People have to make choices among many risks. Part of the skepticism towards climate change is  based on fear that climate responses require global institutions and global management, and that is seen as high risk because “global management will be by elites that make big government and big corporations and screw us”.

Science has the same problem Christianity had when it became the official religion of the holy roman empire: it because self-serving by serving power, and taxed the population to extremes while building its own Rome. Islam filled the vacuum in the population in the ME as Christianity retreated to the centers of power.

I just read the dissertation by Josh Howe that is helpful in understanding these.

MAKING GLOBAL WARMING GREEN:

CLIMATE CHANGE AND AMERICAN

ENVIRONMENTALISM, 1957-1992  http://purl.stanford.edu/cp892qc1059

Recmommened by Lee. SchipperIn previous email (aug 22),   not yet available at Stanford site “being processed”.

Re the previous post, Rifkin quotes Steve schneider

“…To be risk averse is good policy in my VALUE SYSTEM–and we always must admit that how to take risk — with climate damages or costs of mitigation/adaptation — is not science but world views and risk aversion philosophy — and whether you fear more the type one error (wrong forecast so you wasted resources by acting on it) or type two error (right forecast but too uncertain so you didn’t act and it happened and you really got hurt by not hedging) is a value tradeoff…”

So any discussion of public views on climate MUST be about more than the science if it is aimed at examining what might, or might not, lead to traction. 

 The problem is That there are many scenarios of high risk: narchy, fascism, cultural collapse, failure of world economy, plagues, civil wars, So as theory of risk taking should  take into account the perceptual field of individuals and societies: all the things they are worried about. 

Pasted from <http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=657>

Simon Glezos

Excerpts..

I want to challenge the conception of a hard break between an immaterial and material capitalism, arguing there might be more continuity between the two than first appears.

The question remains whether this might not be the latest incarnation of a similar transition that has happened often in the rise and fall of every global capitalist hegemony since capitalism’s inception — whether it be the Venetians, the Dutch, the English — that is, the shift from a manufacturing-based system of production during its rise, to a financialization phase during its decline (an argument developed by economic historians such as Giovanni Arrighi or Immauel Wallerstein).

Why then argue on behalf of a genuine shift in the nature of capitalism itself when what we are witnessing presently may be simply a decline of American capitalist manufacturing hegemony, requiring, in turn, the shift to various new fundamentally unsound strategies to cling to economic relevance?

a crisis of overaccumulation of capital, as developed by David Harvey? The scarcity of capital is thus a problem insofar as circulating immaterial capital, artificially inflated through speculative financial instruments, outpaces this actual concrete capital production.

Eventually the lack of a material productive base underlying the apparently infinite valuation of immaterial production will break through, eradicating the illusory successes. However, this suggests that there is not a sharp division between the material and immaterial economy. In effect, “bubbles” are best understood as immaterial episodes within a broader material economy.

And 

Free markets with monopoly corporations. I’d love to be in that conversation.

News Corp. Donates $1 Million to Republicans

A spokesman for the Fox News parent company says “News Corporation believes in the power of free markets.”

Thinking about paradoxes.

Large government not liked but situation increasingly complex. Best method of coping?

Goal quality of life but concentration of wealth causes problems, including excess of capital over investment opportunities, and the drive to go for financial instruments for high returns vs. the slow returns of investing in actual production.

We want entrepreneurial opportunity but also stability. We don’t like creative destruction.

Small business but against immigration which supports small businesses

How can small government cope with

Roads

Banks

Pollution

Pakistan. What led to the growth of those villages? New agriculture, medicine,

Two articles I’ll quote from in a minute.

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=657

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=658>

Interesting video’s on the future. Showing one of the points of view.

http://www.youtube.com/v/aqTdQHpwfdA?fs=1&hl=en_US”></param><param

http://www.sustainablehawaiiisland.org/node/18

Core article excerpts.

Oil and the Regime of Capitalism:

Questions to Philosophers of the Future

Tere Vadén

 Likewise, human psycho-social or biological environments can radically deteriorate without becoming impossible. More than once the last century demonstrated that the zero point of psycho-social conditions can be reached without provoking systemic breakdowns. ..

 For the same reason, capitalism reaches a crisis point. It cannot continuously grow so that the proportions of different parts remain the same. The parts and the proportions of the parts must change. From this follows delicacy. ..

 There is no limit after which the slum mother can no longer bear it because the option of not bearing it does not exist…

 Is there a form of capitalism that does not need economic growth? ..

the electric motor and the combustion engine, oil and natural gas. The era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present capitalism.which also corresponded with the growth in population: these are depicted by the famous “hockey stick” graph, where the point where the handle reaches the blade represents, at the latest, the 1950s.

The era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present capitalism.The era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present capitalism…

This capitalism changes with the economy of coal and oil, like a mouse becomes a dog and a dog becomes an elephant. These metamorphoses are not the platonic phenomena of abstract capitalism but are instead directly attached to the movements of black raw materials. [ seems specious/ fudges the intrinsic logic of growth problem,]..

when does the sufficiently cheap, easy oil that can be pumped in large amounts, run out?

