I, umm, went to register my date of birth in honour not of fact but the political necessity of restoring even the vaguest understanding among the #auspol political class of the federation – hopefully to be followed by a post Morrison commitment to MAKING IT WORK & mistakenly put it at 9/5/2021 instead of 9/5/2001.

1901 is no longer available for punters.

Ask no questions, tell no lies. – Pākehā Māori expression circa 1970, Central Australia. – I was only nineteen. – Honest.

John Blundell, Independent Journalist, South Australia

“Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth—or even degrowth—of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?” Back then, the idea of prioritizing human and environmental welfare over economic growth was so radical that Gorz was laughed out of the political sphere.” 

“But 50 years later, degrowth has regained its relevance as climate change is projected to worsen faster than humans can respond. Supporters of the movement believe that a radical shift in standard economic thinking is needed, one that challenges the assumption that economic growth is good for everyone. Jason Hickel, an anthropologist and prominent voice on the topic, notes that “degrowth is about reducing energy and resource throughput,” bringing the economy back into balance with the living world.” 

greeneconomyaction.com & the @Twitter account @wired_we are in the words of my 1990s newsletter CEPWW* active in the global public domain for one essential purpose – to grow the language and the economy will follow. It is implicit in this exhortation that the terms of post 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and contemporary economic discourse are DEFUNCT.

..AS IS the framing of biodiverse species defence, regenerative food & fibre production AND human #PublicHealth in the archaic ruling-class language of the League of Nations 1920-1946 of “conservation.”

WHAT even is that? 5 billion children and young people would rightfully ask.. or tell us straight away it’s crap for rich people on cruises or riding in big aeroplanes.

..wheel out the Sierra Club of High Nevada, the Audubon Socitey and the proposed dictatorship of the proletariat (is that what our globally asphyxiating consumer shopping mall and online purchasing economy actually semiotically/ epistemically/ culturally/ historically IS?)?

..the 1917 ‘Laura Spelman Rockefeller Grand Teton National Park,’ no?

And alas the terms of the contemporary $1 billion+ per annum climate conversation publishing bonanza are frankly nonsensical. – In essence, readers are urged to completely ignore the business & organised crime conspiracy to CONTINUE investing in devastating bogus #science for another eight or twenty-eight years – depending upon which conceptually overwrought if not utterly fanciful off-the-shelf ‘Economic Policy Supermarket’ @McKinsey (also in Australia “RepuTex”) econometrics retail politics consumer Plan they MAY have chosen in favour of bush-walks, household reno’s, tree-planting and face-painting for the children.

This public relations greenwashing industry urges us all, as obviously stupid and stupoured consumers, to gaily abandon personal responsibility for such flights-of-fancy as helping to engineer or GROW active social networks and engineer the material and industrial infrastructure of a society that CANNOT EVER SUCCESSFULLY “adapt” to devastating man-made global heating (and notably at the moment the flood rains, cat. 5 storms, rotting wetalands, dying oceans, mass species extinctions & freezes closer to the Equator than have occurred in at least 11,000 years it DIRECTLY causes), to leave such complex matters to the experts. Be Under the Doctor, y’all – it could well be a Dame Edna Everage, Rex Pilbeam, Russ Hinze, Bill Gunn, Ian Macnamara, Scott Morrison, Ita Buttrose, Dame Enid Lyons hoedown.

And the following article by Paige Curtis, who’s only of course doing a job to make her worthy way in this adult life, put the whole fantastic flight of fancy on display for us..

It’s a study. It’s also our lives and we only get one shot.

December 29, 2022

Last spring, I spent the afternoon helping a complete stranger clean out her garage. We met through the Boston Ujima Timebank, an online mutual aid platform. She needed someone to help her with spring cleaning—a week later, I showed up ready to organize piles of clothes and household items in preparation for donation.

The Ujima Timebank offers everything from childcare and career counseling to household cleaning. No money is exchanged. Instead, for every hour members spend helping another, they earn one time credit for the exchange. The spirit of the exchange program is that, as Edgar Cahn, an early timebank proponent put it, “we have what we need, if we use what we have.” I didn’t know it at the time, but this was degrowth in action.

André Gorz, a French social scientist, coined the term “degrowth” in 1972. At an academic forum, he posed a revolutionary question: “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth—or even degrowth—of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?” Back then, the idea of prioritizing human and environmental welfare over economic growth was so radical that Gorz was laughed out of the political sphere. 

But 50 years later, degrowth has regained its relevance as climate change is projected to worsen faster than humans can respond. Supporters of the movement believe that a radical shift in standard economic thinking is needed, one that challenges the assumption that economic growth is good for everyone. Jason Hickel, an anthropologist and prominent voice on the topic, notes that “degrowth is about reducing energy and resource throughput,” bringing the economy back into balance with the living world. 

The push to center ecological and social well-being instead of overproduction and excess consumption overlaps with some of the principles behind the slow movement. The underlying idea remains the same: Rather than constant economic growth, we must focus on how to thrive—economically and socially—within planetary boundaries.

Half a century after Gorz conceived of degrowth, is it time to deprioritize economic growth to address the climate crisis? Is it possible to “degrow” with compassion and long-term sustainability for all people?

The economic shift that degrowthers want starts with rethinking metrics that reinforce “business as usual”—namely, GDP. Looking for a way to gauge recovery after the Great Depression and World War II, economist Simon Kuznets first developed a formula for gross domestic product in 1937. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund were eager to easily understand economic activity by individuals, companies, and governments with a single measure, so GDP fit the bill. Soon the metric became the standard tool for appraising a country’s economy and comparing development between nations.

