Solutions, answers and silver bullets...we only have to fix education, media, politics, food, democracy, religion, industry, but most of all carbon, and it'll all be ok.
Vivid analogy. And totally agree it’s long pat time for women to lead. It makes me curious, how would you extend this analogy for a scenario / vision of a more beautiful future?
Your analogy of our planet as a household in peril not only lays bare the urgency but does it with a narrative flair that’s as unsettling as it is vivid. If only our leaders were as adept at managing crises as they are at mismanaging everything else!
Isn’t it ironic that those who’ve spent decades playing with the thermostat now find the heat unbearable? Perhaps it’s time they step aside and let those traditionally in charge of ‘household management’ take the reins.
After all, if the house is on fire, you don’t wait for the arsonist to grab a bucket; you call in the experts! Here’s hoping we can swap out those who’ve been fanning the flames for those ready to genuinely clean house.
Planet:Critical can be marvelously Planet: Poetical. A timely provocation of necessary conversation inevitably attracts all sorts. The technocratic, the nihilistic and even the sinister AI operatives. Rachel your resort today to poetics speak to my condition this morning here in the Old Empire's Antipides. There is something intensely revealing, pathological, delegitimising and omnicidal signified in the grinding daily obscenity of the Gaza genocide. We must identify but also live the questions, which today includes great sensitivity in discourse and solidarity in action with the Greta Generation, especially those cracking up alone. No One Alone. Compassion Not Capitalism.
As a male with a newsletter focused on "solutions" to the challenges we face with biodiversity loss, climate change and water management, I think I'll let myself out! 😳😔😉
Imagine all the 'solutions' in the world are made of LEGO. Put all of these 'solutions' into a big virtual bucket and shaking it up so that the component parts separate into colors and sizes and functions. What are the common elements or the largest parts that all or most solutions contain? Now gather these components together, build a system that caters for these components and call it a commons economy. Clearly the men in the room have disproportionately contributed to the problem (look around today), so start with women doing the shaking and selecting and designing a new system. #yeswecan (we are working on something like this at #costcarbon)
At risk of sounding like I'm mansplaining and with being 'male, pale & stale' :)
We've been fiercely egalitarian for 94% of our time on the planet as hunter-gatherer communities. The last 12k years we've been hierarchical.
All mammals have a 'dominance behaviour system' and its opposite, 'involuntary defeat system' which is triggered when you receive power or experience being dominated. One of the emergent properties of hierarchy in a complex evolving system, is that the dark tetrad of personality traits, appear to rise to the top.
Granted there have been mainly male dominated societies, our ideas of democracy originated from Greece and it was certainly not a nice place to live unless you were a male in high society. However, you only have to look at female leaders from Thatcher/Braverman/Truss and beyond to realise it's not about men or women, it's about hierarchy.
When institutions like the military or business organisations, need to get 'sh*t' done in a hurry, those institutions create networks of small self organising, egalitarian teams.
They usually operate at the liminal edges and are kept separate from the main organisations, as you don't want too many people challenging the status-quo. :))
I think the problem we have is that societies are resisting taking responsibility for themselves.
I'm not sure we can do this peacefully?
In an AI driven world which will diminish the middle class, we're just heading backwards to a neo-techno feudalism?
True. Absolutly true. It is also true that the 99% is worse than acquiescent - it is too distracted by entertainment and consumer-dreamin' to think at all, much less to think act cooperatively.
Let the fever break. Billions will die -- but so will the system. If it kills itself quickly enough, maybe something worth saving will survive. Otherwise, the longer the vile gods of greed endure, the more absolute the self-extermination will be. Perhaps that would be a good thing. I am still troubled by the idea that humanity could have been better - an perhaps still could be.
Violent revolution? Why? The second 8 billion people realize humanity is one and always has been, then there will be a time to hope - now there is only time for shame.
Talking about a system makes it sound like something we did not construct, and we cannot de-construct to reconstruct.
That is our failure.
The failure to hold our institutions of agency and authority accountable for individual exercises of institutional powers true to their institutional purpose.
Beginning with our institutions of money for finance, and in particular our institutions of fiduciary money and fiduciary finance.
I agree things are a mess - I disagree about being agnostic about solutions. At least on some of the things while we work on the others.
If we break down the whole mess into its parts and tackle them one by one, there are at least some solutions. Clean energy. Clean food that's just about here - like precision fermentation and dried seaweed powder. Just 2% of the world's oceans could provide all the protein we need for 12 BILLION people. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/sea-forest-better-name-seaweed-un-food-adviser
This while creating habitat and food for tiny fish at the base of the food chain, and even deacidifying the local water.
