Sunday
Jul082012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Mission impoverish
Jul 8, 2012 Economics Energy: gas Christopher Booker laments the insanity of the UK government's policy on shale gas, with the headline summing things up rather well
You can’t have shale gas – it might halve your bills
It is an extraordinary thing when the main political parties agree that the way ahead is a the impoverishment of the electorate and transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich.
Reader Comments (183)
We have to pay more for less energy with the political aim to get colder climate?
So what they really want is that more people shall freeze to death during the winter?
And they get elected again and again? The problem here is not the politicians but the voters?
BitBucket
Thanks for your response. To my mind the fallacy of your argument/idea/preference is that whilst the average demand is 30 to 40GW, the peak winter demand is around 60GW and since your form of demand management only reduces consumption then we need real power stations to cover the extra winter demand. This extra capacity then provides backup to the grid. Not to replace ageing power stations and to follow your route could only end in disaster.
we have 300MW of demand management for £100 million and it costs nothing to run
But those devices will use the load later! They don't stop using power because of your $100 million boondoggle. You act as if the demand moved is demand saved.
All your expensive plan does is make life easier for the electricity company with their requirement to have supply from intermittent renewables. It doesn't actually help consumers. Do you see that -- it is a way that consumers can pay to make someone else's life easier. But everyone's life could be made easier by just getting more nuclear, backed up with some gas for peak times.
Unless, of course, "demand management" is actually just using less.
Mooloo: : BitBucket windmills can't save any CO2 anyway unless we have massive pump storage, pumped at 30% efficiency loss by nuclear power.
BitBucket,
What you put forward, whilst not new, is at least positive and might have some merit. However, some of your figures appear to be somewhat optimistic. For a start, you’re not going to get 1% of your gadgets reducing power by 3Kw each. The only appliances in an average household using that amount of power would be perhaps an immersion heater (3Kw), a tumble drier (4Kw) or a dishwasher (3-4Kw). Depending on how you use your Washing Machine, you might also include that (1-3.5Kw). If you have an electric cooker, that could also be included (2-5Kw). So you would only be able to make single 3Kw reductions by actually switching appliances off. You could do that of course, but I don’t think you’d be very popular. To get your 300Mw reduction you would have to average it out across all 10 million gadgets - 30w each. Sounds easy doesn’t it? Not quite. Reducing the power to some appliances, whilst achieving the cut in peak demand, would actually increase power consumption overall. For instance, take the average electric kettle. Reduce it’s power supply from 2Kw to 1Kw. Logic tells us that it will now take twice as long to boil at half the power rate. In fact, it will take a fair bit longer than twice the time to boil. This is because of the heat retention capabilities of the object you are trying to heat - in this case water. The longer you take to heat it, the more time it has to lose that heat. It’s been a long time since I did physics at school, but I’m pretty sure that’s right, I’m sure someone will tell me if I’m wrong :) Obviously, the same would apply to such things as immersion heaters, cookers, heating systems, etc. Some appliances, such as computers and modern TVs don’t react at all well to reductions in supply and could be seriously damaged. I don’t know about such things as kitchen white goods, perhaps some of the engineers here would know. It seems to me that the only real options you’d have would be to target the stuff that’s not actually being used, but has been left on standby. Well, at an average of about 4 watts per item, good luck with that. You also have to understand that the average family these days is very, very aware of cost. Most people have stuff switched on only when they actually need to use it. There will always be exceptions to this rule of course, but on the whole I don’t think there is as much leeway for savings here as some people, including some of the so called experts, seem to believe. At least, not on the domestic front.
On top of all that, of course, in the real world 10 million of your little gadgets wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. As I sit here in my kitchen typing this, I can see 10 appliances, not including the lighting, with probably the same number stowed away in cupboards. To equip every appliance in my house with one, I would probably need 30 or more of your £10 gadgets. I know, lets have just one gadget to control all our appliances at once. We could call it a smart meter and probably only have to pay £200 instead of £300.
Despite all the above, I do think there are avenues to be explored here. As I’ve said, not so much in the domestic sector, but certainly in the corporate/commercial/ industrial sectors. One of the several working hats I wear these days is that of a (very) junior partner in a local taxi company. It always amazes me as I’m driving around at 3 in the morning just how many shops and offices, even in the little market town I work from, leave all their lights blazing away all night. Even their neons.
