Some other relevant links:

George Monbiot is one of the best writers around, when it comes to the environment. Truly worth bookmarking and following:

George Monbiot’s blog

This is also a great site.

CLIMATE & CAPITALISM

From it’s About page:

About/Contact

CLIMATE & CAPITALISM is an ecosocialist journal, reflecting the viewpoint of environmental Marxism. It has three goals:

To provide news and analysis to inform, educate and develop the green left;
To contribute to building an international movement against capitalist destruction of the environment and for ecosocialism;
To encourage and facilitate collaboration and exchanges of views among socialists and ecology activists.

Very good, concise book in the topic of enviromentalism:

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: A Citizen’s Guide to Capitalism and the Environment by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster

bnw wrote:

No it isn’t economical now. I’ve been to wind farms on three continents and none are economical . It is always a government boondoggle to dupe the easily duped. The maintenance costs are high over time. Nothing compares to coal.

Yes, they’re economical, and I provided proof of that. Wind, solar and other renewables all are cheap now, and getting cheaper. They are already — and have been for years — cheaper than coal, from the user and the producer end. And they don’t kill workers or make them deathly ill like coal has done for centuries.

And if we add the massive costs due to environmental damage, and damage to human health, the “value” of renewables skyrockets even more. Backing coal or any fossil fuel is madness. It’s a death sentence of the planet, which means a death sentence for us.

It’s sheer capitalist propaganda, from the fossil fuel industry, to say renewables cost too much, or that “Well, it’s nice technology. But it’s not practical for now. Maybe in twenty years.”

Nawwww. It’s here now. It’s cheap now. It’s doable now. And it has been for years and years. Big Oil and Big Coal see it as a major threat, so they’ve been busy dismissing it for decades. They can’t do this anymore. Too many countries are using it with success — to lower costs for government and private citizens and improve environmental conditions.

Imagine your car using the sun to power up while you’re at work. Imagine the same for trains and planes and ships. The only reason this isn’t commonplace right now is because Big Oil and its allies have successfully crushed or bought up enough start ups, and purchased enough political power, to block this from happening. We could have had solar-powered transport decades ago if there had been the political will and the strength to say hell no to Big Oil and Big Coal.

If Uruguay can do this, we can. And better, because we’re richer, with far more resources. And if we can do it, and we can, then we can help the entire world do this.

I think alternative energies are fine for those that wish to pay the exorbitant costs thereof.

There are no “exorbitant costs.” They’re actually cheaper than fossil fuels. If it weren’t for capitalism’s stranglehold on the world, and Big Oil’s stranglehold on the energy sector, individual citizens could actually have net minuses for their home energy costs, and our cars and all modes of transportation could run for free.

Uruguay makes dramatic shift to nearly 95% electricity from clean energy

As the world gathers in Paris for the daunting task of switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, one small country on the other side of the Atlantic is making that transition look childishly simple and affordable.

In less than 10 years, Uruguay has slashed its carbon footprint without government subsidies or higher consumer costs, according to the country’s head of climate change policy, Ramón Méndez.

In fact, he says that now that renewables provide 94.5% of the country’s electricity, prices are lower than in the past relative to inflation. There are also fewer power cuts because a diverse energy mix means greater resilience to droughts.

It was a very different story just 15 years ago. Back at the turn of the century oil accounted for 27% of Uruguay’s imports and a new pipeline was just about to begin supplying gas from Argentina.
Which countries are doing the most to stop dangerous global warming?
Read more

Now the biggest item on import balance sheet is wind turbines, which fill the country’s ports on their way to installation.

Biomass and solar power have also been ramped up. Adding to existing hydropower, this means that renewables now account for 55% of the country’s overall energy mix (including transport fuel) compared with a global average share of 12%.

Despite its relatively small population of just 3.4 million, Uruguay has earned a remarkable amount of global kudos in recent years. It enacted groundbreaking marijuana legalisation, pioneered stringent tobacco control, and introduced some of the most liberal policies in Latin America on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Now, it is being recognised for progress on decarbonising its economy. It has been praised by the World Bank and the Economic commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the WWF last year named Uruguay among its “Green Energy Leaders”, proclaiming: “The country is defining global trends in renewable energy investment.”

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

Yes, BT, Friedmen makes me crazy. I can only read him once or twice a year.

And notice how breezily he writes about “managing” weak countries. As if thats the US Government’s job. Can you IMAGINE what the NY Times would say if
other countries talked openly about ‘managing’ America ?