If precision fermentation really takes off - this 'electric food' could scale to the point where it is so cheap it mostly shuts down grazing. That's 34% of the arable and back to forests - enough habitat for all and enough trees to sequester ALL historical industrial carbon!
The economic system needs a few changes - with more German-like Mittelstand family-owned firms rather than Corporations. These firms do not have to report 'growth' to their shareholders - they can just work at good products and services for their customers rather than having to have to be perceived as growing through the roof. Or even better - Worker's Democratic Co-ops. The main reason I started with Mittlestand is so that people could hear what I'm saying without immediately accusing me of being a full Socialist. Worker's Co-ops. That's what I'm FOR.
"Political gridlock on climate?" Sure. But the market is FRANTIC for more renewables and EV's and is growing so fast the IEA says there will be an oil GLUT by 2028. 4 years. It's not long to wait!
"Or the debt bondage that keeps the global south trapped in poverty? The political hierarchy that means the world’s most war-mongering country calls the shots?"
That is going to take a LOT of work - I agree. All the more reason to get out there and encourage the right things while fighting the wrong things. You seem to want to tear down any hope in the right things I've listed above? Everything is bad. Tear it ALL down.
"How about resource scarcity for an energy transition?"
Here we go again. As I keep saying - there IS NO resource scarcity for the energy transition. Just production hiccups. (Simon Michaux chose to rant and rave about 5 minerals that the energy transition doesn't EVEN NEED IN THE FIRST PLACE!) So - once again - a quick tour of the technologies and brands that substitute the rare for the super-abundant!
SOLAR PANELS: 95% of solar panel brands are normal crystalline cells that already avoid ANY rare-earths or Critical Minerals by using silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust, and aluminium 8% and some silver or copper to send the electricity out.
WIND TURBINES - are made from iron - 5% of the earth’s crust, aluminium, and fibreglass blades - that’s polyester resin and glass fibres. We can even recycle these blades now.
This next one has radically reinvented their turbine. Instead of requiring the usual quarterly service, 4 times annually for 25 to 30 years - these parts NEVER need servicing! http://newsreleases.sandia.gov/turbine_innovation/
ALTERNATIVES FOR GRID STORAGE: SODIUM batteries are great for the first few hours, as it is 30% cheaper than lithium, operates in a much greater temperature range, and is thermally stable (doesn’t suddenly burst into flames). We're not going to run out of sea-salt and agri-waste. For longer storage use OFF-river pumped hydro. Worldwide there are over 100 TIMES more potential sites than we need. Pick your best 1% and you’re done! https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
RECYCLING all these is getting more efficient. Unlike burning fossil fuels, once mined, all these minerals go into the industrial ecosystem to be recycled forever. "Black mass" from ground-up EV batteries is no longer a waste product to dispose of, but a sought after resource.
Data scientist Hannah Ritchie of “Our world in data” and her own research says we have enough minerals - but there might be temporary shortages as we need to open more mines
"There’s no magic bullet for this level of complexity."
No - but there's magic buckshot. Abundant clean energy and clean food. More activists. More habitat. More New Urbanism and Ecocities. More culture change.
But I cannot sign on to your 'revolution' - not when all I hear is what you are against - not what you are FOR? All I can hear is you want to tear everything down. But what goes in its place? (Also - that last metaphor about the man who left the gas on sounded rather misandrous?)
It's easy to rant and rave against stuff. I've been there. But what replaces all these systems you are against? I have not heard a clear articulation of what you are FOR. Fluffly sounding "We're all stewards" and "We want nature everywhere - no sacrifice zones" don't really explain energy or housing or water or financial policy.
In fact - it was a vague idea about 'everyone having a manor in the country' and mixing city and nature that gave birth to one of the most destructive forms of human habitation ever devised - using 10 TIMES the land of traditional Urban forms. Suburbia. Traffic creating, soul destroying, community erasing suburbia. 'Deploying the city into the country' means they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
So sometimes it is better to be honest. To admit that there's going to be more mining for a while - until there is vastly less because renewables can be recycled. To admit there are going to be 'sacrifice zones' - but trying to monitor them as best we can - and rehabilitate them. By trying to build cities that are more like cities - so we don't use 10 times the land like as in suburbia. But making them 'Ecocities' instead.
Revolution? Not if it means society collapses. It can be so trendy these days for nihilistic older people to be so cynical they praise the collapse of society to 'give nature a chance'. But they don't have a clue how much would go extinct if the world did go Mad Max! Because when the citizens starve - they'll eat anything. Even the cute little critters in that nature rescue just down the road. Or even the big ones. Like Castor and Pollux. The elephants, eaten in the siege of Paris.
