California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Biden: The Least Appreciated Great President in American History

by John Lawrence

President Biden has gotten more real work done for the American people than any President with the exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt. So why is his job approval rating so low - just 39%? Chalk it up to the fickleness of the American people. They don't know a great President when they see one. Biden has been able to do so much with much narrower margins in Congress than FDR had in all his terms as President. In fact Roosevelt had Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate from 1933 until his death in 1945, and in those days the filibuster was a speaking filibuster that delayed but didn't terminate legislation and so was of little consequence compared to the fact that today 60 Senators are required to pass any bill.

So what are some of Biden's accomplishments? The Inflation Reduction Act is a historic legislative achievement that lowers costs for families, combats the climate crisis, reduces the deficit, and finally makes the largest corporations pay their fair share. For the first time, Medicare is able to negotiate the price of certain high-cost drugs, a month’s supply of insulin for seniors is capped at $35, Medicare beneficiaries pay $0 out of pocket for recommended adult vaccines, and seniors’ out of pocket expenses at the pharmacy will be capped at $2,000 a year. Historically low unemployment at 3.5%. A manufacturing boom is occurring. Companies have announced nearly $300 billion in manufacturing investments in the United States. These investments are ensuring the technologies of the future are made in America, and bringing back supply chains from overseas. And they are creating good-paying jobs, including union jobs and jobs that don’t require a four-year degree. As part of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, the Department of Commerce is overseeing $50 billion to revitalize the U.S. semiconductor industry, including $39 billion in semiconductor incentives. The first funding opportunity seeks applications for projects to construct, expand, or modernize commercial facilities for the production of leading-edge, current-generation, and mature-node semiconductors. This includes both front-end wafer fabrication and back-end packaging. The Department will also be releasing a funding opportunity for semiconductor materials and equipment facilities in the late spring, and one for research and development facilities in the fall.

President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan to change the course of the pandemic and jump start our economic recovery. The American Rescue Plan funded our successful vaccination campaign, safely re-opened schools for in-person learning, helped 200,000 child care providers keep their doors open, and delivered relief to American families. Biden forged a consensus and got the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed – a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure. We are rebuilding our roads, bridges, ports, and airports, upgrading public transit and rail systems, replacing lead pipes to provide clean water, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable high-speed internet to every family in America, delivering cheaper and cleaner energy to households and businesses, and creating good-paying jobs – including union jobs, and jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.

President Biden signed into law the PACT Act – the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxic exposed veterans in more than 30 years. This law also enables the Department of Veterans Affairs to move more quickly in the future to determine if illnesses are related to military service, and it offers critical support to survivors who were harmed by exposures. And, the law authorized 31 new clinical sites and provides VA several tools and resources to ensure effective implementation of the law. The Biden Administration announced debt relief of up to $20,000 for Americans earning less than $125,000 per year who had Pell Grants in college, and up to $10,000 for all other borrowers below that income threshold. More than 40 million borrowers stand to benefit from this action, and about 20 million would see their debt entirely wiped out - and nearly 90% of this relief will go to borrowers earning less than $75,000 per year. In early 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to provide millions of borrowers with more affordable monthly student loan payments through changes to income-driven repayment plans.

The U.S. is positioned to achieve our ambitious climate goals of cutting our emissions in half by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. The President has taken executive action and signed legislation to develop clean energy at home, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and reduce pollution that endangers overburdened communities. And, the President is lowering energy costs for families, creating good paying jobs, and ensuring America leads the global clean energy economy. The President also protected more lands and waters in his first year than any President since John F. Kennedy. President Biden took action to lower the cost of health care for millions of Americans. Right now, four out of five people who sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act can find health care coverage for $10 a month or less and millions of Americans on Obamacare are saving an average of $800 a year. Since he took office, there has been a combined 50 percent increase in enrollment in states that use HealthCare.gov and the nation’s uninsured rate is historically low at 8 percent. Over 16 million Americans signed up for quality, affordable health coverage, the highest number ever produced in an open enrollment period.

So what are Biden's most significant achievements? In my opinion infrastructure and climate action lead the way. These areas have been neglected too long, and the Biden initiatives will just barely make amends. In and of themselves, they are probably insufficient, but they are a good start, a start that has been delayed too long. Changing the narrative on taxation, I think, is a major accomplishment. Making it clear that a tax bill does not have to apply to everyone. By not raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, an oft repeated phrase, the narrative has been changed from "tax and spend" to "tax the rich and spend on helping the poor and middle class". Deficit reduction doesn't mean necessarily to stop spending on social programs as it means getting more money into government coffers by taxing the rich. Inequality is out of control; taxing the rich ameliorates this situation. What Biden did to get us through the COVID crisis is remarkable. It could have been an economic disaster for everyone; it wasn't. Student debt relief was a great achievement although it is still not clear how that will play out in the courts.

The American people by and large don't appreciate all that Biden has done compared to what any Republican administration would have done. Clearly, Democrats are on the side of rationality and helping the American people. Republicans are on the side of winning at all costs and helping the rich. They don't give a damn about helping the American people especially the middle class and the poor. The Republican mantra of reducing the deficit and the debt would have you believe that it can only be done in one way, that is by reducing spending. No, it can also be done by taxing the rich which would also reduce inequality. But this is all the Republicans have, that and the discredited policy of tax breaks for the rich that have done little to "trickle down" and have greatly contributed to the national debt. Enhancement of Obama's landmark health care legislation is another major achievement although Obama deserves much of the credit. It's a testimony of what the Democratic party is able to achieve for the country. The fact that Biden accomplished so much in a bipartisan way is something few other politicians could have hoped to accomplish especially in the political environment that exists today.

My criticism of Biden has to do with the Ukraine war. On the one hand he has prevented it from becoming a world war as of yet. However, in the negotiations preceding the war, I believe more could have been done to prevent the war in the first place. By not acknowledging or being sensitive to Russia's concerns about the encroachment of NATO on its borders which started during the Clinton administration and was hastened by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Biden and other diplomats missed an opportunity to defuse the crisis. Their policy was a de facto attempt to bully Russia into accepting the fact that Ukraine would also become part of NATO. Now the US is entrenched in a policy of Ukraine "winning" and Russia "losing" instead of a policy of a negotiated settlement to end the war, a negotiated settlement which could have been had before the war even started IMHO, for instance, by delaying Ukraine's admission to NATO for a period of time during which Russia's security concerns might have been addressed. In effect Ukraine has become a vassal state of the US instead of its historic situation of being a vassal state of Russia.

Off the Top of My Head

Government Deficit Spending Is Not the Problem: Lack of Labor and Physical Resources Is

by John Lawrence

Since the US dollar is a sovereign fiat currency, the US can never run out of dollars. The debt ceiling is a totally artificial limit which results in the US hoisting itself on its own pitard. According to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as espoused in The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, the only limit on government spending is inflation, and inflation is concerned with the amount and nature of resources available to soak up the money injected into the economic system by the government. According to this theory it makes sense that a lack of labor resources could lead to inflation. Consider that right now there is a shortage of air traffic controllers, and this is leading to a cancellation of flights. If there were more air traffic controllers available, the number of flights could be increased, and more economic activity would ensue. The constraint on flights available because of the lack of air traffic controllers leads to inflation because the money charged for each available flight can be increased. Essentially there is a bidding war for the available flights. If any resource including natural resources like steel and cement is not sufficient for the demand for those resources, then the price of those resources will increase leading to inflation. Right now in the US labor is becoming a scarce resource especially labor of the type necessary in the essential economy, that is the economy of goods and services necessary for the continuation and enhancement of everyday life. As more labor is developed for essentially useless services like the entertainment and social media industries, plumbers, electricians and carpenters are not available for useful services, and, therefore, the cost of those services increases.

Which brings us to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act which allocates $370 billion to rebuild infrastructure and fight climate change. These are all necessary and vital goals, but the question should be asked are the resources for this amount of spending sufficient or will this spending be inflationary. To put it more succinctly is the blue collar labor sufficient for the job? If not, the price of labor will be bid up and the spending will be inflationary. More and more these days students are encouraged to go to college where they end up after graduation working for Wall Street or hedge funds or in the entertainment/social media industry. They are not encouraged to go to vocational technical schools to become carpenters, plumbers and electricians. So they go into industries which are not essential to the real economy. There are shortages of labor for the real economy everywhere we look. In order to overcome these shortages, it would be necessary to step up legal immigration since immigrants by and large fill the jobs Americans don't want to do, and by and large Americans don't want to perform any kind of the less glamorous and remunerative type of labor necessary for production in the real economy. Also outsourcing has made it unnecessary for Americans to perform labor in the real economy. We rely either on immigrants or foreign workers for that.

The next thing is that all this infrastructure rebuilding is going to contribute to global warming as well as reducing it. Rebuilding all the bridges of America will require large amounts of steel and cement. Steel and cement production produce large amounts of carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere. The International Energy Agency estimates that direct CO² emissions due to crude steel production is approximately 1.4 tons of CO² per ton of steel produced. The cement industry is responsible for about 8% of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions — far more than global carbon emissions from aviation. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, after the U.S. and China. So rebuilding America's infrastructure will contribute to global warming while at the same time attempting to reduce global warming. The fact is that alternatives to steel and cement which do not produce greenhouse gasses are not available. Research on these topics needs to be stepped up. But more research in areas like artificial intelligence, of the kind which has no use in the amelioration of global warming, takes place while productive research into materials to replace steel and cement languishes. Also while more electric vehicles are being produced, the electric energy to power these vehicles is coming from power plants that still use fossil fuels to produce it. One form of greenhouse gas production is being traded for another. Nothing is gained unless all energy generating power plants are using renewable and non carbon dioxide producing fuels.

The problem is that limited resources both in terms of labor and physical resources will hamper efforts both in repairing American infrastructure and building infrastructure which reduces the amount of greenhouse gas production. Stephanie Kelton writes: "That's why MMT recommends a different approach to the federal budgeting process, one that integrates inflation risk into the decision making process so that lawmakers are forced to stop and think about whether they have taken the necessary steps to guard against inflation risk before approving any new spending. MMT would make us safer in this respect because it recognizes that the best defense against inflation is a good offense. We don't want to allow excessive spending to cause inflation and then fight inflation after it happens. We want agencies like the CBO helping to evaluate new legislation for potential inflation risk before Congress commits to funding new programs so that the risks can be mitigated preemptively. At its core  MMT is about replacing an artificial (revenue) constraint with a real (inflation) restraint." The artificial revenue constraint is the debt ceiling!

In the above passage the words "inflation risk" could also be replaced with "greenhouse gas emission risk." The CBO should evaluate both kinds of risks. So as the economy becomes more electrified in terms of electric cars and buildings, we need to think about the fact that the electricity generated by these increased demands needs to come from non carbon dioxide emitting sources. Also substitutes must be found quickly - in other words research needs to be stepped up - to find substitutes for steel and cement. To boot, non polluting energy sources must be found for ships and planes. Both human and physical natural resources must be taken into account. Have all these things been thought through?

Off the Top of My Head

Elon's Folly Contributing to Rocket Fuel Greenhouse Gas Emissions

by John Lawrence

The Starship that exploded soon after launch recently had a methane based fuel. Methane is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Whatever methane remained in the Starship after launch was fully released into the atmosphere after it exploded. Space tourism will cause even more greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere. At a time when we should have all hands on deck to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, NASA is going full steam ahead with its space exploration program. The astronauts should be repurposed to fight greenhouse gas emissions not to ramp them up. In an article by Mark Piesing for the BBC, titled The pollution caused by rocket launches we find:

In television, and film, spaceflight is usually represented as having little or no impact on the environment. Yet it should be obvious that rocket engines spew out pollution into the atmosphere, like any form of combustion-driven propulsion.

Perhaps the black carbon, or soot, and other emissions didn't matter when only around 70 commercial rocket launches a year took place. Now that number has doubled; it is expected to increase significantly more over the next two decades due to the growth in demand for services like satellite internet services and space tourism.

At least three scientific research papers have already been published this year [2022] on the impact of rocket emissions on the atmosphere, temperatures, and the ozone layer.

So at a time when planet earth is in peril of remaining a habitable planet for the human species, why are we continuing a quest to fire off rocket ships so we can some day put humans on Mars, an uninhabitable planet? It seems like pure folly. By the time they get humans on Mars, the earth will have become an uninhabitable planet also at the rate we're going. The US government should not be contributing to global warming with its space program at a time when it is professing to be curtailing global warming. If we are to save this planet, much more needs to be done than simply making all cars electric by 2050. Many more power plants will have to be built by then to generate the electricity to power all those electric cars. What kind of fuel will they use for all these new power plants? If they don't have enough renewables by then, it will have to be fossil fuels so what has been gained? Nothing.

People have totally compartmentalized the global warming syndrome. On the one hand they are for eliminating fossil fuels. On the other they go ahead with all sorts of activities that increase their use because alternative green forms of energy are not yet available. I guess it's OK to sacrifice a few neighborhoods to tornadoes here and there as long as we can keep the economy humming. We must not sacrifice the American way of life. Too many people might get upset and vote for the other party. Similarly, we can't restrict assault rifles because too many people would get upset and vote for the other party. So Joe Biden is the perfect President for our times. He understands that he can rub his belly and whistle Dixie at the same time. However, the pace of change in energy creation is much too slow even to counteract the population increases. More people on the planet means more demand for energy, and the fossil fuel industry is only too happy to provide it until renewables can totally take over some time in the future, some time that will be too late for a desperate human species.

Off the Top of My Head

Will Renewable Energy Be Sufficient to Stave Off Global Warming?

by John Lawrence

More than a third of the world's energy will come from renewables by 2025. The International Energy Agency says electricity demand is forecast to grow by 3% a year over the next three years compared to 2022. So in 10 years demand will be 30% higher than it was in 2022 Meanwhile, renewable energy generation is increasing about 10% a year. In 10 years renewables will be producing 100% of the energy demand as of today, but, since demand will be 30% higher than today, that leaves about 30% of demand still to be fulfilled by fossil fuels. But electricity generation is not the only source of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Steel and cement production also releases greenhouse gasses. Agriculture, especially cattle farming, releases large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Virtually every aspect of production and consumption releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. To reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses, the world's population needs to go to a plant based diet and get away from the demand for meat, especially beef. Substitutes in building materials need to be found for steel and cement. Otherwise the demand for fossil fuels will never go away. Airplanes and container ships release a lot of greenhouse gasses. Might we have nuclear powered container ships in the future? Will there be a substitute for jet fuel?

Meanwhile, the release of greenhouse gasses is increasing. NBC News reported on March 2, 2023:

"Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

"Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)"

World society needs to make an all out immediate effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, something it's definitely not doing. Instead the human race is preoccupied with war and preparations for war. It is also business as usual for production and consumption especially in the western industrialized societies. There needs to be an immediate cessation of consumption at the level that western societies are used to consuming, but that would bring about an immediate recession in the US whose economy is based 70% on consumption. It seems problematic to suggest that building materials should henceforth be of the kind used in medieval Europe, namely stone which was used to build the great cathedrals. Also earth based materials like adobe would not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions at the same levels that concrete and steel buildings do, not even to mention concrete roads and freeways. It seems all modern methods of production and consumption are based either on fossil fuels or carbon dioxide emissions from steel and cement production. Plastics which are based on fossil fuels need to be immediately replaced with other materials like glass and paper products. Even the wind turbines that produce renewable energy are made almost entirely of steel which generates huge amounts of greenhouse gas. Why couldn't a wind turbine be made of stone except for the moving parts?

Suffice it to say that, when you look at the entire picture, it is not enough just to go to renewable sources for electricity production. For sure that's one component in terms of automobile travel and electricity usage for homes and businesses, but until the problems associated with airplane and ship travel are solved and the problems associated with steel and cement production are solved, we will never reduce the levels of greenhouse gasses being spewed into the atmosphere enough to prevent climate catastrophe. We are moving at a snail's pace when an all out immediate effort is needed.

Off the Top of My Head

A 500 Year Event, Gov. DeSantis, or a Once a Year Occurrence?

by John Lawrence

Gov. DeSantis has said repeatedly, "This is a 500 year event" as if once we get the damage cleaned up from Hurricane Ian, we can relax because this kind of devastation won't happen again for another 500 years. I've got news for you, Gov. Desantis. An event like Ian will probably happen again within 5 years, and it will be even worse as the Caribbean warms more making hurricanes even more ferocious. Floridians experienced the deadly, devastating consequences of back-to-back major hurricanes—Irma in 2017 and Michael in 2018—along with near-misses by Matthew in 2016 and Dorian in 2019. They don't sound like 500 year events to me. Let's be honest with each other, Gov. DeSantis. The wreckage from Ian won't even be fully cleaned up before the next major hurricane hits Florida. Thank God, DeSantis is not a climate change denier. However, he is not given high marks for taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change. “I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists,” DeSantis told reporters at one 2018 campaign stop. “I am not a global warming person. I don’t want that label on me.” Forget about labels, Gov. DeSantis, you have a major problem on your hands. You better get down on your knees and start worshiping at the church of climate change.

Inside Climate News reports:

"Florida’s climate challenges are among the biggest in the country. Beyond those related to hurricanes intensified by climate change, they include sea level rise, extreme heat, drought and increasing health threats from mosquito-borne diseases. Florida is the most hurricane-prone state, and hurricanes are not only getting more powerful, they are bringing much more rainfall. 

Sunny day flooding is a regular occurrence in some communities because of sea level rise. Some face several feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. 

By its own numbers, the DeSantis administration predicts that with sea level rise, $26 billion in residential property statewide will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045."

OK, Ian will probably result in more than $26 billion to clean up, and that's not "by 2045". That's this year - 2022. As insurance companies refuse to insure Florida residential property, Florida residents better hope that the Federal government takes up the slack. By the way that's the Federal government that this Republican state tells to stay out of its business. It's always about states' rights until there's some disaster. Then they come running to the Federal government for help. Private flood insurance will soon be a thing of the past. Nearly 80,000 Florida homeowners will have to find new insurance, after Southern Fidelity declared bankruptcy. The Tallahassee based company is the fourth insurer to declare insolvency recently.

The hardest hit by Ian, of course, were retirees and poor people living in mobile homes. Mobile homes should be outlawed in most parts of Florida. They cannot withstand the powerful hurricanes that are only going to get more powerful as climate change accelerates. Even structurally sound homes will still suffer from water damage and the loss of services like power, water, cell phone towers and more. There will be more water damage from storm surges and fresh water flooding as major storms drop 24 inches or more of water on neighborhoods. All utilities need to be undergrounded, or they will be on the ground more than they will be functional. It will be a full time job just getting water, power, sewer and communications back online, not to mention getting roads cleared of debris and rebuilding bridges and washed out roads. Massive climate disasters are only going to get worse, and we're still putting about 34 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. There's no way that we can survive without a full on effort by all countries of the world to get off fossil fuels ASAP. Yet countries of the world continue to fight, bicker and compete with each other instead of COOPERATING.

Off the Top of My Head

Sea Levels to Rise by 200 Feet if Poles Melt

by John Lawrence

Based on 410 ppm which is the concentration of carbon dioxide right now in the atmosphere, the ice on the poles will go completely away albeit at a glacial pace. Concentrations of carbon dioxide have varied between 100 ppm and 300 ppm for hundreds of millions of years, and earth has gone through hot periods in which there was no polar ice and at least one period where the entire earth was encased in ice. Reliable predictions by scientists show that 410 ppm will guarantee the disappearance of ice from the poles and a 200 foot sea level rise which will wipe out most of the east coast including a total disappearance of the state of Florida. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is continuing to increase. It will continue to increase way above the current 410 ppm. Humans are still pouring billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere year after year. There has been no diminution of this trend. In fact it is accelerating. The world emits about 43 billion tons of CO2 a year. So already there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to guarantee that the poles will melt, and the earth will become very hot. And we're still making it worse year after year.

As the oceans warm and the polar ice melts, we are seeing more extreme weather events due to increased water evaporation from the oceans. That increased amount of water in the atmosphere is released in the form of torrential downpours which cause flooding and weather events such as hurricanes. Higher temperatures are also causing droughts and forest fires. Although these events are tragedies for those directly affected, geological history has shown that life can adapt. One of the first major catastrophes the human race will be faced with is the loss of major cities situated close to oceans such as New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Miami and New Orleans. However, humans can adapt to this by just moving further back from the shore lines as sea levels rise wiping out most low lying areas. Of course this will increase anti-immigrant sentiment due to the the number or refugees in the world as humans crowd onto remaining habitable areas. At this stage we will still be better off than Venus which has a runaway greenhouse gas effect and a surface air temperature of 800 degrees F. Its atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.

The lesson here is that it is to the advantage of the human race to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as quickly as possible. This means major changes to our civilization which human beings are reluctant to make especially in democracies which are governed by the will of the people. While most will give lip service to preserving the planet for future generations, in fact they don't want to do anything that will change their lifestyles or inconvenience themselves in any way. Only when war and pestilence force humans to diminish their numbers on the planet will the human footprint get down to a certain size which, along with the adoption of renewable energy systems, will allow the planet to sustain enough habitable land mass for the furtherance of human life at least for some people. How fast we proceed with changing the human ecosystem in terms of greenhouse gas reduction will determine what kind of a planet future generations will be forced to live on. At the very least it will resemble a hot house earth, similar to conditions which existed millennia ago in which the polar regions were tropical swamps.

Off the Top of My Head

According to Biden's BBB Plan, Buyers of Electric Vehicles Would Receive up to $12,500 in Tax Credits

by John Lawrence

So where is this incentive to buy electric vehicles now that gas (in CA) is about $6 a gallon? Now is the time when we need this subsidy, but, alas, the Democrats couldn't even stick together to pass this and other incentives and measures to get off fossil fuels. How about this as an incentive: preventing daily tornadoes in the heartland of the US? As extreme weather gets more extreme, Congress can't even pass programs to combat global warming and the consequent damage that's being done to people's lives and the economy in general. Not to mention the fact that major portions of the population will not be able to get property insurance which is happening right now and will only get worse. If you have a lot of brush around your house, you're an insurance liability. If you live in a flood plain, you're an insurance liability. We are told by people who know that we only have a few years to do something before we can expect catastrophic consequences from climate change and global warming. Yet we are taking our time getting off fossil fuels. There is even regret that we didn't go ahead with the Keystone pipeline.

The New York Times reported:

"In the coming decades, as global temperatures continue to rise, hundreds of millions of people could struggle against floods, deadly heat waves and water scarcity from severe drought, the report said. Mosquitoes carrying diseases like dengue and malaria will spread to new parts of the globe. Crop failures could become more widespread, putting families in places like Africa and Asia at far greater risk of hunger and malnutrition. People unable to adapt to the enormous environmental shifts will end up suffering unavoidable loss or fleeing their homes, creating dislocation on a global scale,[according to a recent UN report]."

