Judith Curry says
A few weeks ago I spotted this quote (https://spectatorworld.com/topic/the-climate-change-conformists/):
” “Climate change” is just a mental tattoo — a phrase we invoke with an air of scientific sophistication to give some sense of knowledgeability about the unknowable.”
That statement pretty much sums up the whole thing. Climate ‘science’ has become boring, mostly dotting i’s and crossing t’s (or worse yet, crossing i’s and dotting t’s). Even if we assume the science is ‘settled’, the policy discussion is even more boring – infeasible solutions that even if successfully implemented would very possibly leave us worse off than doing nothing (such has having inadequate electricity and fuel for heating during the winter).
(source) (https://judithcurry.com/2021/12/30/year-in-review-2/#more-28190)
Post COP 26, how do
you feel about "Climate Change"?
Lots of work remains to be done, we have decades of wasted time to make up for.
The jerk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics)) is unlikely to be as strong needed though.
Ah! A physical metaphor for social-economic policy pretending to be about a physical phenomena... :) Do you expect (or hope for) a calamity large enough to convince us to "get with the program"?
Do you claim the goal is an ideal (stable) climate?
The "program", as you call it, is ending a century of substance abuse. This did not happen at the speed it rationally should have, so there will be adverse consequences.
Those consequences will be there for us all, whether or not subgroups are "convinced". And yes, as a "program" we have moved on from science to engineering.
The substance you mean is -of course- petroleum, usually called oil. (But coal is also a form.) And its uses are myriad, as I'm sure you know. With what would you replace it?
For heating and fuel, there's electricity -- and the obvious source is nuclear power. (I'll let
you explain why it hasn't caught on...)
For chemical manufactures, there's
what, exactly?
as a "program" we have moved on from science to engineering.
The science is so politicized that it's become too contentious for serious scientists. Climate science has become a realm for activists, politicians, and grifters; of course, some -those few who wisely keep their heads down and continue their work without fanfare- will continue, and there's much to learn. But the public "debate" is poisoned.
Not to say there aren't and won't be more technological improvements to energy production and storage. But there's no replacement for oil...
Add your "yet" to that and what you have is a campaign promise.
If your concern is over pollution, then indeed engineering is the key - together with prosperity. Without wealth other concerns take precedence. And the proven path to prosperity is abundant energy.
Climate science was politicized for decades by science denialists, but it doesn't matter that much anymore. There were dozens of those threads on old D&D, but the world has moved past that now.
The substance you mean is -of course- petroleum, usually called oil. (But coal is also a form.) And its uses are myriad, as I'm sure you know. With what would you replace it?
For heating and fuel, there's electricity -- and the obvious source is nuclear power. (I'll let you explain why it hasn't caught on...)
For chemical manufactures, there's what, exactly?
Fossil fuels to be exact, so petroleum, coal, fossil gas and peat. The last one is fairly marginal, and kind of proto-fossil anyway, the other three are splitting the total climate emissions fairly evenly between them. And agreed, oil is the odd one out of the three, as it is used less for energy/industry like the other two, and more for transport and petrochemicals.
Petrochemicals aren't really the primary concern for emissions. The extraction, refinement and transport of oil have significant emissions, as have the production of plastics, but still relatively small compared with the emissions from burning fossil oils. And the largest use of petroleum is as fuel for fossil (ICE) cars.
As batteries get better fossil cars are disappearing from the new car market. In Norway 3 of 4 new cars sold today are electric (https://electrek.co/2021/12/03/norway-again-shows-all-electric-car-future-closer-than-people-think/), 1 of 5 are hybrids, leaving only 1 out of 40 cars diesel and 1 out of 40 cars gasoline. EU used to be well behind Norway, but is catching up, with 1 out of 4 cars now electric or hybrid.
Here in Sweden 1 out of 4 is electric, 3 out of 10 are hybrid (https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/02/most-autos-sold-in-sweden-are-now-plugin-evs-over-54-in-november/). leaving fossil cars the minority. China is close behind the EU, 1 out of 6 cars are electric/hybrid (13%/3%). The US is lagging, but as roughly speaking the percentage of EVs doubles each year, fossil cars are turning into legacy. Not on the road though, fossil cars remain the majority for many years to come. Even in Norway 5 out of 6 cars are fossil, but as almost all new cars are electric and almost all scrapped cars are fossil, the proportion will change.
Again: What generates the electricity? Some areas maintain hydro facilities, but they are increasingly disfavored. Where is the
push for nuclear generation?
Climate science was politicized for decades by science denialists, but it doesn't matter that much anymore. There were dozens of those threads on old D&D, but the world has moved past that now.
:) Ah, yes!
Denialists! (
We won't mention the
catastrophists...) Yes, the world has moved on, accepting the nature of the debate: Fanatics can't be reached by reason; evidence is of no importance and the "consensus" is maintained by
excommunication... The dogma of AGW is deeply entrenched and demands obeisance and tribute.
But
not results -- at least, not beneficial results. What's the latest estimate of -best case scenario- temperature
increase forestalled by 2050? By 2100?
(And by "best case" I mean at least that the commitments and promises made by political entities are kept. A very doubtful presumption, no?)
