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The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-213
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
> My excuse for posting only three pieces this week Yes and no. After a rather rainy summer around my block it finally warmed up a bit. So I got a bit lazy. But I also read a lot which may help with future pieces. – b. <
> Delaying deliveries of Abrams tanks could ensure that it enters service after the current period of intensified hostilities has ended, after which the vehicles will be less likely to suffer losses which could affect the class’ reputation – or that of the American defence sector. <
—
Other Issues:
Middle East:
Spies:
Europe:
Finance:
Censorship:
Use as open (not Ukraine related) thread …
@ Thurl | Sep 12 2023 15:54 utc | 164
@ suzan | Sep 12 2023 15:16 utc | 161
incl @ Tom_Q_Collins @ Bevin #124
re Jonathon Cook & Geoff Mann & Climate/Environment issues
LRB Vol. 45 No. 17 · 7 September 2023 – Treading Thin Air
Geoff Mann on Uncertainty and Climate Change
(concluding extract)
It is for these reasons that the philosopher C.S. Peirce argued that ‘in reference to a single case considered in itself, probability can have no meaning.’ He explains with a thought experiment:
Quote
If a man had to choose between drawing a card from a pack containing 25 red cards and a black one, or from a pack containing 25 black cards and a red one, and if the drawing of a red card were destined to transport him to eternal felicity, and that of a black one to consign him to everlasting woe, it would be folly to deny that he ought to prefer the pack containing the larger proportion of red cards, although, from the nature of the risk, it could not be repeated.
We would, of course, all choose the red pack, even though we don’t get repeated draws. Peirce, remarkably, looked on this faith in probability as proof that ‘logic is rooted in the social principle’: our interests ‘must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community’. This doesn’t hold for climate change, however, because picking the black card affects everyone; there is no second or third or fourth chance, no other people or planets to benefit from the probability that a decent outcome will eventually come to pass. At this point, it’s time to stop playing the game.
This is where climate policy, despite policymakers’ best efforts, cannot help but become politics. We have reached a stage of global warming at which every decision is critical: we don’t know when our last chance will have been. So when, for example, we base the vast part of our climate policy on offset markets and carbon taxes, as we are doing, and proceed to calculate the social cost of carbon to determine an ‘optimal’ carbon tax that ‘efficiently’ manages the ‘trade-offs’ between the costs and benefits of emitting GHGs, we are doing something much more dangerous than is usually acknowledged. A precise calculation of the ‘optimal’ carbon tax is nothing more than a claim that the best way forward is to perch the gargantuan machine of contemporary capitalism as close as possible to the precipice without tipping us all over the edge. That is neither efficient nor optimal. It is a myopic and recklessly arrogant approach to the unknown fate of life on earth.
What we need is a much more honest assessment of what we do not or cannot know, which is, among other important things, where the edge is. We might, in fact, be past it already, treading thin air like Wile E. Coyote before the fall. Today’s politicians don’t like uncertainty: it introduces doubt. Yet we are in desperate need of a politics that looks catastrophic uncertainty square in the face. That would mean taking much bigger and more transformative steps: all but eliminating fossil fuels, for a start, and prioritising democratic institutions over markets. The burden of this effort must fall almost entirely on the richest people and richest parts of the world, because it is they who continue to gamble with everyone else’s fate.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n17/geoff-mann/treading-thin-air
I do recommend the entire article so the full context and reasoning becomes clear.
A reminder of what the 1992 RIO Conference was actually all about:
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit’, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 3-14 June 1992.
The Rio de Janeiro conference highlighted how different social, economic and environmental factors are interdependent and evolve together, and how success in one sector requires action in other sectors to be sustained over time. The primary objective of the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ was to produce a broad agenda and a new blueprint for international action on environmental and development issues that would help guide international cooperation and development policy in the twenty-first century.
The ‘Earth Summit’ concluded that the concept of sustainable development was an attainable goal for all the people of the world, regardless of whether they were at the local, national, regional or international level. It also recognized that integrating and balancing economic, social and environmental concerns in meeting our needs is vital for sustaining human life on the planet and that such an integrated approach is possible.
The conference also recognized that integrating and balancing economic, social and environmental dimensions required new perceptions of the way we produce and consume, the way we live and work, and the way we make decisions. This concept was revolutionary for its time, and it sparked a lively debate within governments and between governments and their citizens on how to ensure sustainability for development.
“>https://www.un.org/en/conferences/environment/rio1992
Whereas the ‘global warming/climate focused’ UNFCCC was only one of the Institutions and Programs created at Rio’92. Read the whole reference to refresh the memory.
The wide ranging and long term “sustainable development” concept for all nations was subsequently hijacked and distorted beyond recognition by Governments and the UNFCCC/IPCC process. It was switched to only focus on Climate issues instead. The Rio conference Earth Summit, climate science research, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, the COP meetings and ‘Treaties’ have been a complete waste of time and effort and energy ever since.
Nothing has been solved. Nothing has been improved either. Everything is far worse than it was in 1992. The climate scientists collectively have not helped because of their myopic focus upon GHG emissions and fossil fuel use targets. Instead of the real causes of environmental destruction which is the entrenched economic system on steroids.
Whether that is the destruction of ocean fish stocks due to over fishing, rapidly rising GHGs from increased economic activity, the destruction of soils and forests, or all the other problems we are facing today. All being driven by obsessive GDP growth goals, wealth accumulation and excessive unnecessary Consumption by the mega wealthy nations while failing to focus on the broader longer term human focused Rio goals of sustainable development for all people while protecting the entire natural environment.
