Don't believe the hype - References and quotes
Philosophy
2021
REFERENCES AND QUOTES
THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: THE RACE TO GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD IN CRISISEnlightenment and the idea of progress, chasing immortality. Science and technology as saviors against death, doing what religion done before 163 “Through science and technology we will extend our control over the future, the forces of nature, and our bodily duration. We will live better, live longer, enjoy the good life and enter into an earthly Eden of our making where material abundance will provide a fortress against the ravages of time and the onslaught of death.” During the Enlightenment we started to believe that the more stuff the superman-like we would become. 164 Religious and secular obsession with perfection, to transcend spatial and temporal limits imposed on human corporeality. Escaping death through efficiency 165 To be efficient (maximum output with minimum input of time, labour, energy, and capital), perpetual motion and imitating Gods thinking the world into existence. Efficiency secured during the Industrial revolution its place as a temporal tool for securing immortality where more efficient means more productive, more wealth and less time lost. Fredrick Taylor and the spread being efficient as a virtue into other areas. However efficiency runs against love and care 166 167 Rilke, “whoever rightly understands and celebrates death, at the same time magnifies life.” Empathy acknowledged the whiff of death in frailties. No one empathize with the perfect being – empathy is harder to perfect divine. 167 damaging effect of commercial on developing a biosphere consciousness 507 I ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHSEconomy of any life is governed by the entropy law 352 Economy as irreversible process that takes low entropy (valuable resources) and leaves high entropy (valueless waste). But “It compels us to recognize that the real output of the economic process (or of any life process, for that matter) is not the material flow of waste, but the still mysterious immaterial flux of the enjoymentof life” 353 Myths that price mechanism can offset shortages in land, energy or materials. 354 Limited access to energy and material 355 Hard to create matter 355, 356 Exhaustion of material and recycling a pearl neckless, need enough energy and infinite time 356 Production turns incorporeal and the earth turns into a new Garden of Eden. Fallacy of endless substitution. There are no other material factors than natural resources. “However, substitution within a finite stock of accessible low entropy whose irrevocable degradation is speeded up through use cannot possibly go on forever” 361 Different types of innovations: economy-innovations, substitution-innovations and spectrum-innovations 362 Entropic process of nature ignored. Belief in the immortality of mankind, that human will exceed all limitations but mankind’s dowry is finite! “The truth, however unpleasant, is that the most we can do is to prevent any unnecessary depletion of resources and any unnecessary deterioration of the environment, but without claiming that we know the precise meaning of "unnecessary" in this context.”“There is growth when only the production per capita of current types of commodities increases, which naturally implies a growing depletion of equally accessible resources” 363 I TURNING POINT: THE END OF EXPONENTIAL GROWTH?Reasons for being skeptical about economic growth 1190 No hope for technology to drive economic growth. All product and services are dependent on energy. Positive feedback cycle is the engine of economic growth. Higher prices and declining efficiency in turning energy to useful work. 1191 I SUSTAINABILITY ECONOMICS: WHERE DO WE STAND?Spaceship economy, highly energy intensive. Ecological and environmental process must be integrated in economy. SeeDOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST, MEASURING REGENERATIVE ECONOMICS: 10 PRINCIPLES AND MEASURES UNDERGIRDING SYSTEMIC ECONOMIC HEALTHStrong sustainability – substitution is not possible. 291 I THE ENTROPY LAW AND THE ECONOMIC PROCESS IN RETROSPECTdegrading material and problems of recycling 7 The upshot is that material vital for technology will sooner rather than later become extremely scares in the available form. 8 Technology fetish. Already in the 70s we believed that technology was the solution. ”Until we discover cavorite we should not induce people to build multistory houses with neither stairs nor elevators” 14 Viable technology. We cannot create matter or energy therefore technology need low entropy. Promethean gift depletes supporting fuel. 1st was fire. 15 Thomas Savery and Thomas Necowmen came up with 2nd Promethean gift, heat engine 15, 16 Is solar power the 3rd Promethean gift? Have to be able to reproduce by the energy it itself harness, like oil with its EROI 16 Solar power dependent on other primary sources 17 I BEYOND GROWTHProblem of substitution, building “the same house with twice as many saws, but half the lumber.” 