Ye of little faith RD! For me "Don't talk to me about problems"; talk is cheap, especially when it is just continually reprosecuting what the problems are. So, I focussed on solutions, and now you say "Don't talk to me about solutions"! Well, fortunately I got past that phase enough to work out how to take actions to implement solutions en masse. So, I'll be taking actions now, give me a couple of weeks. If someone says, "Dont talk to me about actions", then we really do have a problem. Till then, all the best. RD.
Solutions, answers and silver bullets...we only have to fix education, media, politics, food, democracy, religion, industry, but most of all carbon, and it'll all be ok.
Vivid analogy. And totally agree it’s long pat time for women to lead. It makes me curious, how would you extend this analogy for a scenario / vision of a more beautiful future?
Exactly! Capitalism must be abolished!
Oh I love a fun analogy, passionate and entertaining.
Yes, let women take control away from the lunatics, please!
*Just be sure that they're not of the same ilk as the maladroit bastards that got us into this mess.
Thanks Rachel.
What an evocative read!
Your analogy of our planet as a household in peril not only lays bare the urgency but does it with a narrative flair that’s as unsettling as it is vivid. If only our leaders were as adept at managing crises as they are at mismanaging everything else!
Isn’t it ironic that those who’ve spent decades playing with the thermostat now find the heat unbearable? Perhaps it’s time they step aside and let those traditionally in charge of ‘household management’ take the reins.
After all, if the house is on fire, you don’t wait for the arsonist to grab a bucket; you call in the experts! Here’s hoping we can swap out those who’ve been fanning the flames for those ready to genuinely clean house.
Planet:Critical can be marvelously Planet: Poetical. A timely provocation of necessary conversation inevitably attracts all sorts. The technocratic, the nihilistic and even the sinister AI operatives. Rachel your resort today to poetics speak to my condition this morning here in the Old Empire's Antipides. There is something intensely revealing, pathological, delegitimising and omnicidal signified in the grinding daily obscenity of the Gaza genocide. We must identify but also live the questions, which today includes great sensitivity in discourse and solidarity in action with the Greta Generation, especially those cracking up alone. No One Alone. Compassion Not Capitalism.
What a great analogy article Rachel 👏 getting everyone talking too, even if it’s about aliens sometimes...
As a male with a newsletter focused on "solutions" to the challenges we face with biodiversity loss, climate change and water management, I think I'll let myself out! 😳😔😉
Imagine all the 'solutions' in the world are made of LEGO. Put all of these 'solutions' into a big virtual bucket and shaking it up so that the component parts separate into colors and sizes and functions. What are the common elements or the largest parts that all or most solutions contain? Now gather these components together, build a system that caters for these components and call it a commons economy. Clearly the men in the room have disproportionately contributed to the problem (look around today), so start with women doing the shaking and selecting and designing a new system. #yeswecan (we are working on something like this at #costcarbon)
You tell 'em Rachel! Get yer Irish up! Thanks for the lovely simile.
At risk of sounding like I'm mansplaining and with being 'male, pale & stale' :)
We've been fiercely egalitarian for 94% of our time on the planet as hunter-gatherer communities. The last 12k years we've been hierarchical.
All mammals have a 'dominance behaviour system' and its opposite, 'involuntary defeat system' which is triggered when you receive power or experience being dominated. One of the emergent properties of hierarchy in a complex evolving system, is that the dark tetrad of personality traits, appear to rise to the top.
Granted there have been mainly male dominated societies, our ideas of democracy originated from Greece and it was certainly not a nice place to live unless you were a male in high society. However, you only have to look at female leaders from Thatcher/Braverman/Truss and beyond to realise it's not about men or women, it's about hierarchy.
When institutions like the military or business organisations, need to get 'sh*t' done in a hurry, those institutions create networks of small self organising, egalitarian teams.
They usually operate at the liminal edges and are kept separate from the main organisations, as you don't want too many people challenging the status-quo. :))
I think the problem we have is that societies are resisting taking responsibility for themselves.
I'm not sure we can do this peacefully?
In an AI driven world which will diminish the middle class, we're just heading backwards to a neo-techno feudalism?
True. Absolutly true. It is also true that the 99% is worse than acquiescent - it is too distracted by entertainment and consumer-dreamin' to think at all, much less to think act cooperatively.
