Steady State Economics.

                                                           Comments due by April 23, 2019

(The following are the major arguments against economic growth as presented by Herman Daly, arguably one of the most influential Ecological Economics and the popularizer of Steady State Economics)

Pascal's Wager Revisited

The growthmania position rests on the hypothesis that technological change can become entirely problem solving and not at all problem creating and can continually perform successively more impressive encores as resources are depleted. There is sufficient evidence to make reasonable people quite doubtful about this hypothesis. Yet it cannot be definitely disproved. There is a certain amount of faith involved, and faith is risky. Let us then take a completely agnostic position and apply the logic of Pascal's wager and statistical decision theory. We can err in two ways: we can accept the omnipotent technology hypothesis and then discover that it is false, or we can reject it and later discover that it is true. Which error do we most wish to avoid? If we accept the false hypothesis, the result will be catastrophic. If we reject the true hypothesis, we will forgo marginal satisfactions and will have to learn to share, which, though difficult, might well be good for us. If we later discover that the hypothesis is true we could always resume growth. Thus even in the agnostic case, it would seem prudent to reject the omnipotent technology hypothesis, along with its corollary that reproducible capital is a near-perfect substitute for resources.

The Fallacy of Exponentially Increasing Natural Resource Productivity

The orthodox position argues that exponential technological progress, as measured in two-factor production functions is usually accompanied by exponential increases in resource throughput (depletion and pollution). It is of little comfort to contemplate increasing productivity of labor and capital if it is at the continuing expense of resource productivity and if resources are the ultimately scarce factor. Robert Solow has defended growth by directly appealing to increasing resource productivity. Solow concludes that "there is really no reason why we should not think of the productivity of natural resources as increasing more or less exponentially over time" (1973, p. 51). This remarkable conclusion, if true, would be a boon to those who advocate limiting the throughput of resources, because it would mean that such a limit is totally consistent with continued exponential growth in GNP and is therefore not such a radical proposal. The resource flow could be stabilized and GNP could continue to grow exponentially as a resource productivity (i.e., GNP/resource flow) increased exponentially. Why, then, does limiting the resource flow provoke such strong opposition from growth economists?

In his Richard T. Ely Lecture to the American Economic Association, Solow went as far as to proclaim not only the conditional possibility, but the empirical likelihood that "the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources" (1974, p. 11). Solow elaborates that this is so if we have a "backstop technology," such as breeder reactors, which will mean that "at some finite cost, production can be freed of dependence on exhaustible resources altogether" (1974, p. 11). Apparently, the world cannot get along without all natural resources as he first suggested, but only without exhaustible ones. Just how to build and maintain a backstop technology of breeder reactors (the only example offered) without exhaustible resources such as copper, zirconium, tungsten, and iron, not to mention initial stocks of enriched uranium or permanent depositories for radioactive wastes, is not explained by Solow.
The Ever Expanding Service Sector and "Angelized GNP"

Advocates of growth frequently appeal to the increasing importance of services, which, it is assumed, can continue to grow indefinitely, since such activities are presumable nonpolluting and nondepleting. Thus while agriculture and industry will be limited by their necessary pollution and depletion flows, services are allegedly not so limited and will continue to grow. Therefore, an ever larger fraction of total GNP will originate in the service sector, and consequently the pollution and depletion flows per average dollar of GNP will fall continuously. Presumably, we will approach a nonphysical "angelized GNP."

The flaw in this view is that there are limits to how high the proportion of services to goods can rise in the product mix without provoking a shift in the terms of trade in favor of goods and against services to such an extent that goods production would again expand and service production contract. Historically, employment in the service sector has grown relative to total employment, because productivity and total output of industry and agriculture have increased vastly. Once total output of physical goods is restricted, service sector growth will be increasingly restrained by a progressive deterioration in its terms of trade vis-a-vis physical goods.

Misleading Views on Misallocation and Growth

Many growth economists (Beckerman, 1974, p. 20) have argued that in order to prove that the growth rate is excessive it is necessary to show that the resource misallocation at any point of time takes the form of excessive investment. This reflects a commonly held position among economists that the market will automatically limit growth at some optimal rate. But we must first ask just what "misallocation," or more specifically "excess investment," means in the context of the statement. It means that more is being invested and less consumed out of current production than would be the case under freely competitive markets and consumer sovereignty. Misallocation is defined with respect to the competitive market equilibrium of the plans of savers with the plans of investors, not with respect to physical relations of the economy with the ecosystem. Excessive "disinvestment" of geological capital (depletion), excessive pollution and destruction of ecosystems, and excessively onerous technologies are all consistent with the condition that savers in the aggregate are planning to see just what investors in the aggregate are planning to invest. The market seeks its behavioral equilibrium without regard for any ecological limits that are necessary to preserve bio1 physical equilibrium. There is no reason to expect that a short-run behavioral equilibrium will coincide with a long-run (or even a short-run) biophysical equilibrium. In fact, it is clear that under present institutions the two will not coincide. The behavioral equilibrium between planned saving and planned investment nearly always occurs at positive levels of net saving and investment. Positive net investment means growth, which means an increasing throughput and increasing biophysical disequilibrium.

Orthodox growth economists are likely to reply that if only we could internalize all true ecological costs into money prices, then market equilibrium would coincide with ecological equilibrium. This is a bit like Archimedes saying that if only he had a fulcrum and a long enough lever he could move the world.