The "
Is there an anthropogenic climate change?" mock debate was never climate science, at least not in this century. It is about as relevant as discussing phlogiston theory. Even those funded by the fossil economy have moved on to other delaying tactics. That leaves those still to this day insisting on "climate hoax" or similar left behind. In the words of the
late Douglas Adams: Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
So not a very interesting or fruitful topic of discussion.
Scenarios for 2050 or 2100, now you get me interested. Global average temperatures are guesstimates based on policies and promises, neither of which are very reliable, but we may course correct as we go.
(https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/04/Greenhouse-gas-emission-scenarios-01.png)
Climate Action Tracker have an update based on the most recent batch of promises and policies (mainly connected to COP26),
(https://climateactiontracker.org/media/images/CAT-2100WarmingProjectionsGraph-PNG-2021.11.width-1110.png)
Now, this is as mentioned a promise tracker. As a rough estimate half the promises are held, half are not.
From these baselines it is possible to construct actual scenarios.
Again: What generates the electricity? Some areas maintain hydro facilities, but they are increasingly disfavored. Where is the push for nuclear generation?
Oil is not used much to generate electricity, though the relative share might increase if other uses decrease. Our global use of energy including electricity is likely to increase, though not necessarily by a lot. There are large efficiency gains to be had, so the richest countries are likely to continue on their current path, getting wealthier while using less energy.
The very process of electrification is in itself a huge efficiency gain. While electric vehicles take energy from the grid, the energy used is far lower than the energy consumed by ICE. Emerging "middle-class nations" also have a huge efficiency potential. Poor nations, that use very little energy, don't. Their energy consumption will grow with growing wealth, as will the consumption of middling countries. All of this indicates a modest total global increase in power consumption the next 30-50 years.
In the same period we need to phase out fossil fuels completely, which today provides the most of the energy supply. So we have a major global shortfall over the next 50 years.
In "bang for the buck" in this coming period, there is a clear winner. There is a Moore's law for photovoltaic cells that will not end any year soon. For almost half a century solar PV has gotten dramatically cheaper per kWh, and this will continue for decades more. Other power sources will not be able to compete on this measure. Not coal, not gas, not wind, not fission or fusion.
However, this leaves us with a problem when
– and here in Sweden where
– the sun doesn't shine. As a Californian you know the duck curve. This, the electricity grid, production and logistics issues, and the economics of a rapidly improving products (if you build a solar farm today you will soon compete with newer farms having lower costs) will constrain the ever-higher rise of the sun.
Coal power plants and nuclear power plants can't really perform that well in such an environment, because they provide flat output of energy. Same output at midday when energy is very cheap as in morning and evening when it is expensive. (That incidentally als makes nuclear a fine replacement for coal power plants, where conditions are otherwise suitable, they have very similar characteristics)
This is a reason hydroelectric is back in vogue. They can provide balancing power, and have a built-in energy storage as well. However they have a large environmental impact, and there's a limited selection of available rivers. Gas power plants (fossil gas or not), and garbage incinerators can provide balancing power too.
Here in Europe, the northernmost continent, the energy profile is different. Here wind is the greater power, fortunately at the time of year when the need is greatest. But wind is more unpredictable than sun, so the need for balancing power is just as great.
Have you considered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power) solar power collection from Earth-orbit?
And -since you haven't replied yet: Might I offer some reasonable words from Roger Pielke, Jr. on Policy Causality (https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/policy-causality)?
It's great, if you're already in space. To supply the terrestrial grid makes no sense, even if it were feasible. Similar with the old SF trope of asteroid mining, it makes no financial or engineering sense. The energy to accelerate the minerals to the Earth is higher than the energy expenditure to mine them on the planet.
All other power sources on Earth are way cheaper, way more convenient than orbital lasers.
To supply the terrestrial grid [from space] makes no sense, even if it were feasible.
No sense? As in no pollution, no land-use issues, no trading carbon credits...which only move the "bad stuff" around! And little need to rely on fossil fuels for electricity! (Do you really disbelieve that most of the world's electricity is generated via the burning of fossil fuels?)
As to feasibility:
The technology exists... And -thanks to Elon Musk- reusable boosters are finally here. Something that we (...space aficionados) have waited decades for! While orbiting laboratories are important, it's time for the commercialization of space. And solar power collection seems to me the next reasonable step in that process. Manufacturing should be concurrent; hence the lure of mining... (Will it be cheaper to lift materials up the gravity well than to propel through mostly empty space?) Of course, some folk would prefer we keep our feet on the ground -- even if much of
it has to be given over to PV "farms"!
It's easy to be dismissive of technological advances But it's hard to prevent them.
You're familiar with his Starlink program? Note the complaints against it...
But if we're back to available, cheap energy for which the infrastructure is already in place, we're back to fossil fuels.
There are no land-use issues with solar or any other form of power generation. The land spent on energy is miniscule. Half the land mass of the planet is, mostly inefficiently, used for agriculture. We use a lot more space on roads, and you Americans on parking lots, than we will ever use on energy.
Renewable energy produces very little pollution, and as the energy sector bootstraps the carbon emissions decrease as well. Furthermore the required recycling rate (in the EU) is at minimum 85%, likely to increase to 98%+. Try to recycle solar panels in space. Or repair them for that matter.