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But the metric had one fatal flaw: It measured only market transactions, completely ignoring social costs, environmental impacts, and income inequality. Therefore, Kuznets and his contemporary warned against equating GDP growth with societal welfare. “We must be highly skeptical of the view that long-term changes in the rate of growth of welfare can be gauged even roughly from changes in the rate of growth in output,” Abramovitz urged in 1959.

But when Arthur Okun, a GDP evangelist and former White House economic adviser, asserted  that rises in GDP came with decreases in unemployment, the metric became firmly cemented in monetary policy. Every US president since John F. Kennedy campaigned on economic growth, which often boiled down to boosting GDP. 

Growing the economy isn’t objectively a bad thing. But when nations indulge in environmentally destructive activity in the name of economic expansion, then growth at all costs must be questioned. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres writes, “Absurdly, GDP rises when there is overfishing, cutting of forests or burning of fossil fuels. We are destroying nature, but we count it as an increase in wealth.”

In recent years, the idea of degrowth has expanded beyond academic circles to inspire a new generation of organizers, thinkers, and policymakers. In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists signed an open letter arguing for a shift in goals “from GDP growth and the pursuit of affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving human well-being.” Nobel laureate and former US energy secretary Steven Chu came out in support of degrowth in 2021. The late Herman Daly, best known for his time as a senior economist at the World Bank, remained a quiet crusader for degrowth for several decades.  

Earlier this year, in the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, two working groups specifically highlighted degrowth policies as a pathway to reducing the impacts of climate change. Lisa Schipper, a lead author for the IPCC, coordinated a team of researchers that assessed 34,000 papers on climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. “Degrowth has reemerged over the last few years out of a frustration with other kinds of economic models,” Schipper told Sierra. “Global forces like consumerism are a big part of why we’re facing climate change, but making a systemic transition away from that is so necessary.”

Some may think of “degrowth” as the latest buzzword—like others might have thought of “climate justice” years ago, or “sustainability” decades before that. But any lofty idea has the potential to ignite real change when defined and implemented locally. Local degrowth movements are cropping up around the world, and many of them are flat, decentralized, and just beginning to mobilize in earnest.

“In general, most degrowth groups are academically centered and have emerged in or around international degrowth conferences,” said Joe Herbert, a member of Degrowth UK. “We believe that degrowth should move towards more of a social movement, rather than one of academic structure and focus.”  

The movement is certainly progressing in that direction, with degrowth organizers like Erica Jung, founder of DegrowNYC, heavily focused on popular education and dispelling misconceptions. “A lot of people mischaracterize degrowth as a movement advocating for population reduction, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Jung explained. “We don’t see population growth as a major driver of the climate crisis. Rather, it’s the economic systems that emphasize constant growth and expansion at the expense of the environment.”

Critics of the degrowth movement aptly point out that the strongest voices are in the global north, which doesn’t leave much room for perspectives from the global south. Jung and her cofounder, Jamie Tyberg, felt it important to create DegrowNYC as a space for organizers of color in response to this lack of diverse viewpoints. “I founded the organization out of the recognition that the degrowth movement needs to contend more directly with imperialism, racism, and issues of colonialism that still persist to this day,” Jung said, referring to the role colonialism has played in exacerbating the climate crisis, such that the poorest nations experience disproportionately severe climate impacts despite having lower carbon emissions.

While we may be far from the degrowth-oriented future that activists like Jung and others envision, there is reason to be hopeful. Underlying any degrowth intervention is the desire to abolish GDP as the leading indicator of progress. While it may take decades to do so, efforts are already underway. The United Nations Development Programme created the Human Development Index, which factors in educational outcomes, income, and life expectancy, and later launched the Sustainable Development Goals in an attempt to introduce more holistic measures for human development. Bhutan famously became the first country to use the Gross National Happiness Index, based on physiological health, community vitality, and environmental resilience, to inform policies, and in 2019 New Zealand followed suit. 

Any degrowth policy package would require significant reinvestment in a social safety net—like affordable health care, housing assistance, and stronger public transit—that nations like the United States have struggled to consistently prioritize. Universal basic income, which cities like Chicago are experimenting with, could provide people with a living wage, reducing the need to rely on exploitative wage labor—another step to degrowing.

Beyond policies and commitments, Mike Strode, a degrowth activist, believes we must also address the emotional question at the center of degrowth: What does it truly mean to live with less?

“More people need to reflect on what a ‘good’ life means to them,” said Strode. “Based on how people define a ‘good’ life, the degrowth movement might be able to offer a lifestyle that doesn’t require the consumption of far more resources than there are available.”

Strode is the founder of the Kola Nut Collaborative timebank in Chicago, which has facilitated over 1,000 exchanges of offerings and community needs so far. There are roughly 500 US-based timebanks engaging almost 40,000 community members in local exchanges; supply chain disruptions and mass layoffs during COVID-19 brought renewed interest in cooperative efforts like this. “Participating in a timebank or another form of mutual aid is one way we can start to live out degrowth values. It allows us to meet our needs without the exchange of money, reducing the need to always look first to external markets,” Strode explained.

