Month: April 2015

The dutch state is in court, sued by the Urgenda foundation and about 800+ individual citizens. They crime it is accused off is one against future generations, it is accused of not doing enough to target an emissions trajectory that allows global average temperatures to remain below 2 degrees Celsius more than pre-industrial levels.

It is a difficult case, because the causality and direct victimization are hard to prove. Also there needs to be some benefit from any conviction which will take the form of the court ordering the dutch state to keep with a certain more agressive emissions reduction trajectory.

The demands are not unrealistic, because several european and non european countries are targeting twice the reductions Holland is targeting. So clearly judgement there is that this is the right thing to do, and feasible. Holland is stuck with a right wing government that has paralized en effective response to climate change since about 2007.

This option of legal action is advised by the legal experts, it has taken 3 years to develop its momentum and justified recourse to the court (because you can’t go to court if the government was somehow responsive to the demands). We investigated the options for another tactic one can apply for climate action which is altogether more agressive, but worth mentioning in this context, it is described here.

Right now the judge is considering many aspects of the case, from whether it is up to a judge (instead of politics) to consider these facts to whether the claims made by the state are true and those made by Urgenda are true, to whether there are real victims and benefit. It could be the case is dismissed on a technicality, it could be the case is dismissed because any order to act is superfuous (the state is considered to be doing or promising to do enough). We will know more on june 24th, when the verdict is delivered.

Basic agreed assumptions

• Climate change is man made and can be influenced by policy
• Current policy is not ambitious
• Furthermore
• Holland has had twice the ambition but this is reduced by the right wing government
• Emissions Trading Scheme
• The scheme will retain a surplus of about 2 billion rights
• Many states have suplemantary carbon taxes to reduce CO2 This is allowed within the EU

Carbonleaking

• Emissions moving elsewhere due to measures
• Companies moving to less strickt countries
• Predicted that any reduction of emissions will be 82%-88%
• Carbonleaking to outside the EU is not observed

 Lawyer explaining to the court that reducing emissions early is a lot more effective than later, and that one can lose the chance to control temperatures below 2 degrees.

Further Remarks

• The court can not argue that it can’t act because of ineffectiveness
• The state claimed it was tied to EU ETS, this is not true
• The economic crisis has caused an emissions reduction
• Emissions targets need to be independent of the economic situation
• The state will have to choose stronger targets to achieve their stated reduction goals
• Germany targets a 55% reduction in 2030 which is much more ambitious than the EU target
• English reports show that the EU target of 40% in 2030 does not suffice
• The EU economy will suffer 0,04% from more ambitious climate policy
• If the EU doesn’t stive for more ambitious targets the cost will have to be carried by emerging economies
• The EU talks about 80% in 2050, but 80-95% was originally required
• The EU target of 40% is not certain due to a ‘flexibility clause’ that requires all members to match the commitments.
• To achieve a 40% reduction in 2050 we need 25% reduction in 2020

The court should and has no reason to not dictate at least 25% in 2020 The court can dictate a faster trajectory, as is followed by Germany We have 1000 Gigaton emissions left, which will run out in 2035, meaning that we should be 100% carbon neutral in 2035. This means we have to do the maximum possible at the shortest possible terms. Current trajectory makes 2 degrees Celsius unavoidable. This drives citizen to demand the court to order the state to take stonger action. Remarks second lawyer

• What the state does is a matter of politics.
• The state has been locked up in a “You first” mentality.
• All negotiations have failed to meet the required targets.
• We are facing 4 degrees catastrophic climate change.
• Dutch government is aware it is not meeting targets.
• Binding reduction targets are no longer the goal of the climate conference.
• Holland doesn’t negotiate at the COP 20 meeting.
• Targets for the COP20 meeting are already set and for 2030.
• All emissions should stop asap
• CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years
• Warming is linear with emissions
• Zero emissions is expected to be reached in 2050-2070

