The unspoken assumption behind global capitalism is that there is no whole earth to consider, that there are only the parts of the planet that each corporation deems salable, fungible, viable, valuable. What remains after extraction of resources is not considered a living environment for other human beings; it is considered a public relations or a lobbying issue. The way to deal with whatever remains is to evade responsibility for it. Buy the local government if you have to, but keep the consequences of doing business off the books.
If this business ethic reminds you of the behavior of pirates, you are not alone.
But that is the corporate ethos. No responsible corporation, and no responsible corporate officer, can act beyond the bottom line. The only reason a corporation exists is to maximize profits for its owners, and those profits lie in growing market share, productivity, and profitability — not in looking out for anybody else out there.
The only rational impetus for a corporation to worry about global warming, climate changes, revolutions, or impoverished people is if those categories of planetary variables represent some level of risk to the bottom line. Then they become real, and subject to risk assessment and risk management. They need to be eliminated if business is to stay profitable.
Given the size and scope of multi-nationals today, the wholesale co-opting of governments in every corner of the world is just a normal part of doing business. Business becomes government. As naturally as water soaks the ground, corporate money soaks into every level of government, bending it, twisting it, staffing it for its own ends and profits. Everybody wins except the people who aren’t in on this cornered market.
Bucky Fuller said this madness of corporate rule, of rule by psychopathic legal entities, would continue until it was universally recognized as madness. He gave it fifty years, back in the Seventies.
I read an article this morning about mining asteroids commercially, for their minerals. By 2020, it said, we will be extracting ore from asteroids, pulling it to earth by space tugs, building skyscrapers ten miles high on the moon, and riding elevators into earth orbit.
I read in another article that the landfills of today will become the mines of tomorrow by 2020. Everything will be be made of old stuff, and then be made into other stuff when its time comes. A world without garbage. A world where tossing stuff is a crime.
I got a call from the local Chamber of Commerce, inviting me to a seminar on “Joining the Asian Bonanza” How to ship your manufacturing jobs overseas, and just do the accounting here in America.
I got a call from the local Food Bank, asking me to contribute food or money for local people whose jobs have been shipped overseas.
Is it any wonder I hear voices?

Posted by: Antifa | Jan 22 2007 20:52 utc | 4

One possible benefit from this could be that high fructose corn syrup will rise in price and be used less than it is now in processed food and drinks. Traditional sugar imports from developing countries could rise if US protection is reduced on sugar beets. A small mitigating factor in an area with few good alternatives.

Posted by: biklett | Jan 22 2007 23:43 utc | 6

Al Gore says civilization can’t continue operating planet earth like a business in liquidation. Good diary on dkos today discussing Gore’s thoughts about the stock market as functionally insane, in a December 06 presentation at Harvard B School.
Not sure if this should be posted on the Primaries thread or here, but Gore also makes the point that

the stock market is “functionally insane” … and what is needed is a new approach to measuring value… Over thirty years ago the average stock holding period was seven years while today the average mutual fund turns over its entire portfolio in less than eleven months. This speculation, or “chasing of the froth” as he refers to it, ignores the environment, communities, social welfare, and other important factors that have real value.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 23 2007 0:38 utc | 8

Couldn’t biomass crops as farm subsidies be a good thing for places where American and European firms import their farm products and make it impossible for small-scale local farmers to compete — “economy of scale” –American and Europeans are the Wal-Marts of agriculture and places like Jamaica are the small town bizzes that get destroyed.
anyway, again, hemp not corn makes sense because of its mulitiple uses (esp. as fiber…I’ve mentioned this before. it doesn’t need petrochemical pesticides and it can be grown in many places.
as De and others have mentioned too, large-scale ag. wastes enormous amts of fuel exporting products unnecessarily. Local produce is the future, no matter what, because of the monsantoization of genetic diversity.
however, as ralphieboy noted, the biggest waste of agricultural lands goes toward feeding and maintaining livestock.
which reminds me, courtesy of askod, the mcdonald’s game. See how many rain forests you fell to keep the system going. (watch out for those cows.)

