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Topic: Climate Change and You (Read 1967 times)

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #25
Public companies are public. Clearly their impact on the environment is part of accounting, both for the shareholders and other stakeholders.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #26
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...
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
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Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #27
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.


Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #28
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. :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
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Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #29
David Attenborough wrote a foreword to the Dasgupta review.
Quote from: David Attenborough, Foreword to 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.

Quote from: David Attenborough, Foreword to the Dasgupta review
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.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #30
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).

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #31
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.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #32
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"[1] -going off-topic is, in this place, de rigor, no?!

But you have a persona to maintain... I'll understand if you demure.
I've seen threads I've started go sideways, into interesting -but non sequiter digression, that was worth my while...!:)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #33
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.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #34
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? :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #35
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.

 

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #36
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...[1]
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![2])
I be one such...
RJ, are you lurking? :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #37
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.[1] 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.
Things like farmer's market, community festivals, garage sales and other occasions/events like that. Cooperatives also operated sales kiosks.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #38
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.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #39
It might be instructive, ersi, to read Bill McKibben's Deep Economy... :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #40
I have read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, probably a deeper thing.

Re: Climate Change and You

Reply #41
How often you revert to mysticism! :)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)