Let the fever break. Billions will die -- but so will the system. If it kills itself quickly enough, maybe something worth saving will survive. Otherwise, the longer the vile gods of greed endure, the more absolute the self-extermination will be. Perhaps that would be a good thing. I am still troubled by the idea that humanity could have been better - an perhaps still could be.
Violent revolution? Why? The second 8 billion people realize humanity is one and always has been, then there will be a time to hope - now there is only time for shame.
“We have met the enemy, and they are us.” - Pogo.
Talking about a system makes it sound like something we did not construct, and we cannot de-construct to reconstruct.
That is our failure.
The failure to hold our institutions of agency and authority accountable for individual exercises of institutional powers true to their institutional purpose.
Beginning with our institutions of money for finance, and in particular our institutions of fiduciary money and fiduciary finance.
Warning. Long post.
I agree things are a mess - I disagree about being agnostic about solutions. At least on some of the things while we work on the others.
If we break down the whole mess into its parts and tackle them one by one, there are at least some solutions. Clean energy. Clean food that's just about here - like precision fermentation and dried seaweed powder. Just 2% of the world's oceans could provide all the protein we need for 12 BILLION people. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/sea-forest-better-name-seaweed-un-food-adviser
This while creating habitat and food for tiny fish at the base of the food chain, and even deacidifying the local water.
If precision fermentation really takes off - this 'electric food' could scale to the point where it is so cheap it mostly shuts down grazing. That's 34% of the arable and back to forests - enough habitat for all and enough trees to sequester ALL historical industrial carbon!
Then we could have a massive increase in National Parks and other habitat conservation schemes. NGO's buying and maintaining private land even seem to peform better at biodiversity conservation than National Parks! https://www.notion.so/NGO-s-are-doing-better-conservation-72d2585382df45fc814d5c3b54e3f6af
The economic system needs a few changes - with more German-like Mittelstand family-owned firms rather than Corporations. These firms do not have to report 'growth' to their shareholders - they can just work at good products and services for their customers rather than having to have to be perceived as growing through the roof. Or even better - Worker's Democratic Co-ops. The main reason I started with Mittlestand is so that people could hear what I'm saying without immediately accusing me of being a full Socialist. Worker's Co-ops. That's what I'm FOR.
"Political gridlock on climate?" Sure. But the market is FRANTIC for more renewables and EV's and is growing so fast the IEA says there will be an oil GLUT by 2028. 4 years. It's not long to wait!
Peak CO2 emissions by 2030. Growing 2 or 3 TIMES faster than the Paris agreement by 2030! https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-one-terawatt-of-solar-deployed-annually/
Sorry - what gridlock again?
"Or the debt bondage that keeps the global south trapped in poverty? The political hierarchy that means the world’s most war-mongering country calls the shots?"
That is going to take a LOT of work - I agree. All the more reason to get out there and encourage the right things while fighting the wrong things. You seem to want to tear down any hope in the right things I've listed above? Everything is bad. Tear it ALL down.
"How about resource scarcity for an energy transition?"
Here we go again. As I keep saying - there IS NO resource scarcity for the energy transition. Just production hiccups. (Simon Michaux chose to rant and rave about 5 minerals that the energy transition doesn't EVEN NEED IN THE FIRST PLACE!) So - once again - a quick tour of the technologies and brands that substitute the rare for the super-abundant!
SOLAR PANELS: 95% of solar panel brands are normal crystalline cells that already avoid ANY rare-earths or Critical Minerals by using silicon - which is 27% of the Earth’s crust, and aluminium 8% and some silver or copper to send the electricity out.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/critical-minerals-solar-batteries/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalline_silicon
THIN FILM is the only sector with rare earth issues. But they’re only 5% of the solar panel market for special niches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel#Technology
WIND TURBINES - are made from iron - 5% of the earth’s crust, aluminium, and fibreglass blades - that’s polyester resin and glass fibres. We can even recycle these blades now.
