Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

From The War of the Ring

I have long found Tolkien to be an effective antidote to leaden academic prose. His sentences demonstrate such craft, and his epic language – evocative of Beowulf and Norse legend – contrasts pleasingly with the sesquipedalianism of the academy.

Reading The War of the Ring yesterday, I found a passage that is ironic in hindsight. Gandalf is explaining why vanquishing Sauron is a sufficient task, even though it may leave other perils to be faced by those in the future:

Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

This is strange to read, in light of climate change realities. The weather future generations shall have is now largely ours to rule, and we must decide how much suffering we are willing to impose on them for our convenience and for the pleasure of extravagant energy use.

I have heard it argued that there is no point in dealing with climate change, because some other problem will inevitably arise to confront those in the future. Alternatively, some argue that climate change should be ignored until other ills which they consider more pressing have been addressed. To me this seems a cowardly bit of rationalization. We have the knowledge know to foresee the consequences of our energy choices, and we have several varied courses of action open to us. In choosing how to rule the weather of the future, we ought to acknowledge that and confront the implications.

The difficulty of assessing the cost of nuclear power

This post includes some interesting information:

In the EIA’s analysis, which leaves out all incentives, the average cost of “advanced nuclear” or “next-generation nuclear” plants entering service in 2018—long lead times associated with these technologies will make it difficult to open any early—would be $108.40 per megawatt-hour (MWh), equivalent to $0.1084 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), in 2011 dollars. This seems in the right ballpark, as the estimated cost of power from the new nuclear plant under construction in the Kaliningrad region of Russia is around $0.10/kWh, a German lawmaker said in April.

For reference, the 2012 average retail price of electricity in the US was $0.1153/kWh. So the cost of new advanced nuclear power would be just barely below the retail price of electricity—power sold to you and me at home. (Commercial, industrial, and transportation customers all buy power for less than the LCOE cost for advanced nuclear power.)

In other words, it would be very difficult for a utility to make money selling power generated by advanced nuclear plants, if they had to shoulder the entire cost themselves. But they don’t.

Not included in the LCOE analysis is the cost of decommissioning nuclear plants, which is often externalized and pushed onto ratepayers through surcharges on their utility bills, or the cost of managing nuclear waste for decades, which is generally pushed onto taxpayers through the Department of Energy budget. And these are not trivial costs: Edison International estimates that decommissioning its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Diego, which it permanently retired last week, will cost around $3 billion. So the LCOE analysis actually understates the true, all-in cost of nuclear power.

Related:

Business and job creation

Nick Hanauer on ‘job creation’:

“So when businesspeople like me take credit for creating jobs, it’s a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around. Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring
more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do if and only if increasing customer demand requires it.

Further, that the goal of every business – profit – is largely a measure of our relative ability to not create jobs compared to our competitors. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous.”

Related: Voting based on the economy is dumb

What Toronto350.org is up to

We are quite busy this summer. We are working on finalizing our brief to the University of Toronto, making the case for why they should divest from fossil fuels. We could definitely use some expert assistance for some of the legal and financial sections, so if you know any lawyers or financial professionals who would be willing to have a look for us and make some suggestions, it would be much appreciated.

We are also taking part in the National Energy Board process on the reversal of the Enbridge Line 9 pipeline to carry diluted bitumen east. We have been accepted as a commenter, and will be providing written evidence in early August.

With the sponsorship of Toronto’s Pure+ Simple spas, we are also holding a massive screening of the film Do the Math on October 9th. It will be at the Bloor Cinema, which seats 700, and there will be two shows at 6:30pm and 8:30pm respectively. We are working to line up some exciting speakers, as well as food and beverage sponsors.

Finally, we are gearing up for a big recruitment drive at the beginning of the school year in September. We will be working to get the 300 endorsements we need for the completed brief, as well as swelling our ranks of supporters and volunteers.

Operational security for disclosing wrongdoing

Wired on the steps now required for whistleblowers to leak evidence of wrongdoing to journalists, in an age of ubiquitous surveillance:

“Get a dedicated computer or tablet: the cheapest Windows laptop will do. And pay cash, as our normal laptops have a host of automatic synchronization and similar services. Our personal web browsers also contain all sorts of location-identifying cookies. Even if you’re logged in to but don’t actually visit Facebook’s home page, a subpoena to Facebook can still reveal where you connect and what pages you visit — every “Like” button reports to Facebook that you are visiting that particular page, at a particular time, from a particular IP address.

Leave your cellphone, your normal computer, and your metro card (like SmarTrip) at home: anything that speaks over a wireless link must stay behind. Then go to a coffee shop that has open Wi-Fi, and once there open a new Gmail account that you will only use to contact the press and only from the dedicated computer. When registering, use no personal information that can identify you or your new account: no phone numbers, no names.

Don’t forget: if you get anything at the cafe, or take public transit, pay cash. Be prepared to walk a bit, too; you can’t stay close to home for this.

Of course, the job still isn’t finished. When you are done you must clear the browser’s cookies and turn off the Wi-Fi before turning off the computer and removing the battery. The dedicated computer should never be used on the network except when checking your press-contact account and only from open Wi-Fi connections away from home and work.”

Related: Wikileaks and whistleblowers

More on climate change and capitalism

My friend Stuart on climate change and capitalism: How to Change the Future — and Why We Need To!

Personally, I can see why the argument that capitalism and sustainability are incompatible is convincing to a lot of people. At the same time, I think we have enough of a project on our hands just in replacing the global energy system with a climate-friendly alternative. Replacing capitalism at the same time may well be impractical – and there is no way of being sure that any system with which we replace it will do any better. To me, the liberal economic solution of internalizing externalities through regulation and tools like carbon pricing seems like the most promising path for checking humanity’s more self-destructive impulses. Admittedly, success will require that governments and citizens take a longer-term view of their own interests and develop a greater ability to resist the influence of fossil fuel companies and the short-term temptations associated with excessive fossil fuel use.

Also, I think there is a critical role that capitalist finance will play in driving the global clean-energy transformation. Right now, the plan is to spend trillions of dollars during the next century extracting and processing the world’s remaining fossil fuels. If we are going to build things like country-sized renewable energy facilities (which we will need for everyone on the planet to develop or maintain lifestyles that will probably be acceptable to them), that massive investment will need to be re-directed and the capitalist mechanisms of innovation, deployment, and return-on-investment will likely be necessary.

There was a discussion about this here before: Climate change and capitalism