Obviously more than a few people. A better question is who cares about your total lack of input into this discussion. If you have nothing to add fine but we don't need to know about it.
The election thread - Two middle-late aged white men trying to be blokey and convincing..., same old shit, FFS.
- Thread starter johnny
- Start date
SeventySeven,
You sound even more cynical than me!
I get what you're saying but I still think you're looking at it from the point of view of dog eat dog - which is probably realistic but striving for lowest common denominator is not what we should be doing.
I'd rather try to do the right thing and fail than just give up and screw everybody just in case they try to screw us.
It's possible that once something starts happening then enough positive benefits are generated to outweigh the negatives. You're argument hinges on essentially most variables remaining static ie. everybody else acts in their own best interests to the detriment of everybody else. I don't think you are considering what I think Arete referred to as a positive feedback loop.
p.s My point about blindly chasing economic growth was not directed at you just a comment in general.
You sound even more cynical than me!
I get what you're saying but I still think you're looking at it from the point of view of dog eat dog - which is probably realistic but striving for lowest common denominator is not what we should be doing.
I'd rather try to do the right thing and fail than just give up and screw everybody just in case they try to screw us.
It's possible that once something starts happening then enough positive benefits are generated to outweigh the negatives. You're argument hinges on essentially most variables remaining static ie. everybody else acts in their own best interests to the detriment of everybody else. I don't think you are considering what I think Arete referred to as a positive feedback loop.
p.s My point about blindly chasing economic growth was not directed at you just a comment in general.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
i just look at it from a point of view of economics.
as i've said, even if an agreement will be met it will be unstable and will be broken by countries (if they agree at all) because of the riches that can be attained by doing so.
i imagine it similar to joining a union when non union members get all the benefits they negotiate for irrespective of membership status - not only will it be hard to get people to join but they'll constantly have every reason not to. it just so happens that if everyone joins up the whole workplace should benefit.
i understand the point you are trying to make but i fail to see the point in sending ourselves broke on the *hope* that others will do the same as us, when irrespective of what we do their best economic/riches option would be to screw us over. this becomes especially true when they are incapable of making such an agreement, even if they wanted to (i.e someone couldn't afford the union fees).
Bodin
GMBC
You are speculating and you have no more proof of your opinions than anyone else in this thread. Your main fear seems to be this speculation over going "broke", but it's a false fear.
If you were to take a broader view on this argument (which you seem determined NOT to do) you would see that Australia, like every other major economy that you feel a victim of, is essentially already broke. Yes, the system you're talking about operates on borrowing and EVERY major economy (probably apart from China?) is deeply, deeply in debt. Billion and trillions of "dollars" are on balance sheets somewhere all over the world and the fact is that is doesn't even have a fixed value at any one point in time. It's a fluid concept, an idea in people's heads - an opinion. And this is what you want to measure our futures against?
But the air we breathe is real. So, long term *and even short term*, what do you, me, my kid, your dad or anyone else REALLY gain from avoiding climate change? I'll tell you - a worse outlook. Unlike you and I, people who actually know what they're talking about (i.e. Stephen Hawking) are already talking about humans seriously needing to consider space colonisation to survive.
It's seriously time to put your calculator down mate.
Going broke?? I'm not sure where this perception has come from but even the modelling that John Howard was using to put off doing anything showed us going anything but broke. It did show a decrease in growth of GDP but we were hardly paupers in 2050.
Of course Howard ran with the line that it was going to cost us x megajillions while neglecting to mention it was simply that we would still grow, just by a little less than before - which to my mind is more than satisfactory.
Now I agree modelling is one thing and reality another but you simply stating that we will all be ruined and broke does not make it so. It's very chicken little'esque I think to be saying that and your simplified example has a ton of assumptions that are no different to any economic model and to be honest proves nothing.
Relying on economics alone to determine what is the best course of action is completely flawed as it does not take into account that humans behave in ways economists cannot understand and are far less materialistic than they assume.
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I rather strongly disagree with using strict economic justification for the implementation or not of environmental policy. Imagine if we applied the same principles to health, education, public transport, law enforcement, etc and so on. I also disagree with the justification that if we act, we'll simply be screwed over by less scrupulous parties. It's an extension of the "If I didn't do it, someone else would have" justficiation that's used for everything from selling mutinitions to dictators to tradies who rip off old ladies.