What Second Law?
In an article defending growth, Harvard economist Richard Zeckhauser tells us that "Recycling is not the solution for oil, because the alternate technology of nuclear power generation is cheaper" (1973, p. 117, n. 11). The clear meaning of the sentence is that recycling oil as an energy source is possible but just happens to be uneconomical, because nuclear energy is cheaper. The real reason that energy from oil, or any other source, is not recycled is of course the entropy law, not the relative price of nuclear power. This nonsensical statement is not just a minor slip-up that we can correct and forget; it indicates a fundamental lack of appreciation of the physical facts of life. No wonder Zeckhauser is unconvinced by limits to growth arguments; if he is unaware of the entropy law he could not possibly feel the weight of the arguments against which he is reacting in his article.

An article entitled "The Environment in Economics: A Survey" Begins with the words: "Man has probably always worried about his environment because he was once totally dependent on it" (Fisher and Peterson, 1976, p. 1). The implication is that man is no longer totally dependent on his environment, or at least that he has become less dependent. Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence. How could man possibly become more independent of his environment without shutting off exchanges with the environment or reducing depletion and pollution, rather than increasing them? For man to exist as a closed system, engaging in no exchanges with the environment, would require suspension of the second law. Man is an open system. What was man three months ago is now environment; what was environment yesterday is man today. Man and environment are so totally interdependent it is hard to say where one begins and the other ends. This total interdependence has not diminished and will not in the future, regardless of technology.

Zero Growth and the Great Depression

 A condition of nongrowth can come about in two ways: as the failure of a growth economy, or as the success of a steady-state economy. The two cases are as different as night and day. No one denies that the failure of a growth economy to grow brings unemployment and suffering. It is precisely to avoid the suffering of a failed growth economy (we know growth cannot continue) that we advocate a SSE. The fact that an airplane falls to the ground if it tries to remain stationary in the air simply reflects the fact that airplanes are designed for forward motion. It certainly does not imply that a helicopter cannot remain stationary.

Conclusions from the Growth Debate

To a large degree, the growth debate involves a paradigm shift of a gestalt switch--a change in the preanalytic vision we bring to the problem. Conversion cannot be logically forced by airtight analytical demonstrations by either side, although dialectical arguments can sharpen the basic issues. But as the growing weight of anomaly complicates thinking within the growth paradigm to an intolerable degree, the steady state view will become more and more appealing in its basic simplicity. In any case, orthodox economics will not easily recover from the weaknesses that some of its leading practitioners have revealed in their efforts at self-defense. It is, to say the least, doubtful that "the world can, in effect get along without natural resources." But it is certain that the world could do very well indeed without "the orthodox economists whose common sense has been insufficient to check their faulty logic."

Forests are growing in Developed countries

                                                 Comment due by April 14, 2019 

Colm Stenson drives around County Leitrim, pointing out new tree plantations. In this corner of Ireland, close to the border with Northern Ireland, conifers seem to be springing up all around. The encroachment is not just visual. Mr Stenson, who is a police officer as well as a cattle farmer, recently received a bill from his feed supplier. It came with a brochure advertising easy returns from converting farmland into woods. Forestry companies tout for business in the local livestock market. The forest is “closing in”, he says. In the 1920s, when Ireland became independent, it was thought to have just 220,000 acres (90,000 hectares) of woods, covering about 1% of the land. Once-extensive forests had been shrinking for centuries. Farmers had cut trees for redwood and to clear space for animals and crops since at least the fourth millennium BC; some tree species were wiped out by disease. Beginning in the 17th century, most of the trees that remained were felled to build ships or fed into charcoal kilns to re the Industrial Revolution. Today, though, almost 11% of Ireland is covered with forest, and an unknown additional amount by small woods and scattered trees. The government’s target is to cover 18% of the land area with forests by 2046. Ireland is behind schedule. Still, about 6,000 hectares of new forest ought to be planted this year, while almost none will be lost. It is part of a broad trend: the foresting of the West.

