by egoldstein » Wed 17 Aug 2005, 23:30:48
I was only introduced to the concept of Peak Oil maybe a year ago, by someone who has had life-long business experience in the Petroleum industry. My introduction to Technocracy was about three days ago, so forgive me if I'm a little weak on background facts, though I've been reading with gusto.
Carbon-credits issued each year as a right to every individual on the planet has been advanced as an idea by Richard Douthwaite of FEASTA, Ireland (Foundation for the Study of Sustainable Economics -
http://www.feasta.ie ), as both a human right equally shared by all people (not governments or corporations), and a potential form of international currency, and also a way for people in developing countries (or, say green-living people in developed ones) to receive an income by trading them to people who needed them for industry. He based this on a belief that we all have equal right to the air, or to use the sky as a "sink", but that it should apportioned to us equally, and in accordance with the ability of the sky and biosphere to recycle carbon.
FEASTA (which means "enough" in Irish), hosted a conference about 2 months ago, called "What will we eat as the Oil runs out?". I won't detail it right now - the three days covered dozens of topics from from Peak Oil to "Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes"; but being from a skeptical, farming background, I was highly impressed and much inspired - most especially by the thrilling end speech by the head of the agricultural department at the university that hosted it. Ironically, this is the last university-level agriculture department in Ireland, and it is to be subsumed into another department. In the EU now, we are all going to fly-in cheap food from the third world grown on petrochemicals, and the farmers will just make the countryside look nice for townspeople, you see.
(Don't get me started.)
One of the other participant's session was on "The Energy Farm", and how it could be the literal Power-Bank of a community: generating renewable energy that would be a backing for local currency.
It was thus fascinating to be introduced to a system of economic thought which placed "Energy Certificates" near its core.
Mr. Douthwaite and another FEASTA lady also hosted a workshop on public conservation and value-recapture (by taxation) of "necessary resources".
They were using a neglected system of political economy which may be of interest to posters here - ideas that I only came across two years ago, when I was beginning to suffer serious disillusionment with free-market libertarianism (Rothbard, Mises, Hayek et al.).
To recap some earlier observations:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')
Axioms - Observations-Empirical and Scientific Laws (1) What holds any physical system together is energy. Energy is needed to grow maintain structure and advance to a higher level of organization.
(2) In a closed thermodynamic system (i.e. planet Earth) energy is provided by a free source, actually a nuclear fission reactor, called sun. Mineral forms of energy may exist (i.e. uranium) or can be reduced to (uranium->plutonium conversion) but the feed stock was provided by someone else (call it God, Big Bang, or whatever you want to call it)
(3) No form of energy is ever produced by a human or anyone else; energy is merely transformed to disorganised states. Uncontrolled transformation leads to entropy. Controlled transformation lead to the emergence of structure in a sub-system of the overall global system and entropy in everything else
(4) None can have claims over energy because they cannot produce them. Energy was provided for free by the universe (even though we have to dig for it) and the actual flux is finite. No human or machine action can increase energy above and beyond the total maximum afforded by (2)
(5) No structured system exists without a physical basis. That system can be natural (i.e. life, ecosystems) or artificial (your laptop/PC) but a physical basis is a prerequisite for existence
(6) Since physical systems need materials and energy, different systems will inevitably competing for the same amount of energy.
Energy appropriation is a zero sum game . Maximizing the flux of energy allocated to any subsystem of the global system leads to increased structure (or increased numbers) of that system to the detriment of everything else
I can't disagree with this generally, or see a solid objection. However, what you are saying about Energy here, is just as true about Matter (another form of Energy, or literally: embodied Energy).
1) This entire "Material Matrix" of Energy and Matter, I would suggest, sits in a different category to human beings and their products - I do not mean to suggest that we are not material, energetic beings. But rather, humans, although bound by physical constraints, are able to discern what natural laws there are, and to use these for their own benefit. While squirrels prepare for the winter, humans can actively plan - we have more degrees of freedom, we can use natural forces to shape matter and energy into new patterns. More complex patterns do not inherently use more energy than simple ones either - a knitted wool sock drops just as fast as a pebble of the same mass. The latest analogy I have (stolen) for this is "the gas-guzzling couch potato versus the lean-thinking permaculturalist". In terms of chemical composition and caloric intake, they might be equivalent: but the patterns of matter an energy the latter shapes might support twice his number than that of the former.
Although the substance of us and our products are on loan from the "Material Matrix", the patterns, shapes, and forms we give them belong to us. This includes both the benefits and liabilities thereof. This also avoids little nasties like slavery from creeping in (we own ourselves and the fruits of our labour). It could be said that any system that deviates from this is unsustainable.
2) In the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was common in economic parlance to classify "the Material universe, absent human beings and their products", as "Land". It was a fundamental factor of production, along with Labour, and their synthesis in physical Capital (or embodied Labour impressed on Land derivatives, as it might be described by Henry George). I've been studying George, because his thought seemed to offer a way out of the general unease I had felt with the free-marketeers. (e.g. should poor people really be arrested for stealing water from a privatised public well? Who decides when property begins with natural resources? Oh, well, the market will take care of that!)
His proposal followed from and developed an earlier idea of "Economic Rent" by Riccardo. This is the idea that any part of a natural resource (or monopolised resource), that is more valuable (and scarce) than the least valuable part of that resource in use, will yield the owner an unearned return or increment above that less-valuable part. A very simple analogy is two halves of a prairie, A is more fertile than B. If I own A, I can out produce the owner of B, but only through exclusive possession of A, i.e. not by doing any extra work or investment of capital. A more developed example would be the site-value of an square foot on a high-street, compared with the site-value of the same area on the outskirts of town.
George saw vast inequalities of wealth, even as an abundance of wealth was being created, in the cities - he had also seen the development of these cities from frontier outposts where natural opportunites were still largely unbounded, and poverty was rare.
He proposed that the unearned increment from owning natural resources (including site-value - the monetary value of physical space in a city) or "Economic Rent" be collected for the benefit of the community as a whole - to replace taxes to fund public goods, and even to distribute as a dividend.
This is largely the system in operation for oil royalties to be distributed to residents of Alaska and citizens of Norway.
and again:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '[')b]Human Activity in an isolated thermodynamic system
(1) Any man made system (i.e. machine, other humans, societies) has to compete for energy with everything else.
This also seems precisely what drives up the price of site-values in cities - Land (either the economic category or the everyday meaning) is the ultimate fixed-factor - static in supply. When you own any part of it, you are in a way a shareholder in the ultimate monopoly that can extract a dividend from anyone who needs to use it. Rising site-values (a species of the Material Matrix) in cities create leap-frogging development out of them, and suburbanisation as a fleeing from the speculative land-value bubbles; suburbanisation and sprawl which is also enabled by... cheap oil.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '[')b]Organizing principles of human societies
...
He owns his existence to other human beings that were supported by the system and hence has to repay the system (and the other individuals who indirectly supported him) . “Quid pro quo” is in the form of participation in the democratic process, and system supporting services. Individual pays back the system, the system provides for the individuals. Reciprocity extends in space and time
You might hand to google "Harry Hooton The politics of things" for a taste of the latter