At the same time, as a nation you do need to make smart decisions. If you look at what Rudd took to Copenhagen, I'm astounded that he expected any sort of resonable outcome from it http://www.guardian.co.uk/environme...australia-emissions-copenhagen-greenwash-rudd (yeah it's an opinion piece but the greenwash colmun in the Guardian is fantastic for taking apart "green" credentials).
The epitome of Labor greenwashing was the cash for clunkers policy. Over 50% of the carbon emissions produced in a vehicle's life are produced during its manufacture. So much so that you need to operate a car that is twice as efficient as the one it replaced for 15 years beofre you break even on carbon emissions. Add to that hybrid cars require the replacement of their battries every 5-7 years. Chances are that replacing an existing vehicle with a hybrid never offsets the carbon produced in maufacture. The only place I can see cash for clunkers coming form is the car industry and associated labor unions. It's certainly not an environmental policy.
If you are going to go after personal vehicles in an attempt to reduce carbon you have 2 options: permanently get cars off the road, or provide incentive for people to not purchase new cars - put that $2k into incentives for people to keep their existing cars well maintained. However, imagine the outcry if the government encougead people not to spend money...
Looking at Liberal policy on Climate change, it's token and pissweak at best - aiming for a 5% reduction on BAU emissions is a joke. Tackling it though putting solar panels on domestic dwelling and planting a small number of trees. Investment in unmentioned "renewable energy projects" and absolutely no mention of any action in terms of industry. It's a token policy provided by a party which obviously does not really believe in action on climate change - the majority of their publicly avaiable policy document is allocated to attacking Labor's policies.
If we are to honestly look at Australia's primary role in carbon pollution, acknowledgement of our role as a major exporter of fossil fuel and carbon intensive agricultural produce is essential. It's morally and intellectually bankrupt to sell these commodities to other nations - especially developing nations and deflect the blame to them - we are directly profiting from the burning of fossil fuel and consumption of produce in these nations. IMO the sectors profiting from fossil fuel export/ carbon intensive agriculture need to be held just as accountable as domestic polluters. I'm sure that view will be highly protested by anyone employed by, invested in or otherwise profiting from coal, gas and farming but it is the truth.
I'd personally like to see government promotion of the feral live export and kangaroo industries as low impact alternatives to traditional grazing, outright buy backs of water licensing and widespread cancellation of the MDC irrigation industry, and tariffs on fossil fuel export for use in renewable energy investment.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
don't make too many assumptions.
here's an excerpt from my very-in-draft-stages (i.e totally informal) thesis. i like to write things as a giant rant before i edit them due to getting in frames of mind where i just want to pour words out onto the keyboard. so don't get all judgmental/ad hominem thinking this is what i'll be handing in.
As a side note, Australia almost went the way of the U.S. In October of 2008 the Australian government extended its AAA rating (basically, a guarantee that you won't lose your money, if the firm goes broke the tax reserves will compensate the account holders/investors) to include both all bank deposits (and here's the scary part) all wholesale bank debt. This falls under the umbrella of contingent liabilities - a potential expense, one that may or may not eventuate, depending how events turn out, but which should be provided for in properly kept accounts or budgets, which I mentioned earlier.
To put this in perspective, the US has 60 trillion dollars worth of contingent liabilities. The Australian government has 1 trillion . But that's not the scary part. The scary part is that the biggest budget surplus we've ever had was 20 billion dollars, which we had at the end of the Howard era . In other words, our cash assets were outnumbered 50:1. Now we have no surplus. at all. in fact we're running 100 million a day into debt thanks to the labor government.(needs reference cited) Before all we needed was for 2% of the government assured liabilities, to go bad, and we were in serious trouble. Which, one could assume is unlikely if the government hasn't been reckless with its assurances right? Now, after Rudd's "economic stimulus plan" we'd have to pay it off in USD's, GOLD, or whatever else we have in reserves. At worst, we'd need to call in foreign debt and perhaps borrow some cash off the Chinese ourselves. The difference is that we're not running a trade deficit, so are actually able to pay it back.