This is a classical case of "how can I promote product/technology X?", you have a product that It solves problems nobody have, to a much higher cost than benefit, to cause problems nobody need.
Space has no economic value to Earth, now or for the rest of this century. All projects are because we can, because we want to or because we're curious. All valid reasons, but no profitable venture (except for the middlemen in the space industry). But we can think of it as a (very) long-term investment for when not only we, but everyone we know are all dead.
I like to see it as growing an economy (https://jaxroam.medium.com/the-future-history-of-the-expanse-eb474d991268). Space doesn't have the resources we had and have, but still the space economy can grow to be self-sufficient, and when it is self-sufficient it can grow to become comparable to Earth, and when comparable it can transcend. Not in millennia, but in centuries. Assuming no OakdaleFTL drive by then, centuries is also what it would take to arrive at other star systems. However, assuming space sufficiency around this star system, shifting to some other shouldn't be too hard, though interstellar space is bleak. But all that is the far future for space machines and those humans who have converted into machines.
and you Americans on parking lots
There's also the fairly self-evident point that roofing parking lots with solar panels would also provide very welcome shade that is often lacking. (Although it'd be cheaper and nicer looking to provision some space for trees.)
Yes, solar panels can share and often enhance the area they occupy. They impact their environment in controllable ways. They generally have low albedo (the intention is to capture sunlight after all), creating an often undesirable heat island effect. But they also provide shade, and they can retain moisture. When not in the form of panels, but films, they can further adapt, e.g. by being semitransparent and/or flexible. They can be combined with indirect light.
So the trick is to combine the effects that are locally desirable and reduce those that are not. Generally sunny regions are hot regions, and PV panels work better where it is cool, so cooling effects are more desirable than heating effects. For similar reasons deserts are not ideal. Not only are they usually hot (or not providing solar energy), they are dusty. The usual way to clean off solar panels are with water, not something deserts tend to have a lot of.
However they combine nicely with hydroelectric (and other) dams. Not only are the dam surfaces unused and mostly unusable surface, panels reduce the issue with evaporation, often solved with rubber balls or some such. Furthermore the water cools the panel, and since both are power plants the hydroelectric plant provides balancing power to the solar plant, and the solar plants extends the longevity and utility of the reservoir in places with irregular water supply.
Intriguingly they also work well with fish farms. The fish seems to prefer the shade from the panels. This indicates they may have a useful role with #aquaculture, floating windfarms, refugia and other sea installations. Offshore windfarms seems to have an incidental effect as artificial reefs, so platforms, floating or fixed, may become multipurpose.
Anything marine is implicitly more expensive to build and maintain. But panels also play well with farming, #agrivoltaics. Different types of solar cover do well with different locales and types of farming (and many will be better off with pure farming or pure solar farms).
Cities are literally getting greener, with more vegetation, in part to reduce consequences of climate change, in part because they make city living more comfortable. Solar panels and films are likely to take some of the surfaces not appropriated by plants.
Here's an article about Estonia.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/01/06/europe-s-greenest-city-has-free-public-transport-and-highways-for-bees
Those EU nominations seem random. Judge for yourself how green the city is. The central parts have been widened and improved for sure during recent decades, but with buses and cars in mind, not necessarily pedestrians and certainly not bicylists.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkjTgaY0Qjk[/video]
Tram 4 I use most of all of the city public transport. Actually I use trains more than anything else, but trains are considered countrywide transport. At 8:18 in the video, just when exiting from a tunnel, are the office buildings where I work.
Those EU nominations seem random. Judge for yourself how green the city is.
I think these things are meant more as encouragement toward good development because otherwise a Dutch city such as Enschede, Zwolle, Leiden or Alkmaar would win every year for still being better at everything, which would be boring at best and discouraging at worst, even if technically accurate.
Or these days, perhaps Utrecht would be in the running again, unlike when I lived there for a bit. There was a 12-lane street where there had once been a canal, but the canal has been put back in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=587Ll81fyYU
https://eurocities.eu/stories/utrecht-from-car-to-boat/
Rotterdam is also de-Americanizing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXuI--ERWs4
certainly not bicylists. [1] (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=3960.new#fn1_3)
About a decade ago Antwerp won the best cycling award and as someone from the Netherlands who cycles in Antwerp almost every day let me tell you Antwerp's made great strides but it's late '80s Netherlands level at best. It's certainly a lot better than your video though!
I see. So it is like a rotating trophy title - everybody will get to be the greenest in turn. Maybe even like the "culture capital" title: Several capitals at the same time :D
I rewatched the video in my previous post more carefully to see how many bicyclists I spot. There's one at Kosmos stop at 4:47. He is supposed to ride on the marked edge of the car lane, but instead he is riding on the pedestrian sidewalk, against the rules as usual. Bicyclists only drive on their designated edge of the car lane when they feel suicidal. (I'm fairly suicidal. I occasionally ride on the tram tracks.)
And that's it. That's the only bicyclist I noticed in the whole video going through the busiest parts of Tallinn. There was just one and he was not brave enough to ride on the stripe designated for bicycles. Quite a well-earned "greenest" title.