Dutch State Defence Responses

• State is aware of climate change and the need for action
• Since 1995 governmental action was to keep below 2 Celsius degrees warming
• Holland can not do it alone
• Holland is pleading for climate action at the COP20 meeting in Paris
• There is no legal binding law telling Holland to reduce emissions
• The emission reduction target can not be checked on validity by the state
• Any decision by the judge should be to some advantage, what is that advantage? It has to be new law. And a judge can not order the creation of new laws.
• As long as Holland is acting on the climate threat a supplementary ruling by the judge is unecessary.
• With current targets extra measures are needed to achieve 40% reduction in 2030.
• Climate problem is a global commons problem, needs to be tackled together
• Limits should be widespread and pervasive in each industry plus monitoring.
• In 2014 Holland has -pledged- 100 mljn in the green climate fund.
• Human rights only valid within the participants of the human rights agreement
• It is not yet sure that the 2 degree targets are not going to be met.
• Risk will always remain
• EU court judges climate and other diseaster responsibility in terms of specific risks and victims.
• State considers itself to have a wide margin for action, so it can not be forced to specific constraints from Urgenda
• Judges should not talk about specific targets
• The conditions of the unjust act are not met, there is no clear causal link.
• Also the human rights act does not force countries to protect its citizen.

More details to follow..

Verdict

Verdict will be delivered on the june 24th at 10:00 am.

Link to the text of the Urgenda side (dutch)

A Basic income has been on the lips of a growing number of people. Switzerland recently held a referendum on it, an income of about 2500,- Euro per citizen. Some pundits (not real thinkers) like Guy Standing try to create a new class of people, the Precariat, just another name for ‘the poor’, trying to sell raising people out of poverty as somehow the effects of a basic income (duh).

 

There is nothing miraculous or innovative about the benificial effects of giving poor people some money

What is wrong with his ideas we explain below. Other ‘examples’ are the way Alaska pays its citizen an annual divident (because it sells its oil). Again nothing different from simple common economics. Also quite often people are shown talking about a basic income as a response to automation, focusing on job losses and the impossibility to find any work that generates income. Still most of these people miss the key ingredient that would make their argument solid as a rock, because : Yes, automation is making it impossible to earn a living for a growing number of people.

Wealth =  Materials x Skills x Energy

The big mistake or ommision in these examples and debates is the focus on money and jobs. This focus leads to a lack of attention to the key incredient necessary to support a basic income. Most people don’t understand that if you say : “Money is not enough to support a basic income, in fact, if you need it you will surely fail” because to them money is something independent of everything else, a controlling currency that can be applied to problems like water quenches thirst.

Money is a means of exchange, so if you think it has value you have to specify what money represents to make that true

Money represents something. You may say it represents everything you can buy with it, but that hides the fact that to MAKE everything you can buy with money you need something more fundamental, which you have to be able to buy with the same money. That something is energy. To buy bread you need to buy the energy to bake it, plough the field, irrigate, mill, transport etc etc. Right now that energy is owned by oil/gas/coal or renewable enery companies first. They need money or they won’t deliver the energy. You need that to happen to have your basic income. Unless you find a solution to that need, you will see one of two things:

1. You can’t get people to make the money available, the energy lobby doesn’t allow it, money given away will buy their stuff.
2. You get a stipend, a bit of money accepted by the energy lobby. This money however does not create a sustainable basic income situation you envision (the Alaska situation).
3. Even if the energy lobby is ok with it, banks don’t like the idea because it decreases the competitive atmosphere that drives companies into debt. They will lose customers as well as a way to scare workers into doing shit jobs.

The idea of the basic income can not work unless the resources needed to sustain the recipients of that basic income to come from the recipients. So we can create a basic income society that lasts forever with any group as long is this system does not depend on anything from outside the system. As long as we use fossil fuels or renewable sources that are not part of the system that condition can not be met.

You can’t build a basic income scheme if you are dependent on people outside it to support it

Doing an experiment where people recieve a bit of money without  having to work for it without creating a closed system is simply subsidizing the manufacturers. It has been going on for decades in the form of easy jobs, economic booms like the dot.com and housing bubbles. The economy provides people with a basic income when it makes it easy to earn the money to sustain onesself. Now because fossil fuels are under growing pressure, these types of incomes are being cut and the fight is between those that think the ‘precariat/poor’ should die and those that want to find a solution.