Bitbucket should be in government, he makes the same mistakes.
Although it seems to have forgotten this; the government is elected by the people to serve the people and protect the people. Utility companies are there to supply utilities, not to ration utilities. In a free market supply and demand meet happily in the middle.
What we are moving towards is Orwellian government which micromanages its citizens lives, well they can go there without me.
As some of you point out, I am not suggesting anything new, so the grid is safe from me - do a search for "dynamic demand fridge".
Yes indeed, peak loads are nearer 60GW and there might be problems finding suitable appliances to manage. I wanted to address these points, but there are limits to how long one can spend on a post and I reached mine last night :-)
On finding suitable appliances, there must be millions of water heaters in commercial and industrial settings that can be managed. You know, the sort that are fitted under the sink in the lavatories and that scald your hands whenever you use them (why are they so often turn up so high?). Clearly DM would not be retro-fitted to most appliances as the energy use is too small to bother with, but designed-in DM is quite reasonable. For example if every new LCD or street light in the country dimmed by 5% on grid strain, most people would not notice it and yet the energy reduction would be large.
Regarding peak loads - higher efficiency, the other prong of my attack, would reduce these. Demand management would help most in the smarter form where devices can react to prices and defer demand for hours.
Interestingly BH seems to be doing some demand management on my normal IP range as it now takes me several minutes to load each page. Luckily I have a UK proxy that is stil fast :-)
LC
Thanks for your (implied) support for my position on street, etc. lighting.
While BitBucket's proposals are logical they are, as you point out, not practical in the real world. On the domestic front we have almost certainly gone as far as we can go in realistic terms. The government has continued over the years to couch its energy savings propaganda in the same terms as if nobody has ever paid any attention to anything it has said in the past.
Hence my point that if I had done what I was told every time I was told I'd have turned my central heating off years ago.
Any further savings domestically can only be made by reducing the number of appliances and that is not likely to happen any time soon, though that is the route that eco-Puritans would like us to go down. But on the "How're you gonna keep them down on the farm, now that they've seen Paree" principle that is going to be a very difficult sell.
And it isn't necessary.
We are not going to run out of any of the materials which we currently use to generate electricity any time soon, not in my lifetime and not in that of my children or grandchildren.
We are being bamboozled by scaremongers with their own agenda to pursue and they cannot be selective about the outcomes they are aiming for.
"Unpicking the industrial revolution" doesn't just mean using less electricity so that it's a bit colder or a bit dimmer or a bit more inconvenient. It's not simply electrical power that we are being asked to use sparingly. They would also rather we didn't use oil and any of us could write another 2,000 words on what potential disasters to communication, to health care, to the transport and processing of agricultural produce, and so on and so on, would emerge from that scenario.
BitBucket
(why are they so often turn up so high?) Legionella I think
70 to 80 °C (158 to 176 °F): Disinfection range
At 66 °C (151 °F): Legionellae die within 2 minutes
At 60 °C (140 °F): They die within 32 minutes
At 55 °C (131 °F): They die within 5 to 6 hours
Above 50 °C (122 °F): They can survive but do not multiply
35 to 46 °C (95 to 115 °F): Ideal growth range
20 to 50 °C (68 to 122 °F): Growth range
Below 20 °C (68 °F): They can survive but are dormant
I should have added no opportunity to save demand on this I would say.
Sandy
it is a requirement that water in communal premises is heated to >= 70 °C
Yes, Legionella of course. But the temperature doesn't affect the use of DM. The heater will turn on when the tank drops to a threshold temperature and will normally turn off when it reaches an upper threshold temperature. But there is no reason it could not turn off at any temperature in between these two points, if grid strain is detected.
If I want to drive my gas guzzling car all day, leave all my lights on all day, heat my water and my house to a temperature that suites me and fill my house with electricity guzzling gadgets then as long as I can pay for it and I do not disturb the lives of other people it is my business, my decision, my choice. In a thousand years when we run out of current sources of energy we will have developed new and currently unheard of ways of doing it better and cheaper.