Wind generators WITHOUT rare-earth magnets are now a thing:- http://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/07/28/15-mw-rare-earth-free-offshore-wind-turbine-seeks-path-to-market/
Niron Magnetics: https://www.nironmagnetics.com/
This next one has radically reinvented their turbine. Instead of requiring the usual quarterly service, 4 times annually for 25 to 30 years - these parts NEVER need servicing! http://newsreleases.sandia.gov/turbine_innovation/
LITHIUM RESERVES: We have 22 million tons of lithium reserves. If we save it for EV’s (and use other grid storage - see below), at 8kg per EV it’s enough for 2.75 BILLION EV’s, twice what we need. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42417327/lithium-supply-batteries-electric-vehicles/
ALSO - MOST CITY DRIVING does not need higher-range lithium - but could be cheaper lower range sodium (sea salt). The average Australian passenger car drives only 11,100 km per year - or 30.5 km a day. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/tourism-and-transport/survey-motor-vehicle-use-australia/latest-release
ALTERNATIVES FOR GRID STORAGE: SODIUM batteries are great for the first few hours, as it is 30% cheaper than lithium, operates in a much greater temperature range, and is thermally stable (doesn’t suddenly burst into flames). We're not going to run out of sea-salt and agri-waste. For longer storage use OFF-river pumped hydro. Worldwide there are over 100 TIMES more potential sites than we need. Pick your best 1% and you’re done! https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/
ELECTRIC MOTORS: Valeo have a rare-earth free electric motor. https://www.valeo.com/en/catalogue/pts/high-voltage-rare-earth-free-electric-motor/
TESLA are working on one - prototype due mid 2024? https://www.carwow.co.uk/tesla/news/5220/new-tesla-ev-compact-electric-car-hatchback-price-specs-release-date
It’s a trend across the industry with Tesla, BMW, General Motors, Borgwarner, Jaguar & Land Rover, Tata, ZF, Vitesco, Renault, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Bentley, Marelli and Eurogroup Laminations all working on it. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/automakers-suppliers-pushing-cut-rare-earths-evs-2023-11-14/
RECYCLING all these is getting more efficient. Unlike burning fossil fuels, once mined, all these minerals go into the industrial ecosystem to be recycled forever. "Black mass" from ground-up EV batteries is no longer a waste product to dispose of, but a sought after resource.
COPPER: Replace with aluminium. Aluminium is less conductive so you have to have 25% thicker wires - but that doesn’t matter as it is half the price and weight. HVDC lines are already aluminium. It can replace 90% of the functions of copper. https://www.shapesbyhydro.com/en/material-properties/how-we-can-substitute-aluminium-for-copper-in-the-green-transition/
OTHER REFERENCES:-
Wang et al Jan 2023 says we have enough minerals
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00001-6#%20
The IEA says we have enough but must encourage speed of mine approval
https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals
Data scientist Hannah Ritchie of “Our world in data” and her own research says we have enough minerals - but there might be temporary shortages as we need to open more mines
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/minerals-for-electricity
LESS mining than fossil fuels - even when accounting for all the rock ore bodies moved to refine into the pure metals https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/energy-transition-materials
"There’s no magic bullet for this level of complexity."
No - but there's magic buckshot. Abundant clean energy and clean food. More activists. More habitat. More New Urbanism and Ecocities. More culture change.
But I cannot sign on to your 'revolution' - not when all I hear is what you are against - not what you are FOR? All I can hear is you want to tear everything down. But what goes in its place? (Also - that last metaphor about the man who left the gas on sounded rather misandrous?)
It's easy to rant and rave against stuff. I've been there. But what replaces all these systems you are against? I have not heard a clear articulation of what you are FOR. Fluffly sounding "We're all stewards" and "We want nature everywhere - no sacrifice zones" don't really explain energy or housing or water or financial policy.
In fact - it was a vague idea about 'everyone having a manor in the country' and mixing city and nature that gave birth to one of the most destructive forms of human habitation ever devised - using 10 TIMES the land of traditional Urban forms. Suburbia. Traffic creating, soul destroying, community erasing suburbia. 'Deploying the city into the country' means they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
So sometimes it is better to be honest. To admit that there's going to be more mining for a while - until there is vastly less because renewables can be recycled. To admit there are going to be 'sacrifice zones' - but trying to monitor them as best we can - and rehabilitate them. By trying to build cities that are more like cities - so we don't use 10 times the land like as in suburbia. But making them 'Ecocities' instead.
Revolution? Not if it means society collapses. It can be so trendy these days for nihilistic older people to be so cynical they praise the collapse of society to 'give nature a chance'. But they don't have a clue how much would go extinct if the world did go Mad Max! Because when the citizens starve - they'll eat anything. Even the cute little critters in that nature rescue just down the road. Or even the big ones. Like Castor and Pollux. The elephants, eaten in the siege of Paris.
Ye of little faith RD! For me "Don't talk to me about problems"; talk is cheap, especially when it is just continually reprosecuting what the problems are. So, I focussed on solutions, and now you say "Don't talk to me about solutions"! Well, fortunately I got past that phase enough to work out how to take actions to implement solutions en masse. So, I'll be taking actions now, give me a couple of weeks. If someone says, "Dont talk to me about actions", then we really do have a problem. Till then, all the best. RD.
It’s not the system. It’s “we the people.”
Operator error….