Faced with the need to integrate our economic system into the surrounding biophysical ecological context that makes it possible, we see more and more challenges to creating and implementing policy that is politically disagreeable to politicians because they perceive it to be politically disagreeable to the electorate.
A carbon tax makes rather impressive economic and ecological sense, but we see little appetite for it. The furthest we see it go is to the idea of a carbon trading "market." This is an idea that is well considered by supporters of market economic principles. But as a matter of practice it is still fledgling and rather nebulous. Where it has been tried it is rather non transparent even nefarious as to its structure and function. Those who emit the most are (predictably) strongly against it unless it is another name for the status quo. Most of us are ignorant of what it really means or how it would work to reduce emissions (if at all).
But even after the a carbon tax can be demonstrated to be superior to "permit trading," little movement on it takes place. Thus, we hear the sigh of the activist after years of advocating and cajoling something that makes rational, economic and ecological sense. We also hear from many that to suggest (let alone implement) a carbon tax "would be political suicide."
So we forge onward with an economic system which is almost entirely out of touch with the resource base that makes it possible and leave it to the "invisible hand" (a rather misleading phrase worthy of unpacking as soon as possible!) of market pricing to determine the fate (supply and demand) of the assimilative and productive capacity of nature (on which our demands are increasingly showing themselves to be far too onerous).
In the last 300 years, coincidental, by the way, with the invention of modern markets and economic theory, our population has increased ~10 fold to 6.5 billion people and our consumption of material and energy has increased ~100 fold. We are now guzzling the last half of a 2 trillion barrel cache of oil made possible by millions of years of natural processes. We consumed the first half in the last 125 years and are on track to consume the last half in the next 25-50 years. This is the richest form of energy ever known to us. It is one of a kind in its non-renewability and irreplaceability.
On the other side of the barrel, we have introduced so much of it into our atmosphere in the form of entropy (the result of burning it), that our atmosphere is showing signs of reaching the end of its ability to absorb it at the current rate. So, even if oil were renewable or infinite in supply, we have a fixed boundary in the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate the products of its combustion. All of this is related to how we value it and how we value the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate it. Once the oil is gone, we can try to develop alternatives. Once the assimilative capacity is gone, we're gone. At the very least, something is amiss in the connection between the way we price material and energy and the rate at which it is consumed.
So, perhaps we have things rather severely inverted. Is it not "natural suicide" to think that contingent pricing and anthropomorphic monetary incentives can be a reasonable guiding principle to the health of present and future generations?
Perhaps it is more advisable to attempt what some think may be "the politically impossible" than to continue to do what we know is the biophysically and ecologically impossible.
A carbon tax makes rather impressive economic and ecological sense, but we see little appetite for it. The furthest we see it go is to the idea of a carbon trading "market." This is an idea that is well considered by supporters of market economic principles. But as a matter of practice it is still fledgling and rather nebulous. Where it has been tried it is rather non transparent even nefarious as to its structure and function. Those who emit the most are (predictably) strongly against it unless it is another name for the status quo. Most of us are ignorant of what it really means or how it would work to reduce emissions (if at all).
But even after the a carbon tax can be demonstrated to be superior to "permit trading," little movement on it takes place. Thus, we hear the sigh of the activist after years of advocating and cajoling something that makes rational, economic and ecological sense. We also hear from many that to suggest (let alone implement) a carbon tax "would be political suicide."
So we forge onward with an economic system which is almost entirely out of touch with the resource base that makes it possible and leave it to the "invisible hand" (a rather misleading phrase worthy of unpacking as soon as possible!) of market pricing to determine the fate (supply and demand) of the assimilative and productive capacity of nature (on which our demands are increasingly showing themselves to be far too onerous).
In the last 300 years, coincidental, by the way, with the invention of modern markets and economic theory, our population has increased ~10 fold to 6.5 billion people and our consumption of material and energy has increased ~100 fold. We are now guzzling the last half of a 2 trillion barrel cache of oil made possible by millions of years of natural processes. We consumed the first half in the last 125 years and are on track to consume the last half in the next 25-50 years. This is the richest form of energy ever known to us. It is one of a kind in its non-renewability and irreplaceability.
On the other side of the barrel, we have introduced so much of it into our atmosphere in the form of entropy (the result of burning it), that our atmosphere is showing signs of reaching the end of its ability to absorb it at the current rate. So, even if oil were renewable or infinite in supply, we have a fixed boundary in the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate the products of its combustion. All of this is related to how we value it and how we value the ability of our atmosphere to assimilate it. Once the oil is gone, we can try to develop alternatives. Once the assimilative capacity is gone, we're gone. At the very least, something is amiss in the connection between the way we price material and energy and the rate at which it is consumed.
So, perhaps we have things rather severely inverted. Is it not "natural suicide" to think that contingent pricing and anthropomorphic monetary incentives can be a reasonable guiding principle to the health of present and future generations?
Perhaps it is more advisable to attempt what some think may be "the politically impossible" than to continue to do what we know is the biophysically and ecologically impossible.
Powered by ScribeFire.
