Green Your Head

NPR's Crude Trashing of John Maynard Keynes

There's nothing that ticks me off more than economists who pretend that their black art is actually a science. Just because they use math, mainstream economists think we will believe that their equations describe the real world of resources and people that makes up the economy. These wizards who in actuality are nothing but casino managers, are especially concerned that we might switch allegiance to a different brand - communism, or just as bad - Keynesianism!

Last night NPR aired a totally unbalanced piece on John Maynard Keynes that proved beyond all doubt that Republicans and Wall Streeters can't come anywhere near a scientific or even an intellectual argument challenging the man's ideas, so they are left with attacking his personality. NPR commentators Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg charged that Keynes was an elitist, anti-semite, bohemian pottymouth. Why no mention of his homosexuality? Probably because the gay lobby is too powerful and easily riled. Unlike gays, bohemians still don't get any respect. And the anti-semite accusation? Remember, we are talking the 1930s here. You could tar almost any prominent person in that age with all sorts of prejudices that no polite member of society would admit to today. Does that mean that our current economic leading lights are free of all moral taint? Please, don't make us laugh. It hurts too much.

So, after nearly five minutes of simmering in Adam Davidson's ad hominem stew, did we taste any actual refutation of the Keynesian idea that government spending can help revive a stalled economy? No. After admitting that government spending worked pretty well to get us out of the depression and build the post WWII economy, one commentator said that government spending failed to revive a slowing economy in the 1970s. Therefore, Keynesianism has been discredited.

That's it. That one statement was the entire argument against government spending. That and the goofy assertion that "government consumes wealth" and "only the private sector can create wealth."

These two points reveal the two big failures of mainstream economic theory. First, the economic slowdown in the 1970s had much more to do with the rapid rise in energy costs than with government investment. And second, if, as Jimmy Carter wanted, government had spent lavishly on renewable energy, mass transit and energy efficiency, can you imagine how much better off we would be today? Infrastructure is wealth, and only government can create it.

Despite comparing economists to Einstein, as this NPR piece does, mainstream economic theorists are incapable of understanding the real world of physical resources, especially the reality that there are limits to those resources. In their model, the economy is like a carburetor. If it starts to falter, you tinker with the airflow, that is, monetary policy. There's no possibility in your mind that the fuel could run out. You can't admit that the whole machine might be obsolete and it's time to build a new one because there's no way for private industry to accomplish that feat.

Economists hate government, because in a rational economy, there would be no room at the top for the free-for-all gambling casino that makes their class rich. In their eyes, it is the casino that actually generates the wealth because it draws in the money and money is like the air in the carburetor. So when the Fed opened the throttle wide last fall with zero percent interest rates and it failed to stop the stall, then what? Why is it Keynes who is being discredited now?

When their machine models fail, economists will invoke the Invisible Hand. You can model the economy as a machine or you can model it as a body. If it is a body, then private enterprise is the many hands reaching out to grab resources. The hands don't want to be governed, but in a body, the head needs to get involved or the hands will eventually get the body into big trouble. That's what Keynesianism is, in a nutshell - using your head. And that's not science, it's just common sense.

More Good News - DeFazio Gets Bus Money

The House Rules Committee today approved a bunch of amendments to the stimulus bill for consideration. One of the amendments is Peter DeFazio's provision to increase funding for mass transit investments by 3 billion dollars. It still has to be approved by the full House and the Senate. Keep the pressure on!

Good News for LNG Opponents

Just listened in on a webinar by Platts, the oil and gas industry analysts, on Obama's new energy and climate appointments and the contents of the stimulus package. This group is fighting to get their sea legs as the new approach to energy swells around them. Noting that the stimulus package has a big zero in it for the oil and gas industries and only sequestration research dollars for coal, they remark that renewables advocates are "buoyed." In the mode of "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all, they had no comment on Carol Browner as Obama's new energy and climate czar except to say that oil and gas "don't have the same ally they had in the Bush administration. They did discuss Obama's acting FERC director, Jon Wellinghoff,  an opponent of LNG (liquified natural gas). It seems they feel LNG is in real trouble because of Wellinghoff's background as a "consumer advocate." Bad news for companies like Sempra Energy that are counting on LNG for their Southern California electricity market, but good news for consumers and the environment.