A working Basic Income scheme

What basic income scheme would work? The answer lies in looking at the complete system, including all the inputs needed. The key to making it work lies in not depending on anyone for the basic necessity of energy. Energy combined with skilled labour (and automated systems) can use available resource, waste even and recycle it into whatever is needed. This is how farmers lived for millenia, with fixed recyclable biomass, solar energy (and occasionally wind), and locally manufactured technology.

We don’t claim we should go back to some primitive society, only that those societies where autonomous, people didn’t have to work all the time, there was always something to do for who wanted it, and there was plenty of food for everyone. Today we can do even better. The setup we can choose is the following:

1. People wanting a basic income can pool their resources to unburden the food supply chain from all recurrent energy cost. Farmers can produce all the energy they need to work the farm themselves, make fertilizer themselves, repair their equipment themselves. This is the firs step. Using a new currency a basic income is distributed to those in the pool that allows them to get their daily food, essentially for free or in return for a bit of work. This is an example of an extraeconomic closed system, but it can be interwoven in normal society.
2. The pool of basic income initiators will replace all energy needs in important parts of the economy with renewables in return for currency to buy the products created with the energy. Either the raw materials will become owned by the basic incomers or they will set up renewable based waste recycling plants to gather them where nobody wants to look. This is part of a strategy to reduce cost by applying renewables, and creating currency to allow those that reduced the costs to buy the now nearly free products.
3. Basic incomers adjust their lifestyle to fostering a growing closed, mostly local system that provides them with what they need. They can use automation, technology and their own labour, but what they guarantee themselves is that they can stay alive and healthy.

There is even a perfect demographic to become basic incommers, and those are the pensioners and retired people of the world. If they invest their money into the renewable resouces to build local closed systems to sustain themselves, they will not only secure themselves against fossil fuel calamities but will also be the first generation to enjoy a truely sustainable lifestyle.

Money can facilitate trades that are not possible by barter, so introduction of a currency in itself can free up economic potential

The observation that poor people benefit from free money is nothing to be surprised about. What they mainly observe is that money can create economic liquidity, meaning it can allow equitable exchange of work over larger timespans. This is true even if the money doesn’t buy anything to begin with.

Wrongheaded VPRO documentary about Basic income

‘Duh’ talk : Money for poor people activates them

Generation basic income

Basic income as a way to deal with outliers?

Basic income2013

Karl Widerquist talking about basic income

More sources to be added soon.

 Basic income meetup

 

Yep, integrated

We’re witnessing a development in car driving that has yet unexplored consequences. It is an example of automation and it should lead to less cost for all, because computing power is dirt cheap and cars will be all electric and freely charged (because sunlight is free isn’t it?).

But an alternative scenario is more likely. It is one in which autonomous driving becomes a service you need to subscribe to. How to introduce it? Through the trusty tool of big everything : Fear.

Already some are comparing the safety of autonomous vehicles to those with drivers. As the security standards of driverless cars have to be higher than cars with drivers the safety argument will be used to push every car towards being autonomous. This opens up some possibilities.

First people will be told they are irresponsible if they drive their dangerous cars themselves, and slowly driving will become a thing of the past, everyone sitting in cars moving from A to B autonomously.

As this happens there will already be quality difference between one autonous car and another. Differences in acceleration, turning, routing, general speed and ability. This will develop in a competition between almost equal systems. This happens because fossil credit banking will create a competitive environment to load each competitor to the maximum with debt. A trick they use all the time.

Driver monitoring station, empty of course, what don’t you get about ‘autonomous’

Because of the ubiquity of wireless, autonomous cars will become centrally controlled by a big computer that models the movements of all cars. This allows predictive driving, anticipating roadblocks and adapting speed to allow optimal interweaving of traffic. All this requires a lot of computing power, in fact, it will be the question if what will be claimed is computed will actually be, because routing problems are NP complete, meaning the time to compute them explodes very quickly and real answers soon take more time to compute than there is left in our universe. Multiply that by a couple of billion cars.

So the centrally offered driving service will never be perfect, and will require real computing power (even if such is not delivered, meaning as a non driver you can no longer oversee whether the car drives a smart route or not). We’ll have bronze driving for suckers in the lowest cost electric cars, then silver driving for workers that need to be on time and feel rewarded, and gold driving for those that don’t need to be anywhere they don’t want to be. All subscription services, monthly fees.