 Trees are spreading in almost every European country . Because many of these forests are young, the quantity of wood in them is growing faster than their extent. Europe’s planted forests put on a little more than 1.1m cubic meters of wood per day. For comparison, the iron in the Eiffel Tower is about 930 cubic meters. Russia’s forests spread more slowly in percentage terms between 2005 and 2015, but, because Russia is so big, more than in the entire European Union in absolute terms. Forests now occupy a third of America’s land, having grown by 2% in the past decade. They are even expanding in Australia, following a long decline. Trunk routes Deforestation in South America and Africa rightly gets most of conservationists’ attention. That loss is huge—equivalent to about 4.8m hectares a year, which far outweighs gains elsewhere. Yet the foresting of rich countries is still one of the world’s great land-use changes. It seems just as unstoppable as the deforestation of poorer places. It has plenty of critics, too. The growth of forests is partly a result of changes to food markets. As the best farming areas have become more productive, and as rich countries have imported more of their food, marginal land has become unusable for ordinary agriculture. Some of the most dramatic forest growth in Europe has been in high, dry places where farmers once scratched a living from goats, sheep or olives. Forests now cover two-thirds of Catalonia, in Spain, up enormously from a century ago. In America, the fastest expansion over the past ten years has been in states such as Oklahoma and Texas, which have indifferent soils. “Good cropland is always going to be good cropland,” says Thomas Straka, who follows American forestry at Clemson University. But “a lot of land should never have been planted.” Forests are also growing because governments have favoured them through laws and subsidies. Forest-boosting has a long history, beginning with a French forest ordinance in 1669. In Europe, war drove policy: countries needed wood for warships and then, after the first and second world wars, sought to become self-sufficient in a bulky commodity. In America, a ready supply of cheap home-grown wood was seen as essential for the creation of a suburban, home-owning democracy.  Since the 1990s environmental considerations have weighed more heavily. Forests are increasingly valued as sponges for heavy rain, as wildlife habitats and as carbon sinks. Governments point out that their countries used to be thickly forested— even if the large forests disappeared many centuries ago, as is the case in a country such as Iceland. Some feel inadequate: European countries with scant forest cover sometimes lament how far behind the EU average they have fallen. Whatever their reasons, governments have treated forests generously. In Britain, forests are not liable for capital-gains tax (though the land under them might be). If a forest is bought with the proceeds of a business sale, the tax that would be payable is deferred. Timber sales incur neither corporation tax nor income tax. Forests can be transferred to heirs free from inheritance tax. And, whereas many farm payments in the EU have been decoupled from production, forest subsidies reward planting. The rate in England is £1.28 ($1.72) per tree, plus grants for fences and gates. Money does not grow on trees, goes one quip—trees grow on money. Planted forests are far from universally popular, though. Between June and October this year, forest res in Spain and Portugal killed more than 100 people and darkened Europe’s skies. The res were partly blamed on the spread of non-native trees, especially eucalyptus. That Australian import, which was planted with support from the World Bank, among others, grows so quickly that trees can be harvested for pulp when less than ten years old. It also burns readily, scattering embers far affield. Portugal’s government has begun to restrict planting, in an effort to prevent the country from turning into what one green group calls “Eucalyptugal”. The eucalyptus tree is a scapegoat for a bigger problem, argues Marc Castellnou, a re analyst in Spain. The real trouble is that forests in Portugal and Spain have expanded quickly, with little thought for the consequences. Well-managed eucalyptus plantations are not the biggest danger—much worse are ill-managed ones with lots of underbrush and fallen wood, and the impromptu forests that grow on abandoned farms. The res that get going in such forests jump to the treetops and burn so energetically that they cannot be stopped. In Ireland, the criticisms are different. The country’s default tree is the sitka spruce, a fast-growing, damp-tolerant conifer from America’s Pacic Northwest. Spruce plantations are said to be devoid of life—vertical deserts of dark green. They are accused of wrecking rural communities and driving farmers off the land. And they are said to be out of place in a mostly pastoral setting. Gerry McGovern, another farmer in County Leitrim, puts it bluntly: conifer forests are “not landscape”. The first charge is false. Mark Wilson of the British Trust for Ornithology says that conifer plantations support more bird life per hectare than farmland, largely because they harbour more insects. Inevitably, some birds benefit more than others. The march of conifers across Britain and Ireland has increased the numbers of pine-loving birds such as siskins and crossbills. Conifers are also loved by crows—which is less obviously good, because crows raid the nests of rare birds such as curlews. The second accusation, that trees push out other kinds of agriculture, is only partly true. Forestry subsidies and regulations have indeed distorted Ireland’s land market. Farmers who plant trees get generous payments for 15 years, while continuing to receive ordinary farming subsidies. At that point, with perhaps 20 years to go before conifers are harvested, they often sell to pension funds and other investors. Forested land in Ireland hardly ever returns to farming. To help speed national forestation, the government requires that land cleared of trees must be planted with new trees (which are not subsidised). Ireland also bars commercial planting on the poorest soils, where young trees would struggle. Partly as a result, forests have spread from the hills to the lowlands, says Steven Meyen of Teagasc, Ireland’s agriculture authority. Macra na Feirme, which lobbies for young Irish farmers, argues that forest payments are now preventing good land from coming onto the market. That said, trees are sprouting in rural Ireland because farmers want them to. Many own at least one indifferent, boggy corner of land where animals get stuck and only rushes grow well. Stephen Strong, a farmer in County Meath, has planted 80 acres of his 500-acre farm with sitka spruce, Norway spruce, oak and ash. The trees require much less attention than the sheep that grazed there before—“where you have sheep, you have trouble,” he says. Forestry appeals especially to ageing farmers who are looking for a gentle exit. In 2015, 45% of newly planted land in Ireland was owned by people aged 60 or older. The final accusation, that forests are drastically changing the appearance of the countryside, is spot-on. Advocates may point to a forested past. But rural people have become used to the landscape as it is, and often do not want it to change. What worries Mr Stenson, in County Leitrim, is not just that the ever-spreading trees will displace farmers and make it hard for him to acquire more land, but also that they will prevent him from seeing his neighbours’ lights at night. In America and Germany, people have been conditioned to see forested landscapes as sublime by painters like Caspar David Friedrich and Albert Bierstadt. Irish painting and poetry, by contrast, usually celebrates hills, bogs and farms. In “The Deserted Village”, published in 1770 and probably inspired by scenes from his birthplace in Ireland, Oliver Goldsmith lamented the transformation of a lively landscape, studded with cultivated farms and busy mills, into a silent one dominated by “glades forlorn” and “tangling walks”.

 Safe arbours

Ireland and other countries will nonetheless have to get used to the green invaders. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is set to change in 2020. Nobody yet knows how, but it is a safe bet that subsidies will tilt towards greenhouse-gas mitigation, which will probably mean more money for carbon-absorbing forests and less for methane-belching livestock. John O’Reilly, the boss of Green Belt, a forest-management company, worries that Ireland’s afforestation rate might dip below 6,000 hectares a year in the next few years—a level that he views as necessary for sustaining business. He also worries about Brexit, because Britain is a crucial market for Irish timber. He is not at all worried about the long-term future of his industry. (The Economist)

Limits to Growth

                                              Comments due by  April 7, 2019

The following is from Limits to Growth published by The Club of Rome 47 years ago. This short book was the first computerised model to make projections about many of the issues that have become central matters in Environmental/Ecological Economics. It is interesting to note that although we have been aware of the severity of the possible ecological degradation that we are facing one can argue that we have not done much about it. Why?

