A Public Building in Need of Replacement

Imagine we have an old public building that has become hazardous and costs far more to maintain than any public benefit it provides. It needs to be demolished (and replaced).

We'll need to hire a demolition contractor.  As we consider the tenders, we see that we have one from an under-qualified over-confident dishonest angry demolition contractor with a fixation on “disaster” who asserts, “It will be a cinch to tear this baby down!” He says he’ll do it “fast and cheap” by swinging a wrecking ball during rush hour in the crowded streets. While his own estimates are very low and competitive, his costs do not include collateral damage. He seems to have a curiously cavalier disregard for the complexity of the job, safety, and broader consequences. In fact, it is a virtual certainty that most of the demolition debris will fall directly on our heads and is likely to result in injury, death and irreparable harm.  Shall we give him the contract?

Putting Terrorism into Perspective

The following excerpt from Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011 may be useful in putting the current hyperbolic concern about terrorism into perspective.

-->

“Compare the American death toll, with or without 9/11, to other preventable causes of death. Every year more than 40,000 Americans are killed in traffic accidents, 20,000 in falls, 18,000 in homicides, 3,000 by drowning (including 300 in bathtubs), 3,000 in fires, 24,000 from accidental poisoning, 2,500 from complications of surgery, 300 from suffocation in bed, 300 from inhalation of gastric contents, and 17,000 by “other and unspecified nontransport accidents and their sequelae.”184  In fact, in every year but 1995 and 2001, more Americans were killed by lightning, deer, peanut allergies, bee stings, and “ignition or melting of nightwear” than by terrorist attacks.185  The number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that even minor measures to avoid them can increase the risk of dying. The cognitive psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has estimated that in the year after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans died in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than fly to their destinations out of fear of dying in a hijacked or sabotaged plane, unaware that the risk of death in a plane flight from Boston to Los Angeles is the same as the risk of death in a car trip of twelve miles. In other words the number of people who died by avoiding air travel was six times the number of people who died in the airplanes on September 11.186  And of course the 9/11 attacks sent the United States into two wars that have taken far more American and British lives than the hijackers did, to say nothing of the lives of Afghans and Iraqis.

The discrepancy between the panic generated by terrorism and the deaths generated by terrorism is no accident. Panic is the whole point of terrorism, as the word itself makes clear. Though definitions vary (as in the cliché “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”), terrorism is generally understood as premeditated violence perpetrated by a nonstate actor against noncombatants (civilians or off-duty soldiers) in pursuit of a political, religious, or social goal, designed to coerce a government or to intimidate or convey a message to a larger audience. The terrorists may want to extort a government into capitulating to a demand, to sap people’s confidence in their government’s ability to protect them, or to provoke massive repression that will turn people against their government or bring about violent chaos in which the terrorist faction hopes to prevail. Terrorists are altruistic in the sense of being motivated by a cause rather than by personal profit. They act by surprise and in secrecy; hence the ubiquitous appellation “cowardly.” And they are communicators, seeking publicity and attention, which they manufacture through fear.”

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011, pp. 380-1

Impending Impeachment?

A friend of mine recently expressed his anguish about the future with the "President Elect" in office. He is (as we all should be) very stressed about the very real possibility that the combination of Trump's petulant inarticulacy and proclivity for disrespectful vulgarity toward anyone with a difference of opinion might lead to a global nuclear conflagration.  He told me that he felt Donald would be impeached perhaps even before inauguration next week.  

He cited (among other things) an article from the Independent which cites evidence that Trump actually worked with the Kremlin during the campaign.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html

Here is my response:

I agree that it would be great if DJT could be dispensed with asap.

The problem lies in the "political nature" of impeachment.

Quoting from the the article linked to the one you provided
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-impeachment-impeached-highly-likely-us-president-elect-inauguration-us-congress-illegal-a7525761.html)

Political science Professor Terrence Casey at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology said impeachment was undoubtedly a “political act”, necessitating a shift in public confidence.
“Impeachment means criminal offences, so in that sense it’s not about public support,” he told The Independent.
“It is also a political act. Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings could only occur because you had an opposition party in control of congress. In the case of Trump, you would have to convince a Republican congress to impeach a Republican president, which would fail if he still had public support - like it did with Clinton, and it would succeed if he didn’t - like in the case of Nixon’s resignation.”
Professor Wilson said support would be likely to waver if claims that Moscow had compromising material on the President-elect were proven to be true.