If you don’t work hard to earn enough, your driving will SUCK

Result : Everyone will be paying for their car on a contiuous basis again. Autonomous cars turn out to be a gateway to totally dependent cars.

This scenario nicely demonstrates that it is possible to gain no freedom from automation, especially if it delivers a complex service we can’t perform ourselves. In the case of driving many will be scared away from driving themselves, hoping to live longer easier lives. But all will have to work to earn the money to drive somehow, just like today, while we are seeing a window open where we buy a car and never have to pay for fuel or driving again (Tesla being the most prominent).

There’s a lot more to say about the future mentioned above, but let’s see if the scenario painted actually materializes.

We’ll say it first, with good reason : Prices of renewables will go negative soon. This will be a result of two factors: 1. Production cost will go negative, meaning production can happen without returns 2. Governments will adopt a policy of maximum rollout speed, aided by the negative costs.

How can cost of anything go negative? The first step is to be able to originate the products without help. Think of a well spring which produces water, it has to because of geology and rainfall patterns. Nobody has to buy water to replenish the spring, it flows on its own. The same way solar panel producers will find they have reduced cost in the supply chain to zero, and can go negative. How is this done? By using renewables in every step, renewables owned by the producers themselves.

Negative electricity prices in the US

Paint a scenario in which a solar panel factory has to source its silicon, glass, aluminium from different producers. First it cuts cost by using solar electricity to refine the Silicion (which has to be separated from oxygen and purified in an energy intensive process), this already happens. Then it can cut cost by turning the glass manufacturing in gas based to electrical, and providing the glass producer with solar panels to cover its melting needs (another silicium oxide proces by the way). Third it sources the alumium from iceland, where it is processed using geothermal heat at competitive cost. This is the start of the process of cost reduction, but ultimately the cost will not only be zero, they will go negative. How?

 Negative prices in Europe

For a while now we have seen negative electicity costs in the european market. Germany at times produces to much wind electricity, and as storage is being delayed by the fossil credit based economy the market price of megawatthours of electricity can go as low as minus 200 Euro. This has promted a dutch aluminium smelter to restart its operations. How nice if you can melt aluminium when the cost of doing so is zero or negative!

There need to be many changes in the production and logistics chain to get real negative prices, so a bonus for installing solar for instance, but it is an eventuality that seems unavoidable. Not only because it makes good business sense, but also because for instance, energy storage will lag behind the rise in production, so the use of the energy in production processes will become very attractive and stay attractive for ever. The obstruction of storage by the central distributing fossil based producers will bite it in the tail.

Holland will soon have an aluminium smelter, its own silicon refiners and solar panel factories. It can recycle glass with clean energy. It may be the first to produce at negative prices, extraeconomically, if it doesn’t sell to the international market.

Of course governments, as they are being cleansed of climate denier and fossil fuel lakeys, will become more agressive in preventing the catastrophic changes we (as predicted by the IPCC) see unfolding under our eyes. Part of that is not only going carbon neutral, but going seriously carbon negative. It will be come clear that we can do that, so leaders will step up that will do that. Like Paris no longer allows a roof to be carbon neutral, dictating it has to be either a green or a solar roof, governments will dictate there can be no unused space, roof or garden that could catch carbon or reduce emissions.

This possibility of negative prices shows the invalidity of classic fossil credit based economics

But there is another step that will change the game completely. That is the advent of what we call Extraeconomics. Extraeconomics is the framework of thinking about Extraeconomic zones. What are those? Extraeconomic zones are zones that 1. Have no ties with the world economy, 2. Run entirely on renewables and 3. Are dedicated to increasing carbon capture. They will come about because economics is too greedy and to dirty to fight climate change effectively. We have written about this before see here.

The key to Extraeconomics is to aknoweldge two facts : 1. Economics is about exploitation of available resources. Not the creation of them. Using fossil fuels. and 2. Renewables redraw the map of economic viability of our planet. Areas that before looked like they where uninhabitable now suddenly look perfectly capable of sustaining life.

