation to the U.S. and other wealthy nations, is inherently invasive. It’s invasive to the communities who are kicked off their land for oil extraction infrastructure. It’s invasive to the people who are killed for resisting the environmental destruction of their farmlands, like Ken Saro-Wiwa. It’s invasive to the people who are given diseases by westerners building pipelines, such as in Peru.
One of the fundamental problems of techno-fixes is the continuation of extraction of fossil fuel resources, which leads to the continued exploitation and oppression of communities and their environment.
And this is a climate issue, not only because extracting fossil fuels introduces carbon into the active carbon cycle, but because climate change is inherently a justice issue.
“I hear folks talking simultaneously about the need for immediate change in technologies while opposing the infrastructure needed to make it happen”
The infrastructure that we need to make it happen is not the pre-existing grid. Its the organizations, coalitions and alliances of creative and innovative people!
R Margolis: I think this is straying from the issue of the older generation’s involvement, but I want to respond to your point from a policy point of view.
Investing in energy efficiency is the most cost-effective energy investment. Not only is it putting money back in the hands of individuals, businesses and institutions, it also has the potential to level off our electricity demands, which would mean that we don’t need to invest in new generation capacity unless it really is clean. That means no coal and no nuclear, no matter what promises are made to the contrary.
California as a state was able to achieve efficiency gains like this in a very short period of time. And if we continue to insist on building nuclear and carbon sequestration facilities, we are perpetuating the environmental justice issues along the same lines as the past 40 years. Or 100 years. That’s not going to help us build a broader coalition calling for a clean energy revolution, it’s going to perpetuate infighting between environmentalists.
As a native Californian I can’t resist this one…
When I was a boy in San Diego, the town industries made airplanes, missiles, rockets and built ships. They don’t do this anymore. Yes, there have been gains in efficient technologies, but much of California’s efficiency is from manufacturing moving to other places. In a sense, the US has done some of this already with manufacturing being done in places such as China or South Korea. These countries are also building a variety of power plants.
Both a 2005 LBL report and a 2007 study by the McKinsey Global Institute put the maximum energy efficiency gains in the US at about 20%. We certainly need it, but if you want to go carbon neutral you will need power for the remaining 80%. Without a significant breakthrough in energy storage, you will still need a good deal of baseload power. It can be coal or LNG with sequestration or nuclear, but it will need to be something other than renewables.
As for infighting among environmentalists, I would ask if a united front of environmentalists outnumber the combination of citizens who simply do not believe the carbon issue is real and those citizens who want to solve the carbon issue with the least economic and social impact possible (e.g., old geezers like myself…). If so, then perhaps your strategy would work. I would think a less revolutionary environmental movement combined with citizens who want a ‘minimalist’ approach has the greater chance of quicker success.
“I would think a less revolutionary environmental movement combined with citizens who want a ‘minimalist’ approach has the greater chance of quicker success.”
A minimalist approach isn’t going to work. It won’t get us to what really needs to be carbon negativity. Check out the links above, from the “absolutely don’t have time” segment …
McKibben: Remember - 350 ppm
Hansen, et al: Need to get back to 350 ppm
We need to decrease CO2 from what it is today. We need to radically reverse many of the land transformations we’ve made. If we don’t, we’re in serious trouble. Because the choices are these:
A) We do either nothing or not enough and become subject to drastic reductions in population and standard of living, or …
B) We make significant progress towards sustainability and have a chance of preserving a climate and ecosystems sufficient to support 6 billion people and counting.
There is no ‘C’ option, where we can sort of keep doing what we’re doing now, but with a slightly lower emissions profile. That gets us to the same point as doing nothing. That equals failure and catastrophe. It might in theory be a political “success”, but it would be a real world tragedy and lead to the deaths of millions, perhaps billions by century’s end.
Fortunately, large majorities of the public in every country, even in the US where the climate propaganda is at its peak, believe that the carbon problem is real. They just don’t seem entirely clear in all cases on either the urgency of it or to see a way to practical solutions to it, and they have often been politically disempowered on so many fronts that it isn’t obvious to them that they can do anything. Changing these foundational circumstances is, imo, the prime job of everyone who gives a damn about solving global warming.