We do know the things we need to be doing. It's just that we're not doing them or doing them at such a slow pace that we will still experience the worst effects of climate change. If you think the refugee problem is bad now, climate change will exacerbate and accelerate the refugee problem. People will be fleeing their homes and homelands when it becomes apparent that they can't make a living there. They will be coming to parts of the world where countries are wealthy enough to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Basically, that means that people will flee poor countries and attempt at all costs to enter rich countries. That's why the US, as the richest country in the world, should be going full speed ahead to transition away from fossil fuels and into a new era that consists of renewable energy production and more environment friendly lifestyles. Instead, Americans are determined to lead lifestyles of maximum consumption right up to the hilt of their financial resources and beyond in a last gasp of over consumption.

Common Dreams reported:

In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the "bleak and brutal truth" about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia's war on Ukraine.

"If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC's findings seriously," Pollin wrote, "it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry."

Asserting that "at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing" a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.

The expert proposed starting with "the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips."

"They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies," he wrote. "The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices."

So for roughly half of the defense budget, the US taxpayers could own the oil industry and phase it out at the speed required to save the planet from the worst effects of global warming. Instead we're treated to the Big Oil CEO's defiance that they are not price gouging because prices are set by the world market. Does anyone question why prices have to be set by the world market? No. Obviously, the world market exists to serve the interests of the oil producers, not oil consumers. Maybe the US should get off the world market because we produce enough oil to meet all current consumer demands. So why do we even need the world market? The world market exists to serve the interests of the OPEC nations who won't even open their spigots in a time of crisis, and it exists to serve the interests of the western Big Oil corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell.

Americans would like to have one more blast of consumption rather than buckle down and do what's necessary to combat climate change, an effort that would be at least as great as the effort and sacrifice put forth to fight World War II. Billionaire's would rather blast off into space than use their money to fight climate change. Their lifestyles are major contributors to the emission of greenhouse gasses. They don't want to be told that they can't overconsume with numerous 27,000 square foot mansions and a fleet of luxury cars. That's the American Dream, or is it. It's soon going to turn into the American Nightmare but probably not for them. They have the resources to escape the worst effects of global warming. Instead the nightmare will be mostly visited on the least among us as well as randomly due to tornadoes, floods and fires.

As US Funds Pentagon Bloat, China Investments in Green Energy Soar

A staff member charges an electric bus at a charging station on April 1, 2022 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

In the first quarter of 2022, China is expected to take 65% of the global market in new-energy vehicles.

 

Juan Cole

April 8, 2022 by Informed Comment

China is beating the pants off the United States in the burgeoning new energy vehicle market, out-producing and out-selling America with regard to plug-in vehicles by a massive margin. Whereas the Chinese government is supporting this new industry, the US government is still subsidizing fossil fuels and is spending $728.5 billion a year on the Pentagon at a time when the US is not even at war. The result is bloated and problematic engines of destruction like the failed F-35.

In 2021, about 4 million EVs were produced around the world. That year, China made 57.4% of them.

In the first quarter of 2022, China is expected to take 65% of the global market in new-energy vehicles, according to Yang Yang at China Daily.

China exported about 500,000 new-energy cars in 2021, 2.6 times more than the previous year,. China's EV exports to Europe rose fivefold to 230,000 units write Akashi Kawakami, Yohei Muramatsu and Saki Shirai at Nikkei Asia.

You know whose EV exports to Europe did not increase five times in 2021? America's.

In contrast, the US automakers accounted for just 12% of global EV sales in 2021, Nikkei Asia says, Worse, the US lost market share in this sector compared to 2020. We're not only not at the forefront of this industry, we are falling behind.

The US Republican Party and their plus-one, Sen. Joe Manchin, are preventing the US from becoming the dominant automaker in the world in this decade by consistently shooting down the green energy and transportation provisions of the now-moribund Build Back Better bill backed by President Biden.

The major Chinese automaker BYD announced Sunday that it now no longer even produces gasoline-driven vehicles using internal combustion engines (ICE). The US looks increasingly like a backward, lumbering dinosaur in this new, green technological environment.

Inside China, EVs had been 6% of new vehicle purchases at the beginning of 2021, but skyrocketed to 22% by the end of last year. That is an increase of 1.3% a month every month, Yang points out.

In absolute numbers, in January 2021, China sold 173,000 new energy cars. In January, 2022, 372,615 new plug-in vehicles were registered. That is more than double—115%.

This are incredible numbers.

In 2021, about 4 million EVs were produced around the world. That year, China made 57.4% of them. This year its market share is increasing significantly.

Chinese firms are aggressively invading formerly Japanese-dominated car markets such as Thailand, Nikkei Asia says. The country's largest producer of automobiles, SAIC Motor, sells its MG EP new-energy car in Thailand for 30% less than the price of a Nissan Leaf EV.

---

© 2021 Juan Cole

Juan Cole

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of  "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008).  He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. 

Off the Top of My Head

Plastic Waste and Climate Change: Both Problems Created by Oil

by John Lawrence

Every year 400 million people dispose of tons of plastic waste in the Ganges or in dumps near it to be washed down the river during the monsoon season. The river carries an estimated 6200 metric tons of plastic waste to the sea annually. Plastic is made from oil. Greenhouse gas emissions are caused by oil. Oil is ruining the planet. Yet we are addicted to oil. Oil is killing us on land due to climate change and killing us in the sea as sea life ingests plastic trash. Meanwhile, Indians bathe in the polluted Ganges thinking its waters are the purest in the world. The problem is primarily packaging most of which is discarded immediately after use. Globally, it accounts for 36 percent of the nearly 500 million tons of plastic manufactured annually. In the United States, a person creates an average of 286 pounds of plastic waste a year - the highest rate in the world and more than 6 times India's rate of 44 pounds per person. Civilization and its comforts and conveniences are literally killing the planet, and, therefore, us.

National Geographic reported:

"Most of the research about plastic waste has focused on plastic already in the oceans and its potential for harm—it poses a lethal threat to a wide range of wildlife, from plankton on up to fish, turtles, and whales. Less is known about how the waste gets to the ocean. But it’s clear that rivers, especially rivers in Asia, are major arteries.

"In 2019 the National Geographic Society sponsored a research expedition to one of those rivers: the Ganges, which flows across northern India and Bangladesh, through one of the largest and most heavily populated river basins in the world. A team of 40 scientists, engineers, and support staff from India, Bangladesh, the United States, and the United Kingdom traveled the full length of the river twice, before and after the monsoon rains that dramatically swell it. Sampling the river and the land and air around it, and interviewing more than 1,400 residents, the team sought to find out where, why, and what kind of plastic was getting into the Ganges—and from there into the Indian Ocean."

The growing impurities in the environment are probably contributing to the increase in degenerative diseases like cancer. We eat fish and other seafood products like sushi after sea creatures have ingested plastic waste. We use the rivers and oceans as places to dump our trash, and then we eat animals which inhabit those trash pits. Not too healthy. Like climate change, plastic waste is a side effect of our hydrocarbon habit—most plastics are made from oil and gas—and its impacts, as well as the solutions to the problem, are both local and global. Humans have existed for a couple hundred thousand years, but it has been only about 120 years or 4 generations during which time humans have essentially destroyed planet earth and its ecosystems. Oil and its byproducts like plastic are turning planet earth into a trash dump from which it's not likely to recover in view of the fact that little if anything is being done about it.

What needs to be done immediately? Conversion of all power plants to renewables or nuclear. Conversion of all vehicles to electric. Conversion of agriculture to sustainable and primarily meatless. Conversion of building materials like cement and steel to other materials which don't cause greenhouse gas emissions, such materials as stone and adobe like have been used for centuries. Think of the medieval cathedrals still in use today.

Off the Top of My Head

We're Taking Our Eyes Off the Ball Regarding Climate Change

by John Lawrence

It's all about war and oil. Climate change is taking a back seat to the peril of human existence on planet earth. It won't matter who wins the war in Ukraine if we forget about the constant dumping of carbon dioxide greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. When we should be getting rid of oil consumption, all most Americans seem to care about is the price of gas. 2, 4, 6, 8 we don't want to mitigate. Mitigating climate change will take the cooperation of every nation on earth. Instead nations of earth are dividing into two dissenting camps. If the production and consumption of oil is to be mitigated, the world needs the cooperation of the world's largest oil producers. Let me see who that might be. Could it be Russia and the United States? And let me see who could be the largest greenhouse gas emitters? Could it be China, India and the US? India, by the way, the world's largest democracy, hasn't condemned Russia over the war. The BBC reported:

"India has had to walk a diplomatic tightrope over Ukraine in the past few days as it tried to balance its ties with Moscow and the West. ... Delhi continued with its strategy as it chose to abstain when the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to demand an immediate end to the invasion of Ukraine. ... India's strategy has raised questions, particularly in the West, over whether the world's largest democracy should have taken a clearer stand. ...There are several reasons for India's quest to find a diplomatic balance over Ukraine. The most important are India's time-tested defence and diplomatic ties with Moscow."

So kiss planet earth good-bye insofar as human habitation is concerned. The cockroaches are willing and able to take over. It's almost a foregone conclusion as homo sapiens marches inexorably toward its own extinction. Right now is the time to convert to renewable energy post haste ... with all possible speed. Instead we're squabbling over the price of gas and involved in a war which is destroying what fragile good will existed a few weeks ago. We're all concerned about where our oil production is going to come from instead of using this opportunity to get off oil consumption. But all good American middle-of-the-roaders consider it too radical to take the emergency measures necessary to avoid the complete destruction of the planet for future generations. Instead they want to continue business as usual as if gradual measures will be enough. The time window for doing anything of consequence keeps getting smaller and smaller while greenhouse gas emissions keep bigger and bigger.

Off the Top of My Head

The US Produces as Much Oil as It Consumes. So Why Should Gas Prices Go Up?

by John Lawrence

The US is the world's largest oil producer at about 18 million barrels per day. Saudi Arabia is number 2 while Russia is a close number 3. The US is also the largest consumer or oil at about 18 million barrels a day. So the US produces about as much oil as it consumes. So why doesn't the US control the price of its own oil? Because oil is put on the world market so the price is determined by the supply and demand for oil on the world market. If there is a shortage on the world market, the price of gas goes up for US consumers. That is what is happening now because of the Russia Ukraine situation and the US sanctions on Russian gas and oil. Because of the sanctions, the price of gas for US consumers will increase so President Biden is essentially shooting US consumers in the foot. Why couldn't he take US oil out of the US market and just let US oil be consumed by US consumers. Since supply and demand would be about equal, there would be no surge in US oil prices.

The problem is that the US government does not own US oil resources. They are privately owned, and it's in the interests of the oil corporations to get as much for a barrel of oil as they possibly can. This means that when there is a shortage on the world market, and the price of a barrel goes up, US oil corporations profit from the price increase. There is an analogy which makes this process easily understandable.Say you are a grower of tomatoes. In the early days of your tomato business you just sold the excess tomatoes that your family didn't eat to your neighbors directly at what you both thought was a fair price. As time went on you decide to take your tomatoes to the local market where other tomato growers were also bringing their tomatoes to sell. The price of your tomatoes was then determined by the market price and not the "fair" price you charged your neighbor. If there was a shortage of tomatoes at the market compared to the cumulative demand for tomatoes by consumers, you made a lot more per tomato than you would make selling them directly to your neighbors at the "fair" price. When your neighbor comes to you for tomatoes, you tell him that he has to buy them at the market at the market price because this represents progress.

Now say there is a glut of tomatoes at the local market and the price of tomatoes drops. Now you offer to sell your neighbor tomatoes directly at the "fair" price, but your neighbor says that he can get them at the market for much less than the "fair" price. Such are the vagaries of the market place. So getting back to oil, when there is a glut on the world market, gas prices plummet. When there is a scarcity, prices can skyrocket which is what is happening now not due to the war in Ukraine but due to sanctions on Russian gas and oil which constitutes a major component of the world supply. President Biden can do little or nothing about the price of gas because oil and gas resources are privately owned and they will profit immensely as the price of oil soars above $100 a barrel. However, much of Russia's oil industry is state owned. Therefore, Putin can control the price of gas and energy inside Russia so Russian drivers will pay less at the pump than will American drivers in all probability.

So now while the world needs to transition from fossil fuels to renewable non-polluting energy sources in order to combat global warming, all anyone can think about is how desperately we need oil and the price of gas. This is a foreboding situation for the future of planet earth. We need to get off of our addiction to oil. However, there are trillions of dollars wound up in the oil industry and none of the owners whether they be private or government concerns are willing to give up their investments. Maybe surging gas prices are a good thing. People will drive less, use public transportation more and work remotely from home instead of commuting. Less tailpipe carbon dioxide will be emitted into the atmosphere. In the long run we should thank President Biden for sanctioning Russian oil and the NORD stream 2 pipeline. It will help the global warming situation although American consumers will not be pleased with Biden because they will blame him for gas prices being so high.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Coal is So Hard to Get Rid Of

by John Lawrence

To forestall climate change we must get rid of coal yet coal is the cheapest and most abundant source of energy for power generating plants worldwide. China is building coal fired generating plants in India as India develops into a middle class country. As COP26 aims to banish coal. Asia is building hundreds of power plants to burn it. Millions of tons of coal each year will be imported to fuel a giant power plant that will burn the fuel for at least 30 years to generate power for the more than 70 million people that live in India's Tamil Nadu state. This plant is one of nearly 200 coal-fired power stations under construction in Asia, including 95 in China, 28 in India and 23 in Indonesia, according to data from U.S. nonprofit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). While the US is primarily responsible for the billions of tons of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere, developing countries don't want to hinder their emerging development since they aren't the ones that contributed most of the CO₂ so far. Asia is home to 60% of the world's population and about half of global manufacturing, and coal's use is growing rather than shrinking as rapidly developing countries seek to meet booming demand for power.

Reuters reported:

"In 2020, more than 35% of the world's power came from coal, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Roughly 25% came from natural gas, 16% from hydro dams, 10% from nuclear and 12% from renewables like solar and wind. This year, coal demand is set for a new record, driving prices to all-time highs and contributing to a worldwide scramble for fuel.

"Record coal demand is contributing to a rapid rise in emissions in 2021 after a fall last year, when restrictions on movement for billions of people to slow the pandemic caused fuel use to plummet. While some of the new coal plants under construction will replace older, more polluting stations, together they will add to total emissions. "The completion of the capacity that is already under construction in these countries will drive up coal demand and emissions," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clear Air.

"The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the new plants alone will be close to 28 billion tonnes over their 30-year lifespans, according to GEM."

While India will continue to pollute with coal, their emissions will be dwarfed by China, the top global coal miner, consumer and emitter, whose leader, President Xi Jinping, is not expected to attend COP26. More than 1,000 coal plants are in operation, almost 240 planned or already under construction. Together, coal plants in the world's second-largest economy will emit 170 billion tons of carbon in their lifetime - more than all global CO₂ emissions between 2016 and 2020.

The solution is that the advanced countries like the US have to spend the money to rapidly convert Asia's fossil fuel energy plants to non polluters. Wind and solar are not enough to fill the bill. In order to get off fossil fuels quickly, nuclear power is the only feasible solution, and these plants must be funded and constructed in Asia by the US and the European Union. Bill Gates had plans to build an advanced digital nuclear test plant in China which were nixed by the Trump administration which was a global warming denier. What the rest of the developed world worries about is whether or not Trumpism will come back in the next election. If the earth is not to burn up from global warming, cooperation between the US and China is paramount. Yet the Pentagon continues to advocate for a Cold War with China, and even Biden's administration is ready to cast doubts warily on China. Yet there is no other way. We need to take resources away from the US military establishment which wants to keep itself in business by creating the pretext for war with China while turning China and Russia into pariahs and enemies of the western world. This is a huge mistake if we want our grandchildren to live on a habitable and sustainable planet.

Most plans for new coal plants scrapped since Paris agreement

Report by climate groups found more than three-quarters of projects were discarded after the deal was signed

A coal plant in Nantong in China, which is responsible for more than half of the world’s coal plant plans. Photograph: AP

 

Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent from the Guardian

 

Tue 14 Sep 2021 01.01 EDT

Last modified on Tue 14 Sep 2021 04.37 EDT

The global pipeline of new coal power plants has collapsed since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to research that suggests the end of the polluting energy source is in sight.

The report found that more than three-quarters of the world’s planned plants have been scrapped since the climate deal was signed, meaning 44 countries no longer have any future coal power plans.

The climate groups behind the report – E3G, Global Energy Monitor and Ember – said those countries now have the opportunity to join the 40 countries that have already signed up to a “no new coal” commitment to help tackle global carbon emissions.

“Only five years ago, there were so many new coal power plants planned to be built, but most of these have now been either officially halted, or are paused and unlikely to ever be built,” said Dave Jones, from Ember.

“Multiple countries can add their voices to a snowball of public commitments to ‘no new coal’, collectively delivering a key milestone to sealing coal’s fate.”

The remaining coal power plants in the pipeline are spread across 31 countries, half of which have only one planned for the future.

Chris Littlecott, the associate director at E3G, said the economics of coal have become “increasingly uncompetitive in comparison to renewable energy, while the risk of stranded assets has increased”.

The report found that if China, which is responsible for more than half of the world’s coal plant plans, opted to scrap the projects, alongside India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey and Bangladesh, then the number of coal power plants in the pipeline would shrink by almost 90%.

Christine Shearer, the programme director at Global Energy Monitor, and co-author of the report, said that the Cop26 climate talks to be held in Glasgow in November were “an opportune time for the world’s leaders to come together and commit to a world with no new coal plants”.

Alok Sharma, the UK’s Cop26 president, said that keeping global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5C above pre-industrialised levels would be “extremely difficult” without a commitment from countries to phase out coal.

Coal is one of the biggest contributors to the carbon emissions responsible for the climate crisis, and the UN has said that the use of it must fall by 79% compared with 2019 levels by the end of the decade if the world hopes to meet the Paris climate agreement targets.

 

04:35

The climate science behind wildfires: why are they getting worse? – video explainer

Sharma’s warning came after ministers from more than 50 countries closed a two-day meeting in London this summer without full agreement on phasing out coal.

However, Leo Roberts, a researcher at E3G and the author of the report, said: “Those countries still considering new power plants should urgently recognise the inevitability of the global shift away from coal, and avoid the costly mistake of building new projects.”

Off the Top of My Head

Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change

by John Lawrence

Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.

“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.

"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.

"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.

"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.

"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.

"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.

"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."

Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.

How Sweden Delivered The World’s First Fossil Fuel-Free Steel

Aug 19, from Forbes

David Vetter

Senior Contributor

This post has been updated.

A shipment of fossil fuel-free steel, produced by a joint venture between three Swedish firms, was ... [+] HYBRIT/Magnus Kryssare

Sweden has delivered the world’s first shipment of steel produced without the use of fossil fuels, a major milestone on the road towards cutting carbon emissions from industry.

A shipment of the steel was delivered to Swedish truck maker Volvo AB, but industrial quantities of the stuff won’t be available until 2026.

The news is significant in the context of efforts to limit climate change. While much emphasis has been placed on the role of fossil fuels in electricity generation, research published by Carbon Brief shows that just 553 conventional steel plants worldwide are responsible for 9% of all carbon dioxide emissions, owing to the large quantities of fossil fuels—in particular coking coal—used to produce the alloy. The IEA forecasts that steel production globally will grow by a third through to 2050.

Speaking at a press conference, the Swedish minister for business, industry and innovation Ibrahim Baylan said he was “happy to be minister for enterprise and energy in a country where industry is bubbling with energy for a [green] reset.”

Baylan further noted: “Industry and especially the steel industry create large emissions but are also an important part of the solution.”

The steel was created by a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall, and iron ore miner LKAB. A technology dubbed HYBRIT—a contraction of Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology—replaces fossil fuels both in the production of the iron pellets that are the key ingredient of steel, and in the removal of oxygen from the iron by replacing carbon and coke with green hydrogen. SSAB then uses that iron to produce steel slabs for delivery.

Baylan further noted: “Industry and especially the steel industry create large emissions but are also an important part of the solution.”

The steel was created by a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall, and iron ore miner LKAB. A technology dubbed HYBRIT—a contraction of Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology—replaces fossil fuels both in the production of the iron pellets that are the key ingredient of steel, and in the removal of oxygen from the iron by replacing carbon and coke with green hydrogen. SSAB then uses that iron to produce steel slabs for delivery.

Comparison of conventional fossil fuel-based steelmaking process versus the new approach from ... [+]

HYBRIT

The whole country of Sweden produced just over 45 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2020, but across all its operations SSAB was responsible for almost 9 million. HYBRIT claims that by eliminating fossil fuels from the steelmaking process, it could reduce Sweden’s total CO2 emissions by “at least” 10%.

 

Martin Lindqvist, CEO of SSAB, told media: “The first fossil-free steel in the world is not only a breakthrough for SSAB, it represents proof that it’s possible to make the transition and significantly reduce the global carbon footprint of the steel industry. We hope that this will inspire others to also want to speed up the green transition.”

Anna Borg, CEO of Vattenfall, which is also responsible for some of Europe’s largest wind farms, said HYBRIT “shows how partnerships and collaboration can contribute to reducing emissions and building competitiveness for industries.”

SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall say they will begin full industrial production of the new steel in 2026. Earlier this year, Volvo announced that it would be the first manufacturer to produce vehicles from fossil-free steel.

While this project might be the first to deliver, it’s far from the only project working on the challenge to create “green steel.” Other Swedes are racing to be the first to create industrial quantities, with H2 Green Steel claiming it will be up and running by 2024.

Outside Europe, China’s Baowu, the world’s largest steelmaker, has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and is beginning to develop hydrogen technologies as a way to cut fossil fuels out of production. India’s Tata steel has developed what it calls the HIsarna process, which still uses coal but claims to reduce emissions by 20%. Meanwhile, Japan’s COURSE 50 project uses a range of technologies to reduce emissions from the blast furnace.

Update 08/23/2021 BST0933: This post has been updated to clarify that the HYBRIT process covers the iron pelletizing and ironmaking stages of the process.

Off the Top of My Head

The Manufacture of Steel and Cement Releases Huge Amounts of Greenhouse Gasses

by John Lawrence

It's not enough to electrify cars and make power plants carbon free. About one third of greenhouse gasses are produced by manufacturing processes - mainly in the manufacture of steel and concrete. In order to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, we need to come up with new ways to manufacture steel and cement. Fortunately a Swedish company has come up with a way to manufacture steel without at the same time releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Ironically, wind turbines which produce fossil fuel free energy require large amounts of fossil fuels in the manufacture of their steel. For every ton of steel produced in the world, almost two tons of CO₂ are emitted as well. To really combat climate change, major manufacturing processes need to be revolutionized as well.