The thing is this is what happened with the US government and the housing loans, more went bad than the government had the money to pay for. That in turn lead to the US government taking on all those bonds from China...
Thankfully however, that the Australian and then New Zealand government learnt from this. This policy was cancelled as of 31 march 2010 for Australia and 30th april for New Zealand . The NZ government obviously how much of a colossal error it made when its banks recklessly loaned out $10.3 billion NZ dollars to businesses and inevitably, many of those businesses defaulted. The result was the banks leaving the NZ government in under with a $290 million dollar bill to foot that they’d accumulated in less than 12 months. In a country of 4 million people, that’s a lot, and god only knows how many more of those loans are going to be defaulted on in future. The governments logic was to provide business with capital (money) that it otherwise wouldn’t have gotten. Their argument basically boils down to stating that “these loans have prododuced more than $290 million more output”. However if that was the case then the banks didn’t need the guarantee in the first place!! The only reason for the guarantee is a safety net if you miscalculate your risk. If these loans had of made more output than they cost then the banks would have loaned the money to these businesses regardless! If they wouldn’t have then it’s a business that should have (and eventually did, albeit after giving the government a $290 million bill to foot) failed earlier on. Additionally, this was a country of 4 million people that was borrowing $250 million dollars a WEEK (13 billion over just under a year) to stay afloat. $62.50 per person per week for nearly a year.
So is Australia safe yet?
In short, no. Not by a long shot. Unfortunately, the very ideas, the legislation, policies and ideas that democracy (indirectly through politicians) puts into place is ultimately what makes a country poorer and eventually sends it broke. The biggest of which, is the central banking system. I will now explain why it, and many other core government policies in place are doing nothing but harm to the economy and may ultimately send us broke.
Central banking and low interest rates:
Artificially low interest rates (due to banks being able to take on debt larger than their deposits due to the Reserve supplying it, in doing so devaluing the currency) only results in businesses getting a false impression that their consumerbase has more money to spend than it really does. If levels of loans are increased (proportionate to savings levels) then consumers will have more cash on hand than they should. This cash will then be spent, and quickly (after all, the reason for getting a loan is that you don’t have a demand time horizon equivalent to the time it takes you to save the necessary money). This fast, dramatic influx of unearnt money increases demand for whatever it is spent on. Businesses both assume that these increases will continue or at least remain at their increases levels (because they assume that this money has been earnt by their customers), and are keen to take advantage of this increase in monetary supply. This leads to them investing (whether it be their own saved money or even more loans) in capital which allows them to produce more.
The result of this is two things:
Firstly, once consumers have spent these loans, they must pay interest on them. This interest is the reduction in what would have been their savings to spend on the businesses goods in the future, and so is the reduction in the businesses future revenue/profits. This receives a double hit, as if the consumer is saving their money is EARNING interest, so the difference is in fact double the interest rate. Not to mention that savings interest compounds on itself as well!
Secondly, the business has invested money in capital to be used to keep up with the levels of demand introduced with the lines of credit given to consumers, which increases the fixed costs of running the business.
Businesses are then left with both the net decrease in earnings that consumers are now burdened with (their interest) but the additional running costs of all their new capital investments. Once the fast (loaned) money has dried up, demand levels will shrink back to their original levels minus the interest, and the business is left with the increased running costs of their investments.
The long term result is of course, a double reduction in the businesses overall profits.
The first thing the business will do then, is liquidate the excess capital it has and if it is lucky, won’t have to pay back the remainder of its investment loan with the reduced revenue it now earns thanks to the banks taking that in the form of loan interest on the consumers loans. Alternatively, it may have simply lost both the decrease in demand that the loan interest causes, and the difference between the purchase and sale prices of its newly purchased capital.
The really scary part about all this is that consumers are taking out loans not for investment (which would imply that they’re still able to save money even after paying the bank its share) but rather, for consumption.
Ironically, even for those that take out loans to invest, the inflation for that year caused by those very loans is often greater than or at very least offsets the net earnings that they actually make.
Is Australia’s banking system safe?
Not by a long shot.
50% of Australia’s mortgage market is held by CBA and Westpac, 25% by ANZ and NAB.
