[Terrapreta] Fw: a tiny outburst of common sense

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Lou,

The Minnesota state legislature was the first in the nation to enact a Global Climate Change Mitigation strategy into law. It is called "25 by 25" (25% reduction by 2025) bill.  It does exactly what you propose.  It requires the electric utility Exel Energy, to replace 25% of their electric generating capacity with wind and other renewables by the year 2025.  It is the first law of its kind and it is being accomplished ahead of schedule.  My belief is that the ball needs to keep rolling and even faster after 2025.

There is a phrase I thought of later yesterday ... "Pay It Forward" ... It was the title of a movie about soccer , I think , too.  But the idea to me seems that we need to change  from operating to get what we need now into more one of getting for futture generations what they will need then.  We have to live now only to sustain livability for others after us.  This is very different than live and let live, to each his own, every man for himself, and capitalistic markets, etc.  It is more like realizing that its pay back time.  We cannot any longer sustain the resource extraction and ignore the waste paradigm.  We need to think about sustaining people, people in other places and at later times.

We have to pay our abundance forward.

Regards,

SKB
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: lou gold<mailto:lou.gold at gmail.com> 
  To: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
  Cc: David Yarrow<mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> ; terrapreta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 4:13 AM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fw: a tiny outburst of common sense


  Yep, and politics has its ways to distort all the logic and market forces. For example, the most recent US energy bill avoided two opportunities to guide business as usual into new directions.  One would have required utilities to generate an increasing share of their power from renewable sources like wind. The other would have rolled back about $12 billion in tax breaks granted to the oil companies in the last energy bill and used the proceeds to help develop cleaner fuels and new energy technologies.

  That's politics as usual. But, I believe there's an even deeper "logic" at work: the industrial age paradigm generates both profits and progress from resource extraction and disregard for waste. It approaches limits through depletions and pollutions. It generates a zero-sum politics of scarcity. Viewed from the perspective of the earth, the human race is a vast collection of "haves" and "have-nots" in a process of taking and wasting and fighting for the spoils. This is the field on which business-as-usual plays. The rich get richer, and so on.... 

  I keep thinking that there is another logic deeply embedded in the terra preta model. Rather than a one-way taking from the earth by the human race, it presents the possibility of reciprocities that have not been part of the previous industrial paradigm. In essence, it shows a view from the earth which says that by capturing and converting waste into soil, we the human race may enter a process of giving and using. This, in turn, presents a potential for moving us from exhaustion toward abundance and generates a new playing field for business-as-usual. It suggests the possibility of truly sustainable abundance and a system in which all get richer. 

  Respectfully, I would like to suggest that this is a revolutionary shift -- a sea change -- that requires a leap of faith from familiar notions of scarcity into off-our-present-map novel notions of abundance. It may turn out that consciousness-as-usual is as much or even more of an obstacle than business-as-usual. 

  We have quite a song to sing. Let's do it.

  OK, that's my-your-our dream.

  hugs,

  lou










  On Dec 16, 2007 10:48 PM, Sean K. Barry < sean.barry at juno.com<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com>> wrote:

    Hi David,

    I just read something called "Jevons Paradox".  Duane Pendergast referred me to it.  It is related to a "logical fallacy", called "affirming the consequent", and I think, an incorrect working the modus tollens or modus ponens rule?

    The applicable "fallacy" in the article you referred points out that you cannot rely on conservation of use of fossil fuels to lower fossil fuel consumption.  Reducing the demand (conservation or raising the efficiencies) will lower prices temporarily, but eventually will result in increased demand again.  If we conserve, then carbon demand and consumption will not go up?  ... doesn't work.  That dog don't hunt.  That is a weak induction argument.  The market forces will drive an increase in total demand for fossil fuels.  It is a powerful mechanism that has built most of all the world wide monopolies.

    The only logical method applicable, is a correct use of "inference", when A => B, says not A means not B and also not B means not A.  The way to use this to stop burning fossil fuels, is not to burn less (conservation), but rather to stop mining and drilling for (supplying) fossil carbon fuels!  Or, eliminate the supply altogether and that will definitely lower the total demand and consumption,.  If supply A, then demand B (and consumption), means that without supply => then no demand (and no consumption) in a market.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox>

    In a world where the demand for energy is intense, crucial, and intensifying, the fossil fuel energy industry is in its hey day.
    They operate in a vast market, which allows them to promote conservation and at the same time drive up corporate revenues.
    As for their "renewable energy" objectives, in an open market, replacement of fossil carbon fuel will eliminate the demand and consumption, only if replacement "renewable energy" sources are found at a lower price and can completely replace the "energy" content of the fossil carbon fuels.  As long as there are people who can only buy fossil carbon fuels, then suppliers will always be able to sell at just about any price.  If the supply becomes so precious and rare, it will price right into unavailability for all.

    Without replacement of the "energy" sources, we ALL will not have enough available "energy" resources to live and work as we now do.  Conservation is the "bait" of markets that fossil fuel suppliers are running, along with automobile manufacturers, and politicians who's futures are bent on the "status quo" of open markets acting like open markets.  This is just business.  Business as usual is their moniker.  What would you do, doing so well in business, to consider changing what you are doing?

    Maybe we should consider creating the business of "Eliminating Fossil Carbon Fuel Consumption", and use the logic of eliminating (or taxing the shit out of) fossil fuel supply, in order to rid the world of noxious carbon dioxide pollution?


    "The government's climate change policy works like this: extract every last drop of fossil fuel then pray to God that no one uses it."

    Regards,

    SKB
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: David Yarrow<mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> 
      To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
      Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 3:19 PM
      Subject: [Terrapreta] Fw: a tiny outburst of common sense


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