Energy efficiency is conceptually a crock. It is not energy efficiency that matters, it is economic efficiency. So, when Americans drove huge gas guzzlers back in the days when petrol was cheap as chips, it didn't matter. What is the point of saving a few cents here and there at the cost of (in those days) a less safe and comfortable car? It is like saving water by putting buckets in the shower when the cost of the water you are saving is what you wouldn't bother picking up on the street. It values your time and convenience at the same as the poorest peasant on the planet.
The trouble with Bitty and his ilk's concept is inherent guilt about consumption. The fact is, the times when peak electricity is required are, er, the times when it is required - when it is very hot or very cold, for example. Large scale power generation is designed for precisely this purpose, and while we all have to pay a small loading for having power available 24/7/365, just as we do for water, that is not a reason to reintroduce rationing.
It is true that artificially raising the price of power has some effect on demand, but it is economically regressive - i.e. punishes the poor - and also whacks the businesses that employ people who have to pay for domestic power use. So, the net effect is to make everyone worse off.
Oh, and in this country, if food in commercial premises is stored above 4C, they close the place down as a health hazard. So, they had better not get any ideas about messing with my fridge via 'smart grids'. And, as someone alluded to above, powering down your electric kettle or water heater actually increases usage. Just try boiling your morning coffee water in a pan on the stove as opposed to a modern kettle if you don't believe me, bitty, aka (as we now know) Random Number Generator.
Economic efficiency and energy/resource efficiency are compatible. My feeling is that the waste of resources or energy generally often implies mis-priced externalities. In other words companies or people are not paying the full price of what they waste.
Demand management would not affect the 4C critical temperature you mention or the 70C mentioned by someone above for water heating. If you think it would, you have misunderstood the concept. DM is not new. See the National Grid Reserve Service on Wiki or the NGC site.
No, you got that wrong too. I'm beginning to think that the continuous misinterpretation and misrepresentation that happens in these pages is actually not deliberate. I'd better write shorter, easier, sentences.
Economic efficiency and energy efficiency are not incompatible, but they are not necessarily directly corrrelated either. It depends on the price of the input vs the selling price of the output. Smelting aluminium, for example, is energy intensive and is often on the hit-list of those who regard frugal energy use as a sort of spiritual virtue. But, the reality is that while making aluminium is energy intensive, the strong and light metal it produces saves costs (including energy costs) for downstream users of the product.
As for external costs, this is the last refuge of every economically illiterate scoundrel who disapproves of something and wants to restrict or ban it. We already have ways of dealing with externalities, including tort law and regulatory measures for circumstances where the damage is too widely spread to make actions in tort feasible (eg river pollution). To justify additional regulation, you need to demonstrate clear, non-trivial and traceable harm to identifiable parties. Just saying 'it's for the planet' doesn't cut it. What it does do is make everyone worse off so that a few people can feel good about themselves.
As for smart grids and fridges, if you can explain to me how the network is going to identify fridges, air-con and other equipment for people with medical conditions, heaters, etc when it dumps a brown-out/black-out on the populace, I look forward to hearing about it. Not that it would justify it anyway, but merely to highlight the backwardness and ignorance that underpins the thinking of those who long for life in the Middle Ages to be re-inflicted on all of us.
Johanna Jul 13, 2012 at 3:53 AM,
exactly right.
Sandy
And all, as I've said, totally unnecessary!
The only people who are keen to restrict the public's use of electricity are those I've described as eco-Puritans who, as you point out, johanna, are on some sort of guilt trip or those who see the manipulation of supply as yet one more way of lining their pockets at the expense of the ordinary people.
Oddly enough I was reading a biblical passage the other day which sums this up rather neatly.
It's from chapter 8 of the Book of Amos:
"Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country; you who say 'When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and sabbath, so that we can market our wheat? Then by lowering the bushel, raising the shekel, by swindling and tampering with the scales, we can buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals, and get a price even for the sweepings of the wheat.'"
A good example of Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I reckon!
Oh, and we mustn't forget the control freaks who will do it because it's technically possible and it makes them feel good!
I'm getting bored with Bitbucket's gloom, doom and middle-class angst.
DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.