I tried to send the post below as a letter to the President, but the comments at Whitehouse.gov are limited to 500 characters!!! At change.gov you could actually communicate with the team. Here's what they say on the input form: "President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history." Just don't try to tell them anything that takes more than 2 or 3 sentences.

Buy Me a Bus!

Republicans love to say that they oppose tax increases because the people should be in charge of spending their own money, not the government. But realistically, what were our spending options for that $300 tax rebate we got last summer? It did very little to "stimulate" the economy, probably because most of us used it either to pay bills or to buy some cheap imported consumer item. I don't want another silly toy, I want a bus.

By cutting taxes, government does not increase our options, it reduces them. I can't afford to buy a better transit system by myself, and that's what I most want right now. I wish I could get on a bus in my small rural town and travel quickly and safely to Portland or Seattle or beyond, but that is not an option at the moment because mass transit in general in this country is lousy. I want an infrastructure!

Unfortunately, one third of the nearly trillion dollar stimulus package now working its way through Congress consists of tax cuts. Rachel Maddow reports that this is apparently the work of Obama's economic advisor Larry Summers. According to my congressman, Peter Defazio, Summers hates infrastructure. He is after stimulating a consumer driven economy, not a public investment driven economy.

Obviously Summers needs to do the math. DeFazio says that last year's stimulus bill gave less than a one percent boost to the economy, so why are we repeating the tax rebate/cut mistake? Ironically, Larry Summers is the guy who had to leave his post as president of Harvard University for outraging female faculty members with his assertion that lack of innate math ability is a major reason women are underrepresented in Harvard’s math and science departments.

Please Mr. President, take back those tax cuts and spend it on mass transit. DeFazio says that Chicago alone has a 6 billion dollar backlog of transit improvements that are "shovel ready," but the stimulus package would provide only 2.5 billion. Hasn't Larry Summers ever heard of the multiplier effect? Not only would fully funding Chicago's transit needs provide jobs in that city, but it would immediately create 3000 new jobs in Minnesota building the buses.

Please Barack, buy me a bus, and while you're at it, please feel free to - metaphorically speaking - throw Larry Summers under the bus.

Obama's speech - 100 years from now

George Packer, in the New Yorker yesterday, praised President Obama's inaugural address, but also declared that it would not measure up to the grand speeches of history, saying: "There were echoes of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, but President Obama uttered no words today that will be quoted in a hundred years."

I can't see it. In both listening to and reading the speech, I was caught by several rhetorical hooks that penetrated deeply. Besides, words that come down through the ages have as much to do with the circumstances in which they are said as the phrases themselves. Anyone can say "I have a dream," or "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," but it is the situation that makes the remark memorable.

I don't think enough media commentators realize yet how truly pivotal the times are. Obama's election is about a lot more than just healing the race wounds or even bringing back core democratic values. To maintain a habitable planet we'll have to make changes that are almost unimaginable. If Barack Obama helps us get through the hard times ahead, then his words will be remembered.

Let's start with his most important phrase: "...the time has come to put aside childish things." Sure it's a quote from the bible, not his own words, but the most important literature in the English language is full of bible quotes and allusions. This was Obama's most important phrase because it speaks most directly to our biggest weakness and the place where we need to start.

The next most important phrase echos in some ways JFK's "ask not what your country..." but with a twist that directly confronts the childish idealogues among us: "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." Truly, this is a more important question than JFK's rhetorically pleasing but vague appeal to patriotism.

The audience, from the vantage of my TV, seemed rapt and still, listening to every word, unassaulted by the crude applause lines that most politicians use. But there was one line that elicited immediate, overwhelming applause and this is a line that will be remembered: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

Here are some more lines that will be taught to school children 100 years from now - if there are schools and if there are children:

"...a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers."