Leading economist Giorgos Kallis—who just won a 10 million euro grant to further investigate degrowth—believes that without underlying values like democracy, solidarity, care, and equity, the degrowth movement is doomed to replicate the status quo. In the meantime, degrowth is an invitation to rethink our beliefs, in big and small ways, and to imagine something better.

Paige Curtis is a Boston-based writer covering the intersection of environment and culture.  Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, with familial ties to the Caribbean, the human impacts of climate change have always been on her mind. Her work has appeared in Vox, Grist, GreenBiz, Yes!Magazine, Atmos and other publications. 

Thank you Paige Curtis and Kate Raworth the ‘degrowth’ writer.

John Blundell, Independent Journalist, South Australia

Sam Coppard on @LinkedIn (minus 22hrs, Britain)

“What better way to start the new year than with a completely unprecedented European heatwave and total media silence? 😬

“The UK is on the edge (so some of us are warmer than usual, some of us are colder), but the New Year temperatures on mainland Europe were insane.

“Warsaw recorded 18.9C, more than 5C higher than the previous January record.

“France hit 24.9C and parts of Switzerland didn’t drop below 19C overnight. In JANUARY!

“If you care about your future or your children’s future at all, you should be terrified. This should he headline news. And yet there isn’t a single mention of this completely unprecedented heatwave in any of the 22 headlines on BBC News Europe 💀

#Neoliberal #disaster #capitalism #Global #weather #Systems #collapse.. Our compounding accelerating significantly exponential deontological de-ecological shifts are right now getting direly wound up.. #biodiversity what is that?

John SA🇺🇦😷💰

In a discussion with Kate Raworth and the friends of Donut Economy the question arose as to “1950 textbooks” (Samuelson’s and others right up to R Lipsey & S Holland & into this century, you would say, representing the whole competitive comparative-advantage extractive-exploitative foreign investment & dysregulated (“free” for capital-movers & owners, radically less so for everyone else and utterly catastrophic for global ecological health = liveable habitat for humans, other animals, birds, fish, phytoplankton, insects, mycorrhizae & all microbial life-forms) global economics OR 1850s textbooks.

So I delivered a firm but fair reminder of Smith’s original formulation of ‘executive washroom leaky plumbing’ trickle down to the toilers-at-screens on the floor below who would indeed be blessed with “opulence” for their good works, he wrote in 1776..

Then today, I was reminded by this lecture hall (pic) of my maternal grandfather as a young man at the time of the foundation of the South Australian Labour Party, its executive apparently all bearded besuited Cornish Methodist men from ‘The Burra’ and Moonta Mines*, of Workers’ Institutes & community libraries, of the foment of scholarship and industrial workers’ education across the country principally and pivotally on economy – what it is, how it works and above all other considerations how working men must strive against the contempt for them of bosses… imagining again as I have several times earlier, reading his books (I have two – there were several epochal tides-of-history others stolen, like ACV Dicey’s The Law & the Constitution, when I suffered a fraudulent family bankruptcy scam in 1998) how understandings of economy re-shaped and nearly upturned the geopolitical world through THOSE Noughties, ‘teens, 20’s and, gulp, Thirties.

Please note in the summary of Jim Moss’s book how the very foundation of South Australia as a British colony was explicitly conceived by its greatly celebrated proposer Edward Gibbon Wakefield as “increas[ing] the number of working hands and diminish[ing] the wages of labour,” this sharply distinct from the line now five generations of South Australian schoolkids have been fed that the state was “the only one..” (tah-rah, there’s that Biblical sound of trumpets for us again) not dependent on British convict labour for its new roads, bridges & buildings.

So to return to topic – ‘textbooks of the 1950s rooted in the theories of the 1850s..”

So here’s Mr and Mrs Marshall’s sortie – beginning 1879 with “Economics of Industry.”

Grandpa Alexander Charles Lancaster Sanders’ “Industry” was the 1908 edition I think. “Principles” first out in 1890, was republished frequently. They were certainly used all over Australia in the 1890’s – 1914 period, and then on into the post WWII 1950s, when we were all swept up in the Marshall Plan Lend Lease IMF World Bank Paul Samuelson era… and on into the destructive orgiastic supply- side & business profiteering global frenzy we find ourselves muddling and fooling about with well into the third decade of the 21st century.

If we get our historical dates & links up to scratch then we will not slip back to slogans, throwaway lines, the solecisms and outrageous neofascist lies of the global newsmedia dumbdown, patronising infantilising ABC committee on spoken English absurdities like ‘scramble-ing,” maliciously confusing obfuscatory Gruaniad\ Guardian neologisms of acronyms (cop that you vacuous economically-irrelevant leafy-suburb Gen Y hipsters), the spasms, outbursts or indeed masculinist spurtings of late-adolescent revolutionary or Mom’s Basement fervour, or indeed any 1890s Oxford Union English ruling class Kenneth Graham, Lady Ottolene Morrell, Matthew Arnold “Culture & Anarchy” City of London tosh..

Occasional ringing phrases, biting metaphors and rhetorical flourishes are of course welcome. Just imagine you’re doing a sermon or your weekly segment at radio station 5DN in Tynte St, North Adelaide, whee-hoo.

Cool 😎

John, South Australia 🇦🇺

• ” Sound of Trumpets: History of the labour movement in South Australia,” Jim Moss 1985 

Per courtesy Erin Remblance on LinkedIn 22-12-2022 😲🤓🤨..