There's the Paberi stop at 6:07. It's been revamped entirely for pedestrians plus the tram tracks. It is a very remarkable improvement from the pedestrian point of view compared to what used to be there last century. However, guess what they did to achieve this. They cut a whole new highway through the city, erasing some dilapidated blocks parallel to this pedestrian section. The logic is obvious: For every widening of pedestrian space, cars must receive at least as much.
I see. So it is like a rotating trophy title - everybody will get to be the greenest in turn.
I think there's a truth behind it, as the article I linked puts it:
“Tallinn [...] demonstrated commitment and concrete actions to create healthier, better places for its citizens,” said Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius.
I don't know who's to blame for the "Europe's greenest city" phrasing when it means something closer to the city in Europe that has arguably made the biggest improvements over the last few years. When you more accurately say something like "Europe's most greenifying city" it's obvious that it could still easily be one of the very worst.
Utrecht (where I've never been) has gotten a lot of positive press lately. I suspect in good part because of that humongous central station bicycle parking house, though it seems it is doing a lot of other things right as well.
Things tend to get conflated. What's good for the environment needs not be good for the climate and vice versa. What's good city life need not be positive for either climate or environment. Bicycling/(assisted) human-powered vehicles cuts the diagonal. It doesn't really do much for the climate, except that it discourages sprawl and encourages efficient cities. It doesn't do that much for the environment, except negatively by reducing the need for cars and roads. But done right it can do much for liveable cities. Done wrongly, it's another thing for pedestrians to worry about and reduce the life expectancy of bicyclists. Oslo used to be quite awful, it's better now.
I suspect in good part because of that humongous central station bicycle parking house
To be clear I'm fairly sure they already had some humongous ones; they merely renovated/replaced and/or scaled it up a bit. It's better marketing to say it's the largest in the world or to mention the new absolute number than to say that you have a few thousand extra parking spots.
Things tend to get conflated. What's good for the environment needs not be good for the climate and vice versa. What's good city life need not be positive for either climate or environment. Bicycling/(assisted) human-powered vehicles cuts the diagonal. It doesn't really do much for the climate, except that it discourages sprawl and encourages efficient cities. It doesn't do that much for the environment, except negatively by reducing the need for cars and roads. But done right it can do much for liveable cities.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here. "Good for the environment" always means something closer to "neutral to the environment." If you supply your winter heating needs by cutting some branches from your local trees which regrow it's neither "good" nor "bad," but that's exactly what makes it "good."
Of course it's theoretically possible to build "proper" cycling infrastructure that doesn't include plenty of space for green in the city, so you'd still have the environmental issues from paving over every little piece of ground.
Edit: just after I wrote that, this (https://twitter.com/WisconsinDOT/status/1487154690546708484) popped up on my Twitter feed to (kind of) illustrate the point.
Edit: just after I wrote that, this (https://twitter.com/WisconsinDOT/status/1487154690546708484) popped up on my Twitter feed to (kind of) illustrate the point.
It does not say it won some green(est) capital title. It won Excellence in Concrete Paving award :)
My point is simply that in the Netherlands, that same street would look more like this (https://www.google.com/maps/@53.0574022,4.8012311,3a,75y,159.68h,82.04t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUcDSVHx3SgR4wAzMVtZqxQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUcDSVHx3SgR4wAzMVtZqxQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D138.11195%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192) or like that (https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9543549,4.7760156,3a,75y,317.21h,84.83t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sQQVmuF-2zAmXzeIGteeu2w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DQQVmuF-2zAmXzeIGteeu2w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D284.12094%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192). The included greenery is good for both the "livability" (local environment), making it feel more pleasant, reducing heat island effect, cleaning air, etc., as well as for the soil because if you pave over everything it's more difficult for water to get away, the soil may not get enough water, etc. etc.
It would theoretically be possible to make safe separated bike lanes like in my second picture without including any greenery, with bollards or other forms of artificial barriers. For a Dutch example, see here (https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9582328,4.7588696,3a,75y,13.89h,80.97t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sySL2sCRPQsL5XXGv9k_jwQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DySL2sCRPQsL5XXGv9k_jwQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D65.43092%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192), for a Belgian one see here (https://www.google.com/maps/@51.1996499,4.3332512,3a,75y,236.76h,89.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sGhUfZgJbAHW8CJ2NuchP4g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192). Note of course that it's because it's a much narrower street than in the Twitter link above. In any case, it's a possible example where the best compromise may not include (much) greenery, though I remain unconvinced. And heck, it still somehow manages to have more greenery than that picture from Wisconsin.
But yes, I realize that excellence in concrete paving may not give any consideration to things other than concrete. Perhaps the concrete is excellent quality if you ignore the infrastructure design.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here. "Good for the environment" always means something closer to "neutral to the environment." If you supply your winter heating needs by cutting some branches from your local trees which regrow it's neither "good" nor "bad," but that's exactly what makes it "good."
In a way. The ultimate in environmentally friendly is a full self-erasure, "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints" style. Any attempt to better nature is to make it worse, and unnatural.
I am not sure about that, I think there should be a place for augmented nature. However, neither are what I meant, it was just a shorthand for avoiding environmental harmful externalities like habitat destruction and fragmentation, pollution, or resource abuse. And defragging nature is an environmental positive, if we take the current state as the baseline. Likewise rewilding is likely to be a positive.