As we know, criminal offenses are not offences until proven.  Bringing charges is also very political, which Trump supporters know too well.  Whether criminal or impeachment proceedings or other, it all hinges on "proven to be true."  Trump supporters think that truth is hard to find because the media, journalism and the "establishment" all have the prefix "liberal" or "swamp" in front of them.

Thus, it is impossible to "prove" anything to them that they do not agree with.  Whatever they do not want to hear is a concoction of the "establishment" meant to maintain vested political interests.

So, the only way Trump will go down is if there is a ground swell of popular political support for his removal.  The election indicated less than a majority for DJT but, the ground swell "majority" would have to be much more than marginal to have this take place.

Lets say it rose to 70% of the population (that politicians were capable of discerning), this would still leave a VERY ANGRY 30% who would maintain the belief that everything is false except what they are willing to believe.  This would in turn create an even more divisive political landscape into which the next potential candidate would have to forge.  Bernie Sanders might be the only one who could weather such a hostile world but at that point he would be up against HUGE economic interests (the 1% that owns 90% of US wealth) that would want to derail him.

Given the enormous complexity of the situation and the fact that DJT supporters (and, indeed, a substantial portion of the US population) is impervious to effects evidence might have on their understanding of the world (as Winston Churchill said "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject"), I don't see a resolution to this any time soon.

A positive angle on all this is that "the will of the people" seems to remain at least somewhat influential at least in the possible success of impeachment proceedings.  But then, the "will of the people" may not have been terribly influential in the college electoral system, since Trump had 2.86 million fewer votes than his opponent.

Political or Pathological?

This from Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined (2013): In discussing the psychology of leaders and the association with potential violence he writes, "

The socially constructed nature of dominance can help explain which individuals are most likely to take risks to defend it. Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned.(fn 123) Self-esteem can be measured, and surveys show that it is the psychopaths, street toughs, bullies, abusive husbands, serial rapists, and hatecrime perpetrators who are off the scale. Diana Scully interviewed many rapists in their prison cells who bragged to her that they were “multitalented superachievers.”124 Psychopaths
and other violent people are narcissistic: they think well of themselves not in proportion to their accomplishments but out of a congenital sense of entitlement. When reality intrudes, as it inevitably will, they treat the bad news as a personal affront, and its bearer, who is endangering their fragile reputation, as a malicious slanderer.

Violence-prone personality traits are even more consequential when they infect political rulers, because their hang-ups can affect hundreds of millions of people rather than just the unlucky few who live with them or cross their paths. Unimaginable amounts of suffering have been caused by tyrants who callously presided over the immiseration of their peoples or launched destructive wars of conquest. In chapters 5 and 6 we saw that the tail-thickening wars and dekamegamurders of the 20th century can be attributed in part to the personalities of just three men. Tin-pot tyrants like Saddam Hussein, Mobutu Sese Seko, Moammar Khaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, and Kim Jong-il have immiserated their people on a scale that is smaller but still tragic.

The study of the psychology of political leaders, to be sure, has a deservedly poor reputation. It’s impossible to test the object of investigation directly, and all too tempting to pathologize people who are morally contemptible. Psychohistory also has a legacy of fanciful psychoanalytic conjectures about what made Hitler Hitler: he had a Jewish grandfather, he had only one testicle, he was a repressed homosexual, he was asexual, he was a sexual fetishist. As the journalist Ron Rosenbaum wrote in Explaining Hitler, “The search for Hitler has apprehended not one coherent, consensus image of Hitler but rather many different Hitlers, competing Hitlers, conflicting embodiments of competing visions. Hitlers who might not recognize each other well enough to say ‘Heil’ if they came face to face in Hell.”(125)

