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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Is societal course correction possible before societal collapse?
“The UK, like almost all nations, is profoundly unprepared for crises coming from climate chaos and ecological breakdown. Such crises appear increasingly likely, as even evidence from the UK security community indicates.
“For too long, discourses of systems change in response to ecological breakdown have revolved around debates that will not resolve themselves until it is too late to prepare adequately. Views on the future differ dramatically because of unprovable assumptions, influenced by the inherent indeterminacy of cutting-edge research itself. There is no way for models of global environmental catastrophe to prove their predictive validity until it is too late.
“We use the debate around degrowth as a case study. Degrowth is gaining traction in academic and activist communities. However we argue that the growth/degrowth debate remains in an important sense ‘unwinnable’, for the kind of reasons outlined in the previous paragraph. It is a profound and dangerous illusion to believe that the growthist ideological status quo, or even the general public, are going to be intellectually convinced that degrowth is certainly correct in time to avoid catastrophe.
“The most productive path forward lies in pursuing a more attainable consensus around what an adaptive response to the worst case scenario looks like. This necessitates great focus on creating a ‘Plan B’ — having a strategy of ‘Strategic Adaptation’ that is politically and culturally attractive. This implies devoting greater time to concretely planning for plausible disaster scenarios, building national and local resilience and building preparedness for disruption into our lives.”
Degrowth of GDP, and decommodification of the social economy
“Humanity cannot continue to expand production and consumption exponentially on a finite planet. It’s biophysically impossible. And yet the US Government and respectable opinion remain in zones of denial or deflection. But few people dare to name, let alone tackle, the real driver of climate collapse — the capitalist economy’s demand for relentless economic growth.
“I decided to have a long talk with a leading degrowth scholar and activist, Federico Savini, to get a keener sense of the strategies degrowth is calling for, the hotspots of degrowth advocacy, and the challenges the movement is facing.
“Savini concedes, ‘The term degrowth is not a political winning narrative. This is quite clear. You don’t get votes or move large masses of people with terms like degrowth or postgrowth’. Growth is often justified as the best way to create a surplus and tax revenues that can fund essential social services for everyone, but that very growth also expands carbon emissions and destroys ecosystems.
“The way to break this vicious circle, Savini argues, is to focus explicitly on building up the essential economies of care, housing, transport, health, education, creativity and art — to stop privatizing and commodifying all the social services that are needed.
“A variety of social movements offer constructive options — commons, cooperatives, the Solidarity Economy, cosmo-local production, peer production, community wealth-building, bioregional forms of relocalization.”
Mutualistic exchange by moneyless vouchers
“From an early age, I could see nature being destroyed more each year, power becoming more concentrated, and society becoming more corporate. I could also see that our problems are systemic, with absolutely nothing challenging the corporate system.
“I read, talked, asked questions, and ultimately rejected various [corporate antagonists] in roughly this order:
- Marxism (good critique, terrible solution)
- Electoral politics (captured)
- Protest (barely registers)
- Intentional communities (take too much energy internally)
- Behavioural change / global consciousness raising (not enough people will do it)
- Divine intervention (just kidding)
“I ended up supporting an ecosystem of co-operative, mutualist and individual initiatives to replace capitalism, first in communities, and then at scale. But I knew it was a long shot, because of the power of capital and because co-ops were beginning to be bought out by capitalists.
“I started to discover tools and ideas that I thought were promising, but discrete and disconnected. But they’re not: they can be (and are being) used together to form networks that have the potential to grow exponentially to challenge the status quo — to build a commons economy, a commons society, a commons world.
“Mutual credit — The central theme of an animated movie by a Canadian, Paul Grignon, called Money as Debt is that almost all money in circulation comes into existence when banks make loans. They just type in numbers, and suddenly, the borrowers magically have money in their account.
“I wanted to find alternatives [to corporate banks], and one of the best books I found was The End of Money and the Future of Civilisation by Tom Greco. His focus was mutual credit — a way of trading that doesn’t require bank-issued money. It’s just an accounting system, for who’s done what for whom — no money required.