From The Atlantic magazine's Weekly Planet newsletter:
3 Ways to Think About the SEC’s New Climate Rule
In 1966, at the height of the Cold War, The Wall Street Journal ran an ad that made a surprising claim: Every day, the Kremlin got 12 copies of the paper delivered. The Journal wasn’t boasting that it was helping to advance the spread of world communism, it was making a point: The publication’s coverage was the best guide to America’s “competitive, consumer-driven economy.” Unlike in Soviet Russia, the work of the American economy happens out in the open where everyone can see.
That openness is in part the result of regulation. Since the 1930s, the Securities and Exchange Commission has required public companies to publish certain financial information about their profits, dividends, debt, and risks. These disclosures help investors make better decisions about where to put their money, which makes the economy more efficient. (Well, at least in theory.)
On Monday, the SEC announced that it would add another layer to this set of essential disclosures, requiring companies to also release information about their climate risks. Starting next fiscal year, the country’s largest public companies—such as Walmart, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and ExxonMobil—must publish data about their greenhouse-gas pollution, their exposure to various challenges such as sea-level rise, and any plans they have to minimize their exposure to these risks. Some companies must also publish information about their “downstream” emissions, that is, the carbon pollution from customers using their products. (These are called “Scope 3” emissions in corporate-climate jargon.)
The rule is a big step, and it signals the growing importance of climate concerns in the business world: Apple, Amazon, and other tech companies already publish much of these data in their disclosures, and the country’s largest institutional investors have been clamoring for more firms to do so. Some stock-market regulators in Europe require similar disclosures.
In a sense, the federal government is requiring companies to account for their carbon in the same way that they account for their cash—and frankly the two do have a lot in common. Companies make thousands of debits and credits to the carbon system every day, just as they add to and subtract from their bank accounts. In both cases, we care most about net flow: profits and carbon footprint at the corporate level, scaling up to GDP and national emissions at the national level.
The new SEC rule is more than 500 pages long, and I haven’t read it all yet. “It’s awesome, it’s very cool, it’s overdue—and it’s also extremely boring and plain vanilla,” Ilmi Granoff, the senior director of sustainable finance at Climateworks Foundation, told me. Still, the rule is likely to stay in the news over the next few years. Only the draft rule was published Monday; the rule won’t be finalized until later this year, at which point it will face a long court fight.
So for now, I want to focus on just a few aspects of the rule here.
1. It takes aim at “greenwashing.” Corporate net-zero plans are growing in popularity, and they’re also … a little suspect. Bloomberg Green has found that the net-zero plans of 25 of the world’s largest companies do not actually add up to zero. Now, if a company has a net-zero plan, the new SEC rule will require it to disclose how it will get there.
Net-zero plans are “sort of the Wild West right now,” Madison Condon, a professor at Boston University School of Law, told me. “The SEC has already started to send letters to corporations being like, Hey, you have this net-zero goal, but nothing in your capital expenditures have changed in any way. Can you explain this discrepancy, how you allegedly are changing your entire business model in the next 15 years?” The new rule will help standardize these goals, making sure companies actually intend to keep the promises that they make in public.
One of the flukes of U.S. law is that while it’s legal to lie to the public, it’s illegal to lie to investors. That’s why, when New York sued ExxonMobil a few years ago over its failure to publish its internal science on the dangers of climate change, prosecutors argued that it had defrauded its investors above all. (New York lost that case.) The SEC is now saying that when a company publishes a net-zero plan, it is making a material statement about the future of its business, and it must be as careful to tell the truth in that statement as it would be when discussing its profits and losses.
2. It’s long overdue. The SEC has required companies to disclose their environmental risks as far back as the 1970s. Congress was first warned about the risks of climate change 34 years ago. And as the climate reporter Andrew Freedman at Axios has pointed out, in 2019, a Fortune 500 company—PG&E, California’s largest electricity utility—became the first to declare bankruptcy because of climate impacts. The general idea of the rule—that companies need to conduct the exercise of going through their statements, looking for climate risks that could spiral out of control—is so sensible, the fact that it only happened now is surprising. The delay reflects how long policy makers have taken to understand the destructive scale of climate change.
And I would add that even critics of climate-minded financial regulation—a group that has, in some contexts, included myself—concede that climate-related disclosure is “anodyne.” In this often controversial arena, mandatory disclosures are some of the most widely accepted policies out there.
3. It could get overturned anyway. In the hearing where the rule was unveiled yesterday, Hester Pierce, the SEC’s sole Republican commissioner, announced that she could not support the rule. She argued that it overrode the SEC’s authority, that companies already had to reveal climate risks under the SEC’s existing risk-disclosure rules, and that the new rule aimed to force companies to “do the bidding” of regulators. (She turned off her video for much of the speech, saying that it would “reduce the carbon footprint of my presentation on this platform by 96 percent.”
But she also previewed another argument that I suspect we will hear more of. She repeatedly implied that the SEC’s new rule ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine, a loosely defined principle that courts should look skeptically at rules that have “vast economic or political significance.”
