The Biden Plan: a growth initiative borne of capitalist desperation
Climate change is "in the news" now. I really don't know why. Weren't the news-makers, the stenographers of power, all better off denying it until it kills them? You know, like the people who put up signs next to devastation zones saying "climate change is a hoax"? I live near people like this. Here's a thought: go to a factory farm, and tell the animals they're all going to be slaughtered. Would this knowledge do them any good?
No journalist on a salary wants to admit the truth: a few shreds of human life left the coming era of climate change will be preserved, maybe, if we jettison the capitalist system and try for something more cooperative. This can be accomplished at any time, the main question being one of how much we want to save. At any rate, if the planet is burned to a crisp and there's a resultant famine, the journalists won't be able to eat their money. And they're certainly not going to Mars with Elon Musk's money. So, everyone endorses infinite economic expansion on a finite planet undergoing climate change. Here we go, kids!
It isn't really a matter of "we only have so much time." Well, a lot of people only have so much time, but those who have heard the alarms sounding for quite some time now have found some sort of safe space to wait it out until those who are busy dying are finished. Rather, the strategy to be pursued is one of saying "jettison capitalism" until someone who's listening finally asks, "how?" First, before it happens, we have to want it.
Time Magazine has a big spread on the climate now. Justin Worland's headline article is about "the pandemic remade the economy. Now, it's the climate's turn." Biden's jobs plan y'know. Rolling Stone magazine had a big spread on the climate last month -- yep, Biden's jobs plan. Recently it's come out: the Biden plan involves Da Nookz. Now, notwithstanding the fact that my Mom's Dad died of the side-effects of radiation from the Hanford Nuclear Facility when I was three years old, there are some reasons why the interest in nuclear power isn't really about sustainability. But to add something to the six reasons listed:
1. The problem with uranium, apparently, is that the great preponderance of uranium ores are low-grade, meaning that a whole lot of environmental destruction has to happen for the sake of not a whole lot of uranium. (And if thorium were the solution, they'd be doing a lot more of it now than they in fact are.)
2. When they say nuclear power is "carbon-free," they just cite the nuclear reaction itself. The stuff that makes the nuclear reaction possible is still based on fossil-burning. The whole idea is to supplement the fossil-burning -- but sssh! Don't tell!
3. Are you down with this?
4. This problem would be solved with socialist nuclear power -- but the socialism would have to be of a better variety than what they had in the Soviet Union.
5. And the pundits complain about basing the grid on solar power!
6. Has the waste problem actually gone away? I mean, not in the minds of theorists who discuss breeder reactors, but in actual practice?
At any rate, back to the topic at hand.
There are plenty of critiques of Biden's jobs plan as not enough. The best is that of Stan Cox. As Cox points out:
The only strategy, it seems, is to infuse the U.S. economy with trillions of dollars of funds for energy and other infrastructure, then hand the keys over to the corporate sector and wait for them to figure out how to wean the economy off of fossil fuels.
But the main motivation of the corporate sector is profit, and profit includes profits off of fossil fuel assets. So that won't work.
Cox also points out that Biden resides in the Land of Dicey Promises. An example:
Biden himself has noted that fossil-fueled power stations can be made ostensibly “carbon-free” by capturing exhaust from the smokestack, extracting almost all the CO2, and injecting it belowground. This has not actually been done in practice (except as a technique for extracting more oil, which does not reduce emissions), but just the idea of carbon burial has long enabled governments and utilities to formulate “net zero by year X” emissions targets.
Cox concludes:
When the new White House fact sheet on the climate plan tells us there are “multiple paths” to reaching “carbon free” electricity and other goals “while supporting a strong economy,” it’s not talking about eliminating fossil fuels; rather, it’s implicitly referring to reliance on gimmicks like carbon-capture schemes or forest-based offset programs. (Under the latter, landowners can simply refrain from cutting their trees and thereby earn carbon credits that they sell to utilities or other companies, which can use the credits as permits to keep burning fossil fuels. The result is an overall increase in emissions.) Electric utilities are counting on the continued federal laxity toward fossil energy as they make plans to build a staggering 235 new natural gas–fired power plants in coming years.