“The ecological crisis is being driven in large part by the pursuit of economic growth: ever-increasing levels of industrial production, measured in GDP. High-income economies—and the affluent classes and corporations that dominate them—are overwhelmingly responsible for this problem, as their use of energy and materials far exceeds sustainable levels.

“As Jason Hickel, the lead author and professor at ICTA-UAB, explains, “In our existing economy, production is organized around the interests of capital accumulation rather than around human well-being. The result is a system that overuses resources and yet still fails to meet many basic human needs. It is failing both people and planet.”

“The scientists argue that high-income nations should abandon aggregate growth as an objective and focus instead on securing human needs and well-being, while reducing less-necessary forms of production and the excess purchasing power of the rich. This approach, known as degrowth, can enable rapid decarbonization and stop other forms of ecological breakdown.

“As Hickel puts it, “The dominant assumption in economics today is that every sector of the economy must grow, all the time, regardless of whether we actually need it. In the middle of an ecological emergency, this is dangerous and irrational. We should focus instead on producing what we know is necessary to achieve social and ecological goals—things like universal healthcare, affordable housing, public transit and renewable energy—while reducing destructive industries like SUVs, fast fashion and mass-produced beef.”

“Giorgos Kallis, ICREA professor at ICTA-UAB, notes that there is solid evidence on the types of policies that can help countries move in a degrowth direction: working hour reductions, a green job guarantee, or a universal basic income. But there are still big unknowns regarding the ways in which systems and institutions are dependent on growth for their stability, and researchers can help identifying such dependencies and how they can be overcome.”

“Co-author Julia Steinberger, professor at Lausanne University, says, “The growth-dependence of current economies is a danger to all of us, both for social and for ecological reasons. Degrowth research thus constitutes a vital lifeline: a robust way to consider radical alternatives for humanity to make it through the 21st century, flourishing within planetary boundaries.

“The authors note that degrowth is a purposeful strategy to stabilize economies and achieve social and ecological goals, unlike recession, which is a chaotic and socially destabilizing event that occurs when growth-dependent economies fail to grow.”

https://lnkd.in/gYrXbui7

John Blundell, Independent Journalist, South Australia 🇦🇺

Scientists raced to gather the strongest ever biodiversity evidence base. Time is running out to use it.

• Sandra Díaz

I was filled with hope when I read the first draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in mid-2021. It seemed that the parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity had learnt from bitter experience — the failure of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, set for the previous decade. Instead of vague aims, the draft framework incorporated most of the advice that the scientific community, myself included, had marshalled. It contained ambitious quantitative thresholds, such as those for the area of ecosystem to be protected, the percentage of genetic diversity to be maintained, and percentage reductions for overall extinction rates, pesticide use and subsidies harmful to biodiversity.

Then came the square brackets. In the world of policy, these mark proposed amendments that the parties do not yet agree on. The square brackets proliferated at an alarming rate throughout the GBF text, enclosing, neutralizing and paralysing goals and targets. By July 2021, in a version about 10,200 words long, there were more than 900 pairs of square brackets.

Brackets germinated with particular vigour in sections that could make the greatest difference for a better future because of their precision, ambition or conceptual novelty. Almost all quantitative thresholds had been bracketed or had disappeared.The United Nations must get its new biodiversity targets right

I applaud the new prominence given to gender justice (with a new dedicated Target 22) and to financial resources and capacity building (Target 19). I wonder why other key aspects have not received the same treatment, and have instead been compressed almost beyond recognition. For example, the first draft highlighted that species, ecosystems, genetic diversity and nature’s contribution to people each needed their own specific, verifiable outcomes. Now they have coagulated into one vague yet verbose paragraph.

This thicket of square brackets smothers the GBF and the hopes of those of us who see transformative change as the only way forward for life on Earth as we know it.

In a titanic effort, a streamlined proposal from the Informal Group on the GBF has halved the brackets to be considered by the parties when they meet in Montreal, Canada, for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) on 7–19 December.

We need a text with teeth — and far fewer brackets. This much we have learnt in the 30 years since the foundational 1992 Rio Summit drew attention to the impact of human activities on the environment: a strong, precise, ambitious text does not in itself ensure successful implementation, but a weak, vague, toothless text almost guarantees failure.

It was no surprise when the Convention on Biological Diversity officially declared the failure of its ten-year Aichi Targets. People involved at the international interface of biodiversity science and policy were already discussing how to do better in the next decade with the GBF.Crucial biodiversity summit will go ahead in Canada, not China: what scientists think

The scientific community rose to the occasion. In just three years, we produced the first-ever intergovernmental appraisal of life on Earth and what it means to people: The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services from IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), which I co-chaired. It was ready in time for the original 2020 date for COP15, before the global disruption caused by COVID-19. It was the most comprehensive ever synthesis of published information on the topic, an inclusive conceptual framework involving various disciplines and knowledge systems, and unprecedented participation of Indigenous peoples.

Then, in 2020, we assembled an interdisciplinary team of more than 60 biodiversity scientists across the world, and within a few months produced detailed suggestions for the goals of the GBF. Since then, we have made the best of the many pandemic postponements by issuing a stream of specific, evidence-based recommendations on targets, scenarios and implementation.

The scientific advice is convergent. First, the GBF needs to explicitly address each facet of biodiversity; none is a good substitute or umbrella for the others. Second, the biodiversity goals must be more ambitious than ever, accompanied by equally ambitious targets for concrete action and sufficient resources to make them happen. Third, the targets need to be precise, traceable and coordinated.