Empire. Imperialism. It makes me ill.

w
v

Agreed. It’s not our job, or place, or right, or business. And, of course, imperialism isn’t just horrific for other nations; it ends up being horrific for Americans too. Blowback, endless wars, the concentration of resources in the MIC instead of education, health care, the environment, food safety, clean water, etc. etc.

It’s dead wrong and profoundly immoral that we do this to others. But it also ends up hurting “we the people.”

Time for the empire to die. No more hegemons. I don’t know how to accomplish that . . . but history shows us they’re always massively destructive, on the way up and on the way down. Will we ever reach the point where we say no to them, period? No gods, no masters at home, no masters far away, no nation-state masters, no group of nation-state masters, no economic masters, etc. etc.

To me, the threat against our national parks is a threat against quality of life itself. It’s a huge leap toward closing off most of nature to those who are rich enough to afford their own views, their thousand acres, their streams, lakes, mountains, etc.

It’s easily one of the ugliest ideas that the odious Republicans have ever come up with, and they’ve come up with thousands of them.

While this gets almost no press, to me, it’s far more important than things like same-sex marriage rights, though I support that 100% — and we obviously can tackle both issues at the same time. But this gets down to the very root of our existence, the land itself, who it belongs to, and our ability to take in the natural beauty that surrounds us.

One of my novels — which still needs revision — is set in a future world which is all private. There is no public sector. We have corporate states. And everyone has to pay to move from one private zone to the next. No public parks. No access to anything you don’t own, unless you pay the fare, etc. It’s a Sci-Fi novel, but it seems real life keeps catching up to Science Fiction.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

And you’re forgetting that others helped pay your way throughout your life. You went to public schools, right? Why should people who have no kids pay for your schooling? But they do. They did. They have for more than two centuries. That’s what sane societies do.

Mandatory schooling is so society can have a steady supply of capable people to go into the necessary disciplines required for modern life. Those disciplines are used by people who do not have kids too.

I don’t see education that way at all. It’s not there to herd the masses into becoming useful fodder for capitalists, or mass consumers. It’s there to teach children to think for themselves, learn to think critically, independently, and decide what they want to do with their own lives on their own. It’s there to radically open their horizons and give them the tools they need to reach their fullest potential. Colleges and universities further expand this, open up new worlds for students they might never see without it, and you benefit from this expansion of cultural, social and intellectual horizons as well. We all do.

I still have no idea why you would be against pitching in a few extra dollars to make colleges and universities free for everyone. If it were up to me, the vast majority of the costs would be borne by the rich, primarily because they’ve seen the vast majority of all tax cuts since 1964, both in total dollars and in the steep drop in their marginal and effective rates. And they can afford it. Your share would be less than minimal.

From the Atlantic, on total costs for this:

Update—Friday Jan. 3, 4:31 PM: One more update to answer another good question I’ve received. Technically, you could say the additional cost of making college tuition free would be even cheaper than $62.6 billion. How come? Because most Pell Grant money is already spent at public colleges. In 2011 – 2012, state school students received $21.8 billion in grants. So, if you subtract that from the total needed to completely eliminate tuition, it the sum would be closer to $40 billion. (Apologies for not teasing that point out earlier. I’d noted it in a previous article and didn’t think to repeat it.)

I don’t denigrate others for their choices. I simply shouldn’t be forced to pay for their mistakes.

You’re assuming they did make mistakes, in this case. Why? How on earth would you know? And who are you to say their choice to major in this or that is a mistake? Or that their choice to go to X school instead of Y school is?

And you’re forgetting that others helped pay your way throughout your life. You went to public schools, right? Why should people who have no kids pay for your schooling? But they do. They did. They have for more than two centuries. That’s what sane societies do.

You travel on nothing but public roads and bridges all your life. You eat food inspected by the public sector. You use airports that wouldn’t exist without the public sector. You’re using an invention of the public sector right now, the Internet. Touch screen tech was invented by the public sector too. As was GPS and Satellite tech. Most every tech innovation in the last century came from the public sector, as do 75% of our new drugs.

No business in America could survive a day without public sector support, protection, R and D and bailouts. None could start up without it. Again, taxpayers have pitched in to try to make this society better going back more than 200 years. They’ve helped provide a foundation for you. Why should you suddenly be able to jump off the train and say you won’t help the next generation? Again, it’s not as if it’s a lot. Your tax contributions are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost. It sounds like you think it’s your burden to carry the load for others all by yourself.