The Biden plan is the capitalist way of pretending to do something about climate change. The fact of the matter remains that actually doing something about climate change means, at a minimum, taking large portions of planet Earth out of the category of "assets," and the quicker and more thoroughly this is done, the better. It means creating a NOT-CAPITALIST infrastructure, an infrastructure guiding the entire economy into a managed degrowth pattern away from fossil fuels. It's going to look bad on their statistics: GDP won't rise, and the DJIA won't benefit. And this appears to be something Joe Biden won't do, and something Bernie Sanders won't push Joe Biden to do.
So it's time for a revolution.
Comments
This was also in my Facebook feed:
IEA: Mineral supplies for electric cars ‘must increase 30-fold’ to meet climate goals
This, you see, is the result of trying to duplicate the existing system on the basis of "alternative energy." Toward that end, I move that we create a new military draft. Only CEOs and corporate middle management are eligible to be drafted, and the military will be employed to draft these corporate lackeys into service as operators of lithium mines.
Patriotic duty calls!
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
I like alternative energy just fine
if it's not being deployed by a capitalist or any other for-profit system--or a fascist one.
You have to have a system that seeks the survival of humanity and the persistence of human civilization. If you don't, your system won't make the right decisions no matter what policy it endorses. Everything is affected by what your real ends are. If your real goal is to maximize profit, (Fortune 500, Wall St, the City of London) or to kiss the asses of those who do (politicians), or to concentrate power into your own hands (CIA, etc.), any policy you say you support, no matter how good it sounds, will get twisted.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
It seems to me
the only way to feed any suvivors of the coming end of agriculture is to flash freeze any new deaths and store them in Antarctica for future consumption.
At least it's not Soylent Green.
s/
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
You can't store them in Antarctica
it's melting.
"Pop -- Fizzzz"
opening a can of worms: I comment on
Point # 1. The problem with uranium ores are that they are low-grade (as they are of low concentration and natural concentration processes are rather rare), given the reality of geo-physical processes. Fusion reactors as well as thorium reactors have their on set of problems but those issues will continue to intrigue a subset of my clan.
Point # 2. Nuclear power is not "carbon-free" by any reasonable definition. So ... Shout the Truth to The World.
Point # 3. Are you down with this? Hell No!
Point # 4. This problem will never be solved with socialist nuclear power or any other political crap.
Point # 5. The pundits have their heads up their asses.
Point # 6. Has the waste problem actually gone away? No and the problem is here to stay. I say this knowing more about this than any of you want to hear about from me.
The only way nuclear power could be even remotely acceptable is if Admiral Hyman G. Rickover were still alive and viable ...
RIP
Point 6 has me worried too,
even though I’m not a chemist. As soon as I learned about half-life, I realized the danger of nuclear power. I’ve seen programs about the problems of storage and the problem of how to warn distant generations who may no longer know how to read the warnings or even know what they mean.
Those who push for nuclear power like to ignore any facts they don’t like. The facts won’t ignore them, though.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Sad but unfortunately true
Two worst cases:
First was the Nuclear Engineer teaching at ASU. As a grad student I got on his bad side by "covertly" correcting his most egregious errors whenever possible.
Second was the Engineer that taught a Nuclear Physics course where I came on as a new faculty. I was able to get him in hot water by causing the Rad License for the College to be revoked. I managed to survive (weather) the storm. This fellow died of Mercury Poisoning a few years later despite my suggestions of "Don't Do That" over the intervening years.
Yep, facts have a way of dealing with those that have a different view of reality.
believe it too
unfortunately the stupids in power
live too long
guess it may be their diet?
Ha
question everything
Our 800 Military bases
around the globe and the flights to and from these 800 outposts of our Imperialism, need re-stocking of supplies and re-cycling of troops.
In and out. Day after day. Our military is one of the single biggest hogs of fossil fuels and biggest single polluter.
My simple suggestion is: 1) Close most of the bases and outposts. 2) Ground those planes.
I said simple. Not likely to occur. A Sci-fi book I read recently pictures eliminating 60 flights from the sky simultaneously with cluster type drones. That solved the problem for a while. People were afraid to fly and the skies cleared up.