                                                         ******************************

 “I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the Information that Is available to me as Secretary General, that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left In which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership Is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control.” U THANT, 1969

 The problems U Thant mentions : the arms race, environmental deterioration, the population explosion, and economic stagnation-are often cited as the central, long-term problems of modern man. Many people believe that the future course of human society, perhaps even the survival of human society, depends on the speed and effectiveness with which the world responds to these issues. And yet only a small fraction of the world's population is actively concerned with understanding these problems or seeking their solutions.

Every person in the world faces a series of pressures and problems that require his attention and action. These problems affect him at many different levels. He may spend much of his time trying to find tomorrow's food for himself and his family. He may be concerned about personal power or the power of the nation in which he lives. He may worry about a world war during his lifetime, or a war next week with a rival clan in his neighborhood.  

 The majority of the world's people are concerned with matters that affect only family or friends over a short period of time. Others look farther ahead in time or over a larger area-a city or a nation. Only a very few people have a global perspective that extends far into the future. Fields can be destroyed by an international war. Local officials' plans can be overturned by a national policy. A country's economic development can be thwarted by a lack of world demand for its products. Indeed there is increasing concern today that most personal and national objectives may ultimately be frustrated by long-term, global trends such as those mentioned by U Thant. Are the implications of these global trends actually so threatening that their resolution should take precedence over local, short-term concerns ? Is it true, as U Thant suggested, that there remains less than a decade to bring these trends under control ? If they are not brought under control, what will the consequences be ? What methods does mankind have for solving global problems, and what will be the results and the costs of employing each of them? These are the questions that we have been investigating in the first phase of The Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind.

Every person approaches his problems, wherever they occur on the space-time graph, with the help of models. A model is simply an ordered set of assumptions about a complex system. It is an attempt to understand some aspect of the infinitely varied world by selecting from perceptions and past experience a set of general observations applicable to the problem at hand. A farmer uses a mental model of his land, his assets, market prospects, and past weather conditions to decide which crops to plant each year. A surveyor constructs a physical model-a map-to help in planning a road. An economist uses mathematical models to understand and predict the flow of international trade. Decision-makers at every level unconsciously use mental models to choose among policies that will shape our future world. These mental models are, of necessity, very simple when compared with the reality from which they are abstracted. The human brain, remarkable as it is, can only keep track of a limited number of the complicated, simultaneous interactions that determine the nature of the real world. We, too, have used a model. Ours is a formal, written model of the world.• It constitutes a preliminary attempt to improve our mental models of long-term, global problems by combining the large amount of information that is already in human minds and in written records with the new information-processing tools that mankind's increasing knowledge has produced-the scientific method, systems analysis, and the modern computer. Our world model was built specifically to investigate five major trends of global concern-accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment. These trends are all interconnected in many ways, and their development is measured in decades or centuries, rather than in months or years. With the model we are seeking to understand the causes of these trends, their interrelationships, and their implications as much as one hundred years in the future. The model we have constructed is, like every other model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished. We are well aware of its shortcomings, but we believe that it is the most useful model now available for dealing with problems far out on the space-time graph. To our knowledge it is the only formal model in existence that is truly global in scope, that has a time horizon longer than thirty years, and that includes important variables such as population, food production, and pollution, not as independent entities, but as dynamically interacting elements, as they are in the real world. Since ours is a formal, or mathematical, model it also has two important advantages over mental models. First, every assumption we make is written in a precise form so that it is open to inspection and criticism by all. Second, after the assumptions have been scrutinized, discussed, and revised to agree with our best current knowledge, their implications for the future behavior of the world system can be traced without error by a computer, no matter how complicated they become. We feel that the advantages listed above make this model unique among all mathematical and mental world models available to us today. But there is no reason to be satisfied with it in its present form. We intend to alter, expand, and improve it as our own knowledge and the world data base gradually improve. In spite of the preliminary state of our work, we believe it is important to publish the model and our findings now. Decisions are being made every day, in every part of the world, that will affect the physical, economic, and social conditions of the world system for decades to come. These decisions cannot wait for perfect models and total understanding. They will be made on the basis of some model, mental or written, in any case. We feel that the model described here is already sufficiently developed to be of some use to decision-makers. Furthermore, the basic behavior modes we have already observed in this model appear to be so fundamental and general that we do not expect our broad conclusions to be substantially altered by further revisions.  It is not the purpose of this book to give a complete, scientific description of all the data and mathematical equations included in the world model. Such a description can be found in the final technical report of our project. Rather, in The Limits to Growth we summarize the main features of the model and our findings in a brief, nontechnical way. The emphasis is meant to be not on the equations or the intricacies of the model, but on what it tells us about the world. We have used a computer as a tool to aid our own understanding of the causes and consequences of the accelerating trends that characterize the modern world, but familiarity with computers is by no means necessary to comprehend or to discuss our conclusions. The implications of those accelerating trends raise issues that go far beyond the proper domain of a purely scientific document. They must be debated by a wider community than that of scientists alone. Our purpose here is to open that debate. The following conclusions have emerged from our work so far. We are by no means the first group to have stated them. For the past several decades, people who have looked at the world with a global, long-term perspective have reached similar conclusions. Nevertheless, the vast majority of policymakers seems to be actively pursuing goals that are inconsistent with these results.