For all that, the more modest field of personality classification, which pigeonholes rather than explains people, has something to say about the psychology of modern tyrants. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association defines narcissistic personality disorder as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.”(126) Like all psychiatric diagnoses, narcissism is a fuzzy category, and overlaps with psychopathy (“a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others”) and with borderline personality disorder (“instability in mood; black and white thinking; chaotic and unstable interpersonal relationships, self-image, identity, and behavior”). But the trio of symptoms at narcissism’s core— grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy—fits tyrants to a T.(127)

It is most obvious in their vainglorious monuments, hagiographic iconography and obsequious mass rallies. And with armies and police forces at their disposal, narcissistic rulers leave their mark in more than statuary; they can authorize vast outlays of violence. As with garden-variety bullies and toughs, the unearned self-regard of tyrants is eternally vulnerable to being popped, so any opposition to their rule is treated not as a criticism but as a heinous crime. At the same time, their lack of empathy imposes no brake on the punishment they mete out to real or imagined opponents. Nor does its allow any consideration of the human costs of another of their DSM symptoms: their “fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,” which may be realized in rapacious conquest, pharaonic construction projects, or utopian master plans. And we
have already seen what overconfidence can do in the waging of war.

All leaders, of course, must have a generous dose of confidence to have become leaders, and in this age of psychology, pundits often diagnose leaders they don’t like with narcissistic personality disorder. But it’s important not to trivialize the distinction between a politician with good teeth and the psychopaths who run their countries into the ground and take large parts of the world with them. Among the pacifying features of democracies is that their leadership-selection procedure penalizes an utter lack of empathy, and their checks and balance limit the damage that a grandiose leader can do. Even within autocracies, the personality of a leader—a Gorbachev as opposed to a Stalin—can have an enormous impact on the statistics of violence." (pp 560-2)

It is interesting to contemplate this in the light of the impending inauguration of Donald Trump.  Is he an example of "good teeth" or more of a pathologue?  If it is the latter, Pinker may be overly confident about the "pacifying features of democracies" and their ability to "penalize an utter lack of empathy."  We can only hope (and work hard to ensure) that is not overly confident in "their checks and balance"s that "limit the damage that a grandiose leader can do."

In Zuccotti Park by Michael Greenberg | The New York Review of Books

In Zuccotti Park by Michael Greenberg | The New York Review of Books

Occupy Wall Street Drives Economic Coverage | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)

Occupy Wall Street Drives Economic Coverage | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)

Generally Assembled at #OccupyWallStreet—By Nathan Schneider (Harper's Magazine)

Generally Assembled at #OccupyWallStreet—By Nathan Schneider (Harper's Magazine)

Gearing up for another School year for all, our environment deserves a stronger focus in both action and curriculum:

________________________

Education should begin with what all life begins with: Energy. 

(“Energy” includes everything from the enthusiasm of students and teachers to the focus of their studies.)  

With the rise and set of the sun, it must be the foundational subject on which all others are built since there can be no humans without plants and photosynthesis and there can be no learning without enthusiasm. 

This makes it clear that oil is the product of ancient non-renewable sunlight and taking it from deep in the ground, burning and dumping the result in the atmosphere is a transformation of global ecological magnitude (- even if oil were in infinite supply, we would still have the problem of the ability of the atmosphere to accommodate the entropy that results from burning it). 

Once we all know this as the primordial organizing principle on which we depend, the natural curiosity and creativity of people/students (from the youngest ages) will be encouraged and inspired to develop renewable sustainable means of energizing our lives and societies.
_____________________________

Its all a matter of energy, in everything we do.

Learning needs to start with this subject on which to chew.

And when we learn the truth about our current thirst for joules,

We will quickly realize the entropic extent to which we’re fools.

Humans are all-dependent on plants and photosynthesis,

Without these there can be no Australopithecus.

Since the bicycle is the most efficient universal traveler,

Teach them what goes in our tanks is the ultimate sustainer or unraveller. 

________________________ 

So many things in our world are downwrong out of whack.

Just look at what some corporations think is a wholesome, healthy snack.