Sweden’s SSAB says it has “produced the world’s first fossil-free steel” and has started delivering it to the Volvo Group, its first customer. Cars and trucks are made with lots of steel. Volvo has announced plans to manufacture cars using fossil fuel-free steel by 2026. Fossil fuel free steel has been developed by a consortium of three Swedish companies, two of which are owned by the Swedish state. The Hybrit project was set up in 2016. The idea underpinning Hybrit is to use “100% fossil-free hydrogen” rather than coal and coke in steel production. The goal is to develop the technology so it can be demonstrated at an industrial scale. It’s hoped this could happen as early as 2026. The question is can this process be scaled up on a world wide scale so that the production of steel in its totality can be made fossil fuel free?

The cement industry dumps more than 2 billion tons of carbon into the air each year to make its ubiquitous building material, roughly three times as much as the aviation industry. Plastics are made from fossil fuels, but replacing plastics should be as simple as going back to materials that were used before plastics were invented. In fact going back to the way of life of the 19th century, before oil was discovered, would eliminate a lot, but not all, greenhouse gasses. There is still coal which was ubiquitous in the 19th century. As far as transportation, before the advent of the fossil fuel powered car, horse drawn conveyances were ubiquitous. This produced a lot of horse manure which was a problem in urban settings. People concerned about that breathed a sigh of relief when cars entered the scene because that eliminated the horse manure problem while at the same time creating the greenhouse gas problem which was unseen and unrecognized at the time. As it turns out horse manure is a very good fertilizer and can be put to a constructive use while carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks are deleterious.

But we can't go back to the 19th century. Modern development, using tons of steel and cement, will continue apace. We need to do what the Swedes did, and that is to develop manufacturing processes using hydrogen rather than carbon. We need to get smart about eliminating greenhouse gas emissions wherever they occur. It's not enough just to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. We need to create manufacturing processes free of fossil fuels as well. Also we need to find a substitute for plastics. Many are currently being developed. The question is can they be scaled up in time. The same can be said for eliminating industrial farming and finding plant based substitutes for cows and pigs. The economy of the world needs to be reoriented from the pursuit of profit and even of development to the pursuit of creating an earth suitable for human habitation because with out that the human race has nothing.

Nature’s Own Fuel Could Save Us From the Greenhouse Effect and Electric Grid Failure

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Ellen Brown, Web of Debt blog

Hemp fuel and other biofuels could reduce carbon emissions while saving the electric grid, but they’re often overlooked for more expensive, high-tech climate solutions.

On July 14, the European Union unveiled sweeping climate change and emissions targets that would, according to Gulf News, mean “the end of the internal combustion engine”:

The commission’s draft would reduce permitted emissions from new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to zero from 2035 – effectively obliging the industry to move on to battery-electric models.

While biofuels are a less high-tech, cheaper and in many ways more effective solution to our dependence on petroleum, the United States and other countries are discussing similar plans to the EU’s and California is already on board. But in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times and related video, Evan Halper argues that we may be trading one environmental crisis for another:

The sprint to supply automakers with heavy-duty lithium batteries is propelled by climate-conscious countries like the United States that aspire to abandon gas-powered cars and SUVs. They are racing to secure the materials needed to go electric, and the Biden administration is under pressure to fast-track mammoth extraction projects that threaten to unleash their own environmental fallout.

Extraction proposals include vacuuming the ocean floor, disturbing marine ecosystems; and mining Native American ancestral sites and pristine federal lands. Proponents of these proposals argue that China controls most of the market for the raw material refining needed for the batteries, posing economic and security threats. But opponents say the negative environmental impact will be worse than the oil fracking that electric vehicles are projected to replace. 

Not just the batteries but the electricity needed to run electric vehicles (EVs) poses environmental concerns. Currently, generating electric fuel depends heavily on non-renewable sources. And  according to a March 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, electric vehicles are making the electrical grid more vulnerable to cyber attacks, threatening the portions of the grid that deliver electricity to homes and businesses. If that is true at current use levels, the grid could clearly not sustain the load if all the cars on the road were EVs.

Not just tribal land residents but poor households everywhere will bear the cost if the proposed emissions targets and EV mandates are implemented. According to one European think tank, “average expenses of the poorest households could increase by 44 percent for transport and by 50 percent for residential heating.” As noted in Agence France-Presse, “The recent ‘yellow vest’ protests in France demonstrated the kind of populist fury that environmental controls on motoring can provoke.”

People who can barely make ends meet cannot afford new electric vehicles (EVs), and buying a used EV is risky. If the lithium battery fails, replacing it could cost as much as the car itself; and repairs must be done by pricey dealers. No more doing it yourself with instructions off the Internet, and even your friendly auto repair shop probably won’t have the tools. Except for the high-end Tesla, auto manufacturers themselves are largely losing money on EVs, due to the high cost of the batteries and low consumer demand. 

Off the Electric Grid with Clean Biofuel

Whether carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of climate change is still debated, but gasoline-fueled vehicles do pose environmental hazards. There is an alternative to gasoline that does not require sending all our combustion engine vehicles to the junkyard. This is alcohol fuel (bioethanol). Not only are greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol substantially lower than from gasoline, but as detailed in a biofuel “explainer” on the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

As we search for fuels that won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect and climate change, biofuels are a promising option because the carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit is recycled through the atmosphere. When the plants used to make biofuels grow, they absorb CO2 from the air, and it’s that same CO2 that goes back into the atmosphere when the fuels are burned. In theory, biofuels can be a “carbon neutral” or even “carbon negative” way to power cars, trucks and planes, meaning they take at least as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they put back in.

A major promise of biofuels is that they can lower overall CO2 emissions without changing a lot of our infrastructure. They can work with existing vehicles, and they can be mass-produced from biomass in the same way as other biotechnology products, like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which are already made on a large scale.… Most gasoline sold in the U.S. is mixed with 10% ethanol.

Biofuels can be created from any sort of organic commercial waste that is high in carbohydrates, which can be fermented into alcohol locally. Unlike the waste fryer oil and grease used to generate biodiesel, carbohydrates are supplied by plants in abundance. Methanol, the simplest form of alcohol, can be made from any biomass – anything that is or once was a plant (wood chips, agricultural waste of all kinds, animal waste, etc.). In the US, 160 million tons of trash ends up in landfills annually. Estimates are that this landfill waste could be converted to 15-16 million gallons of methanol. 

In the third in a series of national assessments calculating the potential supply of biomass in the United States, the US Energy Department concluded in 2016 that the country has the future potential to produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass resources annually without adversely affecting the environment. This amount of biomass could be used to produce enough biofuel, biopower, and will bioproducts to displace approximately 30% of 2005 U.S. petroleum consumption, said the report, without negatively affecting the production of food or other agricultural products. 

Energy Independence

A documentary film called Pump tells the tale of the monopolization of the auto fuel industry by the petroleum cartel, and how that monopoly can be ended with a choice of biofuels at the pump. 

Henry Ford’s first car, built in 1896, ran 100% on alcohol fuel, produced by farmers using using beets, apples, corn and other starchy crops in their own stills. He envisioned the family piling into the car and driving through the countryside, fueling up along the road at independent farms. But alcohol was burdened with a liquor tax, and John D. Rockefeller saw a use for the gasoline fuel that was being discarded as a toxic waste product of the kerosene market he had cornered. In 1908, Ford accommodated Rockefeller’s gasoline fuel by building America’s first “flex-fuel” car, the Model T or “Tin Lizzie.” It could be made to run on either gasoline or ethanol by adjusting the ignition timing and air fuel mixture. Rockefeller then blocked competition from Ford’s ethanol fuel by using his power and influence to help pass Prohibition, a Constitutional amendment banning the sale and transport of alcohol. 

The petroleum monopoly was first broken in Brazil, where most cars are adapted to run on bioethanol made from sugar cane. Existing combustion engines can be converted to use this “flex fuel” with simple, inexpensive kits. The Brazilian biofuel market dates back to the oil crisis of the 1970s, when gas had to be imported and was quite expensive. With the conversion to biofuels, Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva achieved national energy independence, giving a major boost to the struggling Brazilian economy. 

The U.S. push for biofuels was begun in California in the 1980s, when Ford Motor Company was enlisted to design a flex fuel car to help reduce the state’s smog problem. But again the oil industry lobbied against it. They argued that bioethanol, which in the U.S. is chiefly made from corn, was competing for corn as a foodstuff at a time when food shortages were a major concern. 

David Blume  counters that it is not a question of “food or fuel” but “food and fuel.” Most U.S. corn is grown as livestock feed, and the “distillers grains” left after the alcohol is removed are more easily digested by cows than unprocessed grain. Distillers grains have another advantage over hay as a livestock feed: its easier digestion reduces the noxious cow emissions said to be a significant source of greenhouse gases. 

Fuel from a Weed: The Wide-ranging Virtues of Hemp

Opponents, however, continue to raise the “food versus fuel” objection, and they claim that biofuels from corn are not “carbon neutral” when the steps used to create them are factored in. Even the fertilizers needed to grow them may emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases.  But corn is not the only biofuel option. There are plants that can grow like weeds on poor soil without fertilizers. 

Industrial hemp – the non-intoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, and many other purposes – is a prime candidate not just for fuel but to help save the environment. Hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient poor soils; it grows remarkably fast with almost no fertilizer or irrigation; and it returns around 70% of the nutrients used in the growth cycle back to the soil. Biofuels usually require substantially more water than fossil fuels, but hemp needs roughly half the amount needed for corn. Hemp can also be used for “bioremediation” – the restoration of soil from toxic pollution. It helps remove toxins and has been used by farmers to “cure” their fields, even from radioactive agents, metals, pesticides, crude oil, and toxins in landfills. 

An analysis published in the journal Science in 2019 concluded that a worldwide tree planting program could remove two-thirds of all the CO2 emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. As reported in The Guardian in 2019, one trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion – “by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.” The chief drawback to that solution is that trees grow slowly, requiring 50 to 100 years to reach their full carbon sequestering potential. Hemp, on the other hand, is one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available, growing to 13 feet in 100 days. It also requires much less space per plant than trees, and it can be grown on nearly any type of soil without fertilizers. 

In a 2015 book titled “Cannabis Vs. Climate Change,” Paul von Hartmann notes that hemp is also one of the richest available sources of aromatic terpenes, which are known to slow climate change. When emitted by pine forests, terpenes help to cool the planet by bouncing energy from the sun back into space. In a mature hemp field, the temperature on a hot day can be 20 degrees cooler than in surrounding areas.   

Reviving an American Staple

Hemp has many uses besides fuel. Long an American staple, its cultivation was mandated in colonial America. It has been used for centuries in pharmaceuticals, clothing and textiles; it is an excellent construction material; its fiber can be used to make paper, saving the forests; and hemp seeds are , providing protein equivalent by weight to beef or lamb. 

The value of industrial hemp has long been known by the U.S. government, which produced an informational film in 1942 called “Hemp for Victory” to encourage farmers to grow it for the war effort. Besides its many industrial uses, including for cloth and cordage, the film detailed the history of the plant’s use and best growing practices. 

Henry Ford used hemp as a construction material for his Model T, and Porsche is now using hemp-based material in the body of its 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport track car to reduce its weight while maintaining rigidity and safety. “Hempcrete” (concrete made from hemp mixed with lime) is a “green” building material used for construction and insulation, including for building “tiny homes.” 

Hemp can replace so many environmentally damaging industries that an April 2019 article in Forbes claimed that “Industrial Hemp Is the Answer to Petrochemical Dependency.” The authors wrote: 

[O]ur dependency on petrochemicals has proven hard to overcome, largely because these materials are as versatile as they are volatile. From fuel to plastics to textiles to paper to packaging to construction materials to cleaning supplies, petroleum-based products are critical to our industrial infrastructure and way of life.

… Interestingly, however, there is a naturally-occurring and increasingly-popular material that can be used to manufacture many of the same products we now make from petroleum-derived materials …. That material is hemp.  

… The crop can be used to make everything from biodegradable plastic to construction materials like flooring, siding, drywall and insulation to paper to clothing to soap to biofuels made from hemp seeds and stalks. 

The authors note that while hemp was widely grown until a century ago, the knowledge, facilities and equipment required to produce it efficiently are no longer commonly available, since hemp farming was banned for decades due to its association with the psychoactive version of the plant.      

Fueling a Rural Renaissance

In an effort to fill that vacuum, a recent initiative in California is exploring different hemp varieties and growing techniques, in the first extensive growing trials for hemp fiber and grain in the state since the 1990s. The project is a joint effort among the World Cannabis Foundation, hemp wholesaler Hemp Traders, and Oklahoma-based processor Western Fiber. The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute, a nonprofit that supports research into organic farming, has also partnered on a USDA-supported research project on the use of hemp in the development of biochar (charcoal produced by firing biomass in the absence of oxygen). On July 31, the World Cannabis Foundation will host a field day and factory tour in Riverdale, California, where an old cotton gin has been converted to hemp textile manufacture. The event will also feature presentations by a panel of hemp experts. 

How to decarbonize 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually with hemp technology and regenerative farming will also be the focus of a COP26 “fringe festival” called “Beyond the Green,” to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November along with COP26, the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference.  

A 2018 article summarizing research from the University of Connecticut concluded that hemp farming could “set a great example of a self-sustainable mini ‘ecosystem’ with minimal environmental footprint.” Henry Ford’s vision was to decentralize industry, with “small [factory] plants … on every stream,” a rural renaissance fueled not with oil but with alcohol. Hemp fuel and other forms of bioethanol are renewable energy sources that can be produced anywhere, contributing to energy independence not just for families but for local communities and even for the country. And it doesn’t place the burden of addressing climate change on the middle or working classes.

Off the Top of My Head

Inflation Probably Not a Problem If Biden Programs Are Carefully Targeted

by John Lawrence, March 14, 2021

Critics have said, "Oh, My your children and grandchildren are going to have to pay back all these trillions of dollars that have been spent by both the Trump and Biden administrations on COVID relief and to get the economy going again." Not True! Modern Monetary Theory has shown that the Federal Reserve can just create the money and the Treasury Department can just spend it without ever worrying about paying it back. Finance is not the problem. The problem is potentially inflation which economist Larry Summers has sounded the alarm about. Most of Biden's relief bill is targeted at the poor which means that that money will be sucked up to pay past due rent and mortgage bills as well as providing a decent lifestyle which should not be inflationary except if you believe the nonsense of the neoliberal Phillips curve which supposedly proves that a certain segment of the population has to live in poverty and penury in order to fight inflation. That has also been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory although most politicians are still on the wavelength of neoliberal economics which has been shown to be fallacious in this and many other regards.

State and local governments likewise will just suck up the money in the relief bill to bail themselves out of debt and provide an adequate level of social services. This also is not inflationary because the money will not be just sloshing around in the economy with nowhere to go. What is inflationary is tax breaks for the rich, but this money can be sucked out of the economy by taxing the rich. What Larry Summers fails to take into account is that the US and much of the rest of the world has a two tier economy. The rich and upper middle class are doing very well, thank you, while the lower middle class and the poor are suffering. The COVID pandemic illustrated this in even starker terms with the so-called K-shaped recovery. The upper classes made money; the lower classes are on the verge of losing whatever financial gains they had made during the Trump economy. Inflation is caused by too much money sloshing around in the economic system. Most of that inflationary money is held by the rich in assets like stocks and real estate. Money injected into the economic system targeted at the poor is immediately sucked out of the system to pay debts and to provide basic necessities. There is enough physical and material capacity in the system to provide basic necessities so this money is not inflationary.

Inflation is caused when there is too much money chasing too few goods. As long as there is the material and human capacity, money directed at those sectors of the economy will not cause inflation. The real problem in future Biden administration bills involving infrastructure and the Green New Deal is that the materials to build out infrastructure, namely, steel, cement and plastics, require fossil fuels to manufacture and the manufacturing processes themselves are inherently carbon dioxide emitting. This comes about from basic chemistry which involves the carbon and oxygen atoms every step of the way. Most basic materials are composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and the chemistry involved in manufacturing releases large amounts of carbon dioxide. The manufacture of solar panels requires mining high quality quartz and combining it with coal. It's hard to get away from fossil fuels as the Michael Moore movie, Planet of the Humans, pointed out. For this reason spending large amounts of money on infrastructure involving cement, steel, plastics and other materials could actually produce more global warming rather than preventing it. The finances are available; the proper materials are not. The manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels require the release of large amounts of greenhouse gasses.

Because of these fundamental limitations regarding materials, it doesn't make sense to throw trillions of dollars at either infrastructure or global warming mitigation. That would be either inflationary or misguided in the sense that large projects in these areas could produce even more global warming. As Bill Gates has pointed out, money should be invested in promising startups and research that can solve these basic problems and into digital nuclear which is the only renewable energy source that won't result in a lot of greenhouse gasses being created in the first place. Advanced nuclear is the most promising source of clean energy. Gates has invested in a company TerraPower which does research on advanced nuclear reactors. Their mission statement reads:

"TerraPower was founded by Bill Gates and a group of like-minded visionaries that decided the private sector needed to take action in developing advanced nuclear energy to meet growing electricity needs, mitigate climate change and lift billions out of poverty. Advanced reactors and other isotopic applications are now possible with technology and enhanced computing capabilities that were unimaginable a few decades ago. At TerraPower, we are innovating in nuclear to improve the lives of people everywhere and to build the clean energy of tomorrow – today."

So when the Biden administration gets around to their initiatives on infrastructure and global warming, they need to heed Bill Gates' warning about traditional manufacturing methods involving cement, steel and plastic. Energy from solar and wind are inadequate to solve the problem for many reasons. Large scale demonstration and build out of nuclear energy reactors should be the order of the day, They are the only clean energy source that has the potential for diminishing the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

Off the Top of My Head

Green New Deal: We Have a Problem and Its Not Money

by John Lawrence, March 5, 2021

Modern Monetary Theory has shown that a nation with a sovereign currency such as the US dollar need never fear running out of money, and that Federal spending does not depend on tax receipts. However, it does depend on whether the human and material resources are available. Just pouring money on the problem will cause inflation unless it is soaked up by available resources. The problem is that the material resources are not available. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, the problem cannot be solved by the renewable energy resources that are now available, namely wind and solar. Building wind turbines requires immense amounts of concrete for the bases and steel for the turbines, and the manufacture of those resources emits tons of greenhouse gasses. Manufacturing solar panels requires mining of quartz sand and coating with ethylene-vinyl acetate. This manufacturing requires energy—most often derived from the burning of fossil fuels, as the Michael Moore film, Planet of the Humans, has pointed out.

Solving the problem of global warming can't be undertaken by using the available resources of concrete, steel and plastic the manufacture of which emits huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. So even though the financial resources are available, the material resources are not. The human resources, however, are arguably available. Wray and Tcherneva  write in a paper How to Pay for the Green New Deal:

"In the neoliberal era, we chronically operate below full employment. That is obvious in Euroland, which is probably operating 25 percent or more below full capacity. Even the US today has substantial excess capacity, in spite of claims that we have achieved full employment. Over the past quarter century, we have had to readjust our estimate for the natural rate of unemployment—the rate below which inflation is supposed to pick up—in every recovery, because inflation never arrives as unemployment falls. Most recently, in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, economists claimed that the natural rate of unemployment had increased to over 5 percent. Yet, the unemployment rate kept coming down, while inflation never materialized. We will not know precisely where the inflation barrier is until we ramp up aggregate demand."

So given that human resources are available, it is clear that the material resources are not. Bill Gates recommends spending the money on research to develop new non-greenhouse emitting substitutes for steel, concrete and plastic. That would require high level scientists who might be less available than low level workers. Assuming a full court press requiring large numbers of university and scientific human power, this project is probably feasible although it would not require trillions of dollars of financial resources at least in the initial phases. Later development would require more and finally building out renewable energy resources using these newly developed materials would require more money. So the problem is not that finance is not available. The problem is dispensing it in appropriate amounts over time. There is one promising energy source that would not require such a huge investment in research and development because that has largely been done and that is what we might call digital nuclear. Bill Gates has invested in a company called TerraPower which claims:

"With the growing demand for electricity, TerraPower entered the nuclear energy arena to lift billions out of poverty. Advanced reactors and other isotopic applications are possible with technology and enhanced computing capabilities that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. At TerraPower, we are ready to build the clean energy of tomorrow – today. TerraPower leads in advanced nuclear energy because it has spent the last decade investing in innovative technologies to solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity."

Two things are clear. Much work has already been done on an advanced nuclear reactor that solves the problems of dangerous explosions such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima and also the problem of spent fuel radioactive storage. Using high level computing power and advanced digital technology which wasn't available to previous generations of nuclear reactors, Gates maintains that a safe design for nuclear power generation is close to being available. Considering the problems with solar, wind and biofuels which have a longer time horizon before being solved, it seems that nuclear is further along in its development phase and also has greater potential for being a carbon free source of energy. “Nuclear has actually been safer than any other source of [power] generation,” Gates told [CNBC's Andrew] Sorkin. “You know, coal plants, coal particulate, natural gas pipelines blowing up. The deaths per unit of power on these other approaches are — are far higher,” Gates said, a fact he also references in his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

In their section, “COSTING” THE GREEN NEW DEAL," Wray and Tcherneva write:

"Milton Ezrati, writing for Forbes, offers his own estimates for the various components of the GND, citing different sources (Ezrati 2019). Here we only use his estimates for “greening” projects. Based on estimates by physicist Christopher Clark, the cost of expanding renewable energy to 100 percent would be $2 trillion over 10 years. The smart power grid would cost an additional $400 billion over 10 years (estimate from the Electric Power Institute).13 Upgrading and retrofitting buildings would cost between $2.5 trillion and $3.9 trillion ($3.2 trillion midpoint estimate) over 10 years. The total cost of greening projects comes to $5.6 trillion over 10 years ($560 billion per year, or 2.87 percent of 2017 GDP)."

This is only one of the costing estimates that Wray and Tcherneva provide, but these costing estimates need to be further examined in terms of how much fossil fuels are necessary to build them out and manufacture them. Materials that require large amounts of carbon dioxide emission for their manufacture must be rejected. In the final analysis the Job Guarantee (JG) that Wray and Tcherneva advocate is partially limited to "what Tcherneva calls “care for community” and “care for people” projects: service projects related to senior and youth care, teacher’s helpers, neighborhood and park cleanup, artistic projects, and so on. Thus, the JG program can provide resources needed for green projects in an amount equal to 1 percent of GDP (and resources equal to another 1 percent of GDP for other care services). These would largely be in upgrading buildings and homes to improve energy efficiency, although some could be used in nontechnical maintenance of energy projects (landscape maintenance, for example)." So the mix of high level workers like scientists could be combined with a significant number of low level workers to provide a comprehensive approach."

