Mapping the UN Sustainable Development Goals
https://www.planetizen.com/node/94687/making-uns-sustainable-development-goals-great-again
Friday, September 8, 2017
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fallacy.asp
Thanks for this! It is so simple (good!) and straightforward. Correlated with Bastiat's thinking is that when something is destroyed, the finite (and ever entropy-bound) energy source that created it (embodied energy) is diminished, leading to long term and systemic economic decline.
Thanks for this! It is so simple (good!) and straightforward. Correlated with Bastiat's thinking is that when something is destroyed, the finite (and ever entropy-bound) energy source that created it (embodied energy) is diminished, leading to long term and systemic economic decline.
Actually, there are physics issues underlying the course chosen, so the owners really had no choice on the chosen. Many people claimed that there was a way to avoid disaster with answers ranging from (a) wind turbines and solar panels, (b) drill for more oil, or (c) learn to live with less. None of these were real choices, unfortunately.
Artleads says:I hope (c) can be explained more clearly. It’s often repeated that the system must grow or collapse. Lay people for whom money is a mystery may be stumped by this, and attempt to understand it as follows: The system has to grow in order to pay debt with interest. This is because people want to make a profit through lending. Paying debt with interest seems like an exponential growth process that must end when it’s clear that, over time, the prospect of getting repaid loses credibility. If the debt system is simply allowed to run out of steam, computers shut down, trucks stop running, and there is universal mayhem.A lender looking at this looming catastrophe might consider a different line of business long before the end is due. A catchy phrase I recently heard was, “low profit, high volume.” Finance a lot more things that ensure industrial society keeps working (whatever kind of political or economic system it requires to do so). If medicine, computers and trucking can keep on going, the top 30% of income earners might not even notice if they had to live on half of what they earn now. Just as the New Deal required the rich to take a cut for the good of the economic/industrial system, why would strategic cuts that don’t kill anybody not work now?What people need is very different from what they want. The money-greed dominant system doesn’t seem workable long term, or to be fixable. If the resources it requires to maintain it for so many billions operate by abstract, digital numbers, 90% of what is actually out there to sustain life is overlooked. It would otherwise require assessment of resources at a much more intimate level than is possible in a top-down, hyper complex global system.- Artleads says:(c) In other words, living with less could grow the economy. Some that have too much could “invest” in the lagging potential economy–greatly expanding the volume of economic players. At some point, rational thinking–the kind of thing that’s missing in my neck of the woods but could help expand economic activity–has to be tried..
- The reasons for needing growth go beyond needing to repay debt with interest.One issue, since the world is finite, it that there is a need to work around depletion. Thus, it becomes more and more expensive to extract resources of any type that are needed. For example, fresh water from wells may be adequate, as long as aquifers are not depleted. But once aquifers are depleted, some other approach must be used. For example, water must be piped in from a distance, or desalination must be used.A second issue is that world population is constantly rising. This means that there is less and less arable land per person. We must work around this problem in one way or another. A popular way is through irrigation. Of course, this runs into limits as well.A third issue is that we have a huge amount of built infrastructure such as electric transmission lines, roads, bridges, water pipes, sewer pipes, sewage treatment centers, and hydroelectric dams that must be maintained and repaired. In fact, the amount of required maintenance goes up each year, just to stay even.Needless to say, energy limits are tied into all of this as well. We need more and more energy resources to fix issues of both of these types. And as the EROEI people tell us endlessly, it takes increasing amounts of energy to extract energy. This is one (smallish) piece of our overall need for growth, or the system will collapse.
- Artleads says:Damnable complexity. As the drawings show in the link, replacing the flood control with the water recycling paradigm is alarmingly dependent on complexity, much of it hidden. At least, in the proposed model.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Tim Groves says:
I for one think novelty is overrated and variations on a theme—if done well and with a worthwhile theme—can be more useful as well as more entertaining. Even great artists and thinkers end up mining and recycling their own ideas or covering the same old ground in the course of their careers.
Gail’s work covers a well-defined and limited field and tends to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. She explores what’s happening in the macro-economy and tries to make sense of it by fathoming how the different phenomena connect with and influence each other, joining dots, extrapolating trends, and pointing out commonly-held misconceptions.
She’s been laboring on this work for a decade or more and so brand new insights are likely to be few and far between. Also, this sort of work is bound to involve revisiting the same topics and points over and over, coming at them from different directions and looking at them from different angles, and this is not by any means a fault.
For readers of her posts, repetition of many of the the same points helps greatly in helping us to become familiar with them is an aid to memory. We are more likely to retain a grasp of ideas we encounter several times than ideas we encounter only once.