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 23 2007 1:30 utc | 10

This discussion seems to me to be extremely “Westcentric” We just cannot imagine that other peoples with different approaches may create different forms of social arrangements. The discussion tends to imagine how we could keep our way of thinking and living with other methods of production. I find the idea of relying on agriculture to provide us with the fundamental aspects of culture extremely exciting from the standpoint of showing a regression towards the medieval and the feudal. But I keep in mind that perhaps some enterprising Africans might decide to use the sunny expanses of the Sahara for the transformation of sunlight into electricity. I don’t know the future nor can imagine it but it is our social arrangement that is in doubt. Mankind either modifies itself or disappears and the modificatriuon will be considerable richer in content than trying to move SUV with “biodiesel” or ethanol.. I am optimistic but all social transformations occur on “the butcher block of History”.

Posted by: jlcg | Jan 23 2007 1:47 utc | 12

awesome conchita! thanks

Posted by: annie | Jan 23 2007 2:39 utc | 14

reading this lovins quote

Americans have a choice, he says: either to import efficient cars to displace foreign oil, or to manufacture efficient cars themselves and import neither the oil nor the cars.

reminds me, for whatever reason, of chomsky & herman’s propaganda model — “serviceability to power is a basic factor influencing the media product.” thus, when lovins frames the permissable solutions w/i such a narrow range of choices – either we import better cars for individuals or we build better cars for individuals – servicability to the power status quo remains unquestioned. this is an illustration of limiting discourse and, hence, thinkable thought, and presents absolutely no challenge to the ideological deadend which has backed us into this corner in the first place. it also brings to mind some of those bioneer programs, featuring techno-utopians who are on the verge of finding the solution for better living thru the application of hi-tech sciences infused w/ an ecological outlook, yet still internalizing the basic fundamentals of the classical economics mythos.

Posted by: b real | Jan 23 2007 3:55 utc | 16

EEstor: More Clues Emerge
In Pay No Attention to the General as “Liberals” Launch Green Energy Fund, I attempted to show that EEstor is a “connected” front for the release of military technology into the private sector. Now, in the following MIT Technology Review article, we learn that EEstor’s CEO previously worked for TRW. Although TRW has been sold off into several companies, for decades TRW served as one of the main vectors for delivering military technology to the private sector (automotive, electronics, telecom); that is, privatizing innovations that had been developed in secret, with public funds.
To sum up: We have a company developing the “holy grail” of energy storage devices, with a CEO who formerly worked for TRW, with the financial backing of a venture capital firm that has Colin Powell, a former four star U.S. Army general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on its board. In Texas.
Richard Weir, EEStor’s cofounder and chief executive, says he would prefer to keep a low profile and let the results of his company’s innovation speak for themselves.
No shit.
Indeed, people might be so dazzled by the black box that they won’t bother to look into the black bag ops that got the thing built.
And why now? So you and I can drive our electric cars around? Right?
Let’s look at couple of quotes from the article. You’ll love this:

“It’s really tuned to the electronics we attach to it,” explains Weir. “We can go all the way down from pacemakers to locomotives and direct-energy weapons.”

and…

“I have no doubt you can develop that kind of [ceramic] material, and the mechanism that gives you the energy storage is clear, but the first question is whether it’s truly applicable to vehicle applications,” Burke says, pointing out that the technology seems more appropriate for utility-scale storage and military “ray guns,” for which high voltage is an advantage.

Well, well, well… We already know that Americans will soon be saying hello to the goodbye weapon, and who wouldn’t enjoy a missile punch at bullet prices?