And then there’s the unappreciators who love to hate the teachers.

Cultivating such acrimony makes its hard to learn about creatures.

So one thing we could start with is a sincere and full apology,

And move on to learn about our vital earth ecology.

Crying out for recognition are the conditions of our very possibility.
Magnificence becoming blurry as pollution obscures our creativity.
We learn most when life on earth inspires our curiosity and wonder.
This is how education will lead renewability away from blunder.   
When we resolve to learn about the real costs of our conditions,
Education will inspire greater nobler human missions.
 ____________________________

Crying out for recognition are the conditions of our very possibility.

Magnificence becoming blurry as pollution obscures our creativity.

We learn most when life on earth inspires our curiosity and wonder.

This is how education will lead renewability away from blunder.  

When we resolve to learn about the real costs of our conditions,

Education will inspire greater nobler human missions.

 

________________________________

Don’t hold your breath, but the greenest thing a school can do is… turn blue. 

Skip the drastic plastic ‘cause water fountains are clean and true.

The real meaning of recycle lies way outside the mobius loops.

It has to do with pedals, frame and rider and two big spinning hoops.

If our education system is to flourish and we are not to shirk.

The least consumptive practices are the ones with which to work.

_______________________________

Charitable Contributions in McDonald's 2010 Annual Report

In his opening statement to McD's "valued shareholders," Jim Skinner (Vice Chair and CEO) provides a long list of the ways in which McDonald's is increasing market share and increasing profits. Near the end of the intro he provide the following statement:

"It starts with delivering a great restaurant experience every time and extends to a host of areas to which we are strongly committed — from charitable giving and supporting the communities we serve, to environmental stewardship and animal welfare."

This is the only reference to "charitable giving" in the entire report.  There is no evidence provided of how much and to whom any charity has been given.

How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth | Solutions

A new article in Solutions Journal by Robert Costanza ("Ecological Economics" Pioneer) et al.

How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth | Solutions

The Life You Can Save

Ever wonder how you can save a child from dying a readily preventable death right now?

This Web site is Peter Singer's (Ethical Philosopher) idea.  It uses "Givewell" to determine a short list of agencies in the best position to directly save a person's life with your donation.

It does not take much.  $1 = a day-long struggle to many.

Think of it as giving CPR to someone who needs you right now. A few compressions and you just revived two hearts!

Estimating the Monetary Value of Environmental Damage (Report)

Please read article below my commentary for an interesting study that attempts to monetize environmental damage.   It is a contextual example for my commentary.  The link to the report itself is above.

It is an example of an approach to environmentalism that has been growing since the 70's.  After many a failed attempt at environmental advocacy in the face of economic gains, some suggested that environmentalists would do better to speak the language of economics and fight the good fight on economic grounds.  After all, if environmentally damaging projects or policies we moving forward because the economic gains to be had were irresistible, environmental protection might do well to demonstrate that these gains were false.

In general, the idea was that putting such damage in monetary terms would make the environmental losses somehow more real and communicable.  This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that monetary value is an abstraction that is currently based primarily on (thoroughly anthropocentric, perceived) value mediated through exchange relations between "self-interested" human transactors.  The irony is that we need abstractions (that are, by definition, very distant from the reality of ecological functioning and health) to make things more "real" to us (at least in the modern economically-oriented world).

The question remains as to how to internalize these costs into the economic system, for until we are able to do this, the concreteness of the abstraction in terms of influencing human behaviour is likely (as economics would also predict) to remain illusive.

As long as the ecological goods and services required in virtually every successful transaction (we cannot have an economy without an environment with which to ensconce, feed and sustain it) are not a party to the valuations and negotiations in human economic transactions, there is a need for a means to ensure that economic transactors are made to take these costs into account (i.e. pay them).

The only way to do this effectively according to economists is by way of a pricing mechanism that provides more complete information, signals and incentives that reflect the "real" (in this case, "real" = ecological) costs.  Economists remind us that If people had to pay the "full" costs of resource use, they would probably use them more judiciously (i.e. for higher valued uses) and there would be less waste.  The result would be that resources would be more likely to go to their most valued uses resulting in the maximization of value on a society-wide basis. 