I agree that “adult” intransigence is frustrating, but i don’t agree with you here–”Exxon’s management decided that it was them against the planet. They decided that they were going to take their obscene profits and keep doing what they had always done and give the finger to everyone else.”
Exxon certainly is sore spot in the plan for planetary longevity. But it’s an immature write-off at best–and unproductive, at worst–to stigmatize them as evil because of their business success. We shouldn’t ignore the fact that our planetary power structures run on competition, from evolution to capitalism: let’s face it, Exxon’s done a stellar job playing that game. Writing them off as “evil” is unproductive because the folks in political and economic power will only listen to us if our ideas are profitable. Exxon’s not created evil, it’s just a company set up to sell a product that happens to compromise other people’s pursuits (like life on Earth). If it becomes more profitable for Exxon to sell another product–whether it’s biofuels, infrastructure for North-Atlantic carbon sequestration, or hell, just daisies hand-grown by Swedish children–then that’s what Exxon’ll start to sell. As long as the widget’s making them money, they don’t really care what the widget is.
As climate activists, we’re barking up the wrong tree if we think we need to change the actors in the system. We need to change the system, and let the actors adapt to its rising tide, sink or swim. At the risk of trading Billy the Kibs quotes like Bible verses, how about this one*? “History indicates that the best partnerships happen when both sides [climate activists and industries like ExxonMobile] have reason to be on board. Our job is to be noisy and joyful and footsore and clever and devoted enough to create that reason. Onward!”
*from the intro to Isham and Waage, 2007, Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement.
In the sixties, the president and many of the liberal, civil rights oriented whites in the north felt that the young people in the south were asking for change too quickly, and putting themselves in far too much danger. Yet it was precisely these actions that helped precipitate larger change faster.
regarding the comments around exxon and corporations in general… i feel we need to re-evaluate and redefine corporations, how they operate, what their responsibilities are and how they address the externalities they love to ignore. in the energy sector, it is difficult to persuade a utility to adopt conservation and energy efficiency, because this directly affects their bottom-line. where is the incentive for them? why would duke energy want to “sell” less energy to its customers? sometimes i doubt if the large corporate hierarchies are even capable of fixing the problems at hand. i think these systems are the “foot-draggers”
a more local and decentralized approach would be more well suited to provide clean renewable every and implement conservation and energy efficiency programs. conservation equals fundamental behavioral change which will shift the way humans think about their energy consumption. local, face to face interactions among community members will allow these changes to take root and be demonstrated in a way that makes sense to folks and much faster than corporate green washing. do we really need to spend millions on top-down ad campaigns to educate the masses about conservation and efficiency? couldn’t this money be better spent on R&D of the technologies we’d like to see in place?
so, then, if corporations are a large part of the problem, what will become of them? granted they provide jobs, but they also concentrate money in the hands of a few, exploit people and extract natural resources, paying no heed to the social and environmental devastation of their practices. corporate accountability and responsibility is a good place to begin, in my opinion. i saw ralph nader speak at powershift last november and he talked about our civic personalities as well as the responsibility we have to call out corporations when they break the laws and strip them of their sovereignty until they comply. how this process will play out is the question we have to wrestle with. but there needs to be corporate accountability and NOW. otherwise, they will continue barreling down the tracks full speed ahead to earn big profits but at the expense of our climate and our futures. a better way is possible!!
more than corporate accountability, there needs to be no corporations. of course corporations are doing their damndest to destroy the plant — that’s what they’re designed for. a bulldozer is designed to bulldoze, and a corporation is designed to reap profits at the expense of all else — people, planet, etc. form is content.
Now I am genuinely confused (must be my old age…): if you are saying that we need to change over as quickly as possible to get rid of carbon, then it sounds like you are really stuck. Yes, over 200 GW of gas turbines were built in the 90’s, but that was when gas was extremely cheap and not much was needed regarding changes to the transmission system. Renewables are not as cheap and they require energy storage. Even if you use some form of eminent domain to force coal plants down and replace them with solar and wind, you will need something else for baseload (i.e., wind and solar are not baseload sources).
I will have to look up how quickly the TVA built grids in the 1930s, but it will be difficult at best to change over the grid to a distributed system in ten years. If I understand your timetable and goals, you propose to switch over the grid in about ten years (including transportation as I recall V2G as part of the energy storage). And I know everyone hates the corporations, but can all this be accomplished quickly with small non-profit cooperatives?