197 I DECOUPLING DEBUNKED – EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITYconditions for real decoupling 18 increase in materials use, note 14 20 Increase in energy use 21 Rebound effect 36 Limited potential of recycling. Recycling requires new material and energy. Laws of thermodynamics in the way of circular economy, limits to circularity. Recycling is downcycling, plastic bottles for example. Circularity is compromised when size of input and waste flows caused by economy compared to the size of the primary source and primary sinks made available by the ecological processes (biosphere). 46 Circular economy cannot grow. “If economic growth means an increase in the size of the economy compared to its environment, then it means that growing economies will sooner or later reach the limits of circularity.” Recycling rates are low. Problems with recycling. 47 When material consumption is increasing recycling will only delay resource depletion. As with steel and copper. Recycling is more relevant in a non-growing economy. 48 Insufficient and inappropriate technological change. Technological progress is (1) not targeting the factors of production that matter for ecological sustainability and not leading to the type of innovations that reduce environmental pressures; (2) it is not disruptive enough as it fails to displace other undesirable technologies; and (3) it is not in itself fast enough to enable a decoupling that is absolute, global, permanent, large and fast enough. New technology can be damaging. 49 Slow introduction of new technology, for example cars. Supporting infrastructure. Committed emissions. New technologies complementing not replacing old technologies. 50 The carbon intensity is not decreasing enough. 51 Technological innovations diminishing returns. 52 Environmental cost shifting SeeMYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖ53 I < THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH Figure 8, metabolic flows within biosphere and technosphere 151 “Indeed, there are limits to recycling and technological fixes in the technosphere for two basic reasons: 1. According to the first principle of thermodynamics energy cannot be produced. We cannot increase the size of primary energy sources, but only learn how to use them better. 2. According to the second principle of thermodynamics irreversible processes alter the qualitative characteristics of material flows. Recycling can be done, but only to a certain extent and at a certain cost, and only if the corresponding primary resources are available. Hence, the amount of primary waste outflows of an economy can be reduced by recycling (provided the inputs required by the recycling process itself do not exceed the waste outflow recycled), but a continuous production of wastes is unavoidable.” 152, 153“Internal recycling is important, but when analyzing the pressure on the environment exerted by the metabolic pattern of a social-ecological system, what really matters is the relation between the size of the primary flows required by the technosphere and the size of the primary sources and primary sinks made available by the biosphere.” Cornucopians vs neoMaltusians. “In the last two centuries the huge gap between the density and pace of flows inside the technosphere and the density and pace associated with ecological processes in the biosphere has been filled by non-renewable stock exploitation (stock-flow supply), rather than by sustainably managing useful ecological funds (fund-flow supply). Indeed, at present, the loop is far from being closed for most primary flows (notably energy and food) and the mismatch is ‘solved’ by depleting stocks of primary resources (fossil energy, minerals) and filling sinks (GHG in the atmosphere, pollutants and wastes in the hydro and geospheres).”153 The problem with Ellen MacArthur Foundation and their view on circular economy, is that you can’t increase economy without increasing the consumption of natural resources, simply by recycling. You can’t recycle products at zero biophysical cost. “On the contrary, the bioeconomics of Georgescu-Roegen emphasizes that the economic process is entropic and that therefore it entails a continuous consumption of resources that must be counterbalanced by the work of nature to remain stable. In this original narrative, the industrial revolution is considered a unique event that made it possible to break away from the external ecological constraints associated with the limited pace and density of flow throughput found in pre-industrial economies. This breaking away was only possible because of the plundering of non-renewable fossil energy resources that enabled a dramatic acceleration of the pace and density of economic throughputs through a linearization of previously circular processes.” Economy will slow down when biological processes are introduced. 