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Is economics a science?

27 Mar

From my buddy John Emerson:

For about five years now I’ve been asking whether economics is a science at all, and not just a weakly systematized area of policy studies and advocacy dazzling laymen with complex math. People seemed to be getting tired of my ranting and trollery and I retired from the field for awhile. But gradually the question became a hot issue in the field  (Google, DeLong 1, DeLong 2, Thoma), mostly because economic true believers had succeeded in throwing us into the worst recession since 1937.  So I’ve collected the more amusing and presentable of my rants below. . . .

There’s probably some kind of congruence between excessive formalization in economics, fraudulent claims to scientific power, ideological claims surreptitiously sneaked in, and mercenary dirty work done for the market. Once detached from the execrescent growths that seem to have taken over, much of the empirical part is probably OK.

What’s really at stake here is the surplus authority economics claimed based on its scientific status. That was fraud and mystification. Economics is not nothing — there are a lot of things there that you need to know. Think of it as a useful craft or art, or as a form of knowledgeable advocacy like law. There are times when you need the best economists you can afford, because otherwise you’ll be at the mercy of the bad guys’ economists.

Here’s a link to his post. Check it out. He’s a scrappy kind of guy with a good head on his shoulders.

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In Transition, the movie

25 Mar

Starring you, and you, and your aunt Maddie and sister Sadie and uncle Willie and all their cats and dogs and peonies.

 

‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun.

In the film you’ll see stories of communities creating their own local currencies, setting up their own pubs, planting trees, growing food, celebrating localness, caring, sharing. You’ll see neighbours sharing their land with neighbours that have none, local authorities getting behind their local Transition initiatives, schoolchildren making news in 2030, and you’ll get a sense of the scale of this emerging movement. It is a story of hope, and it is a call to action, and we think you will like it very much. It is also quite funny in places.

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Indian Point Nukes North of New York City: How much iodine 131 for us?

23 Mar

There are two nuclear Power Plants less that 30 miles north of New York City, putting them in one of the most densely populated regions in the world. Here’s an old piece by Charlie Keil on why they should be shut down. And here’s a new piece in The New York Times reporting that the Governor, Andrew Cuomo, wants the plants shut down:

For Mr. Cuomo, the new discussion about Indian Point represents the latest chapter in a family history of grappling with nuclear power. The concerns he has expressed about Indian Point, particularly the possibility of trying to evacuate millions of residents around the facility, can be traced back decades: his father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, brokered a deal to shut down the Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island in 1989 because of similar worries.

When he ran for governor last year, Mr. Cuomo said in a policy book that as governor, he would seek to “find alternative sources of energy generation to replace Indian Point nuclear facility because it is too dangerous to continue operating.”

Meanwhile, officials in Tokyo are worried that radioactive iodine (iodine 131) in the water puts infants at risk. They’re 140 miles from plants from plants whose current status is a bit of a mystery:

But it was not entirely clear why the levels of iodine were so high, said a senior Western nuclear executive, noting that the prevailing breezes seem to be pushing radiation out to sea. “The contamination levels are well beyond what you’d expect from what is in the public domain,” said the executive, who insisted on anonymity and has broad contacts in Japan.

 

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Unemployment, Barter, and Local Currencies

21 Mar

Over at Marginal Revolution Alex Tabarrok has an interesting post on barter, local currency, and unemployment.

There was a huge increase in barter and exchange associations during the Great Depression with hundreds of spontaneously formed groups across the country such as California’s Unemployed Exchange Association (U.X.A.). These barter groups covered perhaps as many as a million workers at their peak.

In addition, I include with barter the growth of alternative currencies or local currencies such as Ithaca Hours or LETS systems. The monetization of non-traditional assets can alleviate demand shocks which is one reason why it’s good to have flexibility in the definition of and free entry into the field of money …

During the Great Depression there was a marked increase in alternative currencies or scrip, now called depression scrip.

This doesn’t seem to be happening now. Have we forgotten, lost resilience?

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Ralph Nader on what you can do about OUR nukes

21 Mar

In writing about Nuclear Nightmare in the USA, Ralph Nader recommends these steps:

1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.

2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can’t buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don’t stay in business.

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.

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Amory Lovins on Lessons from Fukushima

21 Mar

Writing at RMI Outlet, the blog for the Rocky Mountain Institute, Amory Lovins draws lessons from Fukishima, noting that the US has 6 plants identical to those and 17 very similar to them. And he notes that that pouring money money in the nuclear swamp will “reduce and retard climate protection.” Thus:

Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2-10 times less carbon savings, 20-40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power together in factories or buildings (“cogeneration”), and renewable energy. The last two made 18% of the world’s 2009 electricity (while nuclear made 13%, reversing their 2000 shares)–and made over 90% of the 2007-08 increase in global electricity production.Those smarter choices are sweeping the global energy market. Half the world’s new generating capacity in 2008 and 2009 was renewable. In 2010, renewables, excluding big hydro dams, won $151 billion of private investment and added over 50 billion watts (70% the total capacity of all 23 Fukushima-style U.S. reactors) while nuclear got zero private investment and kept losing capacity. Supposedly unreliable windpower made 43-52% of four German states’ total 2010 electricity. Non-nuclear Denmark, 21% windpowered, plans to get entirely off fossil fuels. Hawai’i plans 70% renewables by 2025.