"Market failure" as manifest in (especially) negative externalities.  The paradigm case of negative externalities is environmental pollution.  It is the example used to demonstrate that markets do "fail" in certain circumstances.  (Virtually every economics text provides pollution as an example of market failure.)  "Failure" means that markets fail to optimize value for society as a whole.  This coheres with Adam Smith's oft-cited statement that is thought to provide a perfect justification for markets.  He justifies it, not egoistic terms (since that would arguably be no truly ethical justification at all) but, in terms of societal wealth.  Those who quote him, (knowingly or not) align themselves with this foundation as their ethical justification for markets.  Conversely, their shared basis for applause (when markets succeed by providing maximal societal wealth) or lament (when markets result in suboptimal societal wealth).  This means that advocates from the entire ideological spectrum (from left to right) have a shared value about what economic and political systems are for.  Everyone seems to agree that they are about optimizing societal wealth.  The only disputed question is about how to best accomplish this shared objective either in individual situations or as a rule based generalized system.

The oft cited Smithian statement goes as follows,

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages"

This suggests that solely self-interestedly rational transactors in the market place lead to greater than intended social good (positive externalties).  What is generally glossed over by "free" market ideologues is that the reverse effect (with which Smith was well aware) is also true.  Free markets based on rationally self-interested transactors lead to both positive and negative externalities.  Most often a mixture of both is the result.

It is a problem in both cases.  When positive externalities result, it means that the producer is not being fully rewarded for the social value that her invention provides society.  This can lead to suboptimal levels of entrepreneurship and inventiveness and a consequent loss to the societal value that could have been created were the incentives more fulsome.  When negative externalities result, it is more obviously a problem.  Rather than the loss of positive value that could have been, we are faced with manifest negative value that IS.  Rather than the ailing person not having access to a drug that  otherwise might have been invented, they might be ailing as a result of toxins that have already been emitted. 

In either case, market failure suggests the need a tempering mechanism.  Until we decide on and implement this, the costs of market failure will accumulate in our biosphere to our detriment (and that of many other beings).

Where negative externalities are occurring in the case of, for example, anthropogenic global warming, carbon taxes are likely to provide price adjustments that will deter activities that are lesser valued that generate them.  Once we are more aware of the costs we currently choose to ignore and "externalize," societal value will indeed become more "real."

By the way, there is no "external" or "away" - as in the expression, "throw it away" - when it comes to planet earth.  We live it is a "closed system" for the purposes of material and energy exchange with outer space.  The sun is the only net "input" to earth and there are virtually no "outputs."  It all stays here in an all-ecompassing cycle of production, use and assimilation.  This means that, in spite of economic vocabulary like "externalities" there is, in ecological reality, really only "internalities."  So, while economic transactions may involve effects that go well beyond the transaction itself and the parties to it (e.g. buying a gallon of gasoline for your car), ecological vocabulary on a biospherical level has no such word or phenomenon.  This is perhaps where the shared roots of economics and ecology (manifest in the Greek root word "oikos" that is sometimes translated as "household"), show their starkest divergence.  There is no external to the ecological "household," even though there appears to be in the economic one.)

Yet our political system (i.e. the popularity contest we call "democracy") is ill-equipped to act on the evidence (i.e. "bad news") and generate foresighted action and policies that can increase societal value for the benefit of present and future generations.  While economic instruments such as carbon taxes may make both ecological and economic sense in terms of maximizing societal value (if only by reducing low value uses), there is almost no appetite for implementing such policies.

Thus, we may be justified in concluding that it is not economics that is driving unsustainable behaviour on a societal and global scale.  It is politics.

JRF
_________________

Award-winning magazine
Clean Solutions for the Business of the Environment
Sign up for Digital Edition

---

This is from Hazmat Magazine at http://www.hazmatmag.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000390011&link_source=aypr_HM&link_targ=DailyNews

Send this story to a friend

Your Information

First Name * Last Name * Email *
Enter your first name. Enter your last name. Enter a valid email address.Enter your email address.