Externalities are often difficult to see or to cost. Many occur far away and western consumers can ignore them and sleep well. But resource extraction often involves despoiling nature on land or at sea, destroying communities, corrupting whole political systems; death and destruction. You don't see it and you think it is not your business; you pay your taxes for someone else to look after issues that you don't want on your conscience. You give Oxfam a few pounds a year and think you've done your bit. The world (except for raptors, I remember you are fond of them) is there for humans to reap and the poor are there for the rich to exploit. We can waste whatever we like because there is always another community we can destroy or waterway we can pollute or or ecosystem we can disrupt. Its OURS to destroy if we wish and f*** those who are unlucky enough to be in the way. Nihilism rules!
Mike Jackson, even a cursory reading of social history tells us that people who believe that we are all materially profligate sinners and that suffering is good for us have always been around. It seems to be an ineradicable streak in human nature. My view is, they are absolutely entitled to live according to their beliefs - but not to force them on the rest of us.
I might add that it is a weird world when I am accused by my leftie friends of being 'right-wing' because I describe the effect of energy-guilt on the poor as malevolent and/or self-indulgent.
BitBucket: "You give Oxfam a few pounds a year and think you've done your bit." We gave to Oxfam regularly over 30 years until we realised that Oxfam were using money that had been give to feed the hungry to campaign against CAGW. Are you aware that money given to Oxfam to feed the starving was recently used to send a whole delegation to Durban - there was even a Head of Delegation? Our money now only goes to organisations like ORBIS which does not squander charitable gifts on mis-guided political campaigning.
Jul 12, 2012 at 2:14 PM BitBucket
Demand management.
The theory is it stops people washing their hands under running hot water.
Jul 12, 2012 at 3:06 PM SandyS
(why are they so often turn up so high?) Legionella I think
That's probably right. But it's an irrational Elf - n - safetee thing.
Legionairre's is spread by cooling towers and air conditioning systems with water lying stagnant at breeding temperature and being blown around by air currents. It is not inpossible that someone, somewhere, caught it from a hot tap but I have not succeeded in finding a reference. Apparently, the risk from your car's windscreen washer is far greater.
On the other hand, scalding injury admissions to hospitals are a daily occurrence.
http://www.capt.org.uk/pdfs/HotWaterDiscussionPaper.pdf
"For the healthy individual, the risk of contracting Legionella from any source is minimal and this has to be weighted up against the known and significant risk of thermal injury occurring as the result of dangerously hot household water"
Max temperature for safety :
46 °C bath
41 °C shower
41 °C washbasin
38 °C bidet
http://www.iphe.org.uk/databyte/dom_water_scalding_TMVs.pdf (reference no longer works)
@ 9:41 PM | Dung
Spot on!
In a free market, all industries encourage us to use as much of their products and services as possible. They want us to keep buying and buying and buying, and so boost their profits. This is a major driver of a healthy economy.
The notable exceptions are the energy and water industries, where we are exhorted to use less and less. They actually tell us they don't want us to use their products. What sort of business would do that?
Of course, this makes no economic sense, is bad for the economy, and is a result of political interference and misguided 'green' meddling.
Martin
correction:
should be elf n safetee fing
Scottie
fanks ^.^
stun
The answer to your last question is simple.
Much of the increased
costprice to the consumer is certainly down to government interference but the money is going onto E-On's coffers so they are hardly likely to let on if they can avoid it.The reason that E-On and EDF leapt into the UK market is that prices are more strictly controlled in most European countries than they are in the UK.
If you want more bad news the price of new nuclear power is likely to be in the region of £100 per megawatt-hour which is about double the current overall energy cost so the sooner somebody starts fracking the better!
Mike,
I should have made my support for your position on shop/street lighting much more explicit. In fact, I should really have given you a hat tip as it was reading your earlier post that brought that particular little bug-bear of mine to mind. As for the rest of your comment of Jul 12 at 2:20pm, I totally agree with everything you say. I was born in 1954. I remember what real poverty was like. Without going too Monty Python, I had a healthy dose of it myself. I also remember the discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea and how the gas, much more so than the oil, fundamentally changed the way we lived. In the space of less than 15 years, we in this country went from homes with primarily coal fired, single room heating to homes with gas fired, multi room heating and all the health benefits it brought with it. Anyone that was used to waking up in the morning to those pretty, fern frost patterns on the inside of the bedroom window, will know what I mean there. Some people need to read a little history on what life was really like just a few short years ago before wishing a return to those days.