Fourth, formally protecting a proportion of the planet’s most pristine ecosystems will by itself fall far short. Nature must be mainstreamed, incorporated in decisions made for the landscapes in which we live and work every day, well beyond protected areas. Finally, and most crucially, targets must focus on the root causes of biodiversity loss: the ways in which we consume, trade and allocate subsidies, incentives and safeguards.

From previous experience, I expected objections to certain sections— pesticides and subsidies, say — but they are everywhere. Only 2 of the 22 targets have no brackets. Ironing out objections takes precious time. Because the framework can be enshrined only by consensus, too many objections can lead to too much compromise.

Now, to avert failure, we exhort the governments gathering in Montreal to be brave, long-sighted and open-hearted, and to produce a visionary, ambitious biodiversity framework, grounded in knowledge. The awareness and mobilization of their constituencies has never been greater, the evidence in their hands never clearer. If not now, when?

Nature 612, 9 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04154-w

I record a big thank you to Nature magazine and to herself for my use of Sandra Diaz’s article.

I take as greeneconomyaction.com readers will be aware a hard line on conferences purporting concern and serious interest in, to put it starkly, the actual state of life on earth at this time BUT SAYING VIRTUALLY NOTHING ABOUT THE NEED TO CEASE PUMPING CARBON, NITROGEN & OTHER GASES INTO OUR ATMOSPHERE

– which deliberate malicious action has already ruined 6 -8 thousand years of seasonal global weather-systems security and together with 50°C summer heat and 100 million hectare 🔥s stands to literally do for mammalian life on earth by as early as the mid 2030’s

John Blundell, independent journalist, climate student & organic regenerative farming leader from 1988 Australia

So does the 1938 English act Margaret Rutherford sail off to the League of Nations conservation-of-nature meeting in Geneva Switzerland when it had ice & snow and functional glaciers?

Aw well I at least get an exciting email from a South Australian Greens senator.

Sir David Attenborough lives they tell me. And alas so do National Grographic, Time Life and Disney World – catering to the bored idle rich white tourists of this already shattered global environment.

It’s their neoliberal End Times economy, Stupid.

Dear John,

Just over two weeks from now, one of the most important conferences for our environment will begin in Montreal. Biodiversity Conference COP15 is our chance to gain global agreement on a framework for protecting our environment and wildlife.

---

While much of the focus has been on the UN Climate Change Conference COP27, there are important differences between the two conferences. While COP27 is focused on mitigating dangerous climate change and setting goals to limit warming to under 2 degrees celsius, the aim of COP15 is to adopt a globally agreed framework – called the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework – for “living in harmony with nature.”

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework is as important to the protection of the environment as the Paris Climate Agreement was to fighting climate change. COP15 will set the targets for biodiversity to be achieved by 2050, to be used as a benchmark in the same way the Paris targets are used to track emissions reduction to address climate change.FIND OUT MORE ABOUT COP15

We are harming nature at an unprecedented rate. Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history, with a million species facing extinction.

COP15 will set out a plan to halt this deterioration.

To do this, we need the Labor Government to:

• Commit to a Post-2020 framework
• Halt the extinction crisis with a ‘zero extinction’ target
• Create plans to implement the 2050 vision for biodiversity
• Strengthen Australia’s weak environment laws
• Implement a ‘Climate Trigger’ so polluting projects are assessed for the emissions they create

Just as COP15 kicks off in Montreal, the Environment Minister will finally respond to the once-in-ten-year review of our environment laws aka the Samuel Review, back here in Australia. If the Labor Government doesn’t commit to a climate trigger in their response, it will not just be a missed opportunity but an indictment on their environment credentials during the international biodiversity conference.

We need to stop making the problem worse by opening up new coal and gas, and COP15 is our chance to create a global movement to tackle the biodiversity crisis with an ambitious plan to live in harmony with nature.

I will keep pushing the government to put Australia’s best foot forward at COP15 and I will keep you updated along the way.

Thanks for your support,

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
Greens Spokesperson for the Environment

The entire world, or at least it’s affluent political class taking lots of rides in big/ small aeroplanes✈️/ 🛩 CANNOT either be serious OR be taken seriously.

This is an outrage by the deskilled recreationally-, socially- & tourism-preoccupied parasitic idle rich of this fracturing, collapsing, baking, freezing, burning, desertifying earth.

John Blundell @wired_we Australia

This @RadioNational problem has degenerated abominably. We we are way beyond the tears-before-bedtime point here. #energy #Disease #economy #CultureEd #History #Mentalhealth #auspol
Collapse of 5-6Kyrs reliable #weather #systems #Prediction

Where the hell are we at Michele?

I for one do NOT accept but TRENCHANTLY condemn any Non-interference in the Market @TheIPA/ @ASPI_org/ Far Right neoliberal platitudes, as.. “there’s not a role for gov’t in running every bit of people’s lives forever.”

Platitudes?? Their 1870 Bismarck & 1944 @TheIPA-@iealondon cluster…..d HYPERBOLE

• Delusional #Leftists vs Cookers/🎪🤡🤡s derisory, lamentable & ignominious polemic..
• Hating everything on behalf of old lady- & genitalman-#party donors w dodgy recall & troubled hygiene.

I work hard helping people grasp the meaning of the term neoliberalism, after the inspiration of prof Noam Chomsky – a ⭐️to me since the days you & I were in national youth employment policy together.. @MicheleONeilAU

Your @AlboMP thinks it’s @Greens bullshit mate

You what?