In other words, the touchy-feely, clean green electric Hummers of the future are going to be spunoff from Pentagon death ray and super cannon projects. (Same as it ever was.) The military needs the energy density that this EEstor thing provides for weapon systems. Weirdly, there was no mention of the autonomous hunter/killer robots. Oh yes, those projects need power too…
What else is there to learn about EEstor? (And, yes, that’s the right page. They just don’t have any information on it.)
via :MIT Technology Review:

A secretive Texas startup developing what some are calling a “game changing” energy-storage technology broke its silence this week. It announced that it has reached two production milestones and is on track to ship systems this year for use in electric vehicles.
EEStor’s ambitious goal, according to patent documents, is to “replace the electrochemical battery” in almost every application, from hybrid-electric and pure-electric vehicles to laptop computers to utility-scale electricity storage.
The company boldly claims that its system, a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company.
The implications are enormous and, for many, unbelievable. Such a breakthrough has the potential to radically transform a transportation sector already flirting with an electric renaissance, improve the performance of intermittent energy sources such as wind and sun, and increase the efficiency and stability of power grids–all while fulfilling an oil-addicted America’s quest for energy security.
The breakthrough could also pose a threat to next-generation lithium-ion makers such as Watertown, MA-based A123Systems, which is working on a plug-in hybrid storage system for General Motors, and Reno, NV-based Altair Nanotechnologies, a supplier to all-electric vehicle maker Phoenix Motorcars.
“I get a little skeptical when somebody thinks they’ve got a silver bullet for every application, because that’s just not consistent with reality,” says Andrew Burke, an expert on energy systems for transportation at University of California at Davis.
That said, Burke hopes to be proved wrong. “If [the] technology turns out to be better than I think, that doesn’t make me sad: it makes me happy.”
Richard Weir, EEStor’s cofounder and chief executive, says he would prefer to keep a low profile and let the results of his company’s innovation speak for themselves. “We’re well on our way to doing everything we said,” Weir told Technology Review in a rare interview. He has also worked as an electrical engineer at computing giant IBM and at Michigan-based automotive-systems leader TRW.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 23 2007 7:19 utc | 18

Well, if the movement to use corn for fuel trumps the use of corn to make high-fructose corn syrup, I’m all for it. There is speculation that the use of corn syrup in way too many foods and beverages is fueling the obesity epidemic, and I am halfway to believing that.
Let’s fuel vehicles instead and find out.

Posted by: Scorpio | Jan 23 2007 19:17 utc | 20

Our January Exit Poll was: “Would you give up your SUV to halt mass murder in Nigeria and Colombia? C’mon, tell the truth.” We received the following responses:

interesting links in the post, including this one from brian tokar: THE REAL SCOOP ON BIOFUELS: “Green Energy” Panacea or Just the Latest Hype? which is an adaptation of a longer article tokar wrote The New Energy Debates: Will the new Congress act to change our disastrous energy policy?

Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet, or merely another corporate push for profits? Two recent studies aim to document the full consequences of the new biofuel economy and realistically assess its impact on fuel use, greenhouse gases and agricultural lands. One study, originating from the University of Minnesota, is moderately hopeful in the first two areas, but offers a strong caution about land use. The other, from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, concludes that every domestic biofuel source—those currently in use as well as those under development—produce less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops.
Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet, or merely another corporate push for profits? Two recent studies aim to document the full consequences of the new biofuel economy and realistically assess its impact on fuel use, greenhouse gases and agricultural lands. One study, originating from the University of Minnesota, is moderately hopeful in the first two areas, but offers a strong caution about land use. The other, from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, concludes that every domestic biofuel source—those currently in use as well as those under development—produce less energy than is consumed in growing and processing the crops.

Posted by: b real | Jan 24 2007 19:18 utc | 22

Scorpio,
another theory has it that not enough exercise is fueling obesity. Bikes might be a cure. (Thought it might be wise to cut down on the corn syrup just in case.)

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Jan 25 2007 0:45 utc | 24

eat or drive: the economics of genocide in action
another example of the genre is the stern review, which claims that 550ppm concentration of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere will be ok – even though it could entail at 3 deg C rise in global av temp, and wipe out half the world’s population

Posted by: Dismal Science | Jan 26 2007 19:16 utc | 26