The bottom line is that we had better get cracking, financing a Green New Deal is no problem because as Modern Monetary Theory has shown, the money is available, but resources must be carefully allocated to avoid the pitfalls of inflation and making the problem worse by using large amounts of traditional materials like concrete, steel and plastics. Nuclear is probably the best bet for power generation and it must be deployed quickly especially in India and China where coal fired power generating plants are still being deployed at a rapid rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwbDETx3zo0

 

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Blue Collar Workers Have to Pay Taxes to Bail Out White Collar Student Loan Debt?

by John Lawrence

Short answer: There is no need for the Federal government to tax in order to spend. That has been demonstrated by Modern Monetary Theory. However, taxation, if imposed in order to fight inflation, needs to be imposed primarily on the rich and upper middle class, not on the poor or lower middle class. The smart thing for the Biden administration to do would be to decrease taxes on the lower middle class ^i.e. blue collar workers before 2022 thus drawing them away from the Trump camp. In general the American people need to be educated that deficits don't matter except just as accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. Biden's COVID relief initiative of $1.9 billion will not raise taxes nor will his follow-on trillion dollar initiative for the build-out of green infrastructure.

The question, "Can We Afford to Pay for the Green New Deal?" is equivalent to the question "Can We Afford to Pay the Costs of Avoiding Annihilation?". In the past we have been able to afford a massive build-up to pay for the Second World War. The climate challenge is the moral equivalent of war. If we lose this war we lose not just our freedom. We lose the habitability of the entire planet. Various attempts have been made to cost out the components of a Green New Deal. Green power generation and transportation are not sufficient in themselves to get to net zero carbon emission, but they are a start. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, major industrial processes also generate much greenhouse gas emission. For instance, every ton of cement that is produced contributes one ton of carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere. Every ton of steel produced results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and every ton of plastics produced emits 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. So it's not enough just to deal with green transportation (electric vehicles) and green power generation (solar and wind).

The cost of "greening" these industrial processes is pretty steep. Capturing carbon dioxide at the site of the manufacturing process is possible, but there is no cheap way to do it. Bill Gates is investing in promising start-ups and is counting on innovation to come up with new processes and materials which will not result in so much carbon dioxide being released into the air. Gates points out that we need to electrify every possible manufacturing process and make sure that all that electricity is generated cleanly. He advocates a new generation of nuclear power sources as wind and solar can not possible fill every energy need mainly because they are intermittent. Nuclear can fill the gap for consistent power generation when solar and/or wind are offline. Smart nuclear power which Bill Gates has been instrumental in developing would solve the problems encountered so far of explosion and what to do with nuclear waste. As a last resort Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide from the air is possible but also costly.

What it all boils down to is this: we will need on the order of a trillion dollars a year for 10 years commitment to address climate change if we have a prayer for avoiding the worst consequences. What's more a lot of this commitment must be made in cooperation with China which is one of the worst polluters. Rivalry and even a Cold War must be set aside if the world is to avoid the worst outcome from global warming. India and China are building coal fired power generation plants at a rapid pace because coal fired power plants are so cheap comparatively and those countries are developing so quickly. It's not enough just to "green" the US. It has to be cooperation on a world wide basis. Competition has to be set aside and replaced by cooperation. The ownership of intellectual property is irrelevant when it comes to saving the planet.

A national budget for a Green New Deal shouldn't contribute to inflation since there are currently so many unemployed people available for work, and particularly because so many of the small businesses that were lost during the pandemic are not coming back. Also further robotizing of manufacturing processes will eliminate whatever blue collar workers are left working in those fields. In World War II there was some postponement of consumption in order to fight inflation. That may be necessary for the moral equivalent of war which the Green New Deal represents. If so, workers in certain nonessential industries may have to be repurposed and retrained for industries involved in combating climate change.

Off the Top of My Head

How to Pay for a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence

In 1940 British economist J. M. Keynes’s book, How to Pay for the War: A Radical Plan for the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave the economic guidance for financing the Second World War. Following Keynes, massive financial resources were devoted to the war resulting in full employment without inflation. There is a model here that can be used for the Green New Deal (GND) which is the Moral Equivalent Of War (MEOW). Bill Gates and J.D. Alt have put an upper bound of $5 trillion a year, but closer and more exacting estimates have put it at $1 trillion a year for 10 years. Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray write: "Instead of simply adding up estimates of the government spending that would be required, we assess resource availability that can be devoted to implementing GND projects. This includes mobilizing unutilized and underutilized resources, as well as shifting resources from current destructive and inefficient uses to GND projects. We argue that financial affordability cannot be an issue for the sovereign US government. Rather, the problem will be inflation if sufficient resources cannot be diverted to the GND. And if inflation is likely, we need to put in place anti-inflationary measures, such as well-targeted taxes, wage and price controls, rationing, and voluntary saving. Following Keynes, we recommend deferred consumption as our first choice should inflation pressures arise. We conclude that it is likely that the GND can be phased in without inflation, but if price pressures  do appear, deferring a small amount of consumption will be sufficient to attenuate them."

Their analysis is the most astute to date. We know that the money is available because the Federal Reserve can create it with a few keystrokes on a computer. This has been demonstrated time and time again from the bank bailouts of the Great Recession to the COVID relief bills. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has provided the theoretical framework that explains how the Fed creates money and the fact that the US can never run out of money. The US government which has a sovereign currency does not have to pay back loans whereas a private household or even a US state does have to pay back loans or else suffer the consequences. The only potential consequence when the Fed creates money for public purposes is inflation which can be controlled by a variety of measures. In How to Pay for the Green New Deal, the authors write: "Viewed from the MMT perspective, the government uses the monetary system to mobilize real resources and to move some of them to pursuit of the public purpose. Affordability is never an important question for a sovereign government—the relevant question concerns resource availability and suitability. There is thus a natural alliance between MMT and the GND. If we can identify technologically feasible projects that would achieve the GND’s goals, and if we can identify the resources to devote to these projects, then we can arrange for the financing of the programs." Bill Gates has identified a number of promising new technologies that he has invested in to address the GND issue.

As Keynes pointed out, it's a question of available resources to tackle any public problem. If the resources are available, the money is no problem although resources may need to be switched from the private to the public sector. Republicans who favor that all economic activity be confined to the private sector may have a problem with this. Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened during the Second World War. Resources, both human and material, were activated within the public sector to fight the war while at the same time were withdrawn from the private sector. Consumption was held to a minimum and deferred till the war's end. Then private resources, both human, financial and material, were unleashed so that the post war era was one of the most prosperous that the world has ever seen. The deflation brought about by wage and price controls and rationing during the war offset the inflation caused by the public money that was spent financing the war. The same tactic is necessary for a Green New Deal.

Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray write: "The approach is simple but also profound: total the resources available to prosecute the war while meeting the consumption needs of the population. If the available resources fall short of what is needed, the solution cannot be found in the finances. Government can always spend more to shift resources to the war effort; if consumption spending is not reduced, the result is inflation that generates a combination of “voluntary” saving and excess profits as real consumption falls. To prevent this undesirable outcome, government must reduce consumption demand by some combination of voluntary saving, taxes, deferred compensation, rationing, and wage and price controls. To be clear, the purpose of these actions is not to provide government with the financial means to “pay for” the war effort but rather to relieve pressure on scarce resources."

There will be much opposition from the America First crowd which is really a euphemism for Me First. The people who put their own freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want will probably not take too kindly to making any sacrifices so that future generations will have a habitable planet to live on. There will be demagogues ala Trump who will appeal to their baser instincts of solipsistic selfishness. They will be all about their First Amendment freedoms to resist any effort that is for the public good especially if it involves doing anything of a salutary nature for people in other parts of the world. I can visualize bars and restaurants complaining that they can't get enough hired help because everyone is employed by the Green New Deal. Let's hope that the better angels of mankind will prevail.

Off the Top of My Head

Despite All the Talk, Practically Nothing Has Been Done About Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Every year 51 billion tons of Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) go into the atmosphere. There has been no decrease in that number despite the Paris Accords, despite more hybrid cars, despite the build up of solar and wind renewables. 197 countries adopted the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015, over 5 years ago and yet there has been no improvement in the number of tons of GHGs dumped into the atmosphere per year. Well, a couple of tons less this year due to the pandemic. In general it is slightly increasing according to Bill Gates in his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." At the rate we are going, there is no way that the earth can escape the dire consequences of global warming. Should we just give up and enjoy the few remaining years of a habitable earth? I don't think so. What will it take to forestall catastrophe? Basically, it will take a Green New Deal or should we call it the Green Equivalent of World War II?

During World War II there was a huge amount of government deficit spending. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that this is no problem because a government such as the US which issues its own sovereign currency can never run out of money whether or not there are tax receipts to cover the spending. The problem is inflation which occurred in WW I despite more modest outlays. In the WW II years there were wage and price controls which effectively controlled inflation. There was also rationing. These measures made sure that all resources both human and material were devoted to the war effort. Everyone was on the same page. Is that possible for a Moral Equivalent of War (MEOW) today? Would people be willing to give up anything so that resources could be devoted to a MEOW as far as Global Warming is concerned? Many Americans are not even willing to wear a mask during a pandemic, and many also believe that global warming is a hoax. Would they sacrifice for a MEOW?

Bill Gates has invested his money in a variety of start-ups which have some promise of addressing the global warming issue. One of them is Direct Air Capture (DAC) in which carbon dioxide is removed directly out of the air. This is a feasible alternative which is already in use on a small scale. The problem is that it's the most expensive alternative out there. A combination of other methods to ameliorate GHGs in the atmosphere would not only be more feasible but cheaper. He estimates that removing 51 billion tons of GHGs per year would cost $5.1 trillion per year. This would be an upper bound on the cost of getting to zero GHG emissions. Actually this does not seem too unreasonable given the fact that between 2008 and 2015, the Fed’s balance sheet, its total assets, ballooned from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion. That means that the Fed "printed" $3.4 trillion with its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. The Fed has "printed" $3.5 trillion just in the year 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic to keep the economy from falling apart. This is the amount of money authorized by Congress in several spending bills. Add to that Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill and you get a total of $5.4 trillion. And yet there has been no inflation.

So there is a little hocus pocus going on in the relationship between the Fed and the Treasury. The Fed by law is not allowed to buy US debt directly from the Treasury department. How it works is Congress authorizes a spending bill. The Treasury issues a Treasury bond if there aren't enough taxes to cover it. That bond is sold to the "primary dealers" which are mainly big Wall Street banks, and then the Fed buys the bond on the "open market" which means it buys them from the primary dealers. So by a roundabout method, the Fed buys up US debt by means of "printing" money although it's actually by means of a few keystrokes on a computer crediting the Treasury's account at the Fed and the Fed takes the bonds onto its balance sheet from which theoretically it could sell them some day. One little distinction: this is not QE. QE was a term coined when the Fed "printed" money to bail out the big banks aka providing liquidity. The Fed took all the toxic junk of mortgage backed securities and other assets onto its balance sheet and gave the banks all the money they needed to cover bets on credit default obligations and interest rate swaps and other casino garbage. So while it amounts to the same thing - the Fed "printing" money and adding it into the economy - the money injected now is going into the real economy whereas the QE went into the Wall Street economy.

But I digress. So Bill Gates says it would require at most $5.1 trillion to get our GHGs down to zero on an annual basis. In other words keep the goddam fossil fuels, cow farts and Keystone pipeline and just get those DAC machines humming. Seems reasonable to me. The Fed can just print up that $5.1 trillion and we're home clear. J.D. Alt estimates that solving the global warming crisis will cost $60 trillion over 10 years which is about the same amount per year that Bill Gates estimates although supposedly we will reach some point at which renewables and other technologies will result in zero emissions so we will not have to go on spending that amount in perpetuity. So why don't we just go ahead and do it? The Fed could just print the money. No inflation is in sight. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that any country with a sovereign currency (such as the US dollar) can never run out of money and as long as the resources are available (both human and material) the financial resources will always be available. The only problem is the stupidity of most of the US Congress (mainly Republicans) whose only response to any Democratic initiative is just to Just Say No as well as their economic ignorance. So it is of paramount importance that next year after the pandemic is over and before Republicans take over (hope not) one of the branches of Congress in 2022, that Congress passes a $5 trillion per year Green New Deal or a $50 trillion GND spread over 10 years.

Off the Top of My Head

Even With Unlimited Spending Some Problems Can't Be Solved

by John Lawrence

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown that unlimited Federal spending is no problem. The money is there, but it's a question if the productive capacity is there. For instance, since most products are manufactured in China, unlimited spending on products needed to counter the pandemic might only produce inflation. That's a problem of letting crucial industries be relocated to a foreign country and not manufactured here. If you can't ramp up production in a meaningful time frame, even though the finance is not a problem, the ability to produce needed products may be. In this situation MMT predicts inflation. Existing facilities to produce vaccines can only produce so many vials.You could go to 24 hour a day production, but beyond that you would have to build more factories and that takes time. Would the money spent to build more factories be well spent if the production facilities came online only after the crisis was over? No. MMT stands for spending money wisely to solve social problems like the pandemic and global warming, but the time frame within which the problems need to be solved is important. There's no sense in spending money to ramp up production if that production only is available after the problem has already been solved.

Yeva Nersisyan and L Randall Wray write:

"But what happens when ventilators and masks are not available for sale even as companies are operating 24/7? More money may not solve the problem, but the government still has a role to play. During the second world war, the US quickly became “the arsenal of democracy” by repurposing its productive capacity to meet the needs of the war. Through diligent planning “[l]ipstick cases became bomb cases, beer cans went to hand grenades, adding machines to automatic pistols, and vacuum cleaners to gas mask parts”. We were able to cut “production time for Liberty Ships down from 365 days to 92, 62, and, finally, to one day”. We can mobilize our resources once again to build temporary hospitals, and to ensure a sufficient supply of medical equipment and whatever else is necessary to overcome the crisis."

So it may be necessary to shift production from pre-COVID endeavors to provide the necessary human and material resources to deal with the problem. For instance, the restaurant industry which filled the gap from lack of time for home preparation of meals due to both spouses working has suffered the most during the pandemic because more people have the time for meal preparation at home. Those workers are now available for deployment in other more crucial industries such as the renewable energy industry. Other hospitality and entertainment sector workers can also be shifted to more crucial endeavors just as they were during World War II. The economy as it existed pre-COVID was composed mainly of profitable private sector activities, many of which were not designed to deal with the most crucial social problems.

The solution of the pandemic at least in the US has an expected solution within the next year. Global warming has a somewhat longer time frame, but requires much more money to be spent because, from a finance point of view, it's a much larger problem. Changing the infrastructure of the whole world will require much more money but over a longer time span. The time span for solving global warming is approximately 10 years so we have ten times as long to solve global warming as we do to solve the pandemic. The pandemic may never be completely resolved because wiping out the virus everywhere in the world completely may not be possible just as it has not been possible to wipe out a number of other viruses. Over time, however, the problem can become treatable and manageable. The same can be said of the global warming problem. It may be impossible to eliminate every source of greenhouse gas emission in 10 years, but if most of them are eliminated, the remaining problems may be manageable in the sense that the earth may ultimately be salvageable.

What we have learned from the pandemic is that much more money needs to be spent on research and development in virology so that we are better prepared to deal with pandemics and epidemics. Two infectious diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest. The rest still exist somewhere in the world. There are also four ongoing programs, targeting poliomyelitis, yaws, dracunculiasis, and malaria. Five more infectious diseases have been identified as of April 2008 as potentially eradicable with current technology by the Carter Center International Task Force for Disease Eradication—measles, mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis and cysticercosis. What we have also learned is that there is more of a threat to Americans and human beings in general from viruses than there is from foreign nations, both state actors and terrorists. Therefore, the money spent on the defense department should be drastically reduced while the money spent on human health should be vastly increased. Let's deal with the real threats not the imagined ones.

Off the Top of My Head

The Left/Right Political Spectrum Is Irrelevant at This Point

by John Lawrence

The Extreme Right position on the pandemic is just to let it rip. This would mean ongoing disaster for the whole world into the indefinite future. The Extreme Left would advocate government spending as much money as necessary to defeat the pandemic and get the economy back to normal. The middle of the road would advocate doing half as much as necessary to sort of but not really get the pandemic under control. Result: the coronavirus would be mutating and popping back up for years just as SARS COVID-9 is a mutation of the original SARS virus and is related to the MERS virus. Whether the mutations occur in animals or in humans, it doesn't matter. Viruses mutate and doing a half ass job in getting rid of this pandemic which is the political "middle" insures that there will be more pandemics in the future. Not allocating increased funding for the study and research of viruses insures that there will be more threats to human lives and economies.

The Extreme Right position on global warming is to do nothing about it. That includes encouraging consumption of fossil fuels and not caring how many greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. This virtually guarantees that the earth will become uninhabitable in 50 years or less. The Extreme Left position would be to do as much government spending as necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in about 10 years. This would prevent global temperatures from rising more than the amount that would destroy the habitability of the earth. The middle position would be to spend a piddling amount to combat global warming. The result would be that the earth would become uninhabitable in a slightly longer time frame.

Republicans want to limit Federal government expenditures to solve problems while maximizing the private sector in the economy. Problem is that dealing with the pandemic and climate change are problems private enterprise is not capable of solving or even leading the way. Is there a role for private enterprise? Certainly, but government must play the leading role or these major problems as well as a number of others will not be solved. Private enterprise won't engage in any activity for which there are no profits to be made. Some problems like the pandemic and global warming are not likely to yield much in the way of profits. Ergo, private enterprise will not be interested in dealing with them.

The COVID relief package that Biden has put forward is totally dependent on Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress. That in turn was totally dependent on the Georgia runoff elections for two Senators which produced two Democrats. Otherwise, there would be no COVID relief package or follow on projects to deal with global warming because not enough Republicans will be voting for any of Biden's projected spending to solve these problems. So the Extreme Left position of these issues which are totally necessary if they are to be dealt with successfully would not have been possible. Even successfully dealing with these two existential problems was hanging by a thread because the election of two Democratic Senators from the state of Georgia was heretofore unheard of. But now there is a chance.

What really needs to happen with regard to government spending is that the public, and that includes Senators and Representatives, need to be educated on how the economy really works. Deficit spending is not really a problem. Read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans rely on the ignorance of the public while suggesting that adequately dealing with global warming or the pandemic will raise their taxes. It does not have to increase taxes which is the conventional understanding about it. The Federal government does not need to pay back Federal deficits because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just "print" the money - although it doesn't actually print it - it creates it by a few keystrokes on a computer. A household or private firm must pay back its loans. Even US states must pay back loans usually by raising taxes. Th Federal government does not have to raise taxes nor does it have to pay back loans. Treasury bonds can just end up on the Fed's balance sheet where in fact most of them do end up. So a government, any government, which has a sovereign currency can create as much money as necessary to solve any problem. The only caveat is that money creation under certain conditions can induce inflation.

Too much money sloshing around in any sector can produce inflation in that sector. What the US economy has created recently is asset inflation but not inflation in the real economy. Tax breaks for the rich has resulted in the bidding up of assets. Take the stock market, for example. Major corporations have used their tax breaks not to build production facilities but to buy back their own stock. This raises the stock price: ergo, asset inflation. The same holds for the real estate market. People, with more money than they are willing to put to productive use, use it to bid up the value of real estate. Ergo, inflation. This makes housing less affordable. The real economy has under utilized capacity in terms of all the unemployed and underemployed labor. Government spending which soaks up this capacity and puts it to productive use in converting to a reusable energy economy and upgrading to green infrastructure should not produce inflation. Neither will more government money spent on research on viruses produce inflation. What else produces asset inflation is money spent on the military-industrial complex. Think $600 toilet seats.

The US public needs to be enlightened on how the economy really works at the macro level. That being understood would take all the wind out of the sails of Republican objections to government spending. It does not have to raise your taxes because the US government can never run out of money. An understanding of Modern Monetary Theory leads to that understanding.

Off the Top of My Head

Which is better: A Universal Basic Income (UBI) or a Government Job Guarantee (JG)?

by John Lawrence, January 22, 2021

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors a JG where the government is the employer of last resort employing people that the private economy cannot accommodate. Now Larry Summers, Secretary of Treasury for Clinton, is coming around to the MMT view. Especially now when there is so much work that needs to be done (infrastructure, renewable energy) and so many idle workers, a JG makes much sense. One might ask where will the money for this come from? Answer: from the same place it came from for Reagan's $100 billion tax cuts, Bush 1's $125 billion tax cuts, Bush 2's $1.2 trillion tax cuts and Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cuts, all of which benefited the rich a lot more than they benefited the poor. Surprisingly, MMT maintains that government spending whether in the form of tax cuts or government programs benefit the private sector economy whether or not they are "paid for" out of tax receipts. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Federal Reserve can just create the money by a few keystrokes on a computer and move it into the US Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve. This process does not depend on tax receipts or money generated from the sale of Treasury bonds.

Either way - tax cuts or government programs - benefits the private economy. It's just that tax cuts benefit the rich more and government programs benefit the poor more. The fact that both entail deficit spending is irrelevant because the Fed can never run out of money. Don't believe me? Read: The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. She explains it better. Larry Summers says:

"The impulse behind the latest “big” progressive idea of creating a federal job guarantee is entirely valid. Studies show that those without jobs are much more likely to be dissatisfied with their lives, to become addicted to alcohol or drugs and to be abusive within their families than even those working at low wages they find inadequate.

"On this point, the U.S. economy is falling short of its potential. The fraction of the adult population between ages 25 and 54 that is working or seeking work has declined over the past 20 years. Despite America’s vaunted labor-market flexibility, the chance that a 25- to 54-year-old man will be out of work is much greater than it is in France and not very different than what it is in Spain . And in sharp contrast to the rest of the world, the fraction of adult women working in the United States has been declining since 1999 .

"These trends are important causes of the increasingly bitter nature of U.S. politics and of resistance to technological change and overseas trade. President Trump received disproportionate support in parts of the country where joblessness increased most.

"If the United States could guarantee jobs in even a modestly efficient manner and in a way that significantly increased employment, it would be a very good thing. I want to be enthusiastic about job-guarantee proposals. But at a time when cynicism about government runs strong, it is important for progressives to avoid making promises that they cannot keep. We must rigorously examine the practicality of a job guarantee."

Here's how the Fed's money creation process works. Tax receipts are deposited into the US Treasury's account at the Fed. The US Congress authorizes either spending programs or tax cuts. The US government spends money. When the Treasury's account at the Fed gets down to zero (spending equals tax receipts), the Fed injects money into the Treasury's account. It is impossible for the US government to ever run out of money. Then Treasury bonds are sold by the Treasury Department which are bought by "primary dealers" (mainly big Wall Street banks) which are obligated to buy them. Some are sold to investors whether they be private individuals or governments like China and Japan.

When the point is reached that the banks don't have enough liquidity (cash - because they've been buying up Treasury bonds)), the Fed creates liquidity by buying up the Treasury bonds from the Wall Street banks in return for cash. Where did it get the money to do this? It created it by a few keystrokes on a computer. So by a roundabout process the Federal Reserve makes sure that the US government has all the money it needs as authorized by Congress regardless of any considerations for deficit spending or the total amount of the US national debt. Those are just accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed buys and sells Treasuries every day as a means of setting the interest rate or of providing liquidity as it did in the Great Recession of 2008. The Fed is the loaner of last resort to the US banking system, and it stands ready to create as much money as is necessary to keep it running smoothly. It also stands ready to provide the same guarantees for the US government, but the money has to be authorized first by Congress.