He further notes that:

Japan, for its size, is even richer than America in benign, ample, but long-neglected energy choices. Perhaps this tragedy will call Japan to global leadership into a post-nuclear world. And before America suffers its own Fukushima, it too should ask, not whether unfinanceably costly new reactors are safe, but why build any more, and why keep running unsafe ones. China has suspended reactor approvals. Germany just shut down the oldest 41% of its nuclear capacity for study. America’s nuclear lobby says it can’t happen here, so pile on lavish new subsidies.

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The Wholeness of Life: Beyond Three Eras of Techno-Scrambling

18 Mar

In 1976 the economist Fritz Schumacher spoke at Findhorn in Northern Scotland in an address as relevant today as it was then for everyone [1]. It shapes the foundations of Transition Party USA.

Historically he noted that we are at the end of three distinct but overlapped eras:

  • 300 years of a Descartian worldview which valued mind over matter, established mind/body dualism (mind good/body bad) and advocated humans controlling Nature;
  • 200 years of a socio-economic-political system shaped by the industrial revolution’s division of labor which led to the devaluation of the whole human being; and
  • 100 years of technocratic and money idolatry, driven by a belief in infinite resources and quick technological fixes — resulting in a ravaged eco-system. [2]

As these old eras draw to a close, bankrupt, we need to regain a traditional understanding of what is good, true, and beautiful and so inform our actions to build a new era that acknowledges the wholeness of life. It is not a single-issue crisis that we face — not just an energy crisis, not just a nuclear crisis, not just an ecological crisis or sociological or political or cultural or economic crisis — our whole “way of life” has become a death-trip: species diversity and cultural diversity are both disappearing faster and faster. Solutions must be nurtured and implemented simultaneously at many levels. Schumacher calls on the audience to first work to foster a new world view in themselves, diagnose what can be done, see if others are already engaged in that rebuilding work and support them, and then act themselves, if even in a small way.

doing a few minutes or an hour each day

communicating for Transition Party USA

circulating insights that show the Path or a Local Way

encourage each child to play, play! PLAY!!!

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“Our Friend the Atom” and He is Us

18 Mar

One idea that I’ve seen here and there in discussions of the nuclear emergency in Japan goes like this: “Why the coverage of the nukes? After all, thousands have already died from the earthquake and tsunami, 100s of thousands are homeless, and whole towns have been wiped away. All that damage far exceeds anything so far caused by those collapsed plants and any damage likely to be caused by them. Why not more coverage of the big story?”

The question, I believe, is a good one. And the answer, I suspect, goes like this: The earthquake and the tsunami were caused by Nature. We can take preventive measures, but we can’t predict or control them (though we’re working on prediction). Those atomic plants, however, they are Us. To say we can’t control them is to say that we can’t control ourselves. If we can’t control ourselves, are we any better than animals?

The issue of control is crucial. The difference between an atomic explosion and an atomic power plant is one of control: WE CONTROL what happens in the power plant. We can turn it on, turn it off, and make it go faster or slower. It does our bidding. Of course, it also creates dangerous radiation, which we must control. If we don’t, the radiation causes disease, cancer, mutations, strange unnatural beings, monsters (Gojira).

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Shazaam! Ontario, the Jolly Green Giant

17 Mar

Writing from Buffalo, Bill Nowak informs TPUSA that Ontario’s become the Jolly Green Giant of North American energy.

Check it out – Ontario has started taking over the North American market for renewable energy because they have followed Germany’s example and set fair, fixed prices for solar and wind through their “feed-in tariff”. The renewable revolution is now accessible to all in Ontario. Individuals, communities, co-ops, Indian tribes and businesses can all generate green energy profitably. They are setting themselves up for a secure future.

In the last year, over $9 billion in private sector investment has been committed to clean energy projects, creating an estimated 20,000 new jobs in Ontario.

In 2003, Ontario had 19 dirty, polluting coal units and just ten wind turbines. Today, the province has over 700 new wind turbines and by 2014 they plan to be finished with coal generators and the greenhouse gases they produce.

Check out the latest news from Ontario’s Ministry of Energy.

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Real Returns, Sustainable Communities

11 Mar

In the Spring of 2010 three executives in New York University’s CleanTech Executives Program, conducted a field survey and study on locally-driven sustainable energy initiatives: Wendy Brawer, Brett Barndt, and Lakis Polycarpou, Real Returns for Sustainable Communities: White Paper, Linking Communities and Investors for Sustainable Development (downloadable PDF of the complete study). They were particularly interested in how such projects could be financed:

Our survey found that investment professionals are interested in local sustainable development projects as a potential asset class. As one professional put it, “Local infrastructure projects like these are very suitable to our investor profiles.” Project finance professionals also said that they expected the sustainable development industry to “grow immensely,” and the key is to “build a platform” for growth.

What then is needed to increase adoption of cleantech and sustainable development projects? “We need to get beyond the bias we have toward centralized energy sources,” and develop ways to get small projects funded, said one professional.

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