154 I COLONIALISM IN THE ANTROPOCENE: THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF THE MONEY-ENERGY-TECHNOLOGY COMPLEX“Building on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s insight that economic processes enhancing utility simultaneously increase entropy, I have inferred that exchange values and productive potential must be inversely correlated, and that the accumulation of technological infrastructure therefore signifies the joint operation of thermodynamics and imperialism. The principles of thermodynamics clearly derive from nature, while the strategies of imperialism derive from society. However, mainstream economists are convinced that their accounts of growth and technological progress have no use for thermodynamics. In their worldview, nature is irrelevant for the constitution of society.” 10 I ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONSNeoclassical economics believe human beings are insatiable why expanding growth is a desirable goal (end), with ever-greater provision of goods and service is thought to expand welfare. Market revealed desire ends. SeeTHINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on goals, < DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST on problem of utility and narrow picture of human beings. Limits of pareto efficient allocation. Problem with efficiency. 4 Consequence of 2nd law of thermodynamics is one-way flow from low-entropy resources to high-entropy sinks. “We can recycle materials, but never 100%; recycling is a circular eddy in the overall one-way flow of the river”. Energy cannot be recycled. 31 Technology helps us to be more efficient not reversing the metabolic flow. Entropic dissipation. 38 Nature the 100% recycler? Kenneth Boulding, “information has to be imprinted on physical structures in the form of improbable arrangements of matter before it is effective in the economy.”39 Even knowledge has entropic costs. Energy and materials using internet and computers. Knowledge can cut both ways, improve and damage. Asbestos, CO2. 40 Belief that we could transcend the physical world through knowledge The western modern desire to free themselves from the constraints of scarcity of nature. See Empathic Civilisation 163-166 41 E=mc2 Increasing disorder in materials 66 Low entropy only restored by conversion of low entropy to high entropy elsewhere. High entropy will always be greater than the low entropy restored. 67 The impossibility of 100 % recycling 84 Technology and economy can’t handle and substitute for scarcity of public goods. Market flows and public good services oft mutually exclusive. 183 We have created technologies dependent on oil. 194 Technology takes time 196 Uncoupling physical consumption from resource use and waste production is impossible because of 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics. 243 Comprehensive efficiency identity 422, 423 I ARBETSSAMHÄLLET – HUR ARBETET ÖVERLEVDE TEKNOLOGINThe western modern desire to free themselves from the constraints of scarcity of nature. See Empathic Civilisation 163-166 87 Technology absorbing work 106 Keynes Economic possibilites for our grandchildren – technological unemployment means that humanity will solve its economic problem i.e work to survive 107 Waste is a part of capitalism. Technical changes in the production will force us to change our economic system and the obligation to work 146 In 2004 315 million computer were thrown, only 10% of it was recycled. Our irrational production is cemented in our technology 147 Planned obsolescence 148 The man in the white suite, https://www.imdb.com/video/vi929934873?playlistId=tt0044876&ref_=tt_ov_vi149 Marcuse, “Is it still necessary to state that not technology, not technique, not the machine are the engines of repression, but the presence, in them, of the masters who determine their number, their life span, their power, their place in life, and the need for them? Is it still necessary to repeat that science and technology are the great vehicles of liberation, and that it is only their use and restriction in the repressive society which makes them into vehicles of domination?” 151 I MYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖMachine fetish is revealed by 3 perspectives 1. Uneven flows of energy, materials, yield per hectare and labour hours 2. World system 3. Our cultural eyes make things appear magical 19 the essence of the machine, the conditions for its existence is inequitable exchange relations 49 Machine as fetish 50 Prices are cultural constructions. Technology as access to energy and price relations. John Stuart Mill, and work saving machines. The machine, a way to displace the removal of space and times resources to unfortunate ones? 51 Being part of a system, growth and technological development in one part of the world, means underdevelopment and environmental degration in another part, a zero-sum game. But seeing the world in this way, seeing this reality, would put us human beings in a deep moral conflict. If current welfare is threaten, as it is today by climate change and dwindling resources, maybe we will move towards a paradigm shift. However we need a vision 53 Industrial technology is related to 3 different factors/levels of reality: 1. Thermodynamics. 