I would think the fastest methods with current technology would be LNG and nuclear along with advanced soil techniques to capture CO2. They might buy the time to see if energy storage can be made to work for the longer term for integration with renewables.
I suggest a broadening of your definition of activism. Just because older generations aren’t on soapboxes or chaining themselves in protest doesn’t mean that they do not care and are not taking action. Activism, as students traditionally define it, is a necessary and important way of bringing attention to issues, but is not the end-all-be-all of progressive change.
Let’s look at it in a different light. Investment in renewable energy technologies is the growing at unbelievable rates and allowing companies to install massive clean energy capacity. “Why don’t students invest in clean energy?” these investors may ask.
Of course, examples abound of people in post-student lives acting and influencing in positive ways, beyond investment. Look at the politicians suing the EPA for the right to regulate CO2 emissions. Granted, it would be better if it didn’t have to be a drawn-out court battle, but people with legal knowledge, regulatory powers, and political capital are working to make change in what amounts to the relatively extreme measure of suing the Federal Government. Is this not activism?
Maybe their resources can be put to better use than blog entries and protests.
In summary, I would conclude that the main difference between environmentally-conscious generations is the sensitivity to the rate of change. We all know that global climate change necessitates immediate action, and I believe that we are reaching the critical mass required to begin making serious strides towards a sustainable energy economy. Older generations might see political, technical, and economic change as more of a process than a revolution.
But please, please consider these contributions before you degrade their efforts.
The suggestion of LNG as a fast method toward a solution to climate change deserves its own post. Look forward to it…
“I will have to look up how quickly the TVA built grids in the 1930s, but it will be difficult at best to change over the grid to a distributed system in ten years. If I understand your timetable and goals, you propose to switch over the grid in about ten years (including transportation as I recall V2G as part of the energy storage). And I know everyone hates the corporations, but can all this be accomplished quickly with small non-profit cooperatives?
I would think the fastest methods with current technology would be LNG and nuclear along with advanced soil techniques to capture CO2. They might buy the time to see if energy storage can be made to work for the longer term for integration with renewables.”
Certainly it will be difficult, but we’ve faced larger difficulties before. However, I think it’s important to evaluate priorities and investments. The grid needs and overhaul, as it’s deteriorating already. Xcel Energy announced last month that it would prototype the first “smart grid” in Boulder, CO. Meanwhile, permitting for nuclear takes about 20 years and the government will pay for any and all insurance and risk. If nuclear is to be part of the solution, we would have to start permitting today, and frankly, I don’t think most of the American public is going to buy it. So what’s more feasible on the short term?
I’m not willing to completely discount nuclear and carbon capture, nor the effectiveness of corporations (Xcel itself serves some eight states). Each of these structures have something to offer. I would turn back to the quote offered above. “History indicates that the best partnerships happen when both sides have reason to be on board. Our job is to be noisy and joyful and footsore and clever and devoted enough to create that reason. Onward!” Only through collaboration and the aligning of interests can we achieve the significant change that is needed.
By continually pushing the boundaries of what’s “acceptable, favorable or profitable” for corporations, activists change the playing field and incentivize better solutions. Yes, we must be watchdogs as Nader warns us, but we must also not fall back on preconceived notions of “good” and “evil” institutions. I don’t agree with the power structures ingrained in corporations, but that we can still work together with the understanding that everything is dynamic. It doesn’t mean compromising our interests or losing our greater mission; it just means using the most effective ways to produce the greatest and most needed change in the shortest period of time.
I checked out the Xcel link and they use vehicle to grid (V2G) to accomplish the energy storage. The regulators are going to want a prototype to work for a while to prove the design. Without major regulatory changes, NONE of the proposed solutions can be implemented within ten years (recall the PSCs have to approve changes in transmission infrastructure). My guess is that we will need all of the available technologies and a longer time period (15 to 25 yrs) for implementation.
I would also be interested in knowing if the ten year clock is based on scientific consensus or the worst case figures.