“Credit Commons — Commons projects can be connected together via the ‘Credit Commons Protocol’ in a federation, with no centre. Each local group retains full autonomy. Everything is interoperable, so that housing, energy or care vouchers are transferable between groups.
“Use-credit obligations — Imagine a community energy group wanting to put up a wind turbine. To raise the money, they’d need to go into debt, which means the infrastructure will be in the hands of capitalists before long. Instead, the community energy group issues energy vouchers, denominated in kWh, not £ (which makes them inflation-proof).
“This basic idea can work in every sector of the economy, and vouchers (especially housing, water, food, energy, care) could form the basis of a pension that doesn’t involve money. The vouchers are denominated in ‘stuff’ (kWh, cubic metres of water, hours of care, acres of land, square metres of housing etc.), which makes them inflation-proof and doesn’t involve banks.”
Gaming the “financialization” system
“Imagine yourself as a housing developer — you win approval for a new subdivision of 1,000 new housing units. Then, perhaps years before the houses are completed and decades before the initial mortgages are repaid, you sell your shares in the venture for a tidy profit. A neat trick, this, cashing in today on bills that others will pay long into the future.
“You have become wealthier, but have you been a ‘wealth creator’? For that matter, are you contributing to ‘economic growth’? Where does the money come from for this venture: is it capital accumulated from the past, or is this money newly created the moment credit is extended by banks as off-setting debts and recorded on balance sheets?
“Is the earning of interest some natural property of money? Why was the phrase ‘the economy’ almost never used until the mid-20th century, while today the economy is routinely invoked as the determinant of what is politically, socially, or environmentally acceptable?
“Why do banks continue to invest in new fossil fuel infrastructures, in full public knowledge that these infrastructures are robbing future generations of a stable climate?”
Kansas regenerative ag practices somewhat popular, others not
“After the Dust Bowl, when a devastating drought triggered massive clouds of blowing dirt that engulfed Kansas, farmers made sweeping changes to their practices. Nearly a century later, regenerative agriculture proponents say the industry stands at the threshold of the next revolution, but skepticism persists.
“Said Charles Rice in the KSU Agronomy Department, ‘By focusing on biodiversity, its methods create resilient systems capable of withstanding climate extremes while potentially increasing the nutritional quality of food’.
“Regenerative agriculture depends on six fundamental principles, Rice said. Minimal tillage and no-till practices help sequester atmospheric carbon within the ground. Cover crops shield the land from the elements and suppresses weeds. The presence of living roots year-round provides essential nutrients for the microbial ‘engine’ that powers fertile land. Diversification further strengthens these ecosystems. Integrating livestock into crop systems offers additional benefits, such as natural fertilization from manure and enhanced carbon storage. The final principle requires producers to tailor techniques to their specific soil types and local climates to maximize both social and environmental sustainability.
“While the state leads the nation in no-till farming, used on 40-50% of its cropped area, only 3.2% of the state’s agricultural land currently employs winter cover crops.
“There are a lot of hurdles that keep this from being widely adopted. Federal farm programs don’t encourage regenerative practices. Also, if a farmer is leasing ground, adopting such practices may depend on an agreement with the landowner. It takes more planning, and there are a lot of factors that go into it. However, as water and other resources become scarcer, the current heavy reliance on irrigation and chemical applications is unsustainable.”
Mis-measured motion of the ocean
“Climate change’s rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and governments originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said.
“Researchers reviewed hundreds of scientific studies and hazard assessments, finding that about 90% underestimated baseline coastal water heights by an average of 1 foot (30 centimeters). It’s a far more frequent problem in the Global South, the Pacific and Southeast Asia, and less so in Europe and along Atlantic coasts.
“One simple way to understand this is that many studies assume sea levels without waves or currents, when the reality at the water’s edge is of oceans constantly roiled by wind, tides, currents, changing temperatures, and things like El Niño. Calculations that may be correct for the seas overall or for the land aren’t quite right at that key intersection point of water and land.”