That’s obviously not the case.

Apparently our making good choices for the long term didn’t sit well with those people accustomed to following the carefree spending high expectations in fun keeping up with the Joneses. It is always about choices.

But all choices are made within a certain environment and environmental conditions, with certain natural boundaries, due to the luck of the draw. All choices are made on foundations that range from impoverished to obscenely wealthy. All choices are made within environments that help or hinder or just outright stop those choices from taken effect.

Some folks are born with wings, others with chains, and everything in between.

The problem is, as ZN mentions, when we think we achieve X because we make “the right choices,” while others “fail” because they made the wrong ones. It’s usually the case that they made really, really good choices too, but their environments, their birth lottery, put them so far back behind the eight ball, it didn’t matter.

Again, it’s cool to be proud of your choices. But why denigrate others for not fitting into your notions of “success”? Or for fitting into your notions of “failure”? Why assume everyone has an equal shot in this country, when that’s clearly not the case? Or that they didn’t make really good choices too?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

Another key here, IMO.

It’s one thing to celebrate your accomplishments. We all should do that. It’s still another to say we did this on our own, and the birth lottery had nothing to do with it; our parents had nothing to do with it; their parents and so on. That the environment we were born into was irrelevant.

It’s still another to say, well, I did it, so everyone can. And because I did it, that makes me incredibly virtuous, and everyone who “fails” to do what I did should be ashamed and doesn’t deserve any support at all. Because in America, anyone can do what I did, bucko!! It’s the golden land of opportunity, donncha know!

So the point- student loans and who pays them off- the borrower or the taxpayer, i.e., the rest of us- leaves a foul taste in my mouth. We played by the rules. And in my opinion, this explosion of student debt we see today can be laid squarely on uncapped, uncollateralized loans and the universities that exploit this by raising tuition accordingly. Market forces are taken out of the equation entirely. Cap those loans and see how fast tuition rates drop. What are they going to do? Close their doors?

Hey, Ozone, hope all is well.

Thing is, even if you played by the rules, you still benefited tremendously from massive investments by other taxpayers, past and present. You couldn’t have done what you did without trillions spent on infrastructure, libraries, museums, schools, etc. etc. and the whole intellectual legacy thing going back centuries. None of us does what we do in a vacuum, and I think Americans are too often barraged with false messages of our supposed exceptionalism and independence, hacking our way through the wilderness, alone, as we face lions, tigers and bears with our muskets and axes.

We’re literally all in this together, no matter how much we want to deny it.

So, it really comes down to where do you want to draw the line. Let’s say you don’t have any kids. You might want to say, “I don’t think I should have to pay for K-12 schools, teachers, books” etc. etc. We can find all kinds of similar situations where one’s personal circumstances make them ask “Why should I have to pay for X? I don’t use it!!” But that’s not how a society functions. And those same people would likely be pretty upset if others said the same and that led to the end of some good or service they wanted, etc.

Anyway, beyond that, two things: The main reason costs have skyrocketed for kids is the massive reduction in state support for tuition. It’s gone in most states from 80-100% to the low teens.

And, two, not everything in life should be subject to “market forces.” There should be realms where we escape from those demands. Like education, health care, energy, food, water, etc. Necessities and staples, at least, should be non-profit.

(Of course, I’d rather see the entire economy non-profit and fully democratized, but that’s another story).

Just my two cents.

Not necessarily useless degrees. Simply a degree from a school so expensive they couldn’t afford to repay the debt.

Right now, that’s most schools. Even state schools. Those of us from earlier generations had a much easier time of that, as mentioned. And we used to have free state colleges as recently as the 1970s — in New York and California. Massive tax cuts for the rich forced states to slash their support for higher ed, and here we are. Millennials now are guaranteed tens of thousands in debt when they leave school — again, even state colleges.

And you aren’t being asked to fund the expensive, private ones by anyone anyway. Sanders’ plan, for instance, only involves public universities and colleges. Clinton has moved in that direction as well.

No one is asking you to pay more taxes to support matriculating to Harvard, etc. etc.

Cartoon of a cartoon? Either you can afford the education or you can’t. Real world difficulties result from never understanding that simple concept.

Yes, cartoon of a cartoon. Your description of these mythical students who, unlike you, lack all connection to reality, have their heads permanently in the clouds, and selfishly choose “useless” degrees, because they don’t know what it means to be responsible for oneself — again, unlike you.