Our conclusions are: 1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential. 3. If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success. These conclusions are so far-reaching and raise so many questions for further study that we are quite frankly overwhelmed by the enormity of the job that must be done. We hope that this book will serve to interest other people, in many fields of study and in many countries of the world, to raise the space and time horizons of their concerns and to join us in understanding and preparing for a period of great transition the transition from growth to global equilibrium.

Stopping CO2 emissions is not enough, they must be sucked out of the atmosphere also.

                                      Comments due  March 30, 2019

Three years ago the world pledged to keep global warming “well below” 2°C hotter than pre-industrial times. Climate scientists and campaigners purred. Politicians patted themselves on the back. Despite the Paris agreement’s ambiguities and some setbacks, including President Donald Trump’s decision to yank America out of the deal, the air of self-congratulation was still on show among those who gathered in Bonn for a follow-up summit.

Yet the most damaging thing about America’s renewed spasm of climate-change rejection may not be the effect on its own emissions, which could turn out to be negligible. It is the cover America has given other countries to avoid acknowledging the problems of the agreement America is abandoning.

The Paris agreement assumes, in effect, that the world will find ways to suck CO₂ out of the air. That is because, in any realistic scenario, emissions cannot be cut fast enough to keep the total stock of greenhouse gases sufficiently small to limit the rise in temperature successfully. But there is barely any public discussion of how to bring about the extra “negative emissions” needed to reduce the stock of CO₂ (and even less about the more radical idea of lowering the temperature by blocking out sunlight). Unless that changes, the promise of limiting the harm of climate change is almost certain to be broken.

Don’t be so positive
Fully 101 of the 116 models the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses to chart what lies ahead assume that carbon will be taken out of the air in order for the world to have a good chance of meeting the 2°C target. The total amount of CO₂ to be soaked up by 2100 could be a staggering 810bn tonnes, as much as the world’s economy produces in 20 years at today’s rate . Putting in place carbon-removal schemes of this magnitude would be an epic endeavour even if tried-and-tested techniques existed.

They do not. A few power stations and industrial facilities capture CO₂ that would otherwise end up in the air and store it away underground, a practice known as carbon capture and storage. But this long-touted approach to cutting emissions still operates on only a very small scale, dealing with just a few tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ a year. And such schemes merely lower emissions; they do not reverse them.

What might? One option is to plant more forests (which act as a carbon sink) or to replace the deep-ploughing of fields with shallow tillage (which helps soils absorb and retain more CO₂). Another is to apply carbon capture and storage to biomass-burning power plants, stashing the carbon sucked up by crops or trees burnt as fuel. Fancier ideas exist. Carbon could be seized directly from the air, using chemical filters, and stored. Or minerals could be ground up and sowed over land or sea, accelerating from aeons to years the natural weathering process that binds them to CO₂ to form carbonate rocks.

Whether any of these technologies can do the job in time is unknown. All of them are very expensive and none is proven at scale. Persuading Earth’s swelling population to plant an India’s worth of new trees or crops to produce energy, as the climate simulations require, looks highly improbable. Changing agricultural practices would be cheaper, but scientists doubt that this would suck up enough CO₂ even to offset the greenhouse gases released by farming. Direct air capture and enhanced weathering use less land, but both are costlier. Though renewable energy could profitably generate a fair share of the world’s electricity, nobody knows how to get rich simply by removing greenhouse gases.

When the need is great, the science is nascent and commercial incentives are missing, the task falls to government and private foundations. But they are falling short.

More science would serve as a collective insurance policy against a grave threat. However, this year Britain became just the first country to devote cash to such projects; America is eyeing grants, too, despite Mr Trump. Britain’s one-off £8.6m ($11.3m) is footling. Roughly $15bn a year goes to research into all low-carbon technologies; that pot needs to increase, and more of it should be channelled to extracting carbon.

Another form of climate denial

A big market for CO₂ would provide an extra incentive to mine it from the atmosphere. But its uses are still limited. If regulators forced industries that cannot convert to electricity, such as aviation, to use synthetic fuels rather than fossil ones, demand for the CO₂that is the raw material for those fuels could increase greatly. The industries, though, would resist.

If the market will not provide an incentive, governments could. The case for a proper price on carbon (this paper has favoured a tax) is strong. Its absence is one of the reasons carbon capture and storage has not taken off as a way of reducing emissions from fossil-fuel plants; the kit needed can double the price of electricity. Yet, setting a price high enough to encourage negative emissions would asphyxiate the economy.

Subsidies are another option. Without them, renewables would have taken longer to compete with fossil fuels. But they are wasteful. Germany has lavished $1trn on low-carbon electricity, and even then still depends on fossil fuels for over half its power. Still, governments could offer a reward for every tonne of CO₂ that is extracted and stored. In theory such a bounty should be paid from a fund bankrolled by countries according to their cumulative historical emissions (top comes America followed by Europe, with China rapidly closing the gap). In practice no mechanism exists to get them to cough up.

Indeed, facing the shortcomings of Paris is beyond most governments. Under Mr Trump, America is not prepared to reduce the flow of emissions, let alone the stock. But the problem would not magically be solved even if America returned to the fold. Many rich countries say they are already doing their bit by cutting emissions more steeply than developing countries. In fact, taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is not an alternative to belching out less greenhouse gas. It is necessary in its own right. Unless policymakers take negative emissions seriously, the promises of Paris will ring ever more hollow.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "What they don’t tell you"

A Brief Intro to The Kuznets Curve

                                                    Comments due by March 16, 2019

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is a hypothesized relationship between various indicators of environmental degradation and income per capita. In the early stages of economic growth degradation and pollution increase, but beyond some level of income per capita, which will vary for different indicators, the trend reverses, so that at high income levels economic growth leads to environmental improvement. This implies that the environmental impact indicator is an inverted U-shaped function of income per capita.