The first fact is what has been getting us into this diseastrous state of near depleted resources, toxic oceans and atmospheres. The reason being that the economic model works like this : You see an opportunity to create a product or service of value? Ok, we give you the fossil fuel credit to bring that about. In return you help us keep money scarce (pay interest) and we can enjoy some of the fruits of your labour.

What this amounts to is :

• You : “Hey, a pristine forrest! If I had fuel for chainsaws, trucks and the sawmill, I could sell the wood into ‘the market’!”
• Bank : “Ok, here’s fuel credit. We’ll be rich!”

Versus

• You : “Hey, these are fertile lands for tree planting. If I plant trees here and wait 12 years I can cut them down and do the same thing as the other guy.”
• Bank : “Hold on! That’s 12 years of investment without returns! And how much fuel do you need? Not much huh? Ok, scram buddy!”

The above happens every time when the value to be traded is a result of a long process. This is why resources are being depleted. Oil itself is a good example, it’s “Get rich now” stuff as opposed to waiting 250 million years for plant biomass to fossilize and turn into coal, oil etc.

So there needs to be a separate paradigm to restore and replenish earths resources, and it can not be based on bank investment models (which are designed to run a fossil fuel credit system). Even though one may invest fossil fuels in an extraeconomic project, it will never produce a return to any lender and what is more shocking, it will produce value without bringing it to the market. What it will do is keep the community running it alive and well.

Extraeconomics is about overproducing carbon capturing commodities and not selling to the market

We will see that with the rise of renewables and the dire situation humanity finds itself in combined with the feasibility of extraeconomic projects, these projects will be set up and extraeconomic zones will grow in the heart of Africa, Australia, Chile and other now barren regions. The oceans similarly will become a tool to grow food and recapture carbon. All these things will be possible because renewable energy is so much more abundant than fossil energy ever was, and it is spread out over the surface of earth. It will bring about a revolution from the myopic city oriented visions of the future to one where people live across the globe, connected, productive and happy. One in which ‘classic’ economics is dead, and nobody is mourning.

 More about the carboncredit economy and extraeconomics

[Update 8-4: Well, perhaps the below post has become a irrelevant as Tsipras has agreed with Putin to build a new Greek pipeline from the turkish border into Greece (which putin hopes will supply as far as Italy). This sellout means Greece will be a slave nation like Ukraine for the forseeable future. Tsipras can be quoted as “Greece is a sovereign nation” but he obviously is to weak to notice he sold out. Its always easier to negotiate when you’re too lazy to do anything painfull. This move also means that Greece is less protected by the EU countries as long as this stupid antagonism (which started over gas) continues]

Greece is in trouble, it has build up a significant debt with the ECB, IMF and other creditors and it doesn’t generate the money to serve those debts. Yanis Varoufakis explains how the debt Greece has was only a tool for the German economy to allow its exports to grow, so more a gift to Germany than to Greece. He is right when het describes a system in which rich countries circulate money to foreign countries to drive their own economies. To him the predicament Greece is in is just a lack of honesty about this strategy on the part of banks, a strategy that never served Greece. That’s what he’s been trying to make Germany see in the last weeks, with little succes.

The fundamental flaw he points out in Greece is that it can not produce enough interesting products to generate export revenue sufficient to be independent of the (selfish) external cash injections. The idea of loans to Greece (as long as they where not of the Goldman Sachs loanshark type) was to give it the challenge to create enough exportable goods with 100% of the loan to generate income for say 5% of interest payments. That is the basic principle of investments. It didn’t work because in reality they where not investments, they where money to spend on European imports. They did nothing to reduce Greeces lack of export potential.

Yanis’s thinking on Greek debt.

The current fight Yanis has is to get rid of the ‘debt’ in a way that doesn’t drag the country down into chaos, as the banks maintain that the primary objective was never for Germany to help Germany. Why? Because a completely broke Greece still has a lot of value the banks like to monetize on. What Greece lacks is control over these malignant sharks. Also Europe can not afford to break the pretense of these self interested ‘investments’ because the system they are part of keeps the Eurozone together.