Sci-fi fantasy. But I like it.
NYCVG
with you on that
shut down the bases, retrain the troops for domestic
re-structuring, and phase-out the military expenditures.
Sci-Fi is an intelligent approach to the future.
Strangle the needs for flying around the world and
find the less toxic methods of 'traveling'.
Save our globe!
question everything
Same as it ever was.
You might find this worth reading, it's long but good: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/28/bidens-climate-plan-its-too-late... The headline could apply to any of our modern ills, but gradualism relabeled as revolution is the best we're going to get from this death cult.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
Nice Essay Cassi
We enrichen and grow our economy off of economic externalities. If we had to pay the real long term costs of extracting fossil fuels then we would not have anything close to our current infrastructures. In fact, extracting these sequestered forms of carbon would be strictly forbidden, except where they can be captured and re-sequestered. There is no money in capturing and long-term sequestration of carbon. On the other hand there are vast amounts of money is extracting more fossil fuels and burning them. How does that work into the capitalist model? It's so predictable that we are screwed. I don't see the possibility of fixing this as it runs contrary to our DNA and greed. I work towards climate sanity only because it's the moral thing to do.
I see Biden as a relief from Trump in one sector, in that he is not a climate change denier. On the other hand he is light years away from proposing any real solutions. As he is a dyed in the wool capitalist and imperialist. It's kinda like the conservatives are idiots and don't mean well, and the liberals are idiots and don't mean well, but have convinced themselves otherwise.
I agree with you Cassi, the only solution has to include Socialism. We have to do what is right for society and that is orthogonal to everyone maximizing their own profits (Capitalism).
The Soviet Union had some good ideas and some people in Russia dearly miss it. It became a dictatorship of the professional politician, and you know what I think of them. The next iteration needs to avoid that by rules and by a system that draws the best and smartest technical minds into running the country. Capitalisms starts with the premise that we are to stupid to run our own country therefore we let the Capitalists and the Oligarchs help themselves to all the political and economic power they can. We do this also in every government structure we build. The British system of class and power is in our DNA. The Chinese system has clearly destroyed any deception that our form of democracy and economic system is superior. Some people just refuse to believe it . It's amusing that Biden, or whoever programs him, believes that we are going to economically out grow China. Ha, and Ha! I just finished doing a spreadsheet that compares the production of useful commodities based on volume and weight, not USD. I used 11 critical commodities, from cement to chicken. The results- The Chinese economy is 9.0 times the size of the US economy, and as a bonus the Russian economy is 1.4 times the size of the US economy. So where is all of that economic activity in the US. You know where it is, in the bullshit sectors, based on pork, economic rent, and imperialism. There are three bright spots in the US economy, airplanes (Boeing), fossil fuels (running out) and Soybeans. But what part of the work force has anything to do with these?
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Here's someone's blog post on the topic:
https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/2021/02/what-woul...
What would it take? A revolution.
Just as a footnote, I kinda think the metaphor of "overshoot" is inappropriate. What are we overshooting? Things are going to die, people are going to die. We know this. Technology isn't static. People aren't static.
Rather, our model of ecotopia needs to stop looking so much like the world we currently live in. And we know which direction we should choose when opting to change the model.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
During my church-going days I got to know a family
whose matriarch (from the UK) had married an American GI after WWII. Her father was a baker and the GI stationed in the UK during WWII really like the bread the baker made. The GI suggested the baker take a contract to supply the local US military base with bread. The baker turned it down because his regular customers would no longer be able to buy his bread. He turned down short term profits for the good of the community. The world would be better if more people were like him.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Hear here
potential profit does not equate
to investing in societal benefit
question everything
A proposed Hydrogen Project in China worth watching.
A pilot project to see if current hydrogen technology is ready to become a successful energy use alternative. China’s hydrogen dream takes shape in Shandong
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Quite a lot could be done with hydrogen
although in the example you cite the hydrogen "factories" are dams - with significant
negative environmental downsides.
I've heard proposals for using dams (this was in reference to those on the Columbia River) to feed power into the grid as normal when demand is high, but to divert it to hydrogen production during off-peak times.
That seemed sensible.