Friend's Information

First Name * Last Name * Email *
Enter your friend's first name. Enter your friends' last name. Enter a valid email address.Enter your friend's email address.

Email Subject

Add a message that will be sent with this email:

* Mandatory field.

---

DAILY NEWS Oct 25, 2010 12:00 PM - 0 comments

Global environmental damage could surpass $28 trillion by 2050: study

---

Global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 represented a monetary value of $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11 per cent of global GDP, according to a new study by the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and UNEP Finance Initiative. Those global costs are 20 per cent larger than the $5.4 trillion decline in the value of pension funds in developed countries caused by the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.
The study, an initial effort to quantify in monetary terms the environmental harm caused by business and the possible future consequences for investor portfolios and company earnings, estimates that, in 2008, the world's top 3,000 public companies were responsible for a third of all global environmental damage.
The study warns that as environmental damage and resource depletion increases, and as governments start applying a more vigorous "polluter pays" principle, the value of large portfolios will be affected through higher insurance premiums on companies, taxes, inflated input prices and the price tags for clean-ups.
The most environmentally damaging business sectors are utilities, oil and gas producers, and industrial metals and mining. Those three accounted for almost a trillion dollars' worth of environmental harm in 2008. The top 3,000 companies by market capitalization, which represent a large proportion of global equity markets, were responsible for $ 2.15 trillion worth of environmental damage in 2008.
Workers and retirees could see lower pension payments from funds invested in companies exposed to environmental costs, says the study, which was conducted by Trucost, the global environmental research company.
The study projects that the monetary value of annual environmental damage from water and air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, general waste and depleted resources could reach $28.6 trillion in 2050, or 23 per cent lower if clean and resource-efficient technologies are introduced.
The study recommends investors should exercise their ownership rights, collaborate to encourage companies and policy-makers to reduce these environmental externalities, and request regular monitoring and reporting from investment managers on how they are addressing exposure to environmental risk.
"An increasing number of large investors are recognizing that environmental externalities generated by one company are likely to come back and hit their portfolios in another place or time," says James Gifford, executive director of Principles for Responsible Investment. "This report provides an important rationale why investors need to exercise leadership and responsible ownership by acting together to reduce corporate externalities."
For the full report please see:

Principles for Responsible Investment - Official Home

Political & Ecological "Impossibilities"

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.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Geology and Democracy

Many Canadians are in dispair about democracy and their political agency because they increasingly recognize that Ottawa politicians are so deeply in robotic lock step with entrenched vested monetary interests that they are incapable of bringing about any meaningful change or even movement on issues.

Yesterday, a modicum of lost faith in democracy was restored when, just prior to the G20 and G8 Summits, Ottawa hosted the epicentre of a 5+ magnitude earthquake near the halls of Federal Power.

While it played hell on the restorative construction taking place around the historic relics known as "parliamentary buildings," it also suggested that Ottawa may actually have access to some of the levers of power and that they may actually have the ability to "shake things up" a little.

In the mean time, in spite of the many fault lines around the capital city, there are no plans for dealing with higher magnitude earthquakes...

Truth in Advertising: A Justifiable Expectation?

In June 2010 Bell sued Rogers for Roger's advertising/promotional claim that it is the "Fastest Most Reliable Network."  Some see it as ridiculous and others see it as a case about truth in advertising.

On the one hand we all know that advertising is loaded with puffery and to take promo claims with a grain of salt.  On the other, advertisers themselves claim that advertising is a legitimate way of getting information about products to the customer.  After all, who else will let them know the features and options available to them in the competitive marketplace?  Purchasing decisions are to be made on the basis of what fulfills your needs the best.  This is the bais of capitalism's primary to legitimacy.  Good products will prevail - goodness being defined as that which best improves the quality of people's lives by their own judgment. 

The question is not whether you are savvy enough to realize that these claims are self interested self serving, and to temper the influence they may have over you.  This would suggest a world where falsehood rather than truth is the dominant expectation.