 Fidel Castro makes the crucial observation: “Marx thought that the limit on the development of wealth lay in the social system, not in natural resources, as we know today.” ..

The history of contemporary capitalism is the history of both these branches: efficiency is increased by the division of labour, specialization, technology and automation.[dc. but part of that goes to machines, the division is not beftween people but between some people, other people, and machines.]..

 Yet surprisingly little has been said precisely about the increase of non-human labour, and its morphological effects. ..

..

Which factors in this capitalist system depend upon the amount of easy and cheap non-human labour? Which of these dependencies are arbitrary, and which ones are necessary?

The calculations regarding availability and sufficiency of oil are, for many reasons, virtually secret…

In the same way as the stock market can act only under the circumstances of unfree and unbalanced information, the combustion engine of this capitalism can only keep running if the fuel gauge is unreliable. …

 A good example is the UK, which thanks to the oil discovered in the North Sea in the 1970s became an important oil exporter in the 1980s, passed its peak in 1999, and after that slid into an oil importing country at the beginning of the 21st century…

In one year approximately one cubic mile of oil is used globally. [8]Correspondingly, in the 21st century global consumption has been about 85 million barrels per day. ..

 It is estimated that the energy consumption of the entire world in 2005 was 15 terrawatts. ..

 If in 2005 there were 6.5 billion people on the planet their total annual work efficiency (maximally) was 0.65 terawatts. Fossil fuel, in other words, gave each person a 20-fold work increase …

The oil of the high EROEI is the pulse of the economy but, to employ a different metaphor, it also produces a blind spot in the middle of the theoretical analysis of growth…

EROEI of the fields in present production is well under 100, under 50, if not even under 20.

The oil of the high EROEI is the pulse of the economy but, to employ a different metaphor, it also produces a blind spot in the middle of the theoretical analysis of growth. ..

From uniqueness follows, inevitably, further questions. If many generally applicable observations of political economy science are concerned not with abstract capitalism (or socialism) [13] but rather the uniquely oil-injected capitalism, then could the same category error be evident also in some critiques of modernism, technology or the Western lifestyle? What if the hegemony of the West was not, after all, defined by modern natural science and technology, enlightenment and individualism but by a one-time offering of coal, gas and oil? As is well known, natural science and technology, enlightenment and individualism cannot be exported — and have not once been exported — without also exporting and using coal, gas and oil. The Catholic faith needed only coal and wind. ..

particularly not nuclear energy, the EROEI calculation of which may be less than one. ..

The increase of energy no longer functioned as a motor for economic growth, as it had during the whole time since the 1860s, with the exception of the 1970s. From then onwards, US economic growth has been reliant on debt. The ending of the energy excess is one reason for the increase in the number of loans. And the waning of cheap oil is one reason for the increase in costs for the continuous taking of loans. The financial crisis and the oil crisis are closely linked;  ..

 It is possible that an important part of the specialization and technologization of the modern world is dependent on and caused by the magnificent, uniquely high EROEI of large oil wells. If this is the case, then the claim that modern prosperity is mainly the effect of improved technology and specialization, has to be revised. ..

if the EROEI of all known energy sources is considerably weaker than the EROEI of the oil fields that have already been used up or are now in production, then the future possibilities for an economy that continuously has to grow (in other words this capitalism) seem weak. ..

 What does the continuous shrinking of the economy mean for science, technology, modernism and individualism? ..

Half empty in that not many philosophers, economists, critics of modernism or social thinkers have said a rational word about the future where the economy shrinks year after year. We have arrived in an uncharted region, where the unknown is fully equivocal. Half full: talk about the end of history and other cultural saturation should be forgotten. Even a large part of philosophy can be started again from the beginning. ..

GardenWorld Politics is a response to this possibility.

Thinking about paradoxes.

Large government not liked but situation increasingly complex. Best method of coping?

Goal quality of life but concentration of wealth causes problems, including excess of capital over investment opportunities, and the drive to go for financial instruments for high returns vs. the slow returns of investing in actual production.

We want entrepreneurial opportunity but also stability. We don’t like creative destruction.

Small business but against immigration which supports small businesses

How can small government cope with

Roads

Banks

Pollution

Pakistan. What led to the growth of those villages? New agriculture, medicine,

Two articles I’ll quote from in a minute.

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=657

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=658>

Interesting video’s on the future. Showing one of the points of view.

http://www.youtube.com/v/aqTdQHpwfdA?fs=1&hl=en_US”></param><param

http://www.sustainablehawaiiisland.org/node/18

Core article excerpts.

Oil and the Regime of Capitalism:

Questions to Philosophers of the Future

Tere Vadén

 Likewise, human psycho-social or biological environments can radically deteriorate without becoming impossible. More than once the last century demonstrated that the zero point of psycho-social conditions can be reached without provoking systemic breakdowns. ..