An example of an estimated EKC is shown in Figure 1. The EKC is named for Kuznets (1955) who hypothesized that income inequality first rises and then falls as economic development proceeds.

Figure 1. Environmental Kuznets curve for sulfur emissions.  

 If the EKC hypothesis were true, then rather than being a threat to the environment, as claimed by the environmental movement and associated scientists in the past (e.g., Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972), economic growth would be the means to eventual environmental improvement. This change in thinking was already underway in the emerging idea of sustainable economic development promulgated by the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) in Our Common Future. The possibility of achieving sustainability without a significant deviation from business as usual was an obviously enticing prospect for many––letting humankind “have our cake and eat it”.

Proponents of the EKC hypothesis argue that

at higher levels of development, structural change towards information-intensive industries and services, coupled with increased environmental awareness, enforcement of environmental regulations, better technology and higher environmental expenditures, result in leveling off and gradual decline of environmental degradation.

It is clear that emissions of many pollutants per unit of output have declined over time in developed countries with increasingly stringent environmental regulations and technical innovations. But the mix of residuals has shifted from sulfur and nitrogen oxides to carbon dioxide and solid waste so that aggregate waste is still high and per capita waste may not have declined.⁹ Economic activity is inevitably environmentally disruptive in some way. Satisfying the material needs of people requires the use and disturbance of energy flows and materials stocks. Therefore, an effort to reduce some environmental impacts may just aggravate other problems.

The evidence shows that the statistical analysis on which the environmental Kuznets curve is based is not robust. There is little evidence for a common inverted U-shaped pathway that countries follow as their income rises. There may be an inverted U-shaped relation between urban ambient concentrations of some pollutants and income though this should be tested with more rigorous time-series or panel data methods. It seems unlikely that the EKC is an adequate model of emissions or concentrations

Green New Deal

                                                Comments due  March 9, 2019

I imagine that each of you has heard of and maybe has formed ideas about the Green New Deal. The following is the text as it was released by AOC. Since this post is a bit long and since we have an exam on March 1, 2019 I decided to treat this post as two separate assignments. That is why the due date is two weeks from now and not the customary one week. I expect to read about your views: do you think the plan is viable, do you think that we can afford it, do you think that it will make a meaningful difference if implemented. Speak your mind but as always what you say must be guided by facts.

If you prefer to read the slightly longer full text instead of the resolution then go to: http://filesforprogress.org/pdfs/Green_New_Deal.pdf

· We will begin work immediately on Green New Deal bills to put the nuts and bolts on the plan described in this resolution (important to say so someone else can’t claim this mantle).

 · This is a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and a timeline.

o The Green New Deal resolution a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all. It will: § Move America to 100% clean and renewable energy § Create millions of family supporting-wage, union jobs § Ensure a just transition for all communities and workers to ensure economic security for people and communities that have historically relied on fossil fuel industries § Ensure justice and equity for frontline communities by prioritizing investment, training, climate and community resiliency, economic and environmental benefits in these communities. § Build on FDR’s second bill of rights by guaranteeing: · A job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security · High-quality education, including higher education and trade schools · Clean air and water and access to nature · Healthy food · High-quality health care · Safe, affordable, adequate housing · Economic environment free of monopolies · Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work · There is no time to waste.

 o IPCC Report said global emissions must be cut by by 40-60% by 2030. US is 20% of total emissions. We must get to 0 by 2030 and lead the world in a global Green New Deal. · Americans love a challenge. This is our moonshot.

o When JFK said we’d go to the moon by the end of the decade, people said impossible.

o If Eisenhower wanted to build the interstate highway system today, people would ask how we’d pay for it.

o When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War 2, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him. At the time, the U.S. had produced 3,000 planes in the last year. By the end of the war, we produced 300,000 planes. That’s what we are capable of if we have real leadership · This is massive investment in our economy and society, not expenditure.

o We invested 40-50% of GDP into our economy during World War 2 and created the greatest middle class the US has seen. o The interstate highway system has returned more than $6 in economic productivity for every $1 it cost o This is massively expanding existing and building new industries at a rapid pace – growing our economy · The Green New Deal has momentum.

o 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans support the Green New Deal o Nearly every major Democratic Presidential contender say they back the Green New deal including: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Jeff Merkeley, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Inslee. o 45 House Reps and 330+ groups backed the original resolution for a select committee o Over 300 local and state politicians have called for a federal Green New Deal o New Resolution has 20 co-sponsors, about 30 groups