- Trevor says:Great points. I’ve been on the same themes for 50 years, so I relate well to what you say. McPherson bumped my game up a notch or two, then fizzled out. Gail has helped me even more, and shows signs of being on a much steadier course. In fact, Gail’s and this site’s combined insights on energy make me now believe that steadiness is a now required way to avoid panic and energy drag. When we determine that there is a similar energy dynamic to the technological and the psychological, steady behavior in both areas seem to make sense.
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
DACA
In some perverse way, the Trump administration is FORCING "communities" to do work they need to do. While I wouldn't rule out there being a reprieve that makes DACA recipients able to stay here longer--can kicking--it's important for them to unify here, during or after deportation. They must stick together and work together throughout. Together, they must form a community where they are sent to, helping each other find work, shelter and safety. They need to marshal resources and expertise of groups in those places and start a movement for repatriation to the US. They have to develop and demonstrate the strengths that are clearly positive for America, and set the tone for more enlightened immigration and foreign policy relations between their native countries and ours.
In some perverse way, the Trump administration is FORCING "communities" to do work they need to do. While I wouldn't rule out there being a reprieve that makes DACA recipients able to stay here longer--can kicking--it's important for them to unify here, during or after deportation. They must stick together and work together throughout. Together, they must form a community where they are sent to, helping each other find work, shelter and safety. They need to marshal resources and expertise of groups in those places and start a movement for repatriation to the US. They have to develop and demonstrate the strengths that are clearly positive for America, and set the tone for more enlightened immigration and foreign policy relations between their native countries and ours.
Friday, September 1, 2017
"The ABAG process, linking housing targets to open land, is outdated. There is too little land (or money) for that kind of development anymore, if indeed there ever was. The approach to shelter must be more sophisticated and nuanced. Housing now must rely on reconfiguring the interior of too-large houses to accommodate multi units. And there are thousands of single-family houses which could be sensitively added onto to provide income for the original owner, as well as new, relatively small rental or condominium housing created from the add ons. Counter-intuitively, this will create a greater volume of new, affordable housing near to work than any alternatives, and will therefore generate greater taxes for cities. It will also greatly limit ecological and environmental destruction, when compared to building on open land."
https://www.planetizen.com/node/94583/whites-communities-bay-area-dont-plan-much-low-income-housing-their-neighbors-do
"Many planners contend that impervious surface itself is the problem. The more of it there is, the less absorption takes place and the more runoff has to be managed. Reducing development, then, is one of the best ways to manage urban flooding. The problem is, urban development hasn’t slowed in the last half-century. "
Reducing flooding through preserving open space has nothing to do with reducing development. Almost any US city could double the size of its housing capacity through infill and add-on development, creating just as many jobs and generating just as much taxes. This approach could keep economically stressed homeowners in place too. It just requires a little thought, something clearly lacking in city leaders everywhere.
https://www.planetizen.com/node/94567/houstons-drainage-problem
https://www.planetizen.com/node/94583/whites-communities-bay-area-dont-plan-much-low-income-housing-their-neighbors-do
"Many planners contend that impervious surface itself is the problem. The more of it there is, the less absorption takes place and the more runoff has to be managed. Reducing development, then, is one of the best ways to manage urban flooding. The problem is, urban development hasn’t slowed in the last half-century. "
Reducing flooding through preserving open space has nothing to do with reducing development. Almost any US city could double the size of its housing capacity through infill and add-on development, creating just as many jobs and generating just as much taxes. This approach could keep economically stressed homeowners in place too. It just requires a little thought, something clearly lacking in city leaders everywhere.
https://www.planetizen.com/node/94567/houstons-drainage-problem
HURRICANES AND BUILDING ON FLOOD PLAINS
Good points!
It is very obvious to actuaries that there is no point in building in flood planes, in areas that are in the paths of hurricanes. Yet local governments want as much revenue and “growth” as possible. Governments encourage the situation.
As people have noticed, there is very little private insurance that provides coverage in the case of hurricane. This is mostly because it is not possible to produce a salable product. If anyone tried to charge for the real expected cost of business interruption coverage for floods in Houston, for example, business owners would laugh, because the premiums were so high.
Some limited flood insurance is sold by the federal government. This is sold at give-away rates, but most buyers still consider the rates too high. With these rates, there continues to be building where it makes no sense to build. The US government has been in good enough shape to provide bailouts in the past. The assumption is that these bailouts will continue forever. They really can’t however, and this may be part of the coming collapse.
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