"...we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

"...there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

"Let it be said by our children's' children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

liquid fluoride thorium reactors

There's an interesting discussion at the Oil Drum today on LFTR nuclear reactor technology. I have looked into this a little as a result of James Hansen's letter to Obama calling for a research program to develop these fourth generation nuclear technologies. Hansen thinks that the global warming predicament is so serious that nuclear power will be needed to knock out coal generation which is far more dangerous to the planet.

The comment below comes closest to my own views, though I would be  more supportive of a massive research effort to determine if these fourth generation nuclear technologies really are feasible.

Ender on January 20, 2009

What is wrong with you people? This is like me as an computer system admin banking on Windows 8 to solve all my IT problems. Windows 8 like LFTR is vaporware. There are no operating LFTR reactors of any kind working in the world today yet you are all willing to hitch your wagons a totally unproven solution that could be the Edsel Ford of nuclear reactors.

The solutions are already here and operating.

1. Generate NEGAWATTS. Electricity you don't have to generate is the quickest, cheapest and easiest method of reducing greenhouse emissions. Start a massive campaign of energy conservation and reduction. I realise that this is boring alternative to something as sexy as LFTR however Negawatts will be saving more power sooner than any new technology. You only have to look at the passive solar threads on TOD to see what can be done and what savings can be made.

2. Make the grid smart. Put in new HVDC links with storage. Again distribution links are the hidden boring part of electricity however without them the grid ceases to function. Replace old transformers etc with modern massively more efficient units. Replace dumb loads with smart loads. The storage at the end of HVDC links benefits the current grid as it can greatly reduce the need for spinning reserve which in itself is a massive waste.

3. Put all the renewables into the mix. Join present wind farms (that should be legislated to have storage), with solar thermal, rooftop PV, tidal, wave and geothermal so that the whole is greater that the capacity factor of the parts and then provide 24X7 power.

4. Join in the existing peaking plants to the smart grid with smart controls and add biomass plants that also product biochar to enhance the fertility of the soil.

5. Electrify transport with V2G so it becomes part of the solution.

Look don't get me wrong LFTR might be great and the answer to our problems but lets not put all our eggs on a vaporware technology that may not deliver any of its promises. We need to start now with what we have. Renewables involve some compromises however they can support a technological society that is prepared to meet them halfway.

Why Green Your Head?

Why green your head? Because the first requirement of sustainability is to change how we think. We must start by abandoning our fantasies of unlimited growth. Technology can help us, but only if we are conscious of technology's limits. Great life, like great art, only flourishes within constraints. 

Cheap Green Living

Live green and save money

With the economy in trouble, can we afford to be green? That's a question you often hear nowadays, but it's a dumb question. We can't afford not to be green. The planet is in peril and there's no time to waste in switching our systems of production and consumption to greener alternatives.

The economic system we've lived under for the past 200 years or so is fundamentally irrational because it requires endless material growth on a finite planet. As a result, the current economic meltdown may help slow down the process of planetary meltdown. Perhaps we should welcome it as a blessing in disguise. If nothing else, it is making business as usual impossible and is creating the opportunity for new ideas and alternatives.

There is another way to live. It is green; it is cheap; and it is good, but to get there requires changing the way we think about almost everything. This blog will expose and explain the historical and current events that have pushed us into this socially dysfunctional and environmentally destructive economic system. It will also explore the ideas, trends and politics of the vast and turbulent transformation that is now under way.

Here is just one example of how cheap green living can happen: Suppose you decide to take a short walk in the woods near your house to get some exercise and improve your health. You take a deep breath, begin to relax, and notice that there are huckleberries growing along the path. They are kind of small and dried up, but you stop and pick several handfuls and eat them. They are high in anti-oxidants and they taste good, even if they are not the big, plump, rather watery blueberries imported from Chile that you can buy in a plastic clamshell at the supermarket in town. How much would it have cost you to buy the supermarket berries? How much would you have spent at a gym to take your walk on a treadmill? Instead you have spent no money but gained in both pleasure and health. You didn't do your duty as a consumer, but there's no need to feel guilty about that!

That's greening your head.