 Why 100% clean and renewable and not just 100% renewable? Are you saying we won’t transition off fossil fuels? Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases. Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy. Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. We do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast as possible. We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero. Is nuclear a part of this? A Green New Deal is a massive investment in renewable energy production and would not include creating new nuclear plants. It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible. No one has put the full 10-year plan together yet, and if it is possible to get to fully 100% renewable in 10 years, we will do that. Does this include a carbon tax? The Green New Deal is a massive investment in the production of renewable energy industries and infrastructure. We cannot simply tax gas and expect workers to figure out another way to get to work unless we’ve first created a better, more affordable option. So we’re not ruling a carbon tax out, but a carbon tax would be a tiny part of a Green New Deal in the face of the gigantic expansion of our productive economy and would have to be preceded by first creating the solutions necessary so that workers and working class communities are not affected. While a carbon tax may be a part of the Green New Deal, it misses the point and would be off the table unless we create the clean, affordable options first. Does this include cap and trade? The Green New Deal is about creating the renewable energy economy through a massive investment in our society and economy. Cap and trade assumes the existing market will solve this problem for us, and that’s simply not true. While cap and trade may be a tiny part of the larger Green New Deal plan to mobilize our economy, any cap and trade legislation will pale in comparison to the size of the mobilization and must recognize that existing legislation can incentivize companies to create toxic hotspots in frontline communities, so anything here must ensure that frontline communities are prioritized. Does a GND ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear power plants? The Green New Deal makes new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear plants unnecessary. This is a massive mobilization of all our resources into renewable energies. It would simply not make sense to build new fossil fuel infrastructure because we will be creating a plan to reorient our entire economy to work off renewable energy. Simply banning fossil fuels and nuclear plants immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. Are you for CCUS? We believe the right way to capture carbon is to plant trees and restore our natural ecosystems. CCUS technology to date has not proven effective. How will you pay for it? The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit. There is also space for the government to take an equity stake in projects to get a return on investment. At the end of the day, this is an investment in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation, so the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity. Why do we need a sweeping Green New Deal investment program? Why can’t we just rely on regulations and taxes and the private sector to invest alone such as a carbon tax or a ban on fossil fuels? · The level of investment required is massive. Even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.

· The speed of investment required will be massive. Even if all the billionaires and companies could make the investments required, they would not be able to pull together a coordinated response in the narrow window of time required to jump-start major new projects and major new economic sectors. Also, private companies are wary of making massive investments in unproven research and technologies; the government, however, has the time horizon to be able to patiently make investments in new tech and R&D, without necessarily having a commercial outcome or application in mind at the time the investment is made. Major examples of government investments in “new” tech that subsequently spurred a boom in the private section include DARPA projects, the creation of the internet - and, perhaps most recently, the government’s investment in Tesla.

 · Simply put, we don’t need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs); we also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment. In the same way that a company that is trying to change how it does business may need to make big upfront capital investments today in order to reap future benefits (for e.g., building a new factory to increase production or buying new hardware and software to totally modernize its IT system), a country that is trying to change how its economy works will need to make big investments today to jump-start and develop new projects and sectors to power the new economy.

 · Merely incentivizing the private sector doesn’t work - e.g. the tax incentives and subsidies given to wind and solar projects have been a valuable spur to growth in the US renewables industry but, even with such investment promotion subsidies, the present level of such projects is simply inadequate to transition to a fully greenhouse gas neutral economy as quickly as needed. · Once again, we’re not saying that there isn’t a role for private sector investments; we’re just saying that the level of investment required will need every actor to pitch in and that the government is best placed to be the prime driver.

Resolution Summary

 · Created in consultation with multiple groups from environmental community, environmental justice community, and labor community

· 5 goals in 10 years:

                                      o Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers

                                      o Create millions of high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all

                                      o Invest in infrastructure and industry to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century

                                      o Clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all

                                      o Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities

· National mobilization our economy through 14 infrastructure and industrial projects. Every project strives to remove greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from every sector of our economy:

           1   Build infrastructure to create resiliency against climate change-related disasters

          2    Repair and upgrade U.S. infrastructure. ASCE estimates this is $4.6 trillion at minimum.

          3   Meet 100% of power demand through clean and renewable energy sources

          4   Build energy-efficient, distributed smart grids and ensure affordable access to electricity

          5   Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency

          6   Massively expand clean manufacturing (like solar panel factories, wind turbine factories, battery and storage manufacturing, energy efficient manufacturing components) and remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing

           7   Work with farmers and ranchers to create a sustainable, pollution and greenhouse gas free, food system that ensures universal access to healthy food and expands independent family farming

          8   Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle

           9   Mitigate long-term health effects of climate change and pollution

         10  Remove greenhouse gases from our atmosphere and pollution through afforestation, preservation, and other methods of restoring our natural ecosystems

          11  Restore all our damaged and threatened ecosystems

          12  Clean up all the existing hazardous waste sites and abandoned sites

          13  Identify new emission sources and create solutions to eliminate those emissions

          14  Make the US the leader in addressing climate change and share our technology, expertise and products with the rest of the world to bring about a global Green New Deal

· Social and economic justice and security through 15 requirements:

o Massive federal investments and assistance to organizations and businesses participating in the green new deal and ensuring the public gets a return on that investment

o Ensure the environmental and social costs of emissions are taken into account

o Provide job training and education to all

o Invest in R&D of new clean and renewable energy technologies

 o Doing direct investments in frontline and deindustrialized communities that would otherwise be hurt by the transition to prioritize economic benefits there

o Use democratic and participatory processes led by frontline and vulnerable communities to implement GND projects locally

o Ensure that all GND jobs are union jobs that pay prevailing wages and hire local

o Guarantee a job with family-sustaining wages

o Protect right of all workers to unionize and organize

o Strengthen and enforce labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards

o Enact and enforce trade rules to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas and grow domestic manufacturing

o Ensure public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and eminent domain is not abused

o Obtain free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples

o Ensure an economic environment free of monopolies and unfair competition

o Provide high-quality health care, housing, economic security, and clean air, clean water, healthy food, and nature to all

Earth Overshoot Day: Is it a good measure?