Rather, it is whether public utterances of any kind (advertising or otherwise) are worth enough to try to maintain.  It is the question of whether it is naive to assume a general principle:  When someone says something, it bears some fairly reliiable relationship with "reality."  "Reality" may be a complex term but our everyday affairs suggest it has something to do with the ability to make decisions on the basis of things that hold sway in the world.  Everything from the weather to Internet blogging, facebook and twitter have elements of both pure entertainment and "truth."  The closer we get to things that the speaker tells us are true and we rely upon for decision-making, the closer we get to having a "right" to regard them as something we can rely upon.

What Bell has done with their law suit is obviously self-interested, but is also something in the line of faith restoring.  Their actions seems to suggest that they feel advertising should resemble truth as well.  Far from expecting Rogers or other self-promoters to say whatever gets them customers and their revenue, they seem to be suggesting that advertising should be something that can be supported by evidence.  How would Rogers know that their network is faster?  Is it not reasonable to ask them for the evidence?  If the slogan is true, it would be a great benefit to Rogers.  If not, it would seem reasonable to ask them to retract it and replace the claim with something bearing some more supportable relationship to reality.

On May 4, 2010 in Fredricton, Justice Judy Clendening of he Court of Queen's Bench in Fredericton ordered Rogers to stop claiming to have the "fastest speed," "most reliable speed," or "fastest and most reliable speed" because they could not support their claim in the absence of fuller information about the Bell Network.

Truth (and support for it) is important plain and simple.  Truth has always been regarded as one of the highest moral imperatives. While it would be nice to find it self-evident, self-generating and self manifesting, we all know that everyone is subject to overstating their value in the world.   While we like to see it in others, we are ourselves vulnerable to distorting it for personal gain.

While it is a complex concept, there is a simple and widely accepted convention about it.  "Because I said so," (or "ipse dixit" in Latin) is generally very suspect.  We increasingly prefer evidence and independent support for the "truth" of something.  

If we should all know that advertising is puffery and beyond the simple principle of the need for independent evidence and support, there is no justification for consuming so much of our valuable time, energy, psychic resources.  If there is one thing that is universally scarce and justifiably regarded as precious in life it is time.  Why should we allow our personal and public space and air waves to be clogged with statements telling us what we should already know is false.  So, if advertising is so obvious puffery and we are fools to take it as truth, then by all means let's get on with banning it outright as it does not advance anything but cynicism and disrespect truth itself.    

Does Advertising Influence Behaviour?

Usefully broken down into two questions:

1. Does advertising affect behaviour?

2. Does a particular ad affect behaviour?

On the first question the answer has to be an unequivocal YES.  Behaviour is directly linked to advertising and the (consumer) culture it creates in general and around given products.  It is probably the single largest driver of unsustainable material and energy consumption.  Businesses collectively spend billions on advertising per year and while there is an element of keeping up with the "din" of other ads, companies do not spend money if it does not make them more money.

Companies and advertisers gliibly tell us that they are merely in the business of improving people's lives by giving them what they want and need.  Do women want to be Anorexically (mortally?) slim?  Does relentless planned "New and Improved" obsolescence really improve the quality of our lives?  While "Lathering and Rinsing" are probably good advice, "Repeat" is probably not. 

On the second, of course some ads are more effective than others.  But at the very least they function to help us avoid thinking of the "pink elephant."  In other words, the worst of the worst ads create a memory and an association with a product.  They may not boost sales and consumption as much as hoped by the company but they certainly go beyond where it would have been without the ad.

Have I ever changed my behaviour as a result of an ad?  I would have to say yes - I certainly change my behaviour based on the latest "evidence" (i.e. research and documentaries such as "Food Inc.") but I also make purchasing inquiries based on ads and perhaps ultimately purchase a given product if their ads live up to reality on closer inspection compared to the competition.

I think the problem is that we have difficulty thinking outside the frame of the atomic individually rational economic actor.  It all seems innocent enough.  Consumers looking for solutions to their wants and needs and purveyers merely providing "information" about their product's ability to meet them.  Yet, can a rational and even well-educated person really compete with millions of dollars, strategies, memes, sound bytes, slogans and jingles carefully crafted by expert marketers and backed by psychologists?  Advertising is far more impactful to both our physical and mental environment than any of us will probably ever be able to comprehend.