The takeaway is that Deficits Don't Matter. The private sector benefits from government deficit spending whether those deficits are created by tax breaks or government programs. Government spending programs primarily help the poor while tax cuts primarily help the rich. A government Job Guarantee in which the government becomes the employer of last resort is better than a Universal Basic Income because a job provides one with more dignity than a handout and there is much work to be done. Congress - not taxes - is the limitation to government spending. Republican obstructionism is the only thing that can limit economic benefits to the American people because, while the Fed can directly benefit the Big Banks without Congressional approval, it cannot benefit the American people without Congressional approval. Democrats want to benefit the American people, convert to renewable energy, provide jobs and income for the American people and prevent the earth from burning up due to climate change. Republicans want simply to hold on to political power by preventing Democrats from being successful.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Sanders, Budget Reconciliation and Modern Monetary Theory

by John Lawrence, January 18, 2021

Joe Biden will have no trouble from Congress in passing his $1.9 trillion relief bill. That's because Democrats control all 3 branches, and the filibuster is neutered due to "budget reconciliation." This allows a spending bill to be fast tracked through Congress without the possibility of a filibuster. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The Senate can consider and pass reconciliation bills relatively quickly and with only a simple majority, rather than the three-fifths majority often needed for controversial legislation. That’s because reconciliation legislation isn’t subject to filibuster. Under general Senate rules, legislation can be stalled by virtually unlimited debate and the offering of numerous amendments, with a three-fifths majority vote required to invoke “cloture,” thereby limiting debate and blocking non-germane amendments. For a reconciliation bill, however, the Congressional Budget Act limits Senate debate on the bill to 20 hours and limits debate on the subsequent compromise between the two houses to ten hours."

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown that deficits don't matter. At least George W Bush didn't think so when he used the budget reconciliation process to give huge tax breaks to the rich which significantly increased the deficit and reduced income to the Federal government from taxes. The use of budget reconciliation did an end run around PAYGO which requires the Federal government to balance its budget and the debt limit which also constrains Federal spending. Both conservatives and liberals will be enthused over the fact that MMT proclaims that either tax reduction or government spending is good for American society (up to a point) even though the debt limit or PAYGO may be violated. This is because government is effectively adding money to the private sector which drives economic activity.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very familiar with not only budget reconciliation but also MMT because one of its chief adherents, Stephanie Kelton who wrote the book, The Deficit Myth, previously was a Senate advisor to Bernie on the Senate Budget Committee. On December 26, 2014, Kelton was designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee, a post that she held in 2015 and early 2016, when she left that position to become an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign. So the American economy is about to get a shot in the arm that will mostly benefit poor and middle class people (whereas the Bush tax cuts primarily benefited the rich) much to the chagrin of conservatives that hold to the idea that government deficit spending should only benefit the rich through tax cuts.

MMT contends that, since the Federal Reserve creates money by keystokes on a computer and the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the US government can never run out of money. Treasury bonds can always be sold to cover deficits, and, if they can't be sold to the general public, they will end up on the Fed's balance sheet where they may remain forever as an accounting entry. Even the interest paid on Treasury bonds, which is now approximately zero, is not a consideration. Interest on Treasuries owned by the Fed is remitted to the Federal government anyway. So now is the time for massive spending by the US Federal government to 1) expedite recovery from COVID; 2) jump start the economy; and 3) expedite a global response to global warming by converting to renewable energy on all levels including:

"replacing fossil-fuel engines with electric in all public and private transport, super-insulating buildings and replacing inefficient HVAC systems, establishing regional photo-voltaic micro-grid electric networks, replacing gas cooking ranges with electric induction units, buying regenerative-produced farm products and 'meatless meats', replacing all small engine appliances and tools with battery electric power"

And this is not to mention that solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy need to replace fossil fuel electric generating plants.

There is no time to lose. The incoming administration has a lot on its plate. In addition to that they have to run an impeachment trial in the Senate. Let's hope it doesn't slow down any of Joe Biden's initiatives. With Bernie as the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, armed with a knowledge of MMT, we can look forward to restoring the US' standing in the world community as well as restoring an economy that works for the poor and not just the well heeled, getting the pandemic under control and mitigating climate change. Thank you Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Off the Top of My Head

Is Full Employment Possible or Even Desirable?

by John Lawrence, January 14, 2021

The important and crucial consideration is what kinds of jobs does the full employment society consist of? The type and quality of the jobs is something to be concerned with. After all Hitler had a full employment society. Everyone had a job in his full employment society. Ditto for Mussolini. Once the US got involved in the Second World War, the US had a full employment society. That ended the Great Depression. Trump bragged about presiding over a full employment society pre-COVID. The question is fully employed at what? Our infrastructure is crumbling, approaching Third World status. Republican economists don't give a hoot about the composition of jobs in the US as long as they're all in the private sector and not in the public sector. Meanwhile, China has built 24,000 miles of high speed rail in its own country and a $4-billion, 470-mile-long rail line, the first electrified cross-border rail system in Africa, Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors a Federal Job Guarantee. The answer to the grievance that many Americans have about the disappearance of good paying jobs is to guarantee them a job. In The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton writes:

"The MMT solution to involuntary unemployment is to introduce a federal job guarantee that establishes a legal right to a good job at good wages with good benefits. This would address one of the most pernicious effects stemming from trade - the unemployment that is too often visited upon whole communities as jobs are lost to foreign competition. It's not enough just to provide training and other temporary forms of assistance to workers whose jobs are lost to foreign competition. ...something more is needed.

"That something is a federal job guarantee. By no means is it a panacea, but at a minimum, it begins to tackle the problem of unemployment directly (as opposed to subsidizing the effects of unemployment). Through the thick and thin of the business cycle, we leave tens of millions of Americans idle in the belief that this makes political, economic and social sense. ...

"The benefits of a federal job guarantee not only include the production of goods, services and income. The guarantee also features on-the-job training and skill development; poverty alleviation; community building and social networking; social, political and economic stability; ... With a program like this in place, the government would have mitigated the localized devastation of communities that directly experienced the loss of well-paying US industrial jobs.

"It may be hard to imagine an economy that doesn't allow millions to fall by the wayside. But that's because America has almost never achieved anything like true full employment. It's something we've rarely experienced outside of wartime. One of the most important features of a job guarantee program is that it maintains a form of full employment by immediately hiring the unemployed into public service work, providing them with income and the retraining required when they are displaced by trade shocks. In this way, the job guarantee can can serve as the core of a response to both "free trade" and the "trade war." With a job guarantee, free trade is no longer a threat to full employment, and trade wars are no longer necessary to prevent unemployment."

Many of the grievances of right wing workers and Trump supporters can be tied to the fact that their communities have been destroyed as good decent paying union jobs have been moved overseas where labor costs are cheaper. MMT argues that those disenfranchised workers should be automatically reemployed especially when their labor is greatly needed to build green infrastructure in order to combat climate change. That's the real war we face right now - not against an imagined enemy - but against the fossil fuel economy which, if left unchecked, will surely destroy the habitability of the planet. It should be obvious that more workers are needed to fight the pandemic and other public health crises likely to happen in the future. It's also obvious that instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on a military-industrial complex which has to instigate another cold war to justify its existence, we should be spending money subsidizing jobs that are really necessary to make the lives of Americans and others around the world better as we move forward.

Right now the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, interest rates on Federal debt are around zero, and there is no reason why the Federal Reserve cannot issue the money necessary to implement a federal jobs guarantee if there is not enough tax money available to cover it, the way it created the money with a few keystrokes on a computer to bail out the Big Banks during and after the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve is the loaner of last resort to the banks, and, since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, as much money as necessary can always be created to support a federal jobs guarantee. Taxes should function as a means to reduce economic inequality but they are not necessary to fund the government as MMT has shown. As long as productive resources in human or material terms are idle, putting them to work will not cause inflation.

The trillions created and spent by the Federal Reserve to bail out the banks have not caused inflation nor have they caused a depreciation of the dollar which is still in great demand by other nations around the world. The old thinking is that the government has to fund itself out of taxes or go into debt which it has to pay back. That certainly applies to households and states, but, with the ability to print its own sovereign currency, the US is in the position that the national debt is just an accounting entry on the Fed's balance sheet. The provision of a good paying job as a guarantee will help to ameliorate the grievances of Trump supporters and move them to the other side of the political spectrum.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Will Not Vote for $2000 COVID Relief Because of the Deficit But Deficits Don't Matter

by John Lawrence, December 28, 2020

Let's say the US Treasury offers a $100,000 bond for sale because the US government needs the money to pay $100,000 worth of obligations authorized by Congress, and there aren't enough tax dollars available to cover those obligations. Let's say China buys that bond. What actually happens is that the Federal Reserve "clears" this transaction. It does this by debiting the central bank of China's account at the Federal Reserve by $100,000 and crediting the US Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve by $100,000. All US banks and most foreign central banks have accounts at the Federal Reserve and US dollars called reserves never leave there. The Fed by means of a few keystrokes on a computer moves money from one account to another. The same thing happens when you write a check. Money is moved from your bank's account at the Fed to the account of the bank of your payee at the Fed. This is how checks "clear." There are fail safe mechanisms in place so that your bank and the US Treasury can never run out of money. Money can just be "printed" by means of keystrokes on a computer. That's essentially what happened during the "liquidity" crisis of 2008 when the big banks were bailed out by the Fed. The Fed just moved sufficient funds into the big Wall Street banks' accounts to cover their commitments.

Because the Fed can never run out of money, there is no need to worry that China will demand payment for the money we owe it because, if it did, the Fed would just print the money and say to China, "here." The money would be a debit on the Fed's balance sheet but so what. The Fed took on at least $4.5 trillion in debits on its balance sheet to add liquidity to the big banks during the Great Recession of 2008. Since the Fed can just print money and no one can ever demand that the Fed reduce the amount of debt on its balance sheet, the US Treasury which funds the US government can never run out of money. That's why deficits don't matter. The Fed could just move enough money into the US Treasury's account at the Fed to cover the $2000. COVID relief checks. The only concern is that flooding the economy with money will cause inflation, but, since so many people are out of work with no or little income, this is not likely to happen. What is likely to happen is that this money will prop up the US economy which might go into recession without it since 70% of US GDP is money spent on consumption. Without consumers spending money the US economy collapses.

Money is created by the US banking system when you apply successfully for a loan. The bank just creates the money without regard to whether or not the bank has the money in deposits. It's called fractional reserve banking. So all money out there is basically created when people go into debt or the government spends money. The relevant book on the subject is Ellen Brown's Web of Debt. The bank is, however, required to have enough collateral on deposit at the Federal Reserve in its reserve account. Since not everyone is going to demand their money from the bank at the same time, fractional reserve banking actually works. In rare cases, however, the Fed stands ready to step in if there is a run on the bank. The important thing to remember is that every check you write is cleared at the Federal Reserve when money from your bank's reserve account is moved into the account of the bank of the payee to whom you wrote the check. Every bank in the world that deals in dollars has an account at the US Federal Reserve, and, since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency and most transactions are conducted in US dollars, they are all cleared at the US Federal Reserve.

This understanding about how the US Federal Reserve works and why deficits don't matter is better and more fully explained in the best book on the subject, The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans who are deficit hawks are just trying to pull the wool over your eyes when they maintain that deficits will have to be repaid by our children or grandchildren out of taxes. Of course they don't have a problem when deficits are created by tax breaks for the rich. Another book that explains how the Fed actually works is Paying Ourselves to Save the Planet by J.D. Alt. He writes that the cost of combating climate change on a time scale that will actually save the planet from destruction is about $40 trillion:

"To that number we must add the cost of subsidizing the change in consumer decisions that will be necessary to reduce the carbon emissions the sequestration efforts are striving to soak up - replacing fossil-fuel engines with electric in all private and public transport, super-insulating buildings and replacing inefficient HVAC systems, establishing regional photo-voltaic micro-grid electric networks, replacing gas cooking ranges with electric induction units, buying regenerative-produced farm products and "meatless meats," replacing all small-engine appliances and tools with battery electric power, etc. It has been estimated that this process of transitioning toward zero carbon emissions will cost $1 trillion/year in consumer subsidies in the U.S. alone. If the rest of the world is also to adopt these consumer choices - rather than the old carbon-based choices - we could reasonably double that. This brings the total cost of avoiding the worst that climate change has in store to $60 trillion between now and 2030."

So if we are to address climate change in the time frame required and with the necessary resources, it will require a huge effort reminiscent of World War II. We cannot just deal in the mind set of normal left/right politics in which these measures are considered too extreme and not amenable to the normal political framework. We must go full steam ahead and Modern Monetary Theory as expounded by Kelton, Brown, Alt and others must provide the economic substructure to make it all work.

Off the Top of My Head

What Can Joe Biden Do to "Restore the Soul of the Nation"?

by John Lawrence, November 24, 2020

The Biden Administration has its work cut out for them. Rejoining the Paris Accords on climate change, rejoining the World Health Organization, appointing a head to the Environmental Protection Agency who is actually not trying to destroy the Environment etc etc. All of these things while so necessary are kind of obvious. To restore the soul of the nation, the number one thing Biden needs to do is to demilitarize the nation. The US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its military more than the ten next highest spending countries combined. It's not just a question of the defense budget; it's all the spending in the military-industrial complex as well. This is at a time when the main threat to the US is domestic not foreign terrorism. Dwight Eisenhauer warned about the encroaching military-industrial complex. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

The violence, discord and division that we see within the United States is a direct reflection of the violence and discord the US has perpetrated in Vietnam and Iraq, two wars which Presidents of the US lied about. The 80 million refugees living in horrible refugee camps in the world are a direct result of US military policy which currently stations soldiers at nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. The US military is the largest employer in the US. The next largest employer, Walmart, employs 1.5 million people. There were a total of 1.3 million active duty military and more than 800,000 reserve forces as of September 2017, according to Defense Department personnel data. But this doesn't count the number of civilians in the military-industrial complex employed by companies like Lockheed Martin (110,000 employees), Boeing (161,133 employees), Raytheon (195,000 employees), BAE Systems (85,800 employees), Northrop Grumman (90,000 employees), General Dynamics (107,000 employees) and many more.

The fact of the matter is that high school graduates who have neither the money nor prospects for college usually go into the military where many benefits await them like free advanced and specialty training, a guaranteed paycheck, free health and dental care, enlistment bonuses, free room and board, educational benefits, a pension and much more. Going into the military right out of high school does not deprive you of a college education. The military can help pay for college or pay off college loans. Most enlistees are eligible for up to 100 percent of college tuition through the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) while on active duty. Additionally, the Air Force has the nation’s largest community college, the Community College of the Air Force for which enrollment is automatic upon enlistment in the Air Force. Armed Forces education benefit programs include the Forever GI Bill, Army, Navy, Marine and Navy College Funds, College Loan Repayment (including Student Loan Forgiveness) and Student Loan Deferment and Forbearance. As an Uber driver I pick up a lot of military people. One Navy guy told me he joined the Navy so that after 5 years he could get free training to become a helicopter pilot at a civilian school. They even can get a pension after 5 years.

Now the high school graduates like me who have college prospects often like me,, end up in the military-industrial complex. I worked at General Dynamics Convair Division in San Diego for several years, later at the Naval Electronics Lab on Point Loma which has changed its name several times to protect the guilty as they say. So many college graduates especially in the engineering fields end up in the milkitary-industrial complex while high school graduates that don't go to college end up in the military, not because they love the military, but because they love the generous benefits. When you add up all the people in the military plus all the people in the military-industrial complex, it's clear that the US is a militarist state whose employment base is military related. This is nonsensical when a greater threat is from domestic terrorism than foreign terrorism, and there is no threat from foreign nation states only from scattered terrorists which could be dealt with with a fraction of the military and military-industrial complex budget that presently exists.

Now consider the benefits accruing to those who join the peace Corps and AmeriCorps. What there still is a Peace Corps. You never hear a word about it in the media. The Peace Corps provides each Volunteer with housing and a living stipend that enables them to live in a manner similar to people in their community of service. Unlike other international volunteer programs, there is no charge to participate in the Peace Corps. There is no application fee, although costs may only be partially covered for required medical examinations during the application process. Upon completion of two years of service, the Peace Corps provides each Volunteer with more than $10,000 (pre-tax) to help with the transition to life back home. This money is yours to use as you wish. AmeriCorps has some educational benefits after completion. The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award is a post-service benefit earned by individuals who complete approved terms of national service in AmeriCorps programs. Well, suffice it to say, the benefits of joining the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps don't compare with the benefits of joining the military and the funding available for these two programs is meager compared to the military budget.

So what Joe Biden can do is to increase the benefits for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps while increasing the funding for those programs and decreasing the funding for the military and the military-industrial complex. This will have the effect of demilitarizing the consciousness of American citizens and will actually do a lot of good in America and the world. When I was in the military-industrial complex, they encouraged you to vote Republican because Republican administrations would increase military funding while, Democratic administrations would reduce it. The message was clear: If you wanted there to be funding for your job, you'd better vote Republican. That's why there should be a pathway for transitioning to a Peace economy from the Militarist economy which guarantees jobs in the Peace-Industrial complex for those presently employed in the military-industrial complex. In the same way there should be a guarantee of employment in the renewable energy field for those losing their jobs in the fossil fuel field.

A transition to a Peace economy away from the military economy in parallel with a transition to a renewable energy economy away from the fossil fuel economy will do a lot to make the United States and the world a better place, and also, by the way, to restore the soul of the nation.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Almost Thanksgiving: Let's Talk Turkey

by John Lawrence, November 14, 2020

So what are Republicans saying about a Biden administration? That the progressive wing of the Democratic party will push him too far to the left. Well, what exact policies would be "too far to the left"? Defund the police? That's just a radical slogan that means about as much as "Lock her up." In other words it means nothing in terms of either Biden's agenda or progressives in the Democratic party. Reform the police - that would be more like where the Democratic party actually stands. As far as Medicare for All, Biden favors Medicare for All Who Want It. I guess there are those Republicans who so love their employer based health insurance that they are terrified by the possibility that it might be taken away from them and replaced with something better. So Biden's position is go ahead and keep it. He just wants to make it possible that those who do want it will be able to have it or a public option which amounts to the same thing.

So Republican concerns amount to whipping up a bunch of meaningless hysteria just like Trump has always done. It's his stock in trade. So what about the Green New Deal? Who could object to creating jobs to build infrastructure and combat global warming? Oh maybe it's that they fear their taxes will go up? There's actually no reason why anyone's taxes should go up based on the realities as they exist in the 21st century. The government has shown that any amount of money can be found and spent to bail out banks or to add to the debt to give people tax breaks. Trump's tax cuts added a trillion dollars to the debt. Quantitative easing and the money to bail out the big banks amounted to several trillion dollars and yet it has had no adverse effect on inflation or anything else. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that Deficits Don't Matter whether those deficits originate from bailing out the banks or a Green New Deal or Biden's Green Deal which is more or less the same. Expect Republicans to cry bloody murder any time government threatens to formulate a program to combat global warming or to create jobs for poor people or to raise wages for essential workers to $15. an hour.

Money spent constructively on infrastructure or other things will never cause inflation. What will cause inflation is money that is pissed away frivolously or unconstructively. Reorienting out priorities can and should be done even if deficit spending is required to do it. When the economy is rebalanced, it eventually will mean that the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes in order to reduce inequality. That's the main thing that Republicans are afraid of - that eventually the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes. In the meantime economic history since 2000 has demonstrated the fact that, if trillions of dollars were found to bail out the banks and give tax cuts to the rich, trillions of dollars can be found to repair and rebuild infrastructure and prevent the world from the disaster of global warming. Private enterprise has done nothing but accelerate global warming because private enterprise consists of the fossil fuel industry. Private enterprise profits from pollution that it doesn't have to compensate for. Therefore, it's up to government to balance out what private enterprise seems incapable of doing. That's not to say that private enterprise is unimportant. It does some things very well, some things that government does not do well. It's a matter of finding the correct balance between private enterprise and government enterprise.

Does any fossil fuel worker object to working in the renewable energy industry providing they are guaranteed a job in that industry? I don't think so. There's no one that loves fossil fuels per se or just because they are fossil fuels. They are not like Scrooge who just loves the look and feel of money. Are there people who so much like the look and feel of oil that they can't bear the thought of working in an industry that doesn't pollute the planet? There are new industries coming - a straw with the look and feel of a plastic straw that biodegrades and doesn't stay in the ocean for hundreds of years like the plastic straw does. These straws are being manufactured today. If government can assist in the ramping up of this private enterprise - Newlight Technologies - we will be all better off except for the plastic straw manufacturers which are using mainly robots to produce their straws so there are not that many jobs involved there.

Huntington Beach, California-based Newlight produces an ocean-degradable biopolymer called PHB using air and greenhouse gas. Newlight's methods are supported by more than a decade of research and development as well as an extensive patent portfolio. Newlight's Series F finance round coincides with the commissioning of a new commercial-scale production facility in California called Eagle 3 and the launch of branded products including a line of cutlery and drinking straws for the food-service industry. Newlight's foodware products deliver a unique level of material safety and certified sustainability, resulting in high-performance, ocean-degradable foodware that works for people and the planet. 

Government can provide an assist to private enterprise as long as that enterprise is headed in a new direction which doesn't pollute and which doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. Which is more important - hanging onto the familiar past or striking out in a new direction that saves the planet and makes it better for our grandchildren? Are we pioneers and adventurers like our ancestors or what?

Off the Top of My Head

Expand Habitat for Humanity in Honor of Jimmy Carter

by John Lawrence, November 11, 2020

The best way to build wealth among poor people is to expand a program that gets them into a house. The debt industry profits off of poor people whether it's Payday lenders, student loan debt, car loan debt, credit card debt or mortgage debt. The debt industry, aka the banking industry, profits off of poor people's debt. That's why the poor need to build wealth which will also close the economic inequality gap. Home ownership is the main way the middle class builds wealth which is then intergenerationally transferable. Habitat says "In fiscal year 2019, we helped more than 7 million people, and an additional 2.3 million gained the potential to improve their housing conditions through training and advocacy." It's not clear how many new houses that 7 million figure represents because they also help people by doing housing improvements. Looking at Habitat's Form 990 reveals some interesting data. They have annual revenues of approximately $300 million. Revenues less expenses for FY 2018 was about $13 million. Without doing an exhaustive analysis of this Form 990, it would seem that $13 million is a paltry amount of money to build new homes if in fact it all went to building new homes. It is to be noted that the CEO made about $400,000. They also seem to spend an enormous amount on advertising and fundraising.