This #ABC problem has degenerated abominably.. way beyond the tears-before-bedtime point here

#energy #Disease #economy #CultureEd #History #Mentalhealth #auspol
Collapse of 5-6Kyrs reliable #weather #systems #Prediction

John 9/22

Dr. Genevieve Guenther

So I’m 6 days into Covid, my brain feels like cottage cheese, but I still want to try to say something about this permitting bill & the way that climate politics seems to be shaking out after the fade-away of the #GreenNewDeal.

It’s supply-side climate policy and it’s bad.

1/n 

The vision of the #GreenNewDeal was to connect climate policy to a large host of policies that would raise the majority’s real income—quite aside from what people would save on clean compared to fossil energy—and thereby win a entrenched constituency for decarbonization.

2/n 

The idea, as I understood it, was that this broad constituency would arise in addition to whatever vested interests in decarbonization would be developed by establishing clean-energy industries, a climate corps, etc.

3/n 

The proponents of the IRA{2} also imagine that new political coalitions will be built by the establishment of domestic clean-energy industries—and they may well be. But the majority of Americans still lose money, even with the IRA’s generous credits and rebates, because…

4/n 

…to participate in climate action, Americans are being asked to act as individual consumers: to spend money on buying a new EV and retrofitting their own homes.

This approach still dumps the costs right in people’s laps, before they start to feel the benefits.

5/n 

And yes, things will be much cheaper—but you’re still being asked to spend money.

This approach to decarbonizing electricity and transportation is the antithesis to a public works project whose costs are socialized and that offers the public benefits directly.

6/n 

But the faith in markets as rational and reasonable, and consumers as perfect little cogs in the wheels of the market, seems to be unshakable. Make clean energy cheap, and people will pay to switch.

7/n 

How much more neoliberalism must we have before we accept that markets don’t solve social problems?

8/n 

And I would entertain the argument that the US is taking this market-based approach to climate policy only because it’s the only way to pass policy through the Senate, if…

9/n 

…if it were not for the unholy alliance of fossil fuel interests, powerful energy modelers, centrist pundits, and climate journalists who are pushing to weaken NEPA{3}, shaming environmentalists in the process.

Supply-side climate policy IS the strategy. It’s not a “compromise.” 

And here’s the thing: it’s not going to work to solve the climate and ecological crisis that we’re currently in.

Yes, we need to build a fuck-ton of renewable energy, transmission, infrastructure, etc.

But that’s not ALL we need to do.

11/n 

Because, I’m sorry, but the crisis we’re in is not just about switching out one form of energy for another while leaving the rest of the system in place.

12/n 

I don’t actually think that degrowth is a viable political program, but degrowth research has nonetheless made the incontrovertible point that everything we extract and bring into our economy and everything we emit as waste “out of” our economy is part of the climate problem.

13 

In addition to phasing out fossil fuel energy, we also need to integrate our economy into planetary boundaries.

14/n 

Yes, I know, I sound very crunchy. I’m sorry. I’m from New York. I grew up liking ballet, and Paris, and Madonna and Prince. I thought nature was gross. I had no interest in ecology until I was well down the climate rabbit hole. But there it is. Planetary boundaries matter.

15/n 

Anyway, my point is that the Democrats and some of the most well-positioned and influential voices in academia and media are starting to coalesce around pushing for and celebrating supply-side climate policy (increase supply of clean energy and voilà: problem solved).

16/n 

Not only does this religion of markets (sustained by the ritual of math with made-up assumptions which is economic modeling) totally ignore how the power of intrenched fossil interests actually works, and how people power must be built to overthrow it, it also…

17/n 

…it also makes decarbonization a series of consumer choices, which is bound to lead to, at best, a partial solution.

18/n 

For even if everyone bought an EV, solar panels, and an induction stove, we would still need not just a decarbonized, electrified economy, but an integrated economy in order to stop destroying the planetary systems that, let’s be frank, enable us to live.

/fin

1. this is of course my “sub-editor’s” title for @DoctorVive’s beyond apposite but trenchant and swingeing albeit off-the-cuff ECONOMIC appraisal after herself suffering a #COVID_19 episode. Most of our good and good-hearted readers already know that governments in late 2022 trying to maintain an electoral NEO-liberal majoritarian charade based upon the supposed macroeconomic/ monetarist bulwark or overflowing Fort Knoxs (or #Crypto money in the “sky” or Aladdin’s Caves full or laundered cash) of unregulated & newly disregulated free-market entrepreneurialism where there is bizarrely no place at all for government “interference” can only alienate BILLIONS more human beings from their insanely technically-ignorant & hubristic (arrogant) deluded deracinated, (uprooted from one’s natural geographical, social, or cultural environment)* entirely vicarious tv drama & kiddie cartoons Boy’s Own adventure, mystery, magic, variously staunch dogged or teeth-gritting & heroic exploration, moonshots mentality AND are literally signing their own death-warrants.

..to which we respond by saying keep on, articulate these messages. Their content & import to us is unknown to the oppressed, violated & about to be written down as human assets.