                                        Comments due by February 23, 2019

Experts widely agree that human activities are harming the global environment. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world economy has grown dramatically. Overall this is a success story, since rising incomes have lifted millions of people out of poverty. But it has been fueled by population growth and increasing consumption of natural resources.

Rising demand to meet the needs of more than 7 billion people has transformed land use and generated unprecedented levels of pollution, affecting biodiversity, forests, wetlands, water bodies, soils and air quality.

On Aug. 1, humans will have consumed more natural resources in 2018 than the Earth can regenerate this year, according to the California-based Global Footprint Network. This environmental nonprofit calculates the annual arrival of Earth Overshoot Day – the date when humanity’s demands on nature exceed what the network’s analysts estimate the Earth can regenerate over the entire year. Aug. 1 is the earliest date since ecological overshoot began in the early 1970s.

Aug. 1 is the earliest arrival of Earth Overshoot Day since humans started overusing the planet’s resources in the 1970s.Global Footprint Network, CC BY-SA

As an ecological economist and scholar of sustainability, I am particularly interested in metrics and indicators that can help us understand human uses of Earth’s ecosystems. Better measurements of the impacts of human activities can help identify ways to sustain both human well-being and natural resources.

Earth Overshoot Day is a compelling concept and has raised awareness of the growing impact of human activities on the planet. Unfortunately, the methodology used to calculate it and the ecological footprint on which it is based is conceptually flawed and practically unusable in any science or policy context. In my view, the ecological footprint ultimately does not measure overuse of natural resources – and it may very well underestimate it.

Rising demands, finite resources

The Global Footprint Network estimates when Earth Overshoot Day will arrive based on its National Footprint Accounts. These include extensive data sets that the organization uses to calculate two overarching indicators:

·         The ecological footprint, perhaps the most commonly used metric of the environmental impacts of human resource use. Each country’s ecological footprint is an estimate of the biological resources required to meet its population’s consumption demands and absorb its carbon emissions.

·         National biocapacity, which is an estimate of how well each country’s ecosystems can produce the natural resources consumed by humans and absorb the waste and pollution that humans generate.

Both of these measures are expressed in global hectares. One hectare is equal to 10,000 square meters, or about 2.47 acres.

Going into overshoot

To estimate when Earth Overshoot Day will arrive, the Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days in a given year for which Earth has enough biocapacity to provide for humans’ total ecological footprint. The rest of the year represents “global overshoot.”

When the footprint of consumption worldwide exceeds biocapacity, the authors assert that humans are exceeding the regenerative capacity of Earth’s ecosystems. This year, they estimate that humans are using natural resources 1.7 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate – or, put another way, consuming 1.7 Earths.

As an example, the ecological footprint for France is 4.7 global hectares per person, and global biocapacity is 1.7 hectares per person. Therefore, it would take (4.7/ 1.7 =) 2.8 Earths if everyone lived like the French.

France’s Overshoot Day would be estimated as (365 x (1.7/ 4.7)) = 130, or the 130th day of the year, which is May 5 based on 2014 data. The United States reached overshoot even earlier, on March 1However, there are some fundamental and misleading shortcomings in these calculations. In a 2013 paper, six authors from academia, The Nature Conservancy and the California-based Breakthrough Instituteanalyzed how the Ecological Footprint falls short. In their view, it primarily measures humans’ carbon footprint but does not address other key impacts.

To calculate ecological footprints, the Global Footprint Network estimates the supply and demand of renewable biological resources across six land use types: forests, fishing grounds, croplands, grazing lands, developed lands and the area of forest required to offset human carbon emissions – that is, the carbon footprint. According to the network’s own analysis, each of these land use types is nearly in balance or in surplus, except for the carbon footprint.

The two key categories for producing food – cropland and grazing land – are defined in such a way that they can never be in deficit. And the analysis does not reflect environmental consequences of human use of these lands, such as soil erosion, nutrient runoff or overuse of water. It measures only land area.

For example, the ecological footprint for Indonesia is 1.61 global hectares per person, which is among the lowest 30 percent of all countries. But according to a 2014 study, Indonesia has the highest deforestation rate in the world.

Furthermore, the footprint calculation does not consider whether stocks of natural resources are decreasing or increasing as a result of human consumption. This question is critical for understanding ecological impacts.

These national ecological footprint calculations also conflate sustainability with self-sufficiency. They assume that every nation should produce all of the resources it consumes, even though it might be less expensive for countries to import some goods than to produce them at home.

As an example, the network lists Canada as an “ecological creditor” whose biocapacity exceeds its population’s ecological footprint. However, Canada is among the top 10 oil-producing countries in the world, and exports much of that oil for foreign consumption. Most of it goes to the United States, an “ecological debtor” that consumes more resources than it produces.

Thinking purely in terms of generic “resources,” everyone is better off when debtor countries can import resources from nations with supplies to spare. There are real and important environmental impacts associated with producing and consuming oil, but the network’s calculations do not address them. Nor do they reflect the decline in natural capital from extracting a nonrenewable resource.

Measuring sustainability

The Global Footprint Network asserts that “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” but it may be impossible to create a single metric that can capture all human impacts on the environment. Earth Overshoot Day highlights unsustainable uses of natural resources, but we need scientifically robust ecological indicators to inform environmental policy, and a broader understanding of ecological risks.

Better measurements of sustainability should reflect changes in our supplies of natural capital, include estimates of uncertainty and incorporate multiple pathways to reducing carbon footprints. The best tool for measuring human impacts on the planet may be a dashboard of environmental indicators, not a footprint.