BitBucket,
I’ve often wondered if you are here just to troll, or whether you genuinely believe what you say and are hoping to change our minds through engagement or at least persuade the lurkers here of the correctness of your viewpoint. I now realise that you are just a “glass half empty” kind of guy and would rather examine the negatives of any situation rather than pay attention to the positives. Entirely your choice, of course, but I promise you, happiness does not that way lie. I cannot let you get away though, with the kind of blanket statement you made at 2:18pm. You have absolutely no clue what I or anyone else on this blog thinks about the world other than within the very narrow confines of energy/global warming issues.
In 1984, along with 2 of my friends, I went to Ethiopia as part of a volunteer group for a small charity affiliated to Christian Aid. Initially, we were meant to be there for 6 weeks, but somewhere along the line that turned into 10. Only one of our group was medically trained, so the rest of us were there just to offer our brute force and ignorance. We dug latrines. We dug pits for burial, then helped fill them with the dead and filled them back in again. We unloaded trucks and planes and helped distribute clothing and blankets. We put up tents and shelters. And we did some of the really horrible stuff too. In other words we did just about anything that was asked of us. To say it was a life changing experience would be an understatement. I could never do such a thing again. Do I give to Oxfam? No, I do not. To quote my mate John in a recent conversation (he was there with me and has been back many times since and I‘ll talk more about him in a moment): “When you see some effin “Co-ordinator” from Oxfam on 80 grand a year jump off a plane, spend five minutes talking to you, tell you to “keep up the good work” and then jump back on the effin plane without so much as getting fly shit on his shoe, then you know something has seriously gone wrong with the charity system in this country”. So what I do now is sponsor people like my mate John. He and his wife go out there every year, loaded up with tools, equipment and seed that they’ve begged, borrowed or stolen all year since their last visit. I give money because it’s the easiest thing for me to do. Me and money don’t like each other much. If I’ve got a pound coin in my pocket, I can’t wait to spend it and the pound coin can’t wait to let me. So I give some of it to John. That doesn’t mean though that my conscience is thereby salved. Far from it. I am only too well aware of some of the suffering in this world and I am very grateful for the lot in life I was fortunate enough to be given. What’s become clear to me over the years though, is there are thousands of John’s in this country (UK). They don’t jump on their soap boxes every two minutes and admonish the rest of us for not doing enough. They don’t go looking for praise or thanks. They just quietly get on with what they’re doing. You could be stood next to a John and never know it. And this brings me to the point of this little narrative. What sickens me the most about people like you, is the firm belief you all oh so righteously hold that only you care about the world we live in. The sheer arrogance of such a position makes my blood boil. You see John, like me, votes conservative. John, like me, is a libertarian. John, like me, believes that if you give people the tools, they will do the rest themselves. You want to stop the corruption and suppression of the poor? Give them the tools to pull themselves out of poverty. Then, as they climb out of that poverty, something else will happen too. They will gain economic power and with that power, they will gain a voice. That power and that voice will then give them the freedom to hold sway on what happens in their particular part of the world. Don’t believe me? What do you think happened here in Britain? You don’t share my views on how the world should progress. Fine. You are as entitled to your view as I am to mine. But never, ever presume to think that I don’t care. As for the rest of the denizens here, the mere fact that they come here day after day and take part in the discussions should show you that they care. In the same way that the denizens of Real Climate show they care. I certainly don’t concur with the world view of that particular bunch, but I wouldn’t for one moment suggest that they don’t care. Apart from the Malthusians of course. Bastards ;)
LC
I can not match your willingness to get out there and help people but at least I can match the memories. I can remember our house being woken by window tappers. I was a spoilt child and refused to get out of bed until my mother had lit a coal fire! It was of course "up north".
Jon
Actually I think it is both.