A government program based on the Habitat model could magnify the number of new affordable homes built per year and could be combined with AmeriCorps which is already working with Habitat. Government service building affordable homes should be an alternative to military service with comparable benefits. One drawback of Habitat is that it does not serve homeless or low income families who can't afford a modest mortgage. So a government program based on the Habitat model should look at improving on the Habitat model. Another thing is that Habitat claims to be a "Christian organization." Does that mean that religiously nonChristian families are not eligible? A government program should not have connections to a particular religion but should be open to people of all or no religions. It should be nondenominational. The people who eventually own the homes have to put in a certain amount of "sweat equity." This is good because it makes the homes more affordable. A program based on FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps could employ youths in public service for 2 years building houses in return for free college education and other benefits. These homes need to be solarized and be built in such a way as to be non-emitting of greenhouse gasses.

The best way to co-opt Trump voters is to offer them economic opportunities. Promised economic opportunities (promised but not delivered) are the thing that pushed Trump over the top in 2016 in the rust belt states. A program of building houses ala Habitat not only would help poor people, who are disproportionately minorities, but would tend to placate poor whites who are mainly Trump voters. That's why programs helping the poor can't be labeled "Black Lives Matter" programs. They can't be just for black people although black people would disproportionately benefit. To design a program only for black people would further alienate Trump voters. Bringing this country together, as Joe Biden has professed he wants to do, means that all programs to help people must of necessity be color blind. Another benefit is that people who contribute to public service in AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps will tend to vote Democratic because they will have seen how Democratic programs have benefited not only themselves but other people as well.

Many people who join the military do so for the benefits and because they have no better prospects after high school. Military service for 5 years gains them a free college education plus many other generous benefits, even a pension. They also get brainwashed to vote Republican. Even those working in the military-industrial complex are brainwashed to vote Republican. As a college graduate the jobs available to me were mainly in the military-industrial complex. Once there I was pressured to vote Republican because it was believed that Republicans would expand funding for the military and hence the military-industrial complex. It was thought that a Democratic administration would cut funding for the military-industrial complex and we could be RIFd (Reduction in Force). Expanding programs in the peace industry should have the opposite effect. I left the military-industrial complex many years ago fortunately, and my economic future doesn't depend on future funding it. Many others are not in the same position.

As the nation transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, it's important that workers in the fossil fuel industry have a path to transition to new jobs. The same holds true in transitioning workers in the military-industrial complex to the peace-industrial complex. It's also important to give young people the possibility of serving their country in a way that contributes to peace and economic stability with comparable benefits instead of serving in the military. The peace industry (like building houses here and abroad) needs to become more important than the war industry. The issue of global warming in particular means that all nations of the world must cooperate and foster a spirit of cooperation while putting their antagonisms aside. Peace, renewable energy, economic development for poor and middle class people need to replace a power structure that fosters political antagonism among the nations of the world. Jimmy Carter not only wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity in his nineties, but also put solar panels on the roof of the White House (which Ronald Reagan took down). If we had had Jimmy Carter for a second term and Al Gore instead of George W Bush (with his fossil fuel loving vice President, Dick Cheney), we would be further along the path toward replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and further along the path of dealing with global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

Democrats: Don't Let Republican Narratives Define You

by John Lawrence, November 9, 2020

Labels and sloganeering are not important. Global warming is not a question of Left and Right. It's a question of Smart and Dumb. If science shows that we have to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2035, then we have to do whatever it takes to get there. It's not enough to compromise to get half way there. Half way is not good enough. Half way means that the destruction of the earth is a certainty. This is not a political football. It's something that needs to be done post haste. That's why it's important to force the appropriate legislation through Congress based on the power to do so. If Democrats win the 2 Senate runoff races in Georgia, they will have the power to do so. If not Republicans will still control Congress, and all bets are off.

Republicans are adept at defining people and issues with labels, and then getting us to fight over the labels even defining the labels as too far left or too far right or meeting in the middle. How is a Green New Deal too far left if it saves the planet from global warming? It is not constructive to fight over this label. We just have to do what needs to be done. Already we are seeing the destructive power of nature caused by global warming with intense and widespread wild fires all over the world and relentless, destructive hurricanes and flooding in the Gulf states and elsewhere. This year alone several powerful hurricanes have hit the Gulf states, and they are still coming. They are coming so frequently that people have not recovered from ones 3 hurricanes ago. We have to go full steam ahead on attacking global warming not half speed ahead. Call it a Green New Deal or a Biden Green Deal or whatever you want to call it. The label is unimportant. The action taken is.

What put Trump over the top in 2016 was his appeal to working class voters. Trump's support of the fossil fuel industry appealed to all the workers in that industry especially in Pennsylvania and Texas. Let's be clear. Workers in this industry are not wedded to that industry; they are wedded to their jobs. They don't want their jobs to go away. If Joe Biden and the Democrats guarantee fossil fuel workers jobs in the renewable energy industry at higher wages, they will abandon whatever allegiance they had to fossil fuels in a heartbeat. This needs to be the message. And with it will come a flip of Texas from red to blue. Pennsylvania will stay squarely in the Democratic column. Republicans know this so they will do whatever they can to obfuscate, confuse, demonize and obstruct a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. That's why it's so important for Democrats to control the Senate. Otherwise, Mitch McConnell will block any progressive legislation including legislation designed to get us to net zero carbon emissions by 2035.

Republicans obviously don't care about the issue of global warming. Their tactic is to demonize the label: "Green New Deal." That's how they operate. They have money at stake in fossil fuels. They could care less about the workers. They care about the investors and the financial class that's invested in fossil fuels. The Democratic strategy should be to care about the workers by guaranteeing them jobs in the renewable energy field and let the investing class fend for themselves. Once they see the profits to be made in renewable energy they also will flip in a minute and abandon fossil fuels investments. Already many of them are divesting. When humans discovered the efficacy of metals they left the stone age and left the remaining stones in the ground. We need to do the same thing with fossil fuels: leave them in the ground.

Joe Biden has been very careful about the slogan: Defund the Police. Republicans are trying to hang that label around the Democrats' necks also. Nobody in his right mind wants to defund the police. Allocate more funds to social workers who may be better able to deescalate mental health situations? Of course. So nuance is important, but Republicans don't deal in nuance; they deal in labels and in particular the use of labels to demonize the other side. Joe Biden has threaded the needle very agilely. Also Republicans have not demonized Joe like they did Hillary for 25 years or more. That's why Joe is considered "more likable." In the final analysis labels are not important. The label - socialism - is not important. What is important is to make contructive - I will not even say progressive - change in this country, first to save the earth from global warming, and, secondly, to put the US on a more constructive track with regard to a host of other issues. Let Smart win over Dumb!

Off the Top of My Head

Robots Will Not Replace Us

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden wants to bring the country together. Here are 3 programs guaranteed to do it. 1) Guarantee that every worker who loses his job in the fossil fuel industry, as the energy industry transitions to renewables, is guaranteed a job in the renewable energy industry including free retraining if necessary. 2) Free apprenticeship programs for electricians, plumbers and other occupations for which no robot can replace them. Let's change that white supremacist chant to "Robots will not replace us." 3) A huge build-up of a Habitat for Black Humanity program (open to participants of all races) in honor of Jimmy Carter who famously wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016. Gaps in wealth between black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. The black-white wealth gap reflects a society that has not and does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.

Middle class Joe knows that the main way the middle class has built up wealth is through home ownership - equity in a home. This equity also facilitates the intergenerational transfer of wealth which the black community is notorious in lacking. Blacks are less likely to receive wealth transfers from parents than whites, and conversely, they’re under more pressure to transfer their own limited wealth to parents or relatives than whites. So whereas each white generation starts from somewhere above zero, each black generation is more likely to start from zero. A greater proportion of white adult children receive financial support from their parents than blacks in all three categories of parental support. The share of whites receiving financial support from their parents is 34% for higher education, 12% for home ownership, and 26% for other purposes. The comparable figures for blacks are 14%, 2%, and 19%, respectively.

Trump supporters in the Rust Belt could rest assured that their means of livelihood will not be taken away from them as the country transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. Biden has assured workers that he will not ban fracking. Then it's a logical next step to guarantee those workers a job as the country transitions away from fracking. Leave it in the ground should be our motto, but just because we do that, there is no necessity for workers to suffer. Biden has said that he will create millions of new jobs in infrastructure and green industries. Then let's guarantee that the first workers to get those jobs will be old fossil fuel workers. Let's transition the workers as well as the source of energy. This will go a long way towards placating Trump supporters in Pennsylvania and Texas and also adding supporters to the Democratic party which more represents the interests of workers than does the Republican party.

Similarly, the Black Lives Matter Movement should embrace the Black Home Ownership Matters movement. When we talk about creating wealth, it's not in the context of Lamborghinis or yachts or multimillion dollar houses. We're talking about wealth on the order of the price of a middle class house. Wealth distributed among a large number of people not just ridiculous amounts of wealth of the 1% and billionaire class. Reducing economic inequality starts with an ambitious program to create wealth among the 99%. Debt reduction and forgiveness is also important especially for student loan debtors. Joe Biden can redeem himself here. Formerly known as the Senator from MBNA (MBNA is now a subsidiary of Bank of America), Biden voted for a provision to take bankruptcy protection away from student loan debtors. The senator was a key supporter of a bill -- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" -- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.

Joe Biden will resuscitate America's reputation in the rest of the world as he had a wealth of experience in dealing with foreign policy for 8 years in the Obama administration. He has to be careful both in how he treats black citizens and how he treats white former Trump supporters in order to build a coalition for the Democratic party. If he does it right, the Democratic party will predominate for a generation or more. The US dodged the bullet of fascism by voting Trump out of office. The US was heading down the rabbit hole of fascism and a second 4 years of a Trump administration would have sealed the deal. By the way including a public option in Obamacare would practically be a guarantee of a transition to Medicare for All. Many of Joe Biden's positions amount to the same as Bernie Sander's positions but in a less stark and abrupt way and for more care placed in the transition process. Let's hope that Democrats take control of the Senate with the two yet to be resolved Senate races in Georgia. Working across the aisles is nice, but Republicans have never backed away from using raw power to get their way. Democrats should follow that example also.

Off the Top of My Head

Quantitative Easing = Printing Money

by John Lawrence

In her book, "Deficits Don't Matter," author Stephanie Kelton makes the case that we don't have to worry about deficit spending. That's when the US government spends more than it takes in in taxes. So in a sense taxes don't matter either at least as far as balanced budgets go. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. This means we don't have to ask anyone's permission to print money. The US dollar was taken off the gold standard in 1971 under President Nixon. It is a fiat currency meaning that it is not backed by anything other than the word of the US government. The US has experienced the phenomenon of printing money to bail out the banks in the Great Recession of 2008. As of September of this year, the Fed's balance sheet was $7.1 trillion. As of January 2008, the Fed's balance sheet was less than $1 trillion. That means that the Fed has printed money to the tune of over $6 trillion since 2008. Yet there has been no inflation in the US economy which is the danger a lot of economists had predicted from printing so much money.

The Federal Reserve bank can print US dollars just by a few keystrokes on a computer. Approximately $3.5 trillion was printed to bail out the banks during the Great Recession. Another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far to deal with the COVID pandemic. The question arises that, if the Fed can print money any time it wants, why can't there be Quantitative Easing (QE) for the people? In other words, if the Fed can bail out the banks, why can't it bail out the homeless, why can't it bail out the $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure spending, why can't it bail out the hungry and the poor? The answer is that it can do all those things, but this tool, QE, for that is what it is - a tool - should be used judiciously. It should be used to accomplish useful and necessary goals. It should not be used frivolously. It should be used in conjunction with other tools like tax policy. It should be used to promote a full employment economy and achieve socially useful goals.

Tax policy should be used to raise most of the money needed for government spending, and it should be used to redress the balance of the high amount of inequality in the American economy. Taxing the wealthy both in terms of income and wealth while giving tax breaks to the middle class and poor while implementing policies to help them build wealth is one of the major things US Federal tax policy should do. Additional money can be obtained by reducing the bloated military and military-industrial complex budget. If, however, there are additional goals that should be met like hastening the switch to renewable energy or a fuller safety net for the American people, then QE for the people should be implemented. The goal is to have a balanced and useful economy, one that promotes net zero carbon emissions, one that promotes sustainable development on other parts of the world, one that hastens the day when no child goes hungry or uneducated, one that reduces financial inequality.

It has already been demonstrated that deficits don't matter because the Great Recession of 2008 was quelled by the Fed's policy of printing money with no adverse effects on the economy. We have seen again the salubrious effects pf printing money or QE, if you want to call it that, during the COVID pandemic during which another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far. There is no reason why any country that has a sovereign currency like the US does cannot print money. Since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, other countries and individuals are willing to buy up most if not all of US debt. But if they didn't buy up any of it, the Fed could still take it - or as much as necessary - on its balance sheet. In other words the fact that other countries are buying US debt means that the Fed doesn't have to print as much money. Any country with a sovereign currency can do the same even if their currency is not much in demand on world markets. Since the US dollar is used a lot in world trade, other countries need a supply of US dollars and are willing to buy US debt to get them.

There is no reason why any American should go hungry or be homeless or lack health care. Speaking of health care, Medicare for All would not eliminate private health care as some have suggested. Even with Medicare some doctors refuse to see patients because they don't like the reimbursement Medicare provides. There would be a private market for the wealthy who would just pay out of pocket to doctors who refused to accept Medicare patients. The wealthy don't even need health insurance. It could not be made illegal for such a market to exist. So even though everyone would have health care under a Medicare for All plan, the wealthy would still hire private and presumably better doctors at their own expense.

The policy of the Fed's buying US debt, which is equivalent to printing money, should be used wisely and the money not wasted.  QE for the people combined with the fact that deficits don't matter should lead to a more productive society providing that those additional tools and resources are used in a constructive way and not used to further militarize the society and the world. Any tool can be used for good or for ill. QE for the people could be used for a more healthy, beneficial and well balanced society for all people, could eliminate poverty in the US and the world, bring US infrastructure into the modern era and combat global warming and future pandemics.

Off the Top of My Head

All Cars Sold in CA after 2035 Must Be Zero Emission Vehicles

by John Lawrence, September 25, 2020

California's Governor Newsom has issued an executive order mandating that all new car sales by 2035 will be zero emission vehicles. That is they will either be all electric or hydrogen cells. A mandate is one thing. However, the implementation is quite another. He has given this job to the California Air Resources Board. The devil is in the details. The best implementation would be a state ordered straight line reduction starting in 2021 and ending in 2035 which would decrease gas powered car sales in accordance with that line year after year. Otherwise, the whole thing wouldn't amount to much especially if there was no government ordered mandate to reduce cars systematically year over year. More than 1.63 million new cars and trucks are expected to be sold in the state in 2020, according to the California New Car Dealers Association. This makes California one of the world's largest car markets.

The Governor also called on the legislature to ban fracking. Fracking contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as much as oil products since the natural gas the wells produce is 90% methane. Methane is a 40 times more powerful GHG than carbon dioxide. Fracking is only marginally profitable, and many fracking operations go bankrupt with the consequence that the fracking wells are abandoned without proper stoppage. Methane continues to leak from them. The reduction of regulations by the Trump administration has only accelerated this practice so that the fracking operations are not accountable for leakage from their wells. In New Mexico the San Juan Basin was considered a plentiful resource for fracking. But the boom and bust economy has contributed to the fact that many wells are being abandoned. Capital and Main reported:

Right now, there are over 30,000 wells in the San Juan Basin, but only about 20,000 remain active.

“You’re in danger of orphaned and abandoned wells at every level: Your first concern is the small producer who just ducks out, that goes off and abandons their well or takes bankruptcy,” Schreiber said. The BLM and the state of New Mexico require companies to secure bonds to guarantee they’ll comply with regulations, including safely plugging wells once they’re no longer producing.

But Schreiber said the bonds are “wholly inadequate.” They represent just a fraction of what it costs to properly plug and abandon a well, which includes rehabilitating the well site, the road and any pipelines or other infrastructure.

Adrienne Sandoval, director of New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division, agreed that the downturn comes with certain risks. “Companies on the margins of going out of business may be forced to make decisions that put compliance on the backburner,” she said. “We need to be as diligent as possible to make sure our regulations are being followed and we’re protecting human health and the environment.”

In the age of Trump, deregulation is the watchword and many companies don't do the right thing. The consequence is methane leaking from abandoned wells and contributing to global warming as GHGs build up in the atmosphere. The further consequence is destructive wildfires all over the world from California to Australia to Siberia which experienced 100 degree temperatures above the Arctic circle this year!

"In the next 15 years we will eliminate in the state of California the sales of internal combustion engines," Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento before signing the order. "If you want to reduce asthma, if you want to mitigate the rise of sea level, if you want to mitigate the loss of ice sheets around the globe, then this is a policy for other states to follow." Newsom's executive order calls ending the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 a "goal," but it also orders the Air Resources Board to immediately begin drafting regulations to achieve it by that year.

Now it is up to the California legislature to put some teeth in Governor Newsom's "mandate." It's got to be full steam ahead for eliminating GHGs on a systematic basis, and everybody has to get on board this train. So far since the Paris accords in 2015 more, not less, GHGs have gone into the atmosphere every year. It will be interesting to see if 2020 will be any different due to the coronavirus pandemic. If the nations of the world don't put aside their petty grievances and get on the same page to drastically reduce GHGs, we can expect more and more destructive wildfires as well as sea level rise leading to destructive floods and hurricanes.

You know it's not just about making America great again, it's about making the world great. It's about making the world great by creating a sustainable and inhabitable planet powered by renewable energy. It's about doing something about the 80 million refugees in the world that America helped create. It's about doing something about the 40% of the world's population that does not even have clean water or adequate sanitation systems. Americans need to not be so self centered, get off their carcasses and make the earth great again.

Off the Top of My Head

US Consumed More Energy from Renewables Than Coal in 2019

by John Lawrence, September 24, 2020

In 2019, U.S. annual energy consumption from renewable sources exceeded coal consumption for the first time since before 1885, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Energy Review. Despite that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were up .6% in 2019 over 2018. The world is still going the wrong way. In order to keep global temperatures to within a 2 degree C increase, we have to decrease GHGs between now and 2050 so that there are net zero GHGs emitted by 2050. This will be hard to do as developing countries are still installing coal fired electricity generating plants. However, they are just trying to catch up with the US which has contributed much more in terms of GHGs than any other nation over history starting with the industrial age.

GE has dropped its coal fired power business. GE was one of the largest manufacturers of coal fired power generating plants. Five years ago it bought Alstom's power business, which makes coal-fueled turbines, for $9.5 billion. Now that investment is a total loss. GE has laid off thousands of power workers, slashed its dividend to a penny, fired two CEOs and sharply written down the value of its power business. GE's exit from coal "highlights the billions of dollars of shareholder value destruction that is embodied with the failed Alstom acquisition," John Inch, senior analyst at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors, said. GE's jet engine business is also way off thanks to the pandemic and the decline of airline revenues. GE's stock has gone down since the announcement that it is getting out of the coal business.

China is still very much involved in the coal business despite its goal of reducing GHG emissions. China’s “economic miracle” has seen the country become the world’s second-largest economy and pulled nearly a billion people out of poverty. But this progress has been built on a boom in energy from coal, and China has also become the world’s largest carbon polluter by far. It's a trade off between economic growth based on cheap and plentiful coal or a desire to reduce GHGs. China’s CO² emissions increased again by around 2% in 2019, based on recently released official economic data, and 65% of the annual growth in energy consumption came from fossil fuels.

India also is building more coal fired plants in an attempt to grow and develop its economy. India, the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, saw its annual coal demand rise 9.1% to nearly 1 billion tons in the year ended March 2019. Coal demand from utilities accounted for over three-quarters of total consumption. India expects coal-fired power capacity to grow 22% in 3 years. This is bad news for India's cities which are highly polluted at the present time and will only get worse. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambition to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024 and turn the country into a manufacturing hub will require industries to have access to continuous and dependable power supplies. It is also bad news for the world which needs to decrease GHG emissions if a climate catastrophe is to be avoided. If GHGs keep being emitted into the atmosphere, the goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to 2 degrees C will not be met and the earth will become uninhabitable in many regions.

It's very important that the US cooperate with China, India and Russia which is number 4 in world GHG emissions. The world needs to pull together on this issue. Instead the US at the present time is going forward with its fossil fuel industry especially fracking and natural gas which is methane, an even more potent GHG than carbon dioxide. The US is also increasing tensions with China in particular under the Trump administration while a Democratic administration would probably be hostile against Russia. This is not helpful or constructive in terms of the cooperation needed to convert to non polluting renewable energy as quickly as possible and as universally as possible. Instead of harping on the shortcomings of these countries, it's of paramount importance that the whole world unite in an attempt to reduce GHG emissions. Intellectual property protection is just not important. Patents are not important because it is unthinkable that individuals or corporations would seek to profit off technologies invented to save the world from global warming. All those technologies and intellectual property should be widely shared with other countries in order to bring down GHG emissions. The alternative is that the world burns because nations refuse to give up their petty squabbles.

Off the Top of My Head

Methane Emissions Have More Than 30 Times Global Warming Potential of Carbon Dioxide

by John Lawrence

Methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil. Methane emissions also result from livestock and other agricultural practices and by the decay of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills. The largest component of natural gas is methane. Leakage from fracking and the transport of natural gas makes natural gas more climate-unfriendly than coal as corroborated by many independent studies of gas-field methane emissions. Natural gas pipelines leak methane into the atmosphere as do abandoned wells which aren't plugged sufficiently. The melting of Arctic permafrost is also contributing methane emissions. Arctic temperatures have been increasing more than twice as fast as the global average. This has caused permafrost thaw in many locations and triggered newly awakened microbes to decompose the organic material thereby releasing methane into the atmosphere. Just a 3% release over a short time, or 50 billion tons of methane, is the equivalent of 1 trillion CO² emissions … sufficient to ecologically destroy the Earth.

From the unexpected speed of Arctic warming and the troubling ways that melt water moves through polar landscapes, researchers now suspect that for every one degree Celsius rise in Earth’s average temperature, permafrost may release the equivalent of four to six years’ worth of coal, oil, and natural gas emissions—double to triple what scientists thought a few years ago. Within a few decades, if we don’t curb fossil fuel use, permafrost could be as big a source of greenhouse gases as China, the world’s largest emitter, is today. If we hope to limit warming to two degrees Celsius, as 195 nations agreed to during the 2015 Paris talks, new research suggests we may have to cut emissions eight years sooner than IPCC models project, just to account for the thawing that will be going on.

Scientists have measured big increases in the amount of methane, the powerful global warming gas, entering the atmosphere over the last decade. Cows or wetlands have been fingered as possible sources, but new research points to methane emissions from fossil fuel production—mainly from shale gas operations in the United States and Canada—as the culprit. The “massive” increase in methane emissions occurred at the same time as the use of fracking for shale gas took off in the U.S., says Robert Howarth, an ecologist at Cornell University and author of a study published in the journal Biogeosciences. “We know the increase is largely due to fossil fuel production and this research suggests over half is from shale gas operations,” Howarth said.