*Deracinate was borrowed into English in the late 16th century from Middle French and can be traced back to the Latin word radix, meaning “root.” Although deracinate began life referring to literal plant roots, it quickly took on a second, metaphorical, meaning suggesting removal of anyone or anything from native roots or culture – Merriam

2. @forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2022/08/02/the-inflation-reduction-act-is-the-most-important-climate-action-in-us-history/• • •

3. National Environmental Policy Act, EPA plays a unique role in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. EPA has responsibility to prepare its own … https://www.epa.gov/nepa

 

Keep Current with Dr. Genevieve Guenther @DoctorVive

**This entire article per courtesy e360.yale.edu **

Renewable energy skeptics argue that because of their variability, wind and solar cannot be the foundation of a dependable electricity grid. But the expansion of renewables and new methods of energy management and storage can lead to a grid that is reliable and clean.

BY AMORY B. LOVINS AND M. V. RAMANA • DECEMBER 9, 2021

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As wind and solar power have become dramatically cheaper, and their share of electricity generation grows, skeptics of these technologies are propagating several myths about renewable energy and the electrical grid. The myths boil down to this: Relying on renewable sources of energy will make the electricity supply undependable.

Last summer, some commentators argued that blackouts in California were due to the “intermittency” of renewable energy sources, when in fact the chief causes were a combination of an extreme heat wave probably induced by climate change, faulty planning, and the lack of flexible generation sources and sufficient electricity storage. During a brutal Texas cold snap last winter, Gov. Greg Abbott wrongly blamed wind and solar power for the state’s massive grid failure, which was vastly larger than California’s. In fact, renewables outperformed the grid operator’s forecast during 90 percent of the blackout, and in the rest, fell short by at most one-fifteenth as much as gas plants. Instead, other causes — such as inadequately weatherized power plants and natural gas shutting down because of frozen equipment — led to most of the state’s electricity shortages.

In Europe, the usual target is Germany, in part because of its Energiewende (energy transformation) policies shifting from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to efficient use and renewables. The newly elected German government plans to accelerate the former and complete the latter, but some critics have warned that Germany is running “up against the limits of renewables.”

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In reality, it is entirely possible to sustain a reliable electricity system based on renewable energy sources plus a combination of other means, including improved methods of energy management and storage. A clearer understanding of how to dependably manage electricity supply is vital because climate threats require a rapid shift to renewable sources like solar and wind power. This transition has been sped by plummeting costs —Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that solar and wind are the cheapest source for 91 percent of the world’s electricity — but is being held back by misinformation and myths.

Myth No. 1: A grid that increasingly relies on renewable energy is an unreliable grid.

Going by the cliché, “In God we trust; all others bring data,” it’s worth looking at the statistics on grid reliability in countries with high levels of renewables. The indicator most often used to describe grid reliability is the average power outage duration experienced by each customer in a year, a metric known by the tongue-tying name of “System Average Interruption Duration Index” (SAIDI). Based on this metric, Germany — where renewables supply nearly half of the country’s electricity — boasts a grid that is one of the most reliable in Europe and the world. In 2020, SAIDI was just 0.25 hours in Germany. Only Liechtenstein (0.08 hours), and Finland and Switzerland (0.2 hours), did better in Europe, where 2020 electricity generation was 38 percent renewable (ahead of the world’s 29 percent). Countries like France (0.35 hours) and Sweden (0.61 hours) — both far more reliant on nuclear power — did worse, for various reasons.

The United States, where renewable energy and nuclear power each provide roughly 20 percent of electricity, had five times Germany’s outage rate — 1.28 hours in 2020. Since 2006, Germany’s renewable share of electricity generation has nearly quadrupled, while its power outage rate was nearly halved. Similarly, the Texas grid became more stable as its wind capacity sextupled from 2007 to 2020. Today, Texas generates more wind power — about a fifth of its total electricity — than any other state in the U.S.

Myth No. 2: Countries like Germany must continue to rely on fossil fuels to stabilize the grid and back up variable wind and solar power.

Again, the official data say otherwise. Between 2010 — the year before the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan — and 2020, Germany’s generation from fossil fuels declined by 130.9 terawatt-hours and nuclear generation by 76.3 terawatt hours. These were more than offset by increased generation from renewables (149.5 terawatt hours) and energy savings that decreased consumption by 38 terawatt hours in 2019, before the pandemic cut economic activity, too. By 2020, Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions had declined by 42.3 percent below its 1990 levels, beating the target of 40 percent set in 2007. Emissions of carbon dioxide from just the power sector declined from 315 million tons in 2010 to 185 million tons in 2020.

So as the percentage of electricity generated by renewables in Germany steadily grew, its grid reliability improved, and its coal burning and greenhouse gas emissions substantially decreased.

In Japan, following the multiple reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, more than 40 nuclear reactors closed permanently or indefinitely without materially raising fossil-fueled generation or greenhouse gas emissions; electricity savings and renewable energy offset virtually the whole loss, despite policies that suppressed renewables.

Myth No. 3: Because solar and wind energy can be generated only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, they cannot be the basis of a grid that has to provide electricity 24/7, year-round.

While variable output is a challenge, it is neither new nor especially hard to manage. No kind of power plant runs 24/7, 365 days a year, and operating a grid always involves managing variability of demand at all times. Even with no solar and wind power (which tend to work dependably at different times and seasons, making shortfalls less likely), all electricity supply varies.