This is precisely why campaigns against smoking and other harmful behaviour such as smoking are needed.  They are only required as an attempt to counter the effects of advertising that have promoted private profit over public "wealth."  While many are useful and "effective," they are a burden on scarce public resources, under-resourced relative to the original, and should not be required in the first place (even if paid for by the original mind invader).  Its a bit like BP's oil spill and the promise to make people "whole" (or was that "hole"!) again after a clean up.  Simple not possible.  Once the ideas and images are out there (like the oil), social ecology (like coastal ecology) has to deal with it and will be irretrievably "changed."

Advertising is replete with fantastic and laudable creativity and has produced many fascinating public discussions and even promoted self-discovery individually and collectively in some important ways.

However, this fantastic human creativity would be manifest in other areas were it not subsumed by the big money consumption promoters who teach us (at everyone's peril) to equate having with being.

Since the only true assets any of us have in life are, 1. Time 2. Space and 3. Energy.  I would heartily recommend that the single biggest thing any of us could do to promote sustainability and preserve both our creativity, sanity and our species is to avoid and prevent advertising from invading any one or all three of these as much as possible.


Turn off the TV, avert your stare, read stories instead of flyers.  Talk and listen.  Write poetry, music, verse, songs.  Make the most of the wondrous gift of mortality.  Eschew the clutter.  Own yourself.

Goals that transcend the means to fulfill them

The dilemma of all human economic systems is that they not only seek to, and promise to but, must satisfy needs and aspirations, that are themselves far beyond both human and economic.

Economics: a discipline that posits theoretical scarcity while assuming practical abundance. 

The Abundance of Scarcity

The irony of our time:  How it is that the central concept in modern mainstream economic theory is "scarcity," while the central operational assumption of modern economic practice is abundance.

(Mis) Leading Indicators

This most recent example from Statistics Canada is telling. Here is a summary of a “Leading Indicator” Report of April 22, 2010 (Earth Day!):

     "Leading indicators

     Economic Accounts: The composite leading index rose 1.0% in March, matching its average monthly increase since July 2009. However, the sources of growth continued to shift away from housing to other sectors of consumer demand and manufacturing.

The housing index rose by 0.2%, its smallest increase since its current upturn began in the spring of 2009. At its peak last summer, the housing index was rising over 5% a month. The recent slowdown originated in a retreat of existing home sales from their record posted late in 2009. Housing starts continued to increase.

     Elsewhere, consumer spending was mixed. Furniture and appliance sale rose 1.3%, their largest advance since June 2006. Spending on other durable goods declined 0.5% after eight months of strong growth. Services employment increased 0.6% with strength evident in both the personal and business sectors.

     Manufacturing demand continued to recover. New orders rose 3.2%, their third increase in four months. The increased ratio of shipments to inventories was driven mostly by higher sales. Export industries have led the rebound in sales, as demand for capital goods continued to languish. Factories remained restrained in hiring, and the average workweek fell again. The outlook for export demand was buoyed by further gains in the leading indicator for the United States."

“Consumer demand,” “manufacturing,” “housing index” (the cost of houses), “home sales,” “furniture and appliance sales,” “spending on durable goods,” “hiring” are all mentioned in the summary of “leading indicators” above. A few questions suggest the limits of these as adequate measures of the wealth of a society. What if consumer demand was for head ache medicine? What if manufacturing was for sandbags to hold back a flood? Why are more expensive houses considered a positive thing? Could more home sales indicate that people are moving to get away from something less desirable to them? Would it not be better for individual families and society overall if we spent less on “durable goods” so that money can go elsewhere (e.g. to education, skill development etc.)? What if hiring is in sectors that are associated with health risk, low income, or generally unsatisfying positions? It does not take much thought to realize that these “leading indicators” do not indicate very much except increases and decreases in transactions in the market. However, given the positive glow that usually surrounds news of increases in virtually any form of economic activity, these indicators might well be renamed: Mis-leading indicators.