So natural gas isn't much if any better than coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions although it's been sold to us as safe. Fracking is also a problem in terms of the obvious effects it has on the environment. Research indicates the U.S. oil and gas industry emits 13 million metric tons of methane annually, for a leak rate of 2.3% of all production. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by contrast, estimates the fugitive emission rate at 1.4 percent. Methane is a major greenhouse gas. In addition to fracking's global impact, there are harmful effects to those living near extraction sites. A host of ancillary components released at well sites can lead to health problems such as irritation of the eyes, nose, mouth and throat. Local air pollution can aggravate asthma and other respiratory conditions. Regionally, fracking-related processes release nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, forming smog that can deprive workers and local residents of clean air.

On a national and state level, the fracking process uses billions of gallons of water each year. On a local level, the median volume of water consumed is 1.5 million gallons per well, according to the EPA. This consumption reduces the amount of fresh water available to nearby residents, particularity in areas where water availability is low. When water is not available to fracking sites locally, it may be transported from other regions, ultimately drawing down available water from lakes and rivers across the country. On a national and state level, the fracking process uses billions of gallons of water each year. In addition to air and water pollution, fracking can have long-term effects on the soil and surrounding vegetation. The high salinity of wastewater spills can reduce the soil's ability to support plant life. In addition, the injection wells used in the storage of hydraulic fracturing wastewater can cause earthquakes.

So fracking needs to end while efforts toward the development of renewables need to be accelerated. Fracking is environmentally unsustainable. It is also financially a money losing operation even though executives are making big money. Despite the highest oil prices in years and record amounts of oil production, the fracking industry continues to spend more than it makes. And somehow, smaller industry losses can still be interpreted as being “more profitable than ever.” There also a lot of jobs at stake here, but the creation of green energy projects can absorb those workers if the right policies are put in place by the US government. As long as money can be borrowed at zero interest rates, the fracking industry will continue to pretend it's profitable while all the while it is polluting the environment and contributing greenhouse gasses on a greater rate than coal production.

Off the Top of My Head

Climate Change: The Equivalent of a Forest Fire For Which Nothing is Being Done to Put It Out

by John Lawrence, September 20, 2020

In 2016 the Paris Agreement called for the nations of the world to limit temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.That means that the amount of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted by the nations of the world would have to decrease year over year. To meet this goal the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said we must cut emissions to net-zero by 2050. What has happened in the meantime? The period since the Paris agreement was signed has seen the five hottest years on record. GHGs have increased each year since 2016. Total GHGs increased by .7 gigatons (billion tons) from 2016 to 2017 and by 1 gigaton from 2017 to 2018. In 2019 total carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry totaled 36.8 billion tons, according to an estimate from the Global Carbon Project. That represents a 0.6 percent increase from 2018, which until now stood as the record for GHG missions. For 2020 global total GHGs could decrease because of the worldwide pandemic. But the dynamics for increased emissions will return once the pandemic ceases unless we convert to renewable energy production ASAP.

So what does the almighty financial system have to say about climate change? When they get involved things usually change. This is from the foreward to "Managing Climate Risk in the US Financial System," a report from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Investors and financial markets are poised to deliver the low-carbon capital and infrastructure that our global economy requires to address climate risk. We know what we need to do and how to do it. We are impatiently waiting for the appropriate incentives and other policies to reduce emissions to be instituted through legislation. Only then will the awesome power of the financial system be able to address at scale this existential threat.

Why am I so passionate about climate risk? The answer is easy. Like others, I see what is already happening—entire regions burned by increasing wildfires, larger storms, more frequent floods, ecosystems under mounting stress, major health impacts, and climate refugees. In addition, I worry about the future my four grandchildren will likely experience in the coming decades, along with the rest of their generation. Our decisions today will have a major impact on the quality of their lives. Those of us who see the danger, recognize the required path forward, and understand the urgency of taking action must muster the courage and clarity of vision to do what is required now to get us on that path.

People are already migrating in response to climate change. Insurance companies are not going to insure houses in fire prone or flood prone areas. Some people have been burned out twice. Will they rebuild in the same area a third time? Fool me once, maybe. Fool me twice? Some areas of the earth are becoming uninhabitable. People living in those areas are going to become climate change refugees. There are already 80 million refugees in the world. The US is abdicating leadership in the world with respect to resolving the world's real problems. The only problem the US seems willing to resolve is to make the world safe for billionaires to accumulate more capital. The US is so out of step with the real problems in the world, is doing nothing to solve them and in fact is only exacerbating them.

Does it take a global pandemic to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? The pandemic will eventually be over. The nations of the earth will go back to increasing GHGs unless renewable energy takes the place of coal powered electricity plants. Developing countries like India are increasing their usage of coal in these plants. China also has many of them. In the US fracking is contributing methane emissions. Methane is a GHG which is worse than carbon dioxide. The US, as the world's second highest GHG emitter needs to assume a leadership role in diminishing GHGs in cooperation with China which is the world's largest GHG emitter.

Off the Top of My Head

China Leads the Way on Electric Vehicle Production

by John Lawrence, September 19, 2020

A Chinese company has developed an electric car that can go 438 miles without recharging. They have developed an infrastructure of charging stations. China surpassed the United States to become the world's largest automobile market in 2009 with a record 13.9 million vehicles sold in the country, compared to 10.43 million cars and light trucks sold in the United States. China leads the world in deployment of electric vehicles. At the end of June 2019, almost half the electric cars and 99% of the electric buses in the world were in China. China reached its goal of 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020. China is both the largest manufacturer and consumer market for electric vehicles in the world, accounting for more than half of all electric cars made and sold in the world in 2018. China also makes 99% of the world's electric buses. China manufactured and sold about 1.2 million plug-in electric vehicles in 2018, which was more than three times the sales in the US. China has become the fastest and largest growing market for electric vehicles in the world. New electric cars had a market share of 4.2% of new cars sold in China for the entire year of 2018. Big cities like Shenzhen and Beijing are rapidly adopting electric vehicles -- for example, all of Shenzhen's 16,000 public buses are now electric, and soon all of its 22,000 taxis will be electric cars as well.

You see, dear reader, the US needs to play catch up. That's exactly what Joe Biden wants to do. China subsidizes its electric vehicle industry and subsidizes the purchase of electric vehicles by the public which can be purchased for $30 to $40 thousand US before subsidies of $8000 or so making them very cost competitive with gas guzzling vehicles. So China has an industrial policy which is so far anathema in the US. For the US government to have an industrial policy or to subsidize certain industries smacks of socialism. But without Joe Biden's plan or some other plan, the US will fall far behind China in electric vehicle production and for the necessary R&D and infrastructure. China's EV production is also part of their plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also need to replace their numerous coal fired electricity generating plants with renewables.

The number of EV charging stations in China is growing rapidly. In January 2019, the Chinese Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Agency (EVCIPA) reported 808,000 EV chargers in China (an 80% increase in one year). Of these, roughly 330,000 were public chargers, and 480,000 were home chargers. China has hundreds of auto manufacturers, many of which are owned in whole or in part by provincial or local governments. According to some reports, as many as 200 Chinese auto manufacturers have produced electric vehicles. In 2018, 1527 fuel cell electric vehicles also were sold in China, bringing the country’s total fuel cell electric vehicle fleet to 3428.

But it's not only China's government or SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) that are investing in China's EV market. It's China's private sector as well. In 2019 Evergrande, a Chinese firm believed to be the biggest real estate company in the world and backers of electric vehicle startups like Faraday Future and NEVS, announced a massive $23 billion investment in the production of 1 million electric cars and 500 GWh of batteries per year. With a valuation at more than $100 billion and revenues of over $40 billion, Evergrande is now looking to expand into electric vehicles. After acquiring large stakes in two electric vehicle companies, Evergrande claims to have “acquired key technologies in the sector” and now plans to launch its own production of electric vehicles in China in a big way. So why aren't American corporations making investments like these? They still seem committed to producing gas guzzlers. The Trump administration even has challenged California's attempts to set higher emissions standards. Trump revoked a longstanding waiver that allows California to set higher fuel emission standards than the federal government. The US is going backwards on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the earth burns and floods.

The waiver revocation is also part of the Trump administration’s longstanding attempt to roll back federal fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. Californians buy more cars than people in any other state, which means the emissions standards it sets for itself have big repercussions on the US economy as a whole. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have also adopted California’s vehicle emissions rules. So the California waiver was a big impediment to the Trump administration’s larger goal of rolling back regulations that were implemented to combat climate change. As a global warming denier, Trump is committed to dumping more rather than less greenhouses gasses into the atmosphere.

China's economy is a fusion of a socialist and free market economy so it's somewhat unique in the world. Like the US Federal Reserve, the Chinese central bank, the People's Bank of China, can print yuan, the Chinese currency. The Chinese market is more devoted to manufacturing for both internal sales and export while the US economy is now focused more on financialization which means making money off of money or betting in the Wall Street casino. The US is devoted to making money by any means necessary which has led to increasing inequality. The Chinese market is more devoted to making money from sales of actual goods and services and is less financialized. So US capital doesn't go so much into manufacturing as it goes into financial markets. China is more dedicated to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions while the Trump administration doesn't even believe in global warming and is a full steam ahead fossil fuel supporter.

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Green Deal

by John Lawrence, September 18, 2020

Just as soon as progressives come up with something called a Green New Deal, Republicans set out to demonize it, the name that is. They don't even bother to argue the merits; they just demonize the name. That's their MO. So Joe Biden, not being a dummy, doesn't say that he's for a Green New Deal. He says he's for Biden's Green Deal. That phraseology is not as easily demonizable, but it amounts to the same thing. Here's the thing (as Biden would say): the jobs created by revolutionizing the US infrastructure in such a way that we reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is not only a Green New Deal, it's a big deal for job creation. The "full employment" economy pre-pandemic, which Trump likes to tout as being so great, was like a house built upon sand. 40% of the population could not cover an emergency expense of $400. It was an economy in which there were a few good jobs, but the rest of the jobs were service sector jobs like baristas, tattoo artists, bartenders, servers, nail salon artists and uber drivers. All these jobs didn't even exist when there was a full employment economy consisting of manufacturing jobs in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Now Joe wants to recreate the equivalent of those manufacturing jobs, good paying union jobs recreating American infrastructure in such a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. One of his signature pet projects is the installation of electric car recharging stations on a massive scale. Joe has also committed to carbon free electricity generating plants by 2035. Right now many of these plants are powered by fossil fuels which emit tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Putting electric vehicles on the roads and building pollution free power generating plants will go a long way toward America becoming free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. So call it what you want - a Green New Deal or Joe Biden's Green Deal, it amounts to the same thing. In reality it's a Big Fucking Deal, as Biden himself once so famously said.

Another BFD is student loan debt forgiveness. Joe is committed to Elizabeth Warren's plan for student loan debt forgiveness. Right now there is over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. This means that so many young people cannot afford to get married, start a family and get a mortgage on a house. They have to move back home and live in their parents' basement or sleep on their parent's couch (in my case). A lot of this money is money owed to the government which the government is even making a profit on. It's not right. Senators Schumer and Warren have called on President Trump to forgive student loans. He won't do it. Biden will. You can see the proposed legislation here.

There are so many new technologies that can be developed that will not only create solid American jobs (not gig work and tattoo artists), but will also create industries that will stay right here on American soil and not be sent to China like US corporations did with their outsourcing spree starting in the 1990s. Keep those industries here. Keep the jobs here. Keep the manufacturing here. This is what Joe Biden is all about. If this is socialism, so be it.

Off the Top of My Head

Worldwide Greenhouse Gas Emissions Must Decrease 3.33% Per Year To Get To Net-Zero by 2050

by John Lawrence, September 17, 2020

This is just simple mathematics: 30 years times 3.33% = 100%. Instead GHGs have been increasing year over year every year since 1990 with the exception of 1992 (tied with 1991), 1998 (.1 Gt Eq lower than 1997) and 2009. In 2018, the world spewed 51.8 Gt CO₂ eq of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Gt is a billion tons. CO₂ eq includes methane and other greenhouse gasses. That means that on average there must be a 1.72 Gt CO₂ reduction every year from now to 2050 to get to net zero by that date. In 2009 there was a reduction of .5 Gt CO₂ from the year before. That was the only year with a substantial reduction and it does not even come close to 1.72. Meanwhile, in the last 10 years GHGs have been increasing not decreasing. Obviously, radical change throughout the world is required if planet earth is to reach net zero by 2050.

Since China and the US are the two largest GHG emitters, they must cooperate to lead the world in reducing GHGs. Particularly in India which is developing rapidly, coal fired electricity generating plants are increasing GHGs. China also has a lot of coal fired electricity generating plants, but is developing renewable energy rapidly. The US is using natural gas more and coal less, but natural gas, which is methane, is responsible for increased emissions of methane so it's no panacea. There are serious concerns about methane leakage in distribution systems and in fracking. At this point the US is producing more GHGs from methane than from coal.

This is from "All-Electric America":

Transforming the United States' current electricity capacity, which is roughly one million megawatts, will require developing approximately 60,000 megawatts of new renewable capacity a year over a thirty-five year time frame to supply all of our energy needs in 2050. In 2015 China planned to install roughly 40,000 megawatts of new renewable power and by 2030 is committed to add a total of 800,000 to one million megawatts, the equivalent of today's total US electrical capacity. There is no doubt that America can do the same if we decide to.

Joe Biden has a plan to develop the electrical recharging infrastructure equivalent to today's network of gas stations so that electric vehicles can be much more prevalent. There will also be incentives for people to purchase electric vehicles. Hydrogen fuel cells are also a technology that can power trucks, ships and even airplanes. Hydrogen is a renewable energy since when it burns, the only by product produced is water. An all electric train system is also possible if the US is determined to do it.

Solar and wind power can serve all of America's needs. Storage of renewable power is also under development. Tesla's Powerwall is available today. It stores energy from solar panels when the sun is shining and delivers the power when the sun isn't. The problem isn't that renewable energy isn't available. The problem is that fossil fuel energy is cheap and plentiful, but if the earth is to remain a habitable planet, 75% of it must remain in the ground. The notion of a carbon budget is that there is an amount of GHGs that can be deposited in the atmosphere between now and 2050 that, if we go beyond that budget, earth's temperature increase will rise above 2 degrees C. As of 2018, the budget for staying below the 2°C threshold has been calculated at approximately 1170 Gt. Calculating approximately 100 Gt added in 2019 and 2020, we have approximately 1079 Gt left. That means we have approximately 20 years at the current rate before earth's temperature rises above 2 degrees C and all hell breaks loose.

As if all hell hasn't broken loose already. 12 million acres burnt in Australia in 2020; 6 million acres burnt in California in 2020. Major hurricanes landing in the Gulf coast faster than people can recover from the last one. Huge chunks of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers breaking off. The Antarctic glaciers have the potential of raising sea levels by 10 feet. What is President Trump doing? Hiding his head in the sand. He has stripped the EPA of environmental regulations and is a global warming denier. Meanwhile, our carbon budget is being exhausted while the US is literally doing nothing about it. That's why it's so important that Joe Biden is elected. He has promised to get us to net zero by 2050.

Off the Top of My Head

Reparations and Universal Basic Income

by John Lawrence, July 14, 2020

Old Chinese proverb: Give someone a fish, and they will eat for a day. Teach them how to fish, and they will eat for the rest of their life. This is how I feel about cash payouts for both reparations and Universal Basic Incomes (UBI). I am for reparations in the sense of guaranteeing a living wage job for people who are able bodied. If not the social safety net should provide food, housing and medical care free of charge. In kind welfare is always better than cash payouts which can be squandered, gambled away, spent on drugs and alcohol or other foolish items. Besides billionaires and millionaires, black or white, don't need reparations or UBI.

I am for reparations in the sense of affirmative action for minorities and poor people in the sense of providing jobs either in the private sector or by the government as a last resort. I believe government should be the employer of last resort. In Sweden they have a national employment database which tracks every job opening in the whole country. They will do their best to hook you up with one of those jobs. This is not a bad idea. Then if no matches can be found, the government should be employer of last resort. There sure is a lot of work that needs to be done that can only be done by government like infrastructure repair and development, not only in this country but around the world.

China has exported its expertise and workers to the rest of the world to build infrastructure. This creates future trading opportunities for China, but it also guarantees that there will not be an unemployed class in China. China by virtue of its Belt and Road Initiative is a full employment society. The US could do the same. There is much to be done in terms of sanitation, health, education and job development to bring the rest of the world up to even a minimally acceptable standard of living. At the same time everyone, in both developed and developing societies needs to adopt a sustainable standard of living. The New American Dream should encompass not unlimited consumption but reasonable and sustainable consumption. Otherwise, the planet's resources will be rapidly, at least in geological terms, exhausted, and the result will be resource wars, poverty of the majority and over consumption of the few.

There is much work that needs to be done, but the private economy is not concerned with necessary work. It is only concerned with encouraging consumption that produces the most profits. It is not concerned with what is good for the environment. It is only concerned with exhausting resources if that is what produces the most profit in the shortest period of time. We need to be concerned with husbanding the earth's resources so that they are there for future generations. Renewable energy is a must instead of exhausting earth's fossil fuels. The same can be said for agriculture and other consumable items. They need to be harvested in a sustainable way. Forests need to be maintained instead of being clear cut. The environment needs to be protected. Food needs to be grown without being sprayed with chemicals. There are good practices which will sustain, maintain and renew earth's resources in such a way that everyone can be employed and everyone can benefit including future generations.

In the meantime there is much necessary and essential work to be done here at home and around the world in eliminating poverty, building housing along the Habitat for Humanity model, growing organic food, eliminating factory food operations, providing health care. China is building infrastructure, but it is not directly eliminating poverty around the world. That's a niche the US could fill. A good step would be converting the 800 military bases in various countries to hospitals, schools and affordable housing for local and indigenous people, defunding the military and reallocating resources to helping poor countries become developed in a sustainable way rather than exploiting their resources.

Off the Top of My Head

The Essential Economy Should Replace an Economy Based on Consumerism

by John Lawrence, July 7, 2020

The economy is never going back to what it was before the coronavirus pandemic. Brick and mortar stores were already failing. Now their fate is being sealed. J Crew, JCPenney, Brooks Brothers, Neiman Marcus, Chesapeake Oil, Gold's Gym, Hertz, Tuesday Morning, Diamond Offshore, Whiting Petroleum, Sur La Table, 24 Hour Fitness, GNC, Chuck E Cheese, Lucky Brand, Men's Wearhouse, Pier 1 - the list goes on and on. Many of these businesses were carrying huge amounts of debt even before the virus hit. This huge number of bankruptcies is going to slam the economy, and the economy will be restructured as a result. Brick and mortar stores will never be the same as more people are going online to order goods. More schools and businesses will also be going online and staying online. This is good as it will slow the greenhouse gas emissions from commuter vehicles.

The economy needs to be restructured even if we never had the pandemic. Maybe the pandemic is a blessing in disguise if it forces a restructuring which reduces the market for fossil fuels. There needs to be massive restructuring in this regard in the next 10 years if we are to have a prayer to escape runaway global warming. This restructuring will also allow the next President if it's Joe Biden to address economic inequality and uplift the lower half of family incomes. Joe Biden is calling for a $15.00 minimum wage with no exception for tipped workers. This is a step in the right direction. There needs to be massive hiring in fields which will rebuild American infrastructure in a way that uses renewable energy. Fossil fuel companies that are carrying huge amounts of debt should be left to go bankrupt instead of being propped up by interest free loans from the Federal Reserve.

Medicare for All needs to be implemented and updated to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Both Medicare and Obamacare are currently prohibited by law from negotiating with drug companies to get lower drug prices. Whether Biden calls it Medicare for All or enhanced Obamacare, the health care system needs to be radically overhauled and updated so that the poor and middle class get the same level of care as the rich. This is all predicated on both Houses of Congress being controlled by Democrats. Otherwise, nothing will get done, and the US will continue to go down the path of degeneration.

The current American economy is predicated on 70% consumption. It is predicated on private enterprise and very limited government. The result is immense economic inequality and lack of investment in public health, which the pandemic has made evident, and also lack of investment in infrastructure. Instead, the only government investment has been in a ginormous military establishment which has been used in disastrous wars, the only result of which has been to create millions of refugees. It has done nothing to help the 40% of the world's population that does not even have access to clean water or proper sanitation. This situation has only been made worse by the current President whose only goal has been to make the world safe for white people. He has used economic sanctions with the result that the world has turned away from using the US dollar and turned toward China as an ally. Case in point: China has been helping Iran economically as the US policy of trying to trash Iran's economy has left it no alternative.

Instead of making America Great Again, Trump has absolutely trashed the nation including his response to the pandemic. While other countries have mounted a credible response, Trump has only further trashed the American economy by insisting that opening the economy was the only thing that mattered. "So I said to my people, slow down the testing, please." Exactly the wrong response. Trump said to his people (the Supreme Court) "Slow down the legal process, please." He got his wish there. His tax returns will not become public until after the election if ever. The Supreme Court said it has to go back to a lower court. From there it will probably go to a court of appeals and from there back to the Supreme Court in a neverending circular process that only rich people can afford. Lawyers will make a fortune though. That's why rich people get justice. Poor people can't afford it.

The political system needs to be restructured so that the Senate can never again be captured  by one political party which then stymies any initiatives put forward by the other party. Democrats in the House can put forward progressive legislation, but, as long as Mitch McConnell is leader of the Senate, it will never see the light of day or be implemented. It becomes a joke. The result is that the political process is only spinning its wheels and has been for 40 years. Let's hope a Democratic President and a Congress in which both Houses are controlled by Democrats can implement, instead of just talking about, progressive policies starting in 2021.

Off the Top of My Head

#GreenNewDeal + #BlackLivesMatter = #TheWayForward

Affirmative Action for Blacks, Latinx and Native Americans in a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence, June 29, 2020

Living with the COBID pandemic could be the new normal. Assurances of a vaccine by the end of the year might be meaningless. Here's why: for many viruses including HIV, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis there are no vaccines available despite years of study and years of effort to develop one. It took 100 years from the first polio epidemic in the US until a vaccine wiped out polio. Just as the Trump administration misled the American people in minimizing the effects of COBID including that things would normalize after we "flattened the curve" and giving dates by which we could "open up", they misled us by raising expectations that a vaccine would be available by the end of the year. Read the book, "Spillover", if you want authoritative scientific information about viruses and how long vaccine development takes if ever.

So, if the pandemic is something we have to live with indefinitely which could well be the case, the economy, in the way it existed before the pandemic, would never be coming back. So how do we create a new economy which works for the American people which, arguably, it was not working before the pandemic despite quasi full employment. Number 1: we refund the CDC and WHO which are the major institutions dealing with viruses and pandemics. Trump tried to defund CDC, and he did defund WHO in the midst of the pandemic. Politifact reported: "As for funding, there’s no question that the Trump administration sought to cut key CDC budget categories. But thanks to Congress, that funding was restored and even increased in bills that Trump ultimately signed." He had better luck and actually did defund WHO.