Money Greece borrows is spend on fossil fuels, which are burned without leaving anything to pay the interest on the loan

It is easy to see how Greece needs to produce Euros to pay the debts, while it also needs Euros to function. It now rings the doorbel of Russia (and other parts of the BRICS group) and asks for help there, which should not be a big political thing, but what can Greece offer Russia in return that would not ameliorate its problems with Europe? Russia and Europe are in the middle of a rearrangement to reduce the gas dependency of Europe. Greece imagines itself as a hub for Russian oil and gas, and if that happens it certainly can count on financial support from it.

The system Yanis has to demolish is the carboncredit system. He can with renewable energy

The sad thing about all this is that this would not reduce Greeces dependency on foreign cash, it would start to work for Russia in moving the dangerous and polluting hydrocarbons, to be burned into the atmosphere at immense cost down the line. It would perhaps develop gas/oil dependent industries usefull to Russia, but it would stay weak as it is now.

The alternative though is for Greece to literally fight a war of independence. It would have to reorganize itself in a shocking way, to make the greek citizen realize the energy and food potential the country clearly has. It would have to mobilize to create so much renewable energy capacity that it can take care of itself, produce goods and services for itself, without the need of exteral (carbon)credit. (We all know that money is primarily a means to allow the owner to purchase fossil fuels, or allow it to be purchased to support the production/logistics/sales chain).

A destructive too course for Greece also creates European tensions 

Of course this state of independence shall -never- be, because Greece is weak and that is pretty usefull to all its neighbours, that is, independence won’t be allowed, it has to be fought. Yanis doesn’t seem to contemplate it now, but he (or his replacement) might have to if the country wants to escape more and more humiliation and depravity.

A Greek currency gives Greece control over the activities of its population

One important step to take for Greece is to get a handle on its own workforce and market. It has to reinstate an independent currency to achieve that, it can stay in the Euro, but part of mobilizing its workforce in more flexible ways is to reinstate a Drachme or perhaps a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was suggested as an Apri Fools measure, but it is not far off. The problem with Bitcoin is that lots of foreigners own it, it has to be mined at great energy expense, and the blockchain servers are few and not in Greece. It would be much easier to simply start a Greekcoin, even using the same ledger system as bitcoin, just without the mining.

Pockets of autonomy would have to be developed, primarily in agriculture sector

Having an internal currency would allow Greece to peel away parts of its economy in which it doesn’t need the Euro. Parts that are more or less autonomous. Those Euro’s can be used to pay of debt and get rid of loans. This would start a ‘mining’ operation to find and develop autonomy in Greeces economy. A major tool in that efford would be the introduction of renewable energy and sustainable farming methods.

Hmm.. not so foolish after all?

The ‘greekcoin’ approach would also enable Greece to mobilize workers and direct activities in its economy outside the control of the Eurobankers. Even if it doesn’t solve the debt, it allows flexibility to implement changes that will reduce dependence on Europe.

We may have entered an era in which no region is ever allowed to develop (economic) independence, for simple security reasons. Most problems today emanate from independend regions and nations.

Introduction of the Drachme is often described as an exercise where the Drachme will be worthless or have some fixed value against the Euro. The key is that Greece doesn’t have to care what its internal currency is worth against any external ones. It can even prohibit the exchange and mandate (similarly to countries) that the Euro is used for some transactions and the Drachme for others. It just needs to use its currency to the best effect for Greece.

The altenative to loyalty to a Greek currency is mobilization and forced labour, or dependence

It seems Greece may not be there yet, it may not be ready yet to put it’s shoulders under such a currency, like it would put its shoulders under a rebuilding of the country after a world war. That is the effort needed from it to become independend, to escape the fossil fuel credit chains. Maybe it finds leaders that can inspire it to move that way, but more likely at this time, as it is not mobilizing and working frantically to reduce it’s dependence, it first has to sink deeper to see the key ingredient to free itself : Renewable energy.

P.S Perhaps Greece should follow through on building the first Rossi e-cat power plants as multiple studies report cold fusion is real.

Update : Asking for war reparations doesn’t solve the issue, although it does create an opportunity for Germany to build and install renewable energy capacity in Greece that can help the country sustain itself. The worst that can come of such a request is increased antagonism in Greek society against Europe and Germany, while the problem is only with the economic policy, not with its people. Those that want Greece to destroy itself will surely polarize whoever they can over this issue.