[lbo-talk] catastrophy

Gar Lipow gar.lipow at gmail.com
Wed Mar 16 11:31:51 PDT 2011


On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Gar's technological fixes, assuming them to be accurate, are still in the
> world of fantasy. They assume that the evils of capitalism are grounded in
> the actions of evil capitalists

When the fuck did I say that? For the record my position is that they are caused, except very marginally, by structural flaws in capitalism and markets. Most of these flaws involve people openly doing jobs as best they can in ways that neither they nor most observers see anything wrong with, doing things that their role requires. There are contributions of people deliberately spreading falsehoods and so on, but that is very tiny compared to harm done by intelligent people of good will doing the best they can within a flawed system.

, and that simply isn't true.
>
> Corporations MUST, on penalty of self-liiquidation, cut costs, regardless of
> how damaging to people or to the earth that cost-cutting is.
>
> That is just part of what Tamas means when he notes that Rousseau thought
> capitalism was evil, Marx thought it was history. If you want to make room
> for elaborate technical 'fixes' of global warming, etc you have to get rid
> of the causes that make cost-cutting  essential: and those causes are
> inseparable from a social order built on commodity production. That of
> course is part of what I mean by freedom: the ability to make decisions not
> constrained by  internal relations.
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Gar Lipow
> Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:53 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] catastrophy
>
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Alan,
>>
>> While I appreciate that you pay attention to what I post to this list,
>> I also think that you over-analyze it way too much.  I was making a
>> simple point that people tend to be more scared by catastrophic events
>> than by continuous but far more dangerous peril.  So chill out man -
>> it is a schmoozing list not a seminar in litcrit or pomo theory :)
>>
>> Wojtek
>
>
> A couple of empirical points. There have been a number of studies
> suggesting that renewables without nuclear can replace fossil fuels at
> a cost comparable to fossil fuels. This is not necessarily a "soft
> path" because the cheapest solar and wind are large solar and wind
> farms that take advantage of economies of scale. (small isn't always
> beautiful even with reneewable energy.)
>
> A recent peer reviewed example:
>
> Jacobson, Mark Z. and Mark A. Delucchi. 2010a. "Providing all global
> energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy
> resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure,and materials."
> Energy Policy. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.11.040.
> www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
>
> Jacobson, Mark Z. and Mark A. Delucchi. 2010b. "Providing all global
> energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system
> and transmission costs, and Policies. "Energy Policy.
> doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.11.045.
> www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf
>
>
> Incidentally, Jacobson ranked power sources by social harm in another
> article.
>
> http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?Jo
> urnalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article
>
> Ethanol ranked worse than nuclear. Nuclear and CCS coal were ranked
> equal, so coal without CCS (which is all existng coal minus an
> experimental station or two) by implication does indeed rank worse
> than nuclear.  Hydro is barely better than nuclear.
>
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