Perhaps you can see the issue here. Simply dealing with climate change will require technocratic tweaks to many aspects of American law. In that way, it resembles cybersecurity or cryptocurrency—real-world shifts that could cause real damage if they’re not countenanced by our governance. Yet a faction of the American political system, particularly on the right, has decided that any climate policy is controversial, that anything touching this new risk should be taken up exclusively by Congress. Last month, a federal court ruled that the doctrine prevented the Biden administration from considering any costs of climate change when undertaking an executive action. (That decision has since been reversed.) Most important, the Supreme Court heard a separate—and potentially landmark—case last month that could essentially strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate carbon pollution.
A self-perpetuating logic has infected conservative jurisprudence in America; it risks finding that any rule touching climate change cannot be promulgated, simply because of its subject matter. Given the influence that conservative judges have over the judiciary, and especially in the Supreme Court, it could soon be settled law that even a minor climate rule confronts a “major question,” fit only for lawmakers to answer. If allowed to spread, this idea will bring U.S. policy out of the realm of the real, further discredit corporate planning around energy, and push the American energy system deeper into paralysis. If you think simply disclosing risks is major, wait until they arrive.
(Since they urged me to forward the newsletter, I feel no compunction at posting the relevant section in its entirety. Plus -for folks like
ersi who don't like to click on
my links- this is "easier"! :) )
Just a few quick points.
"[W]hen New York sued ExxonMobil a few years ago" was in 2019, after a four-year's long investigation... (Details (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/10/exxon-did-not-mislead-investors-a-new-york-judge-ruled-on-tuesday.html))
"PG&E, California’s largest electricity utility—became the first to declare bankruptcy because of climate impacts" assumes our recent droughts are "caused" by Climate Change™ and that those droughts "caused" the wildfires that incurred PG&E's astronomical liabilities...
The attribution of the droughts is of very low likelihood (to use the jargon), and the wildfires had more to do with land use policies and piss-poor forest management.
'it could soon be settled law that even a minor climate rule confronts a “major question,” fit only for lawmakers to answer' is -of course- a rallying cry! Our wise and benevolent bureaucrats and executives know what's best — for us... Coming early this summer (https://www.eenews.net/articles/supreme-court-weighs-major-questions-in-epa-climate-fight/), the decision in
West Virginia v. EPA will likely be jeered and derided!
The Great Greta may even be called upon to add het "How
dare you!" to the
reasoned debate... :)
Public companies are public. Clearly their impact on the environment is part of accounting, both for the shareholders and other stakeholders.
It seems to me that you presume a reliability of attribution (to man-made carbon emissions, of consequential "climate change") that even the IPCC has not...
If you don't know what your company is releasing into the environment, you probably shouldn't be running it. It is a question of accounting.
Targets and what you are going to do in the future are different, but not fulfilling them can be breach of contract. The new SEC rules don't seem to require that, just that if you say "I have a plan", you have to show what that plan is, not that it will succeed. But investors should then be able to discern between those who don't have a plan and those who do, and among the latter who has got a good plan and who has not. Companies with no or bad plans, and/or big climate exposure will be riskier investments.
Companies with no or bad plans, and/or big climate exposure will be riskier investments.
When
cult science comes to predominate what's usually called
environmental protection, indeed! But virtue signaling is still the most that is required...to avoid onerous regulation/litigation. :)
David Attenborough wrote a foreword to the Dasgupta review (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review).
Today, we ourselves, together with the livestock we rear for food, constitute 96% of the mass of all mammals on the planet. Only 4% is everything else - from elephants to badgers, from moose to monkeys. And 70% of all birds alive at this moment are poultry - mostly chickens for us to eat. We are destroying biodiversity, the very characteristic that until recently enabled the natural world to flourish so abundantly. If we continue this damage, whole ecosystems will collapse. That is now a real risk.
Given where and how I grew up (fairly deep in the countryside, engaged in farming activities with a notch above primitive level of technology) I thought the mass of wildlife vs. mass of civilisation was roughly equal. Yeah, if you want truth, don't be an optimist.
Economics is a discipline that shapes decisions of the utmost consequence, and so matters to us all. The Dasgupta Review at last puts biodiversity at its core and provides the compass that we urgently need. In doing so, it shows us how, by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute...
The analytical-contrastive (as opposed to holistic) mind that gave us modern science and the entrepreneurial (as opposed to contemplative) spirit that gave us capitalism tend to disregard the consequences of their own actions. The environmental concerns come only now, reactively, when the consequences of previous disregard are too obvious to deny.
Analysis is okay when you compare and contrast, e.g. plus and minus are definitely not the same thing and should not be mixed up. However, plus and minus are also interdependent - one cannot exist without the other, and if/when the one exists, so does the other. It is similar with ecology and economy. Economy draws from ecology, so in a complete account of economics ecology would never have been relegated to an externality. I'm sure ancient people understood this properly and considered ecology the more fundamental of the two, economy being a subset of ecology or a superstructure on ecology. But we have ruined it along the way, and have not learned any lessons from a number of earlier civilisations fallen due to disregard of ecology.
Dasgupta's purpose is to translate ecological reality into economic concepts and to make ecology amenable to accounting. I'll see this weekend if he succeeds.
have not learned any lessons from a number of earlier civilisations fallen due to disregard of ecology.
Note that the Easter Island for example was a completely made up hoax. Its civilization never fell (or at least not until Peruvian slave raiders captured most of the population).