World markets reeling from tin soldier Trump
“Governments around the world are desperate to bring down oil prices in the wake of a cutoff of about one-fifth of the world’s supply due to the Iran war closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Here are some of the moves we’ve seen so far.
“The International Energy Agency called an emergency meeting to discuss release of strategic petroleum reserves to ease prices. But it is unlikely that the daily release of oil will be more than a fraction of the lost barrels given constraints on how fast the reserve can be accessed.
“Some countries are implementing price caps, rationing, and reducing the workweek in order to cope with shortages of oil products.
“The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced that it may intervene in the futures market for oil to tamp down speculation. Not surprisingly, the heads of major futures and stock exchanges didn’t like the idea of Treasury manipulating prices [when] such manipulation would be considered illegal if private individuals did it. Moreover, public exchanges are meant to be places for price discovery. How can customers using those exchanges expect to discover the true price of oil if the U.S. government is putting its thumb on the scale?
“Now, here is a stratagem that few people recognized as intentional manipulation: rumor mongering. The U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright posted on social media that ‘the U.S. Navy successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets’. The oil market swooned 19% immediately afterward. The post turned out to be false and was quickly deleted.
“The United States is offering temporary waivers to countries that wish to buy oil from Russia, which is under sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a way to punish Russia. The oil sanctions consist of price caps, insurance bans for illicit ships, asset freezes on Russian oil companies, and many other measures. The purpose [of the sanctions] has been to reduce Russian income from oil via price caps while NOT depriving the world market of oil. The waivers won’t make much difference in the available supply, and they are allowing Russia to reap a huge windfall.
“There are hints that the U.S. is working on a plan to open the Strait of Hormuz. It seems to me to be a fool’s errand that is unlikely to succeed. The Iranian military has demonstrated its ability to target whatever it wants to blow up very precisely. Of course, the fastest way to bring down oil prices would be to end the war with Iran.”
Plug-in solar threatens stranglehold by utilities
“Easy-to-install solar panels that plug into a regular outlet are getting attention because these pbalcony solar panels start shaving off part of a utility bill right away. The panels are already popular in Germany, where more than 1.2 million of the small plug-in systems are registered.
“For the panels to become more widely available in the U.S., state lawmakers are proposing bills that eliminate complicated utility connection agreements, which are required for larger rooftop solar installations.
“But the drive toward plug-in solar is facing pushback from electric utilities. So far, utilities have won over lawmakers in five states and convinced them to delay votes on plug-in solar bills. Plug-in solar advocates say that safety concerns about the new technology have been addressed and that utilities are really just worried about losing business.
“The primary concern that utilities have raised with lawmakers is that during an outage, a panel could continue generating electricity and send the power through a home’s wiring and back out to the grid, where it could endanger a lineworker. ‘There are technical ways to mitigate those potential hazards for utility workers’, says Ken Boyce at UL Solutions. That’s also one of the issues UL Solutions will consider as it tests plug-in solar products for its certification.”
MAHA as vacuous as MAGA
“One of the world’s leading medical journals has issued a scathing rebuke of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to mark his first year leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The editorial, titled ‘Robert F. Kennedy Jr: 1 year of failure’ appears in the latest issue of The Lancet.
“A quote from the piece marks an otherwise blank front cover: ‘The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm’.
“To the Senate committee who confirmed his nomination, Kennedy promised a receptive and collaborative relationship, and to the public he promised a new era of unbiased science.
“10 days after his speech about trust and openness, HHS rescinded a 54-year-old policy of soliciting public comments for new rules and regulations, silencing the voices of many of the stakeholders he pledged to serve. Kennedy has summarily dismissed advisers and experts, communicated policy changes on pay-walled media, fired a whistleblower, and overseen the revisions of guidelines and recommendations, contradicting decades of established science, often to the benefit of industries he formerly condemned.
“The Lancet is one of the oldest peer-reviewed medical journals in circulation. It also boasts one of the highest impact factors, making it one of the most cited medical journals in the world.”
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