 For the same reason, capitalism reaches a crisis point. It cannot continuously grow so that the proportions of different parts remain the same. The parts and the proportions of the parts must change. From this follows delicacy. ..

 There is no limit after which the slum mother can no longer bear it because the option of not bearing it does not exist…

 Is there a form of capitalism that does not need economic growth? ..

the electric motor and the combustion engine, oil and natural gas. The era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present capitalism.which also corresponded with the growth in population: these are depicted by the famous “hockey stick” graph, where the point where the handle reaches the blade represents, at the latest, the 1950s.

The era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present capitalism.The era of fossil fuels and the motors and machines that utilise them is inseparable from economic growth and the bottleneck of present capitalism…

This capitalism changes with the economy of coal and oil, like a mouse becomes a dog and a dog becomes an elephant. These metamorphoses are not the platonic phenomena of abstract capitalism but are instead directly attached to the movements of black raw materials. [ seems specious/ fudges the intrinsic logic of growth problem,]..

when does the sufficiently cheap, easy oil that can be pumped in large amounts, run out?

 Fidel Castro makes the crucial observation: “Marx thought that the limit on the development of wealth lay in the social system, not in natural resources, as we know today.” ..

The history of contemporary capitalism is the history of both these branches: efficiency is increased by the division of labour, specialization, technology and automation.[dc. but part of that goes to machines, the division is not beftween people but between some people, other people, and machines.]..

 Yet surprisingly little has been said precisely about the increase of non-human labour, and its morphological effects. ..

..

Which factors in this capitalist system depend upon the amount of easy and cheap non-human labour? Which of these dependencies are arbitrary, and which ones are necessary?

The calculations regarding availability and sufficiency of oil are, for many reasons, virtually secret…

In the same way as the stock market can act only under the circumstances of unfree and unbalanced information, the combustion engine of this capitalism can only keep running if the fuel gauge is unreliable. …

 A good example is the UK, which thanks to the oil discovered in the North Sea in the 1970s became an important oil exporter in the 1980s, passed its peak in 1999, and after that slid into an oil importing country at the beginning of the 21st century…

In one year approximately one cubic mile of oil is used globally. [8]Correspondingly, in the 21st century global consumption has been about 85 million barrels per day. ..

 It is estimated that the energy consumption of the entire world in 2005 was 15 terrawatts. ..

 If in 2005 there were 6.5 billion people on the planet their total annual work efficiency (maximally) was 0.65 terawatts. Fossil fuel, in other words, gave each person a 20-fold work increase …

The oil of the high EROEI is the pulse of the economy but, to employ a different metaphor, it also produces a blind spot in the middle of the theoretical analysis of growth…

EROEI of the fields in present production is well under 100, under 50, if not even under 20.

The oil of the high EROEI is the pulse of the economy but, to employ a different metaphor, it also produces a blind spot in the middle of the theoretical analysis of growth. ..

From uniqueness follows, inevitably, further questions. If many generally applicable observations of political economy science are concerned not with abstract capitalism (or socialism) [13] but rather the uniquely oil-injected capitalism, then could the same category error be evident also in some critiques of modernism, technology or the Western lifestyle? What if the hegemony of the West was not, after all, defined by modern natural science and technology, enlightenment and individualism but by a one-time offering of coal, gas and oil? As is well known, natural science and technology, enlightenment and individualism cannot be exported — and have not once been exported — without also exporting and using coal, gas and oil. The Catholic faith needed only coal and wind. ..

particularly not nuclear energy, the EROEI calculation of which may be less than one. ..

The increase of energy no longer functioned as a motor for economic growth, as it had during the whole time since the 1860s, with the exception of the 1970s. From then onwards, US economic growth has been reliant on debt. The ending of the energy excess is one reason for the increase in the number of loans. And the waning of cheap oil is one reason for the increase in costs for the continuous taking of loans. The financial crisis and the oil crisis are closely linked;  ..

 It is possible that an important part of the specialization and technologization of the modern world is dependent on and caused by the magnificent, uniquely high EROEI of large oil wells. If this is the case, then the claim that modern prosperity is mainly the effect of improved technology and specialization, has to be revised. ..

if the EROEI of all known energy sources is considerably weaker than the EROEI of the oil fields that have already been used up or are now in production, then the future possibilities for an economy that continuously has to grow (in other words this capitalism) seem weak. ..

 What does the continuous shrinking of the economy mean for science, technology, modernism and individualism? ..

Half empty in that not many philosophers, economists, critics of modernism or social thinkers have said a rational word about the future where the economy shrinks year after year. We have arrived in an uncharted region, where the unknown is fully equivocal. Half full: talk about the end of history and other cultural saturation should be forgotten. Even a large part of philosophy can be started again from the beginning. ..

GardenWorld Politics is a response to this possibility.