Good point. I have wondered if e.g. Mayan civilisation had indeed been abandoned due to some ecological catastrophe or was it abruptly ended by colonial firepower. In the latter case the events would be analogous to the way Inca and Aztec empires ended (and also more in line with Mel Gibson's movie). Colonial era is not a too distant past (it is arguably even ongoing) so we should know better.
In some sense one could somewhat disingenuously argue that civilisation never ends for ecological reasons, only transforms. A staple resource ends, so humans will adapt, one might say. But I'd draw the line where humans must radically adapt or die. E.g. Vikings in Greenland did not last long, because Greenland could not sustain cattle, so Vikings went extinct. At the same time, Eskimos never had a problem. Maybe a few Vikings adapted and aligned themselves with Eskimo way of life, but that's indeed the end of Viking civilisation in Greenland.
The distinction here is between a civilisation (or high culture) and a way of life (low culture). A lower human culture does not affect the environment much more than the animals in the region would, whereas a civilisation reshapes landscapes and horizons so that it is the environment that either adapts or doesn't. But yeah, a matter of degree.
Dasgupta's purpose is to translate ecological reality into economic concepts and to make ecology amenable to accounting. I'll see this weekend if he succeeds.
I'm intrigued,
ersi! Who
again it this Dasgupta fellow? :)
The distinction here is between a civilisation (or high culture) and a way of life (low culture). A lower human culture does not affect the environment much more than the animals in the region would, whereas a civilisation reshapes landscapes and horizons so that it is the environment that either adapts or doesn't. But yeah, a matter of degree
Glad to see you acquiescing to the real world! (I'm not bothered by the "low" and "high" misnomers...:)
Perhaps you can let loose of your ridiculous partisan pejoratives long enough to
discuss...? Nah, you're a Never-Trumper, silly as it seems! You'd not know how to discuss anything with an American -who wasn't a
Demon-crat- or some other species of America hater. You've got your pride, after all...
[Did you really say SDI wa
evil? "You can't protect yourself from our attack! That's — provocative..." said the Kremlin, and -as a good little school boy- you believed it then (if you didn't understand it) and you believe it now, because —
jeez, you hate to admit when you're wrong! :)]
Shall we keep talking? I'd like to... But, of course, it's up to you: As you know, I don't care about "forum niceties" -going off-topic is, in this place,
de rigor, no?!
But you have a
persona to maintain... I'll understand if you demure.
I'm intrigued, ersi! Who again it this Dasgupta fellow? :)
His research was funded by British Treasury. At least somebody tries to come up with a complete theory for economic analysis. Not sure if anybody will make use of it though. In practice it usually suffices to be a good accountant to see through the defects of mainstream economics and also circumvent the defects, but it is long overdue to give a positive expression to a complete economics in modern terms.
[Did you really say SDI wa evil? "You can't protect yourself from our attack! That's — provocative..." said the Kremlin, and -as a good little school boy- you believed it then (if you didn't understand it) and you believe it now, because — jeez, you hate to admit when you're wrong! :)]
In my current job, I have to understand something called "dual-use goods". They are things that the counterpart says are for one purpose, but I have to know they can be, and are, actually used for a different, risky or criminal purpose about as often.
I have seen and understood doublespeak in action almost since birth. You, on the other hand, think (and say) that Reagan can do nothing wrong and always means what he says. Here's a hint: Reagan was an actor. And a politician too!
Reagan's Star Wars was not for defence or protection, obviously, duh. It was for military supremacy - when USA already had military supremacy. USA always had military supremacy. Take a look at history: When has USA ever been attacked? The answer: Never. USA has always been on the attack, but it has never been attacked by any other country. When USA purports defence, it is such a ludicrous lie that only the most brainwashed daily flag-worshippers cannot see through.
Usually it is said that Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex, but when I read it, I saw that it was a blueprint and a manual for how to bloat it.
And, different from you, I have no partisan bone to pick in this. E.g. JFK and Nixon were equally evil wrt Cuban crisis and Vietnam war.
Reagan's Star Wars was not for defence or protection, obviously, duh. It was for military supremacy - when USA already had military supremacy. USA always had military supremacy.
As usual, you ignore whatever is unfamiliar... Was not the Soviet Union's stated (and practiced) goal to subvert the world -specially the West, and the Americas, in particular- to Communism?
(There was a little kerfuffle about Party membership, here; in the '50's, the overthrow of our government by subversion was a no-no! My, how times have changed!:)
Why -you seem to ask- would any nation seek obvious military supremacy, over an adversary who intends that nation's demise? Gee: Let me think... When Reagan called the Soviet Union an
evil empire, he wasn't just reading the lines of some speechwriter... He spoke clearly about what "diplomats" dare not mention: Reality trumps ideology, and politics becomes meaningless when war is a real consideration...
The US had no (stated) aims of acquisition or subjugation of the territories of other sovereigns. The Comintern was a different animal, no? :)
Why -you seem to ask- would any nation seek obvious military supremacy, over an adversary who intends that nation's demise? [...] Reality trumps ideology, and politics becomes meaningless when war is a real consideration...
"Intends" is not reality. "Does" is. USA has never been attacked by any other country ever. This is the historical and geopolitical reality.