Politicians not that long ago were conviction politicians, you might not have agreed with them but they said what they believed. In the modern day convictions have been replaced by focus groups and the need to get elected. How can "unsophisticated" voters make a good choice when most politicians say what their focus groups tell them is what people want to hear.
I believe the Liberal Democrats are closer to being conviction politicians but there is only one true conviction politics party and that is UKIP. Reason for that statement is that until very very recently any focus group would tell you to stay well clear of the EU if you wanted to get elected.
In general the electorate is bored and frustrated by politics and that suits the so called major parties just fine.
LC
Frost on t'inside of t'windows? Eeh, lad , tha' doan't know tha's born. We 'ad frost on t'inside o' wer eyelids, and that was in t'warm room in t'house!
I can beat you by a decade+ and I spent the first 10 years in a house with no running hot water, no flush toilet and an electrical system that meant you had to be very careful about what appliances you ran at the same time.
Which goes a long way to explain why those of us who will never see 60 again are less than keen on having the eco-Puritans "bomb us back to the Stone Age" or, as I tend to put it, "unpick the Industrial Revolution". Shame that a lot of the proponents are themselves (Hansen, Ehrlich) also over 60, but then most Americans have to go a lot further back than WWII to remember real deprivation — at least the fortunate ones.
I totally agree with your views on charities. As I've said in here before, I long since gave up on Christian Aid, Oxfam, CAFOD, and the other NGOs (I can't bring myself even to call them charities any more). The solution to poverty (especially in Africa) does not lie in swanning around in 4x4s and distributing largesse like Lady Muck nor does it lie in pouring money into the ever-open maw of corrupt dictators and those who know just how much "alleviation of poverty" is necessary to give their contributors the impression they're doing something useful while making sure they don't do themselves out of a job by actually solving the problem.
Africa has the land and the people to solve all its problems. What it needs is a level playing field (don't anybody mention 'Fair Trade', please) and the technology to turn places like Sudan into productive farmland.
Until we recognise that famine is a political tool and not an inevitable sequel to low rainfall and until we are prepared to confront the dictators and the other vested interests (inlcuding the UN) we are emptying our aid into a bottomless pit and short-changing a very large number of our fellow human beings.
I can't find much in your words to disagree with (LC, MJ) but I have trouble reconciling those words with the "selfishness doctrine", espoused by some on these pages, that seems to admit to no moral need to bother ourselves with how we damage the planet; the world is there for us to reap just as other species would reap.
Perhaps you'd argue that your compassion extends only to humans and that the grasses under their feet and the air they breathe can look after themselves. In the very long term doubtless they will. In the meantime the "resource curse" can remain a problem only for those unfortunates who live in the way of our thirsts.
Precisely right, BitBucket. You are absolutely 100% correct. Couldn't be righter.
My "compassion", as you call it, though I prefer the word "responsibility", is first and foremost to my fellow human beings. All of them. And that includes generations to come.
Which is precisely why I quoted and disparage what you could call the "last pack of paper" syndrome. In essence we don't know and have no way of knowing what the effects of our actions will be over the long-term. We can only make intelligent and hopefully responsible decisions that affect us and our immediate descendants. Beyond that we don't know.
Think yourself back to 1912 or even 20 years beyond that when the threat was 10-foot high piles of horse manure in the middle of London. What I wouldn't give for some cheap horse manure where I am just now!
The argument that we must leave the coal in the ground for future generations is wrong, stupid, fatuous and evil. The proponents of that course of action are not interested in future generations. The intellectual descendants of Ehrlich and his fellow Malthusians will make precisely the same arguments then but as now it will come back to the simple question: Do we need those resources now? Answer (as we know from the state of the world's poor): Yes.
Whether we are making the most moral of choices in how we mine and use those resources is a different debate but the bottom line is that "enlightened self-interest" is usually the best option — as long as we remember the "enlightened" bit!
Enlightened self-interest and intelligent, responsible decision making are not concepts that fit naturally with human resource extraction and usage. Greed and selfishness are the norm.
It is incongruous when sceptics use 3rd world poverty to justify the West maintaining its wasteful ways. Does the West reducing its resource usage increase their poverty? If we use less oil does the price for the poor go UP? Surly if we use and waste less, prices go down and the poor can afford more. If Western companies move offshore to avoid environmental taxes and restrictions doesn't that mean that poor countries benefit? Such arguments used to justify the status quo are confused.