It is now too late. The great simplification is coming ready or not. https://www.thegreatsimplification.com
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens (PhD lecturer former stock broker financial expert) is a podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Conversation topics will span human behavior, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment. The goal of the show is to inform more humans about the path ahead and inspire people to play a role in our collective future.
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Sep 13 2023 3:48 utc | 363
@ Thurl | Sep 12 2023 15:54 utc | 164
@ suzan | Sep 12 2023 15:16 utc | 161
incl @ Tom_Q_Collins @ Bevin #124
re Jonathon Cook & Geoff Mann & Climate/Environment issues
LRB Vol. 45 No. 17 · 7 September 2023 – Treading Thin Air
Geoff Mann on Uncertainty and Climate Change
(concluding extract)
It is for these reasons that the philosopher C.S. Peirce argued that ‘in reference to a single case considered in itself, probability can have no meaning.’ He explains with a thought experiment:
Quote
If a man had to choose between drawing a card from a pack containing 25 red cards and a black one, or from a pack containing 25 black cards and a red one, and if the drawing of a red card were destined to transport him to eternal felicity, and that of a black one to consign him to everlasting woe, it would be folly to deny that he ought to prefer the pack containing the larger proportion of red cards, although, from the nature of the risk, it could not be repeated.
We would, of course, all choose the red pack, even though we don’t get repeated draws. Peirce, remarkably, looked on this faith in probability as proof that ‘logic is rooted in the social principle’: our interests ‘must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community’. This doesn’t hold for climate change, however, because picking the black card affects everyone; there is no second or third or fourth chance, no other people or planets to benefit from the probability that a decent outcome will eventually come to pass. At this point, it’s time to stop playing the game.
This is where climate policy, despite policymakers’ best efforts, cannot help but become politics. We have reached a stage of global warming at which every decision is critical: we don’t know when our last chance will have been. So when, for example, we base the vast part of our climate policy on offset markets and carbon taxes, as we are doing, and proceed to calculate the social cost of carbon to determine an ‘optimal’ carbon tax that ‘efficiently’ manages the ‘trade-offs’ between the costs and benefits of emitting GHGs, we are doing something much more dangerous than is usually acknowledged. A precise calculation of the ‘optimal’ carbon tax is nothing more than a claim that the best way forward is to perch the gargantuan machine of contemporary capitalism as close as possible to the precipice without tipping us all over the edge. That is neither efficient nor optimal. It is a myopic and recklessly arrogant approach to the unknown fate of life on earth.
What we need is a much more honest assessment of what we do not or cannot know, which is, among other important things, where the edge is. We might, in fact, be past it already, treading thin air like Wile E. Coyote before the fall. Today’s politicians don’t like uncertainty: it introduces doubt. Yet we are in desperate need of a politics that looks catastrophic uncertainty square in the face. That would mean taking much bigger and more transformative steps: all but eliminating fossil fuels, for a start, and prioritising democratic institutions over markets. The burden of this effort must fall almost entirely on the richest people and richest parts of the world, because it is they who continue to gamble with everyone else’s fate.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n17/geoff-mann/treading-thin-air
I do recommend the entire article so the full context and reasoning becomes clear.
A reminder of what the 1992 RIO Conference was actually all about:
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit’, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 3-14 June 1992.
The Rio de Janeiro conference highlighted how different social, economic and environmental factors are interdependent and evolve together, and how success in one sector requires action in other sectors to be sustained over time. The primary objective of the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ was to produce a broad agenda and a new blueprint for international action on environmental and development issues that would help guide international cooperation and development policy in the twenty-first century.
The ‘Earth Summit’ concluded that the concept of sustainable development was an attainable goal for all the people of the world, regardless of whether they were at the local, national, regional or international level. It also recognized that integrating and balancing economic, social and environmental concerns in meeting our needs is vital for sustaining human life on the planet and that such an integrated approach is possible.
The conference also recognized that integrating and balancing economic, social and environmental dimensions required new perceptions of the way we produce and consume, the way we live and work, and the way we make decisions. This concept was revolutionary for its time, and it sparked a lively debate within governments and between governments and their citizens on how to ensure sustainability for development.
“>https://www.un.org/en/conferences/environment/rio1992
Whereas the ‘global warming/climate focused’ UNFCCC was only one of the Institutions and Programs created at Rio’92. Read the whole reference to refresh the memory.
The wide ranging and long term “sustainable development” concept for all nations was subsequently hijacked and distorted beyond recognition by Governments and the UNFCCC/IPCC process. It was switched to only focus on Climate issues instead. The Rio conference Earth Summit, climate science research, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, the COP meetings and ‘Treaties’ have been a complete waste of time and effort and energy ever since.
Nothing has been solved. Nothing has been improved either. Everything is far worse than it was in 1992. The climate scientists collectively have not helped because of their myopic focus upon GHG emissions and fossil fuel use targets. Instead of the real causes of environmental destruction which is the entrenched economic system on steroids.
Whether that is the destruction of ocean fish stocks due to over fishing, rapidly rising GHGs from increased economic activity, the destruction of soils and forests, or all the other problems we are facing today. All being driven by obsessive GDP growth goals, wealth accumulation and excessive unnecessary Consumption by the mega wealthy nations while failing to focus on the broader longer term human focused Rio goals of sustainable development for all people while protecting the entire natural environment.
It is now too late. The great simplification is coming ready or not. https://www.thegreatsimplification.com
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens (PhD lecturer former stock broker financial expert) is a podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Conversation topics will span human behavior, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment. The goal of the show is to inform more humans about the path ahead and inspire people to play a role in our collective future.
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Sep 13 2023 3:48 utc | 364
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