December 2009: 60% of CBA’s lending books are mortgage. 50% of Westpac’s are, and both are increasing.
CBA 2009 annual report - their leverage ratio is almost 20. total assets of 620 billion vs 31 billion dollars of equity. Of that 620 billion, 43 billion are home loans. That means that if approximately 6.6% of its loans go bad, 100% of its shareholder equity is wiped out. This problem parses in comparison to the contingent liabilities, calculated to be over $13 TRILLION by the Reserve Bank.
What the really scary part about this is, as The Australian noted in 2008;
“The Reserve Bank has a dark worry about our banks: the get 90% of their cash from each other. If one bank gets into trouble, the Australian financial system could be snap-frozen overnight.”
what i think you're failing to see is that even if we take action, it's likely to be pointless. i don't know how else i can explain this.
what we can gain by avoiding action? well we can be filthy rich in the meantime, and then reap all the benefits of all the sacrifices that everyone else make.
that's the temptation, and that's why it's impossible for effective action to be taken.
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seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
again, pointless. they'll simply go and dig up the rocks or the oil somewhere else. removing the pollution from australia isn't going to remove it from the world.
why buybacks of water licencing and cancellation of the irrigation industry?
Buybacks as irrigated agriculture is a major producer of CO2 emissions, amongst its other significant environmental drawbacks and limited lifespan of viability.
It comes back to your continued use of the "If we don't screw it/them someone else will" principle - which is an intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt standpoint as I tried to indicate, but one you seem quite happy to apply.
Morally bankrupt - By the logic you are using, we should be turning Australia into an opium poppy field and becoming filthy rich flooding the globe with heroin - if we don't do it, the Taliban are just going to keep profiting from it. There'll still always be heroin and it's pointless to gorw a lower profit crop. While we're at it, we should be pulling the Australian military from Afghanistan and using it to control the blood diamond trade. If we don't the Congolese army are just going to keep doing it. We should also be selling uranium to North korea because if we don't do it someone else will.
Intellectually dishonest - the mindset is self fulfilling. By making the assumption that someone else will do it if we don't, you become that someone else. I.e. if no one sells North Korea uranium, they don't have any and can't enrich weapons grade plutonium. By assuming at someone would sell them uranium and using that to justify us doing it, we became that "someone".
You seem unable to remove the hard economist's blinkers and look at the issue of climate change from any perspective other than your back pocket.
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seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
if i gave that impression then i apologise. i can certainly understand why climate change is a big issue that needs to be addressed. apologies if i appeared flippant or ignorant on the issue.
the difference with things like heroin, uranium, whatever are twofold, and are addressed in a manner in which it may be possible to address climate change.
that is, if the world was to come to an agreement that climate change should be addressed (just as it has agreed that heroin or blod diamonds or genocide or what have you is bad ) and enshrines it in international law, offending countries can be subject to all manner of UN/etc sanctions.
this includes but is not limited to, economic and financial warfare. just as the U.S has "dealt" with cuba for example. in doing so, if the australian government was found guilt of profiteering from the illegal production of heroin, it could be subject to fines, shipping blockades, discluded from trading with trading partners, etc. this makes polluting (if caught) much more costly than the costs of cutting down on carbon.
this is a possible solution, if the countries can agree to it. however, it also presents a problem in that there is still demand from countries that are not governed by the agreement. i.e you have a bunch of countries acting legally, and a bunch of countries acting illegally. just as you have people who sell legal products to legal buyers, and people who illegally sell drugs to people who illegally purchase them.
the difference i believe is that these countries could quite easily go on producing & buying heroin from one another and (theoretically) this would have nothing to do with the other countries. however, pollution is not quite the same.
as far as your argument about intellectual dishonesty goes, i completely understand what you are saying. it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.
however, the point needs to be raised that this does in fact happen. locking one drug dealer up does not simply mean there are less drugs on the street. rather, it means the prices of current drugs go up until that very profitability results in new suppliers in the market. their argument isn't moral, they are well aware that what they're doing is wrong. i doubt you'd get many drug dealers saying "well if i don't do it someone else will", but rather "well i wanted to make some money".
i have little doubt that north korea is attempting to get its hands on plutonium/uranium/etc through illegal channels, and due to uh... its "other" activities it has been submitted to all manner of internationally agreed sanctions, just as cuba was with cars.
as for the economic blinkers well, i am in the process of completing a double economics and business degree, so can't really speak of the scientific aspect. i imagine you can - care to give some info to the less enlightened of us?