Bitty
The fossil fuel burning capitalists are the true conservationists. Our nasty planet has been removing CO2 from the atmosphere and hiding it all over the place for far far too long. Fear not CO2, conservative green humans will now "put you up where you belong, where the eagles fly...."
BitBucket
Oppenheimer demonstrates his confused thinking on the subject with his last sentence. Presumably he means that we need to make sure they don't get any more destitute than their current state of destitution. Nice one, Morry! How does that work, again?It is difficult to know where to start demolishing your cynical — and totally distorted — view of my (and I suspect LC's) view of the world but I had better try.
To begin with greed is part of the human condition, like lust and envy. Google 'seven deadly sins' for a far from comprehensive list of the nastier characteristics of human nature. Whether greed and selfishness are the "norm" depends entirely on your perspective. At least you didn't equate enlightened self interest with selfishness so I'll score you that as a plus. The trick, of course, is making sure that self-interest doesn't spill over into becoming selfishness.
Your point about sceptics using Third World poverty as a justification for Western waste is a nonsense — literally. It is non-sense; there is no coherent or logical concept in the statement. For a start you don't define 'sceptic' but on the assumption that you mean sceptical of the CAGW hypotheses there is no theoretically logical connection between the two. My views on climate do not fuel my views on Third World poverty.
Except that in practical terms they do because, as both LC and I have argued, the NGOs whose purpose is supposedly poverty alleviation are more concerned with climate change than their primary purpose and are expert at ensuring their own continued existence by not alleviating poverty at all — or at least enough to notice. Meanwhile adherents to the Club of Rome philosophy argue that the poor of the Third World should stay that way.
You don't believe me?
Your own argument is full of holes as well. Yes, I'm afraid that decreasing our resource usage is more likely to impoverish the already impoverished. (Bear in mind that we have, I hope, already agreed that neither of us is in favour of 'waste' though we may disagree on the definition.) You do not benefit the poor by making the rich poorer. You benefit the poor by making the poor richer. This is so obvious you would think that it hardly needed saying but it is apparently too complex a concept for the Dirigiste Tendency probably because applied widely enough the result would be a rapid diminution of their power and influence.
And far from attempting to justify the status quo, both LC and I are arguing that the status quo is wrong. The protectionist attitudes of both the EU and the US are keeping millions in poverty.
I argued this when I said that what Third World countries need is a level playing field and that includes the same sort of access to raw materials and technology that we enjoy in the developed world. This is no time to be telling doctors in up-country Nigeria that they can have a solar panel that will either run the fridge for their medicines or the lights for their operating theatre but not both and no you can't have petrol generator because you'll destroy the planet.
Their fight is not with me and my oil-fired central heating; it's with the eco-Puritans who don't really give a flying **** about them or their patients, just about their own overweening self-righteousness.
I agree with Mike that you benefit the poor by making the poor richer, the problems in doing that though are political not logistical. The benefit to the whole world of raising the African continent out of poverty, corruption and dictatorship into enlightened government and a dynamic economy would be enormous.
Africa is tribal but the lines we drew on the map do not fit with the tribal lines so there is conflict. Even with the best will in the world I think helping Africa is a truly tough ask.
If I were asked (haha) how it could be done then I would start by redrawing the lines on the map along tribal lines. Then I would want the West to enforce law and order throughout the continent at the same time as making sure that all Africans are as well educated as the rest of the world and allow them to develop economically.
Set targets for the new tribal countries which, when achieved, would grant those countries independence.
Iraq, Lybia and Egypt show the dangers of simply removing a despot from power and trying to install democracy, the people are not ready for democracy and again the lines we drew on the map play a part in that. If the result of our action is any kind of government that is religious then we have probably made things worse (for them and for us).
Currently we are feeding the starving and saving the children but for what? Without some kind of political/ecenomic change, saving them will mean ever more support is needed in the future.
The wisdom of Solomon would struggle to put Africa to rights.
If humans had not discovered the many resources of the planet and how to extract and use them, we would all be living in caves and this conversation would not be taking place.