Of course, it is true that most of the actual conduct of politics - diplomacy - is fluff, huff and puff, i.e. just rhetoric, total non-reality. This is why you need to distinguish between words and deeds. USSR never attacked USA - and in the rest of the world they attacked much less than USA. Yet USA *did* accelerate the nuclear arms race with reference to protection from USSR - not in word, but in deed.
Not that USSR is or was anything good. No, it was evil. But USA is at least as bad. At least. I have no difficulty in stating that none of the major powers is any good, all are lying morally empty power-hungry war-mongering colonial imperial capitalist pigs. And USA trumps them all.
So well propagandized you are! (Says Yoda...:)
Mortality -since it became philosophical- is, for intellectuals, a "ball of confusion"! But the ole standby -Them vs Us- suits most people. (Which is to say, means little or nothing — except in times of crisis; then some will want to take a step back and look at what-all is going on, to see if thee's a more reasonable way of dealing with conflicts, conflicting aims, zero-sum thinking about same...
Communism always had (totalitarian) domination as its goal. American capitalism had — a good idea that it could promulgate...
I'm sorry for all the havoc and inconsiderate non-kow-towing we've engendered.... But, hey, life goes on! We can't all be plebes. (You-all can get your Telly free from our insidious influence easily enough, if your gub'ment will permit ya to!)
American capitalism had — a good idea that it could promulgate...
Capitalism is a bad idea, particularly in combination with the modern defective economics. Capitalism rewards insatiable greed. It encourages deceptive and shady business practices and is polluting the planet with impunity. There is no sense of responsibility anywhere in the system.
You can call the greed industriousness or free enterprise instead, but it does not change the fact that capitalism has no controls for consumer protection or environmental protection. Monetary profit rules and now we have the global consequences at hand.
Of course capitalism spreads easily, because the average joe is greedy. But this does not mean greed should be fomented. Lions eat lambs, but this does not mean lambs should be fed to lions. The average joe is greedy and the good idea is to restrict the greed, not foment it. Some regulation restrictive of the excesses of capitalism is in place in most continental European countries. Some in USA also, but there is a better systematised consumer and civil protection in Europe.
An even better idea would be to institute a system of economy where industriousness is systemically channelled to rewarding the provision of *necessities* first (as distinguished from *luxuries* such as houses you don't live in and *manufactured needs* such as batteries and connectors that only go to your Apple device, not anywhere else) and employing *sustainable means* second (as in recycling and renewable resources).
In practice, this better system of economy has been inherently or naturally or institutionally at work only in hunter-gatherer societies. I have personally experienced it also during the anarchy that was the transitional era during and after the collapse of USSR. The cracks in the economy appeared early in the Gorbachev's era, as soon as he legalised so-called cooperatives, which permitted some small private enterprise, particularly trade of anything that could be sold/traded in рынок and ярмарка. This caused grey economy to explode, while there was no administrative official bureaucratic capacity to account for what was going on in it, so it was basically untaxed, in effect black market rather than grey. And since it grew bigger than the official taxable economy - or big enough to threaten and replace it -, the official economy was doomed. As the regime collapsed with hyperinflation, shops became empty and money became purposeless, so countryside people like me naturally turned to tilling the land, which we had been doing anyway all along, even though it had been illegal.
When shops don't feed you, then you feed yourself, which just so happens to be the most meaningful (self-)employment for a human being, particularly when it is not a new way of life that you need to learn and adapt to, but something you grew up with. When you feed yourself from a given piece of land, you obviously take care that the piece of land remains productive across your lifetime, you avoid polluting it. And around your home you make use of any and all available materials and you do not throw them away after use - there is no place to throw them away to! - but rather make repeated use of them until they are completely exhausted. If inexhaustible, you keep repurposing the materials, i.e. recycling.
This is what I used to do with absolutely everything and it was perfect. In comparison, the current capitalist fads of recycling and sustainability are a painful joke and mockery, a scam and money grab in addition to all other scams and money grabs that we already have more than enough of in capitalism.
So the best time of my life was during the transitional era, when the government was not there and the society fell back close to a hunter-gatherer way of life. For most city people it was horrible times, but I was quite happy to have my city relatives around helping to toil and then share the produce. My industriousness was naturally channelled to the provision of necessities, even though my economic scope was limited to my extended family and immediate neighbourhood. A properly instituted economic system would enable a larger scope for small businesses.
In summary, even though this was clearly the most sensible form of economy, unfortunately this was not an instituted form of economy. It was a fall-back state in the absence of government. Eventually another government cropped up and began taxing so that shop goods, corporate brands and manufactured needs gained priority over the produce of the land. All the systemic evils of capitalism were viciously enforced with a vengeance.
Capitalism is a very very bad idea. And American capitalism is a global humanitarian disaster. You should be able to observe the *manufactured poverty* locally in the streets of SF and LA, those tents of homeless and the crawling drug addicts. At least things are esthetically not that bad over here.
Of course capitalism spreads easily, because the average joe is greedy.
I'm not convinced it spreads all that easily. If you look at it historically it's quite a top-down forced proposition. As you also retell yourself from a very different perspective:
All the systemic evils of capitalism were viciously enforced with a vengeance.
It might be instructive, ersi, to read Bill McKibben's Deep Economy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Economy)... :)
I have read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, probably a deeper thing.
How often you revert to mysticism! :)