Drizz
Likes Dirt
There were a few flaws in your argument (e.g. country adopting contingent liability and the chance of it becoming a real liability) but it will end up going OT and arguing over semantics.
All I can say is this: Economics is great when it is used from a pragmantic angle to explain an actual market behaviour or phenomonia. Economics is shit when people have confirmation bias, cherry pick their facts to extrapolate a "doomsday" scenario.
No worries - I know better than to get offended by a political argument on the internet. It's actually very refreshing to hear a fiscal conservative who accepts that carbon pollution is an issue.
I've posted enough times regarding HICC that everyone's probably sick of hearing about it, but to recap - 97% of the 5000 odd peer reviewed articles published on the subject in the last 15 years do not significantly deviate from the core predictions of IPCC. In fact, all recent research on glacial and sea ice retreat rates indicate that melting is more extensive than IPCC worst case predictions. Even the much maligned U of East Anglia CRU has been cleared of any scientific misconduct in two independent investigations. This is more scientific consensus than there is on rather fundamental issues we take as given, like the concept of time, relativity, gravitation and particle mechanics.
The majority of "experts" who are sceptical of HICC are in positions with extreme conflict of interest - using two examples: Ian Plimer - he is a mining geologist who has never carried out an empirical climatology study in his life. He director of 3 mining companies, from which he earns an estimated $400 000 a year. He has the gall to state that science in favour of climate change is mercenary in pursuit of research funding...
Number 2 is the Heartland Institute, where old mate Stephen Fielding went to learn about climate change. Before the advent of climate change, HI was most notable for receiving approximately $1.6-3.2 million US annually from tobacco companies and coincidentally finding that there was no link between cancer and smoking - up until the early 2000's. In 2008, it's estimated that HI received between $560 000 (HI statement) and $800 000 (Greenpeace statement) from Exxonmobil and coincidentally found no link between carbon pollution and global warming...
etc and so on.
In summary - the science is there. Unfortunately making the connection that simultaneously clearing 50-70% of earth's vegetation and burning anywhere between 20-50% of the carbon sequestered by Cambrian forests 250 million years ago in a quarter of a millennium increases atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration and therefore sharply changes the thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere is the easy part.
Understanding how a minor change in atmospheric thermal dynamics will affect the cycles and synergistic properties of it is far more complicated. There has been vastly more carbon in the atmosphere than HICC could ever produce before and there was still life on earth. The issue is that a) it was very different life and b) carbon quotients changed over millions of years in the past, not 300 years or so - or if they did change rapidly - such as massive volcanic eruptions etc, they resulted in mass extinctions - such as the end-Cretaceous which wiped out approximately 95% of life on the planet.
The best modeling we have is that if we continue emissions at business as usual rates the changing thermal dynamics of the atmosphere will cause a shift in climactic patterns and places that we currently live and grow food in may not continue to be as good for life and productive for food as they have been - and extreme climactic phenomena like droughts, storm events, heat waves, etc and so on will become more frequent and severe towards the latter half of the century. This will definitely suck if you're say, a wheat farmer in marginal wheat belt Australia, a sub Saharan African who can barely eat enough to live as it is, or an elderly asthmatic in Adelaide. As healthy, well heel 1st world urbanites it may mean that washing your car and watering the lawn will become things of the past and groceries we take for granted my become luxury items.
If you're an alpine lizard/bird whatever on the other hand, the habitat you can tolerate shifts above the top of the mountain...
There is an old saying in Politics, that when you are sick of saying something people are finally starting to hear it. All you can do is keep saying it until people are ready to hear it, and realistically 'you' have to. People will never accept such confronting information from any bloke off the street, the academia have to push and push and just keep pushing. The crediblity gap between a Biology PhD and a Green's Senator is large, you can do what Hanson-Young can't, actually my 5yr old neice fits that category too, but I'm sure you get my drift with out me having to quote Spiderman.