I don’t think whats confusing Mr. Margolis is his age, but rather his class and privilege. For the intelligentsia and similarly privileged groups whose interests are bound to the status quo (exploitation of others) the issues being discussed are largely theoretical. For the majority of the world the environmental and (inseparable) economic issues are much more practical. Although climate change will affect everyone, it is quite obvious it will affect people very differently according to social class and geography.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that, at the present day, one of the main dangers of civilization arises from the inability of minds trained in the natural sciences to perceive the difference between the economic and the technical- Lionel Robbins 1957″
I agree it is critically important not to fall back on “preconceived” notions about social institutions. If there is one thing my studies of political economy over the past several years have taught me it is that our current economic system not only reproduces greater and greater inhumane conditions but also is incapable making the needed changes for sustainability. I will not try to convince those who believe otherwise here in this limited space, but I would reiterate the urgency of addressing the tired defense of this system which has increasing been the only defense over the past 15 years: the endless mantra of TINA- There Is No Alternative. We must create alternatives, and there are stories across this page of entrepreneurs and activists making strides far faster when they are geared towards meeting our needs rather than a competitive profit margin.
That is not to say we should not try to influence corporations, politicians, and academics/scientists or to suggests that people are not capable of seeing past their own interests. However, increasingly:
“[W]e have to see “officialdom” as people who are judged and judge themselves in terms of the functional goals of the bureaucratic structures for which they work. Their sense of self worth, their income levels, status and life chances are in good measure tied to whether their agencies get that land, build that dam, or strip that coal. We thus cannot appeal to their “better natures,” because to do so implies that they commit a sort of sociological suicide and resign from their perceived organizational communities. They are in good measure beyond reach; they are Heath’s robots in action. At best we can try to redefine their interests for them; more likely we will have to oppose them.”-
Plaut, Thomas. 1978. “Extending the Internal Periphery Model: The Impact of Culture and Consequent Strategy”. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Lewis, Johnson, and Askins Eds. Appalachian Consortium Press P.362
Both opposing and redefining the interests of the powerful and complacent will require a popular base ready to use force (not to imply that this force must be in the form of violence). We will not mobilize such a base with plans of “minimal invasiveness” that seek to maintain as many of the worlds inequalities as possible. We may judge the protests of our plans’ inefficiency by privileged and respected members of business and economics by their claims as to what is most efficient (and consequently what Mr. Margolis has apparently been trained to consider non-”controversial”).
According to Lawrence Summers (Former President of Harvard University, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Clinton, and nephew of Paul
Samuelson and former son-in-law of Kenneth Arrow, both winners of the Nobel Prize in economics.):
“Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging
more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:
(1) … should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country
with the lowest wages.
(2) … I’ve always thought that under-polluted countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably…low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City…
(3) … The concern over an agent that causes a one-in-a-million chance in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to
get prostate cancer than in a country where under-5 mortality is 200
per thousand…
The high-priests of economics whose empty scriptures produce sermons like the one above (excerpted from the Economist Magazine) are kept well funded and comfortable by the 1% of the population who control nearly half the world’s wealth. To them and theirs I would say:
“You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”
The food riots occurring around the world this week as food is consumed in profit maximizing biofuels schemes which do nothing for the climate and the looming recession in the US are just the beginning of the crises young people today will face. Don’t get to bogged down worrying about about the “foot-draggers” there are so many more poor and working class people in the world who don’t require pleading and persuasion, only some education and organization, to spring into action.
Apologies, I just realized that I snipped too much from the Rev. Lawrence’s 1st point of argument above, it should read:
(1) The measurement of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends
on the forgone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From
this point of view a given amount of health-impairing pollution should
be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country
with the lowest wages.
Translation= their suffering and very lives are worth less because their labor produces less valuable commodities
I never knew I had class.
Seriously, I agree that you can change the system such that you can put up any energy technology you want. However, if the technology does not yet exist you will run into the proverbial brick wall. An entire grid filled with current wind and solar technology will simply not work without an adequate amount of energy storage. And no matter which economic/social system you employ materials need to be obtained/processed and energy must be expended to maintain the current global population. Yes we need to do better (more recycling, minimize mining, no-till soil techniques, etc), but the physical needs are real.
I must also have been misunderstood: I am NOT in favor of keeping people in poverty. It is the march of development that is one of the drivers behind greater energy demand in the developing world. Besides the industries described by Ryan, public health facilities such as water treatment and hospitals require energy too.