The biggest thing that could be done to minimize the bad outcomes for this and future pandemics is to get rid of Donald Trump as President of the US. A Democratic President would refund the CDC and WHO. The second thing would be to take a page out of FDR's book by reinstituting the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which financed the New Deal including many infrastructure projects. In fact the Federal Reserve could finance a #GreenNewDeal without even tweaking the law. With the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) it is now resorting to, it is financing debt relief not only for banks but for hedge funds, private equity funds, bankrupt corporations and even rich individuals. It is taking trillions on its balance sheet with quantitative easing. The SPVs require deal making with the Treasury Department. It would be a very small step for the Fed using a SPV to fund a Green New Deal. The US is about $4 trillion in arrears on infrastructure rebuilding and development. Instead of just bailing out bankrupt institutions the Fed could take a more positive role and actually fund productive development. By the way the RFC actually made money on repayment of loans and user fees as opposed to the Fed which just swallows US debt.

If no vaccine is found for COBID in a timely manner, the whole economy should be restructured because many businesses are not coming back. Many including Herz, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus and Chesapeake Oil have already filed for bankruptcy. A Green New Deal could take up the slack reducing the GDP from 70% consumerism to 50% which would be in line with the EU consumption component of GDP while increasing government investment by 20%. That would represent a full employment economy but it would be reoriented from consumption to building green infrastructure.

Minority hiring for a Green New Deal could be along the lines of affirmative action with African Americans, Latinx and Native Americans being hired first. This would go a long way to reduce inequality in America while being a form of reparations in light of the fact that slave labor built much of this country and Jim Crow redlining was responsible for the fact that black families have not been able to accumulate wealth at the same rate as white families. #BlackLivesMatter plus a #GreenNewDeal could help to restore the balance while at the same time creating a full employment economy.

Off the Top of My Head

A House Built Upon Sand: the US Economy

by John Lawrence, June 26, 2020

The wise man built his house on rock, and it withstood the rains and the floods and the wind. The foolish man built his house on sand and it collapsed. An apt metaphor for the US economy in the midst of a pandemic that is only getting worse. Before the pandemic hit, it was a full employment economy in which half the people couldn't survive a $400. emergency. It was an economy built on consumerism. Consumerism was 70% of GDP. About half the economy was small business, but these jobs and this economic activity was vulnerable. Much of it was non-essential. It was bars (by the way you can drink at home); it was restaurants (by the way you can eat at home). It was travel and hospitality (by the way you can sleep at home if you're willing to make your own bed).

The essential parts of the economy continued to operate even when the pandemic hit. It isn't fair that minimum wage workers were more exposed to the coronavirus, but, be that as it may, with some exceptions these workers did not get sick in higher ratios than anyone else. If more of the jobs were essential, productive and less frivolous, there would have been fewer jobs lost and much less unemployment. The economic house was built on sand and when the pandemic hit, it collapsed. At the same time the fault line of black racism and inequality was fully exposed. It's as if the hurricane of the pandemic cut away the underbrush and exposed this situation for what it is thanks to #BlackLivesMatter.

The Homestead Act signed by President Abraham Lincoln which gave free land to white people allowed whites to build equity and wealth while blacks who were promised 40 acres and a mule after slavery were denied even that. They ended up in many cases working the same land as sharecroppers and living in worse poverty than when they were slaves. After World War II the G.I. Bill aimed to help American veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. African Americans did not benefit nearly as much as White Americans. Historian Ira Katznelson argues that "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow". In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.

Additionally, banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the G.I. Bill even less effective for blacks. Once they returned from the war, blacks faced discrimination and poverty, which represented a barrier to harnessing the benefits of the G.I. Bill. So whites were able to build wealth through home ownership while blacks were denied that opportunity. Wealth from home ownership is the difference between the middle class and the poor. Home ownership became the means for the intergenerational transfer of wealth for white people. Each generation of black people started out from zero. There was an intergenerational transfer of poverty instead.

Blacks who were able to get manufacturing jobs after the Second World War did fairly well, but those jobs have by and large fled the country. In the financial crisis of 2008, the Great Recession, blacks were screwed as well. While the Federal Reserve bailed out the banks and mortgage companies hundred cents on the dollar, blacks who needed help paying their mortgages did not get it and were foreclosed on. The government could have bailed them out instead, but it didn't.

So now the country is faced with not only a public health crisis but also an economic, financial and racial crisis which would be much less severe if those manufacturing jobs still existed. The economy is not coming back as it was constructed pre-pandemic. There is no way that small business based on 100% occupancy is going to survive based on 50% occupancy. Many of the businesses like professional sports, cruises and even churches are predicated on high occupancy. People will not be comfortable with high occupancy unless a vaccine is found for COBID, but finding a vaccine is not a foregone conclusion. There are some viruses for which a vaccine has never been found including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.

It takes a lot of money to develop a vaccine, and that money has been lacking from US budgets. There are two obstacles to faster progress, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, director of the vaccine research group at the Mayo Clinic. “One is scientific, and one is embarrassing,” he said. The embarrassing part is the lack of investment. It takes 10 years and more than $1 billion to develop a vaccine — a small fortune for a medical advance but a pittance for a weapons system. While defense research is driven by one mega-customer, the Pentagon, vaccine researchers face a confusing hodgepodge of potential backers. In short the US has spent its money on weapons of war instead of protecting its people from pandemics which are far more deadly than terrorist attacks. 405,000 Americans died in WW II. Over half that amount have already died in this pandemic, and it's getting worse due to American foolishness at the top levels.

There is a chance now for America to start out on a new path, and that path would be more or less what Bernie Sanders and other progressives have identified as their agenda: a Green New Deal would create good jobs for millions of unemployed Americans and it could give priority to black people so that they could get started on wealth building. Low cost housing loans and subsidies could give black people the same advantages they didn't get with the Homestead Act and the G.I. bill. At the same time a Green New Deal would be converting the country to renewable energy and rebuilding infrastructure, both of which are necessary if earth is to remain habitable for the human race. Medicare for All would only bring the US up to the level of most other civilized countries.

We have to reset our priorities, reduce the military-industrial complex and make peace and have cooperation with our so-called enemies. We can quibble about Russia's and China's internal affairs or we can cooperate with them as peers to forestall global warming and create a planet worth inhabiting. We can spend our money on war or we can spend it forestalling future pandemics. The solution to many of our myriad problems is clear, and it doesn't require a revolution necessarily. Reform is all that's necessary to implement Medicare for All. Reform is all that's necessary to implement a Green New Deal. But countries that do not do what's necessary and obvious to meet the needs of the people create a situation in which violence may ensue. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs socialism. Most countries of the earth including Russia and China are a combination of both. I started with a Biblical reference so I will end with one: "Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!" God bless the USA.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Helping American Workers, the Fed Prints Money and Swallows US Debt

by John Lawrence, June 25, 2020

The Federal Reserve is printing trillions of dollars and buying US government debt. The market for US Treasury bonds is a hard sell these days because they pay so little interest: 1.37% for a 30 year bond, less than the inflation rate. China is dumping its Treasuries. It will probably accelerate the rate of dumping if tensions between the 2 countries continue. China was the US' largest creditor till recently when Japan took over that role. While the Federal Reserve has set interest rates effectively at zero, credit card companies are still charging as much as 30% interest which creates a huge number of Americans debtors especially when you throw in student loan debt which stands at $1.5 trillion. In fact, revolving consumer credit card debt reached nearly $1.1 trillion at the end of February 2020, according to the Federal Reserve G19 Report. Americans were paying as much as $121 billion in interest and fees combined by the end of 2019. That's no surprise since the Federal Reserve reported in February 2020 that the average interest rate on credit cards reached an astronomical 16.61%. While billionaires can borrow money at zero percent interest, average Americans pay 16% and up.

The effect of zero interest rates on savings accounts and Treasury bonds is to force everyone into the stock market which, although we're in a recession bordering on depression, continues to go up. It is totally divorced from reality; it wouldn't go down even in a depression like it did during the Great Depression. The Fed is keeping it artificially pumped up because so much American wealth is at stake there.

The Fed is buying Treasuries and mortgage backed securities (MBSs) to the tune of trillions of dollars. Wolf Street reported:

In March (2020) and April combined, the Fed monetized 100% of the additional Federal debt. Over the two-month period of March and April, the US government increased its debt by $1.56 trillion (most of it in April); and over the same two-month period, the Fed bought $1.56 trillion in Treasury securities (most of it in March) and thereby monetized 100% of the additional pile of debt during the two-month period.

The Fed is just swallowing all kinds of debt which is enriching the richest Americans and foreign banks even more. Problem is this forced feeding of cash by the Fed is not trickling down to the American people. It is not creating jobs. Now the Fed is creating even more ways to monetize debt by creating Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). These SPVs can buy assets the Fed is not allowed to buy, and they can lend to entities and rich individuals to buy certain assets. Under the arcane Federal Reserve Act, these SPVs require taxpayer backing from the Treasury Department to protect the Fed from losses. The SPVs can buy asset backed securities (ABSs) on a non-recourse basis which means that, if there are any problems, taxpayers take the losses. Indirectly via its Special Purpose Vehicles and its Primary Dealers, the Fed can buy even old bicycles, as long as taxpayers take the losses.

Wolf Street reported:

These ABS can be backed by credit card loans, auto loans, student loans, equipment loans, floor plan loans, insurance premium finance loans, some loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA), and eligible loans on receivables. The loan amounts will be “equal to the market value of the ABS less a haircut and will be secured at all times by the ABS,” the Fed says.

A little history on Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) : At the end of 2010, under orders from Congress, the Fed released data on over 21,000 transactions it performed during the Financial Crisis, which revealed among many other outrageous acts, that the Fed lent to well-connected individuals and all kinds of hedge funds and others under its TALF program so that they would buy certain assets, such as these consumer loan ABS, drive up their prices, sell them to pension funds and others later for a huge profit, and pay back the loans to the Fed.

These well-connected individuals included John A. Paulson, Michael Dell, Christy K. Mack (wife of former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack), Kendrick R. Wilson III (former Goldman executive and top aide to Hank Paulson Jr.), H. Wayne Huizenga (founder of AutoNation and Waste Management), Jonathan S. Sobel (head of Goldman’s mortgage department), etc. Some very wealthy people made a lot of money off the Fed’s bailout programs even as workers and the economy was in deep trouble.

So the Fed is paying John Paulson money by means of an SPV. Paulson is the guy who bet against the subprime mortgage market in 2007 and made one billion dollars in one day. Goldman Sachs had to pay him off, but eventually due to all the legerdemain in the financial markets, it was French and German taxpayers that paid him for his astute bet. That's casino capitalism at its best. Now he has direct access to the Federal Reserve's money printing press. Why? When there are so many poor and unemployed people in the US, why is the Fed intent on only bailing out financial markets, meaning rich people? Suffice it to say that the Fed is able to buy most anything from rich people and monetize their debt. Because of this and the fact that the rich can borrow at zero percent interest, they engage in risky bets. If they win, they pocket the money. If they lose, the Fed bails them out at zero percent interest.

Compare this with how the situation was dealt with during the Great Depression. Instead of force feeding wealthy people with interest free cash and adding trillions to the US National debt, FDR created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The original legislation establishing the RFC did not limit it to lending to financial institutions; it was also authorized to provide loans for railroad construction and crop lands. In other words it created jobs for average Americans. An amendment passed in July 1932 allowed the RFC to provide loans to state and municipal governments. The purpose of these loans was to finance projects like dams and bridges, and the money would be repaid by charging fees to use these structures. To help with unemployment, a relief program was created that would be repaid by tax receipts. Under the New Deal, the powers of the RFC were greatly expanded. The agency now purchased bank stock and extended loans for agriculture, housing, exports, businesses, governments, and disaster relief. The RFC actually made money on these loans.

So the RFC could actually create jobs for average working people (and not just for hedge fund managers) doing constructive things like building houses and infrastructure. Part of the New Deal was the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program which made the federal government by far the largest employer in the nation. A Green New Deal would create money much as the Fed does with a few keystrokes on a computer, but, instead of just providing liquidity to banks, hedge funds and rich people, it would provide money for productive jobs paid for by the government. The government needs to be employer of last resort in order to recreate a full employment economy.

A Green New Deal would convert the American economy from a fossil fuel dependent economy to one fueled by renewable energy. In so doing it would provide good paying jobs for those in American society who have been left out or left behind. The Fed should monetize the $3 trillion backlog in American infrastructure repair and rebuilding. Making the Fed a public bank instead of a bank whose main purpose is to swallow US government debt and give money to rich people in order to provide "liquidity" would go a long way to reducing inequality and bringing the American poor including minorities into the middle class. IMHO the COBID pandemic will insure that the old economy based on 70% consumerism is not coming back. The new normal will be based on government spending to create a Green New Deal or will sputter along at about half its former level.

Off the Top of My Head

The Fed Will Have Given About a Trillion Dollars a Year to Rich People Since 2008 by the End of 2020

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve prints money and gives it to rich people. According to CNBC, it will have printed about $10 trillion by the end of 2020. This policy is called quantitative easing. It represents a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for rich people, but so far, despite Andrew Yang's proposal and the Second Great Depression we find ourselves in due to the coronavirus, there is no UBI in the works for the rest of us. In addition the Fed has lowered interest rates to zero for rich people, but credit card rates for poor people still top 30%. So the rich can borrow unlimited amounts of money to buy up all the foreclosures and failing businesses caused by the Second Great Depression.

The economy is not going to bounce back to where it was which was an economy in which consumerism was 70% of GDP. There just is no way when large scale venues and bars operating at 25% capacity will be the norm for the foreseeable future. There is also the possibility of multiple waves or spikes in the number of cases as states and cities try to open too much too soon. Plus people are just not going to feel comfortable going on cruises and going to professional sports venues until there is a vaccine which is not a foregone conclusion that one can even be developed. The economy as it existed pre pandemic was one in which we were entertaining ourselvesr to death. It was an economy built on entertainment, an economy predicated on selling each other lattes. Even though we can still be entertained at home via TV and via the internet, there is still a substantial enough loss of revenues and jobs that the economy will stumble along at half or three quarters speed unless a fundamental change is made in how the economy functions.

Government investment in the economy similar to FDR's New Deal is not only necessary to get the economy working again, it is essential to change an economy of entertainment and titillation to an economy where real and essential work will once again be the norm. We have a multi trillion dollar deficit in infrastructure in the US. This can be addressed by forgetting the defunct economy consisting of selling each other lattes and putting people to work doing real and essential jobs. This will also contribute to a revitalization of the American spirit. America was built by people doing real work whether that was in agriculture or manufacturing and not by people entertaining us to death.

The book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman made the argument very cogently. According to Wikipedia,

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.

Postman was on to something. Entertainment and not religion is the opium of the masses. When people like the Kardashians can make their living by just advocating consumerism and indolence, America has lost its work ethic. A UBI which just allows the consumer economy to reinvent itself would to a certain extent be a missed opportunity for government to create meaningful jobs that the private sector can't create to build a better, more meaningful society, a society built on helping people here and around the world. FDR was on to something. His New Deal can be emulated in a Green New Deal which at one and the same time can address the global warming crisis, build  a stronger and more resilient infrastructure and create meaningful jobs for every American.

Off the Top of My Head

A Jobs Program for Inessential Workers
by John Lawrence, April 30, 2020

Turn inessential workers into essential workers by putting them to work building green infrastructure. This is essential work that is not getting done. Much of the previous inessential work they did is better left undone even in a recovery. It is still inessential. It'll always be inessential compared to what needs to be done in creating and building green infrastructure. Building out solar and wind renewable energy could employ thousands if not millions of people. Repairing roads, bridges, waterways, clean water systems, airports, railroads and all other infrastructure could employ millions. This is essential work that has remained undone despite the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the US a D rating for infrastructure. High speed rail needs to be built. The widespread adoption of electric cars has to be mandated, and construction of a national electric vehicle charging network to power them has to be built.

Unemployed people still need jobs. Mark Cuban said on CNN this morning that there should be a jobs program similar to that of the New Deal. He is exactly right although he didn't make the necessary connection about the essential work that's still being left undone and the inessential work that doesn't need to be done even in a recovery. Forget Cuban's sports and entertainment enterprises. I hate to tell you that they are basically inessential. What is essential is greatly expanding the public health undertakings of the Federal  government which has been totally behind the curve in this pandemic.

We must ask ourselves what is essential and not go back to a new normal in which all the inessential businesses of the past are brought back just in order to provide employment to the millions who have lost their jobs. The pre-pandemic economy was 70% consumerism. The economy post epidemic should be much less a consumerist economy and much more an investment economy. The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports. Of these government spending must be ramped up to provide the essential jobs in infrastructure building as well as in the areas that the pandemic has made clear are indeed essential: health care, education, transportation, agriculture.

Government spending must go up; personal consumption must go down. It's as simple as that. As for business investment, it's a lost cause as business will only do what's profitable for itself as has been made abundantly clear. Investment in fossil fuels and plastics which the big oil companies are making is only destructive to a green economy, not constructive. As far as exports are concerned, the dollar has already been weakened as much as it could possibly be by zero interest rates, so increased exports, although desirable, are not likely to happen any time soon.

Private enterprise knows only one thing in terms of the economy "reopening": get back to consumer spending. It ain't going to happen. People are still afraid of the virus. The pandemic is not over. They will use their money to pay off debts instead of going in debt to the hilt like they are used to. People will save their money instead of entertaining themselves to death. Why? Maybe they have learned their lesson that a high employment economy predicated on the fact that people will always have a job and always have a prepensity to consume is just a chimera. Rather than living paycheck to paycheck, I hope people will understand that there may come a rainy day, and they need to save for that. That lesson has really been brought home by the coronavirus pandemic.

The true heroes are essential workers not the military. The military itself was brought to its knees by COBID-19. There is a lesson there. It's more important to spend our collective money on preparing for the coming pandemic of global warming than on a bloated military. It is more important to house the homeless and guarantee the economic rights of shelter and health care to all Americans as in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. It is more important to help people all over the world escape from extreme poverty because poverty breeds health crises which then can spread all over the world. It's more important to make peace with our rivals rather than try to control them with military threats and sanctions.

May the next President (and I hope to heaven that it's not Donald Trump) see the light of a more rational, compassionate and humane world, one more concerned about the health and welfare of all the world's peoples. I hope Governor Cuomo's values of being tough, smart, disciplined and most importantly loving spread to every corner of US and world society, and we get on with essential business instead of the inessential business of amusing, entertaining and consuming ourselves to death.

Rooftop Wind Power Might Take Off By Using Key Principle Of Flight

by Andrea Thompson, April 24, 2020

from WhoWhatWhy blog

An artist’s rendering of AeroMINEs along the edge of a roof and combined with solar arrays. Photo credit: Sandia National Laboratories

This story originally appeared in Scientific American and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Solar panels perched on the roofs of houses and other buildings are an increasingly common sight in the US, but rooftop wind systems have never caught on. Past efforts to scale down the towering turbines that generate wind power to something that might sit on a home have been plagued by too many technical problems to make such devices practical. Now, however, a new design could circumvent those issues by harnessing the same principle that creates lift for airplane wings.

Overall, electricity generated by renewable sources has grown in the US in recent years, and wind power has been a major driver of that trend. It accounts for more than 40 percent of electricity from renewables in the US (though only 7 percent of all electricity production). Unlike solar energy cells, which are limited to collecting energy during daylight hours, wind turbines can run all night in any place with the right conditions — namely, in open plains or gentle hills with consistently sufficient wind speeds. But in addition to those requirements, large turbines need open space, which is not always available near towns and sprawling cities. Installing rooftop wind systems on homes and city buildings could help harness more of this resource.

When it comes to wind power, size matters. The amount of energy an individual turbine can generate is proportional to the area its blades sweep — so devices that are small enough to fit on a roof are less powerful. “What’s kept distributed wind from being successful is that most of the systems are basically miniaturized wind turbines,” says Brent Houchens, a mechanical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories. The smaller devices do not produce enough energy to be cost-effective. Plus, their quickly spinning blades create noisy vibrations, and their many moving parts are more prone to breakage. Compared with passive rooftop solar panels, wind turbines have the potential to be quite high-maintenance.

Houchens and his colleagues think they have engineered a solution that overcomes these obstacles by borrowing from a fundamental principle of air flight. The curved shape of an airplane wing — called an airfoil — alters the air pressure on either side of it and ultimately produces lift. Houchens’ colleague Carsten Westergaard, president of Westergaard Solutions and a mechanical engineer at Texas Tech University, says he hitched two airfoils together so that “the flow from one airfoil will amplify the other airfoil, and they become more powerful.” Oriented like two airplane wings standing upright on their side, the pair of airfoils directly face the wind. As the wind moves through, low pressure builds up between the foils and sucks air in through slits in their partly hollow bodies. That movement of air turns a small turbine housed in a tube and generates electricity.

Thanks to this design, the device — which the researchers call an AeroMINE (“MINE” stands for Motionless, Integrated Extraction) — can pull wind energy from a larger area (essentially, the AeroMINE’s rectangular face) than its turbine blades could on their own in a traditional setup. Houchens likens such standard turbines to cookie cutters that leave wasted dough behind. The new device makes use of all the available wind, allowing it to extract more energy.

AeroMINEs also do not generate the same vibrations and noise as regular turbines; they are “less noisy than a ventilation fan,” Westergaard says. The relative simplicity of their design means there are fewer moving parts to malfunction. The turbine, which is housed inside a building, would be easier to access if it does need repairs. This arrangement also keeps the blades isolated from any contact with people or wildlife. The team is designing the system so that it could be used in conjunction with rooftop solar panels, plugging into the existing infrastructure to harvest the energy they generate.

“I do think this technology could be groundbreaking” for areas with good wind conditions, says Luciano Castillo, a mechanical engineer at Purdue University, who is not involved in the project but has worked with Westergaard in the past. He also thinks the simplicity of AeroMINEs could make them a good option for developing countries, because the new devices do not require specialized parts or tools and are relatively easy to fix. Castillo and Westergaard both see the potential to use the design underwater to harness tidal energy as well.

Jay Apt, co-director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, who is also not involved in the project, agrees that the simplicity of the design is attractive. But he is unsure whether the system can be scaled up to efficiently generate energy at a low enough cost in a real-world setting. Houchens says that with suitable wind conditions, he and his colleagues think AeroMINEs can be competitive with the current cost of rooftop solar power.

The team, which has received funding from Sandia and the Department of Energy, has tested scaled-down models in wind tunnels to fine-tune the design. In June the researchers have plans to test a four-meter-tall version of the device on a single-story mock building at the Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility, part of Texas Tech’s National Wind Institute.

Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Sandia National Laboratories.

The Solutions to the Climate Crisis No One is Talking About

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Both our economy and the environment are in crisis. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by. The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades. Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

We can address both crises by doing four things:

First, create green jobs. Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air. The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050. In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

Second, stop dirty energy. A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas. We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics. For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits. The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife. As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed.

As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing. 

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage. In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis. The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards. 

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.

If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.

Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before. 

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry. 

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.