These studies you mention in the last 15 years, it's only now starting to really get a hold in the broader population. Give it another 15-20 years and it will be accepted across the board, the question is at what point between then and now it will become accepted widely enough to be actioned, it's a more difficult question to answer but discontinuing the discussion certainly won't speed it up.
Just to explain what I meant by positive feedback mechanisms as I saw it misinterpreted further back - to offer a grossly oversimlipfied example for the purpose of explaining the concept - convection is a positive feedback we use all the time.
Say you put a pot of water on the stove. As it heats up a bit the hot water near the element rises and forces the cold water at the top of the pot down, where it heats up close to the element and rises and so on. Once this positive feedback mechanism is well enough established, you can turn the stove right down and the pot will continue to heat up.
Similar, but vastly more complex positive feedback mechanisms exist in terms of greenhouse gas release and global warming. As such the timing of emission reduction is important, possibly more so than the level of reduction - in the same way as turning a pot on the stove down 25% before it heats up will be far more effective in stopping if from boiling than turning it down 90% once it's started bubbling.
Resultantly - If Labor is well informed regarding climate change - and it's got the Garneaut report in it's grubby mitts - it would know this. Thus by using delay tactics in regards to emission decreases it would be knowingly contradicting the stance it supposedly takes on the issue.
Say you put a pot of water on the stove. As it heats up a bit the hot water near the element rises and forces the cold water at the top of the pot down, where it heats up close to the element and rises and so on. Once this positive feedback mechanism is well enough established, you can turn the stove right down and the pot will continue to heat up.
Similar, but vastly more complex positive feedback mechanisms exist in terms of greenhouse gas release and global warming. As such the timing of emission reduction is important, possibly more so than the level of reduction - in the same way as turning a pot on the stove down 25% before it heats up will be far more effective in stopping if from boiling than turning it down 90% once it's started bubbling.
Resultantly - If Labor is well informed regarding climate change - and it's got the Garneaut report in it's grubby mitts - it would know this. Thus by using delay tactics in regards to emission decreases it would be knowingly contradicting the stance it supposedly takes on the issue.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
totally agree, although the point is to kind of make the reader think more than anything.
iirc the US housing f**kup was counted on the contingent sheet. you can only imagine what would have happened with au/nz if their guarantor policy continued.
later on i plan on highlighting when/how the recording of different stats have changed. i.e the U.S and removing things from its CPI because these things were shooting up too much. problem easy fixed - just stop counting them.
as for the whole "country adopting a contingent and the chances of it becoming a real liability" thing goes well, (i'm going to assume you have an econ background of some sort) so i'm sure you are aware of trickle out, circular flow and domino effects.
when these are caused by contingents they're referred to as a "black swan". the basic idea being that various elements cannot survive without one another. the result being that whilst security is increased, the consequences of things failing are so much worse.
this link here http://cij.inspiriting.com/?tag=black-swan# explains it all quite well.
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Ivan
Eats Squid
Arete,
I'm glad that your around to post on these forums, especially regarding HICC. Even though I am a scientist myself, and am aware of all the things you discuss, I don't have the skill to write as eloquently and succinctly as you do.
Unfortunately, my experience in discussing HICC with people has given me the impression that the majority of people believe it be a scam or untrue. Maybe it is different in more metropolitan area's, but there is a resistance to believe, which seemed to increase once a carbon tax/ETS was mentioned.
I'm glad that your around to post on these forums, especially regarding HICC. Even though I am a scientist myself, and am aware of all the things you discuss, I don't have the skill to write as eloquently and succinctly as you do.
Unfortunately, my experience in discussing HICC with people has given me the impression that the majority of people believe it be a scam or untrue. Maybe it is different in more metropolitan area's, but there is a resistance to believe, which seemed to increase once a carbon tax/ETS was mentioned.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
which only contributes further to the unwillingness of people to do anything about it.
Ivan
Eats Squid
I agree. A tax on carbon only would only see popular support when everyone is in agreeance that a cost needs to be born. Tax credits would be a more popular way to promote development of green technology in the current circumstances.