2. Knowledge. 3. Economy, sociocultural institutions for exchange. 56 Production is dissipative. Industrial capitalism is built on underpayment in the exergy of natural resources. Order is stored in the industrial countries infrastructure. Exergy use is rewarded with more exergy use. This unequal exchange is hidden in the use of exchange value (prices). 58 Exergy is doing the job not the machines 59 The machine fetish rests on the money fetish. 60 Thermodynamic maintenance of the technosphere 61 Difference between the biosphere and technosphere. The biosphere and technosphere are on a collision course 64 Lotka and technology as exosomatic organs. Technology as strategies that overcome limitation of space and time. Technology involves resources, knowledge and social relations. Technology as parasitism. 103 Gravity and friction limits space. 4 categories of technology. 104 Technology as a price relation 112 Is the machine a way to shift the extraction of time and space resources? 113 Industrialization, guano, fertilizers, ghost areas, appropriated carrying capacity and shift of resource and space consumption to the periphery. 114 Sustainable farming cannot be dependent on fossil fuel. 115 The transition to the use of exosomatic energy made it easier to shift the cost to the poor 122 Triangular trade and how the liberation from endosomatic energy allowed a new form of exploitation of areal resources. More poor people now than ever. 123 Technology is consumption of time and space of to save time and space for someone 152 Machine fetishism 159 Uneven exchange and transport technology 160 Rail road as saving time and space for one social category at the expense of another. Von Thünen measuring gravitation and friction against nutritional value 161 Von Thünen, Cuzco and modern transportation of perishable goods. 162 Power to make claims on the resources of other human beings can be based in the oyster shells or money fetishism. 162, 163 The transfer of silver from Central and South America via Spain to England and the birth of modern technology in 18th century England. 163 Poverty and technology development are two sides of the same coin as time and spatial resources are limited. “Från gudaföda till maskinfetishems förblir de ekonomiska systems landskap möblerade med våra egenhändigt tillverkade synvillor”. 164 Georgescu-Roegen, economic process and the growth of technosphere made possible by a selfreinforcing unequal exchange. SeeTHINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on Success to the successful 173 Technosphere and Prigogines dissipative structures. 173, 174 The technosphere exchange of exergy for entropy is unlike other dissipative structure in the universe in that it is based on a social relation, an uneven price relation. It is the exploitation of someone’s environment/nature, a shift of the consumption of resources 174 The distinguishing trait of the modern society is the abstract usage of language with which it strives to encompass and engulf other cultural systems of meaning, a sort of cultural imperialism. Imperialism as who gets to build models of whom. Economic word of utility is an example. Utility as an imperialistic concept. Utility is given meaning by the cultural context and is nothing without it. However it becomes a tool to reduce cultural preferences to a manipular measure. The interchangeability is the foundation of modernity and money gives utility a material and socioecological potent form. Technology as a cultural accepted way to achieve certain culturally accepted goals. 178 Economic growth and technological development therefore have ethical implications Prigogine and dissipative structures. 2nd law of thermodynamics and the consequences for the technosphere: 1. Finite exergy resoursces and 2. disorder (waste) 191 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMISTDecisions of technology for the future concerning sustainable use of transport, buildings and food security 54 Technology stopped doing good by monopolies and patents, the enclosure of creative commons. Robots, who will own them? 158 Automation, work and fairness. USA employment in agriculture went from 50%, 1900, to 2%, 2000. See < THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on the great linearization 149. Technological segregation. Taxing non-renewables and not work and basic income won’t be enough. We have to share. Biosphere is for all! Colonization of the commons, controlling ideas and knowledge. Innovation happens without immaterial law. 161 spread the knowledge 164 “Being less bad is not being good, it is being bad just less so” Be good, start giving, be one with nature. Be generous through regenerative design. Change the core/purpose of business. Help nature. Mimic nature, Janine Benyus 180 Circular economy can be seen as good start though towards regenerative design. See < THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on circular economy. 