Seasonal variations in water availability and, increasingly, drought reduce electricity output from hydroelectric dams. Nuclear plants must be shut down for refueling or maintenance, and big fossil and nuclear plants are typically out of action roughly 7 percent to 12 percent of the time, some much more. A coal plant’s fuel supply might be interrupted by the derailment of a train or failure of a bridge. A nuclear plant or fleet might unexpectedly have to be shut down for safety reasons, as was Japan’s biggest plant from 2007 to 2009. Every French nuclear plant was, on average, shut down for 96.2 days in 2019 due to “planned” or “forced unavailability.” That rose to 115.5 days in 2020, when French nuclear plants generated less than 65 percent of the electricity they theoretically could have produced. Comparing expected with actual performance, one might even say that nuclear power was France’s most intermittent 2020 source of electricity.

Climate- and weather-related factors have caused multiple nuclear plant interruptions, which have become seven times more frequent in the past decade. Even normally steady nuclear output can fail abruptly and lastingly, as in Japan after the Fukushima disaster, or in the northeastern U.S. after the 2003 regional blackout, which triggered abrupt shutdowns that caused nine reactors to produce almost no power for several days and take nearly two weeks to return to full output.

Thus all sources of power will be unavailable sometime or other. Managing a grid has to deal with that reality, just as much as with fluctuating demand. The influx of larger amounts of renewable energy does not change that reality, even if the ways they deal with variability and uncertainty are changing. Modern grid operators emphasize diversity and flexibility rather than nominally steady but less flexible “baseload” generation sources. Diversified renewable portfolios don’t fail as massively, lastingly, or unpredictably as big thermal power stations.

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In boost for renewables, grid-scale battery storage is on the rise. Read more.

The purpose of an electric grid is not just to transmit and distribute electricity as demand fluctuates, but also to back up non-functional plants with working plants: that is, to manage the intermittency of traditional fossil and nuclear plants. In the same way, but more easily and often at lower cost, the grid can rapidly back up wind and solar photovoltaics’ predictable variations with other renewables, of other kinds or in other places or both.This has become easier with today’s far more accurate forecasting of weather and wind speeds, thus allowing better prediction of the output of variable renewables. Local or onsite renewables are even more resilient because they largely or wholly bypass the grid, where nearly all power failures begin. And modern power electronics have reliably run the billion-watt South Australian grid on just sun and wind for days on end, with no coal, no hydro, no nuclear, and at most the 4.4-percent natural-gas generation currently required by the grid regulator.

Most discussions of renewables focus on batteries and other electric storage technologies to mitigate variability. This is not surprising because batteries are rapidly becoming cheaper and widely deployed. At the same time, new storage technologies with diverse attributes continue to emerge; the U.S. Department of Energy Global Energy Storage Database lists 30 kinds already deployed or under construction. Meanwhile, many other and less expensive carbon-free ways exist to deal with variable renewables besides giant batteries.

Many less expensive and carbon-free ways exist to deal with variable renewables besides giant batteries.

The first and foremost is energy efficiency, which reduces demand, especially during periods of peak use. Buildings that are more efficient need less heating or cooling and change their temperature more slowly, so they can coast longer on their own thermal capacity and thus sustain comfort with less energy, especially during peak-load periods.

A second option is demand flexibility or demand response, wherein utilities compensate electricity customers that lower their use when asked — often automatically and imperceptibly — helping balance supply and demand. One recent study found that the U.S. has 200 gigawatts of cost-effective load flexibility potential that could be realized by 2030 if effective demand response is actively pursued. Indeed, the biggest lesson from recent shortages in California might be the greater appreciation of the need for demand response. Following the challenges of the past two summers, the California Public Utilities Commission has instituted the Emergency Load Reduction Program to build on earlier demand response efforts.

Some evidence suggests an even larger potential: An hourly simulation of the 2050 Texas grid found that eight types of demand response could eliminate the steep ramp of early-evening power demand as solar output wanes and household loads spike. For example, currently available ice-storage technology freezes water using lower-cost electricity and cooler air, usually at night, and then uses the ice to cool buildings during hot days. This reduces electricity demand from air conditioning, and saves money, partly because storage capacity for heating or cooling is far cheaper than storing electricity to deliver them. Likewise, without changing driving patterns, many electric vehicles can be intelligently charged when electricity is more abundant, affordable, and renewable.

A third option for stabilizing the grid as renewable energy generation increases is diversity, both of geography and of technology — onshore wind, offshore wind, solar panels, solar thermal power, geothermal, hydropower, burning municipal or industrial or agricultural wastes. The idea is simple: If one of these sources, at one location, is not generating electricity at a given time, odds are that some others will be.

Finally, some forms of storage, such as electric vehicle batteries, are already economical today. Simulations show that ice-storage air conditioning in buildings, plus smart charging to and from the grid of electric cars, which are parked 96 percent of the time, could enable Texas in 2050 to use 100 percent renewable electricity without needing giant batteries.

To pick a much tougher case, the “dark doldrums” of European winters are often claimed to need many months of battery storage for an all-renewable electrical grid. Yet top German and Belgian grid operators find Europe would need only one to two weeks of renewably derived backup fuel, providing just 6 percent of winter output — not a huge challenge.

MORE ON YALE E360

From homes to cars, it’s now time to electrify everything. Read more.

The bottom line is simple. Electrical grids can deal with much larger fractions of renewable energy at zero or modest cost, and this has been known for quite a while. Some European countries with little or no hydropower already get about half to three-fourths of their electricity from renewables with grid reliability better than in the U.S. It is time to get past the myths.

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Amory B. Lovins is an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and co-founder and chairman emeritus of Rocky Mountain Institute. M. V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. MOREABOUT AMORY B. LOVINS AND M. V. RAMANA →

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