Mike, are you saying that resource extraction and usage are not governed by greed and selfishness (as opposed to enlightened self-interest and intelligent, responsible decision making), or just that it doesn't matter?
Your quotes don't do you justice: the second seems to be an out of context fantasy (I haven't found the full context); in the first, the author does not mean that the 3rd world should stay poor but that their development should not result in high GHG emissions.
How does that work then? Sure, there are plenty of people who benefit from our resource usage, including the mining and O&G companies and of course the officials they bribe to get their way. But these people are not "impoverished". If what you say is correct, shouldn't we import more and just dump or bury it in order to help the poor?
Condescending drivel!
BitBucket
I'm sorry but I have no wish to debate with an economic illiterate.
Those who only see a finite cake to be "more equally" divided, thereby spreading the poverty around, are part of the problem not part of the solution and this appears to be what you are saying.
Your interpretation of Oppenheimer is too charitable and the fact that you can't find the context for Strong suggests that you don't really know who he is or what his philosophy is.
It is wealth creation which is going to make the poor richer. Reducing our economic activity is not a recipe for increasing somebody else's.
Wise up.
Mike, full of accusation and not much content. Put your quotes in context if you believe they have merit; otherwise they are meaningless.
If your proposition is that reduced resource usage necessarily equals reduced economic activity, you are simply wrong.
Bucket
So how would you drag Africa out of poverty? Oh and thanks for the grown up compliment.
Both those quotes are quite understandable to anyone who isn't bogged down in the idea that the world has to impoverish itself. Both Oppenheimer and Strong are arguing that the Third World must not be allowed to rise to the economic standard enjoyed by the rest of us. Explain which bit is too much for you to accept.
In the real world, 'greed' and 'selfishness' cannot be distinguished from 'enlightened self interest' and 'intelligent responsible decision making.'
Depressingly Monbiotish.
If that's genuinely your opinion, shub, I'm surprised at you. Or our definition of enlightened self-interest is different.
I said to BitBucket that you must make sure one doesn't spill over into the other (easily done since we're all human) but I'm sure there is still enough altruism and good will combined with good business sense and a genuine concern for the common good that selfishness need not drive out enlightened self-interest.
Mike, you support turning off street lights etc, in order to reduces resource wastage, and then berate me for wanting to cut Western levels of resource usage because, in your opinion, it would worsen 3rd world poverty. You seem confused. Strong's words, from what I can see, are taken from an imaginary future discussion. You are on weak ground with such nonsense. Oppenheimer's words are open to your interpretation only if you seek to paint a man you do not know in the worst possible light for your own purposes; you clearly do, which says more about you than him.
Dung, much of Africa is growing rapidly. It needs no help from me or, I suspect, from you.
Shub:
Really? So the financial centers of London and New York act in their own enlightened self interest and make intelligent, responsible, decisions. And there's me thinking they are just greedy, selfish, mother-frackers. Silly me.
BitBucket
If you want to debate like an adult stop behaving like a troll.
I made the point about waste in my 10.57 post this morning specially to avoid having you wander up this particular blind alley but you found it anyway.Surprise, surprise.
There is a world of difference between keeping lights on all night in empty buildings and dictating how and when I am allowed to do my laundry or cook my dinner or heat my lounge. And neither of those things has anything to do with reducing the use of raw materials.
Ooops! There go the goal posts again.
As for Oppenheimer and Strong, they are by no means the only ones. Have you read any of Strong's output? Or Erhlich's? Or any other of the 'back to the simple life' crowd?
Come back when you know what you're talking about.
Bucket
So if Africa is doing fine, where is your 3rd world poverty? Glagow?
Mike: "stop behaving like a troll" - care to explain what you mean? Am I a troll just because I disagree with you, or because I don't go away when insulted, or... what?
You are inconsistent. If you are not in favour of waste, why would you not favour improved resource efficiency? And If you do favour improved resource efficiency, what do you think is being saved if not resources? And yet you want to claim that Western reductions in resource usage hurt the poor...
I'm guessing that you threw your best shot with your two quotes. As they amount to less than a pile of beans, why would I bother chasing up more of your misinformation?
Dung, where did I say that Africa has no poverty?