182 Recycling start doing it. 85 % of phones were not recycled. Look at Japan! Cyclical not circular! Nothing is 100 % recyclable. New idea of value, start seeing things as stored value, materials and energy! See < THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on circular economy. 183 Good examples of regenerative design 185 Need of an open-source. Linux and Asknature.org. Potential of polymer 190 I THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMERTurning renewable into nonrenewable through technical efficiency “Nonrenewable resources are stock-limited. The entire stock is available at once, and can be extracted at any rate (limited mainly by extraction capital). But since the stock is not renewed, the faster the extraction rate, the shorter the lifetime of the resource”“Renewable resources are flow-limited. They can support extraction or harvest indefinitely, but only at a finite flow rate equal to their generation rate. If they are extracted faster than they regenerate, they may eventually be driven below a critical threshold and become, for all practical purposes, nonrenewable.” Renewable-resource cycles but now we can through technology and efficiency drive resource population to extinction. Possible behaviors of renewable resource system: 1. overshoot and adjustment to a sustainable equilibrium 71 Overshoot followed by collapse of the resource and the industry dependent on the resource. Outcome depends of 2 things: 1. Threshold 2. Rapidity and effectiveness of the balancing feedback. Consequence: 1. Equilibrium 2. Oscillation 3. resource and industry collapses 72 Feedback delays and technology. Change takes time. Easier to slow down the change rate than changing delays but technology tries to speed up the rate of adjustment. 152 I PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTHAbsolut increase in CO2, Figure 5.2 116 Increasing material footprint Figure 5.4 Figure 5.5 118 No evidence of decoupling however evidence of the opposite. 119 Investments are needed but technology won’t be enough, a change in economics is needed. “In fact, it is this need for what we might broadly call ‘ecological investment’ which begins to transform the economics of the twenty-first century. Protecting, maintaining and enhancing the ecological assets on which our economy and our own wellbeing both depend turns out to be vital to the economics of a finite world”“But none of this will happen automatically. None of it flows easily from the logic of conventional economics. There is no simple formula that leads from the efficiency of the market to the meeting of ecological targets. Simplistic assumptions that capitalism’s propensity for efficiency will allow us to stabilise the climate or protect against resource scarcity are nothing short of delusional. The truth is that there is as yet no credible, socially just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for upwards of nine billion people. And the critical question is not whether the complete decarbonisation of our energy systems or the dematerialisation of our consumption patterns is technically feasible, but whether it is possible in our kind of society. The analysis in this chapter suggests that it is entirely fanciful to suppose that ‘deep’ emission and resource cuts can be achieved without confronting the structure of market economies.” 125 “But even as the engine of growth delivers productivity improvement, so it also drives forward the scale of throughput. Nowhere is there any evidence that efficiency can outrun – and continue to outrun – scale in the way it must do if growth is to be compatible with sustainability.” 126 I THE SPIRIT LEVEL: WHY MORE EQUAL SOCITIES ALMOST ALWAYS DO BETTERrebound effect of technology 219 I DANA (DONELLA) MEADOWS LECTURE: SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMSVillains: 1. Desire for growth. E.g. Fisheries 14.51 2. Technology 15.20 3. Market 15.33 The villains are taught by our culture to be the saviors/super heroes 15.46 we got to have an enough “If you get how we are interrelated with the environment and that all of this throughputs that run our lives come from the environment, go back to the environment and that we cannot be out of balance then you start inventing new functions and purposes. The first thing that you see is that growth is one of the stupidest purposes ever invented by any culture! We got to have an enough!”07.38 PART 3 I GLOBAL PATTERNS OF ECOLOGICALLY UNEQUAL EXCHANGE: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY I AID IN REVERSE HOW POOR COUNTRIES DEVELOP RICH COUNTRIES I A LETTER TO STEVEN PINKER (AND BILL GATES, FOR THAT MATTER) ABOUT GLOBAL POVERTY - JASON HICKEL I GLOBAL CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS ARE SET FOR THEIR SECOND-BIGGEST INCREASE IN HISTORY - IEATo encouragement
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