China’s Hydrogen Society Beginning to Take Shape
Europe vies with China for clean hydrogen superpower status
Coming soon to an ocean near you: Radioactive water.
Speaking of nuclear power plants...
Meanwhile China asserts that the US put Japan up to this
...in order to provoke China. And the are correct.
.
Expressing what it called “grave concern, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a written statement:
,
US war crimes and attacks on China are coming fast and furiously, now. The China Seas are teaming with US war ships, while US bombers conduct frequent fly-overs.
,
The water can be evaporated, for example.
Greenpeace criticized Japan’s plan to release the treated Fukushima water into the ocean and said there are other options that should be considered.
“Rather than using the best available technology to minimize radiation hazards by storing and processing the water over the long term, they have opted for the cheapest option, dumping the water into the Pacific Ocean,” the group said.
I am not surprised
On several occasions I have pointed out that the EPA doesn't properly track radiation in the dust carried in the air that we breath. And, it has not do so since the Radiation Network of sampling stations was created. Nobody cares. The releases will not amount to very much as dilution occurs, so go back to sleep, and pretend I said nothing.
Alternatives?
Can it? Without releasing more radioactivity anyway? I didn't see what Greenpeace's
proposed alternatives were.
I hate to defend anything about the Japanese nuclear policy, but it's clear there is not much point in just accumulating more and more of the partially treated water above ground.
There is not an ideal techno-fix for every problem. As this particular problem is the result of greed, stupidity, really poor policy decisions... it is particularly galling that there is not an easy fix for this but the decision to do a controlled release of the water *may* be the best among undesirable options.
Just looking at the current storage setup, I very much doubt it would stand up to an earthquake approaching the one that took out the plant - another would likely mean a massive and uncontrolled release.
We should save some outrage for the Japan and US government's failure to recognize and support the horrific injuries suffered by US Navy personnel aboard the carrier USS Ronald Reagan which was only a few miles offshore when the reactor explosion occurred - its water system contaminated, Japan and Korea refused to let it dock and it was forced to stay at sea for a further two months until it was finally allowed to dock in Thailand.
Numbers of the crew have died and many others seriously ill or disabled, but the USG, Japan and Tepco have all tried to shut down efforts to have their plight recognized and compensated.
Extensive article from Mint Press explains.
Wow, South Korea disagreed with us?
That makes me happy.
Of course, they have every reason to, as they will definitely be impacted, but often S. Korea behaves as, well, a client state.
I'm even happier about this than I was when France decided not to support our reckless banditry in Iraq.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Not to be a shithead, but a place as earthquake-prone
as Japan never had any business going nuclear in the first place. And I'm shocked that they did, given their history (and our part in it).
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Belt and Road
Not that I'm averse to dispensing with capitalism if there are better alternatives out there...
Or that I disagree with the characterization of the Biden "green" (as in astroturf? a 7-Up PET bottle?) initiative amounts to a colossal boondoggle.
But holding up China as some sort of alternative model doesn't stand up well to scrutiny.
Pretty comprehensive article here
Then there is:
source
and this - from 2013 - about all that has changed is that although the population is no longer really growing food self-sufficiency is decreasing:
China's food security is threatened by the unsustainable use of water resources in North and Northwest China
Taisheng Du Shaozhong Kang Xiying Zhang Jianhua Zhang
First published: 12 November 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/fes3.40
Japan, too is going to get a grim reality check on food supplies one of these days. Import (calorie basis) about 70% of their food and are still burying rice fields for houses (despite having millions of unoccupied ones) convenience stores and such. Much farmland also just abandoned due to lack of farmers to work it.
Plenty of water, though. Which has likely not escaped China's notice.
The Epoch Times
is the propaganda arm of the Falun Gong, which is the funded regime change arm of the see-eye-a. Any thing that comes out of there should be suspect and as credible as the New York Times.
IMHO
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
When I think of the environment
and nuclear power I think about the people left behind in disasters. The world moves on to something new and leaves those harmed behind. What happens when there is no place for the world to move on to? Mars? We were designed to live here, this is our garden of Eden.
https://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/people/index.html
Wow.
wow. No further comment on those beautiful people who are doomed.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Well said.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver