'How dare you': Greta Thunberg tears into world leaders over inaction at U.N. climate summit

Yes we all have our "issues". Science is about facts and accurate predictions.

2004 DoD study: climate change will destroy us …in 2020.

“A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.”​

Those are testable claims, now falsified.

Glacier National Park Quietly Removes Its “Gone By 2020” Signs.

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Like I said, the CO2/climate change issue IS hotly debated.

But I don't need to get bogged down in that debate, to show that the filthy fossil industries' emissions of carcinogenic particulates, poisonous gases and chemicals polluting the environment and causing long-term damage to human health, along with increasingly uncompetitive pricing, will soon enough bring about its own demise, as clean green becomes cheaper than fossil (in a decade, according to Rifkin....)

Perhaps that's why you only replied to the first sentence in my post; you know your "invisible hand" capitalism is becoming obsolete, for reasons noted in that post.

 

No it isn't. The scientific evidence quite clear.

Of course, the doomsday scenario being pushed by the Left-wing Statists is without compelling empirical support.

A decade ehh?

You refused to deal with the problem of centralization of power under your old Chartilism. That is why the centralizing scheme you are pushing will never be adopted by the US.

 

Creation of money in the public sector as well as in the private sector - consistent with available resources and productive capacity of the economy (an MMT insight) - is NOT "centralisation of power" (aka 'independence' of central banks), it's democratisation of policy.

 

Sure it is. Here's a thought experiment:

You have 10 people using a hundred dollars to exchange goods and services. You hand one of the persons a 1,000 dollars in currency that is indistinguishable from the original currency and you have just centralized the power over labor and resources in that person. To call that "Democratic" is ridiculous.

 

I wouldn't have waded into this:

 

Your scenario is too simplistic/too far removed from the real world to be useful, ie, the 10 people are not always fully employed in a real world capitalist economy. If they were, everything would be fine.....

So the creation of money in the 'government's bank' (ie the central bank which is part of the consolidated government sector in MMT), to fund a counter-cyclical Job Guarantee, is a solution to the problem of un+underemployment associated with business cycle downturns, since there are always unemployed resources associated with unemployed labour, in first world countries at least, during a recession. (Ie, there is no sudden shortage of resources or labour, causing the downturn).

[btw the government's deficit is the private sector's savings....another important insight of MMT].

 

She's an incredibly mature debater for her age, given the science behind the AGW climate issue is a tough nut to crack.

On the other hand, there are enough people working on developing green energy now, to ensure it will soon (in a decade, according to Jeremy Rifkin in his new book "The Green New Deal") be cheaper to generate electricity from clean green than filthy fossil...and then it's game over for fossil, given the almost zero marginal cost of clean green (once the infrastructure is built).

 

Gasoline is portable, cheap and generates a lot of power per drop how will you replace it?

 

Good question.

Also, a question to all of the vegan meat-haters out there.

How are you "saving the environment" by eating a vegan diet? How do you think your vegan diet got to the store that you bought it from? It required lots of tractors working fields, and planes/semis/etc. transporting it to the store. That sounds like a lot of carbon-based fuel usage to me, does it not?? How will we replace all of this energy generation?

Obviously these people do not think about the full process, and instead choose to chant science denying bullshit.

 

She does not debate; she chants science denying bullshit.

There is no science behind the AGW theory... AGW denies science. It also denies logic and mathematics. AGW is nothing more than a religious theory that is frantically preached by irrationally scared fundamentalist zealots.

We do not generate energy from fossils. Fossils do not burn very well... Are you instead referring to carbon-based fuels? What is "filthy" about them? They actually burn very cleanly nowadays (here in America, anyway).

 

Er.."fossils" is shorthand for our fossil-fuel burning civilisation.

Burning of fossil fuels (whether in coal/gas plants or internal combustion engines) is "filthy" ie emits carcinogenic particulates and poisonous gases that have long term negative effects on health and environment. That's why the EU is phasing out diesel engines.

America? CA has its views on vehicle emission standards...

 

By eating plant foods (eg grains) directly, instead of feeding them to animals to produce meat; the savings in both land and water use are considerable:

"At present, the US livestock population consumes more than 7 times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population. The amount of grains fed to US livestock is sufficient to feed about 840 million people who follow a plant-based diet"

By building the necessary green infrastructure (as explained in previous posts), and transitioning to fuel cell or battery EV technology.

Obviously your capacity for analysis is revealed to be ….minimal...., at best.

 

We do not burn fossils for fuel.

We do not use fossils for fuel. Carbon based fuels do not come from fossils. They form naturally underground. They can also be synthesized.

No, they burn very cleanly nowadays.

I no longer consider the SOTC to be part of America. They do not even follow their own State constitution, let alone the federal one.

 

Are people getting this food from their own gardens, or are they getting it from grocery stores? You are forgetting about all of the heavy equipment working the fields to produce all of those "grains"... That is not improving the environment in any way.

Also, "grains" are very high in carbohydrates and sugars, which are not healthy for people, and those carbs and sugars are part of the reason why we have such widespread obesity and diabetes in America. Meat is a MUCH healthier option for people to consume, and there are numerous cases where people fix a lot of their skin/health issues simply by switching to a carnivore diet. Jordan Peterson and his daughter are probably the most famous examples of this.

Grains and plants provide very little nutrients compared to meat and animal products. Many vegans are nutrient deficient, as opposed to people who eat a lot of meat and animal products.

Wind and Solar simply aren't reliable sources of energy, nor are they as convenient as carbon-based sources.

 

No it wouldn't. You handing money to one of them is not "democratic" at all, it's the government selecting who in the economy will have power and how much they will have.

 

I don't agree that "handing money to one of them" - who has become unemployed during a business cycle downturn - is 'undemocratic'; rather it's restoring health (ie full employment) to the economy.

Note: in MMT, the Job Guarantee has a fixed (base) salary - above poverty level, but below private sector wages, so your concerns about 'power' are misplaced. And the variable JG 'buffer' pool of workers, during 'normal' recessions, would still be small in comparison to the private sector workforce.

Not sure if you understand MMT yet, but it will play an important role in the transition to a clean green economy, since the management of resources, not money, will be key in that transition.

 

MMT went from kook status to a new left wing revered idea. Seems appropriate.

 

Both

Large scale industrial agriculture, with its fossil derived artificial fertilizers, is poisoning and robbing the soil of vital biological factors. Study that topic yourself.

Non-plough techniques reduce the damage from heavy equipment, plus reduction of meat consumption reduces acreage planted to crops that are then directly eaten by humans.

Natural grains and pulses are high in valuable carbohydrates, and have little or no sugar (unlike the buns in a Big Mac, in which the sugar is added by the baker).

Vegetarian diets do require more knowledge about combining plant based protein, than meat diets (in which the protein is complete) - but that knowledge is easily accessed. Peterson's case can be countered by countless vegetarians who are healthier than him.

Addressed above. In fact, vegetarianism is generally considered to be the healthier diet.

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If backed by storage (eg pumped hydro; google it) solar and wind are reliable...and at the micro level (homes etc) nearly every home can become a generator of excess electricity which can interconnect and sold to the grid

And after the infrastructure is built, it's clean and free (apart from maintenance)....unlike filthy fossil, which is charging us all like a wounded bull.

 

At the mid point of the last business down turn there were $10M unemployed
The New Green Deal runs about $2.5T a year.
If you give every unemployed person $250,000/year, why would they look for a job, and lose it?

 

The Green New Deal is not realistic and will never become law. I wouldn't waste time thinking about it. However, it is realistic to dramatically reduce carbon emissions to something close to

net zero by 2050 without sacrificing too much. The developed nations of the world should reduce defense expenditures in order to divert those funds into clean energy.

I copied this from factcheck.org: "How much will the Green New Deal cost". The current U.S. budget deficit to GDP ratio is 4.6% so we are in a poor financial position to borrow more money.


Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, thinks it’s entirely possible to get to net zero by 2050 by spending around 2 percent of GDP each year, or around $18 trillion in total.

“$18 trillion is real money,” he said. “But when you spread it out over 30 years, it’s entirely feasible and it will have a lot of economic benefits in addition to getting us down to zero emissions.”

Under his scenario, Pollin says the economy would continue to grow and consumers would not see increases in their utility bills — one of the prospects that some politicians have highlighted under a shift to a greener economy.

Pollin, however, strongly disagrees with the resolution’s aim of getting to net zero with just a decade of investment.

“I think it’s completely unrealistic and it’s not worth costing out,” he said of the Green New Deal.

 

The Job Guarantee is a means of ensuring workers do not become long-term unemployed during and after a downtown. The JG fixed-wage is above poverty level (c. $35,000? for a family), but generally below private sector wages.

The JG is a real job (maybe temporary, if the private sector can bid higher wages for labour when the downturn ends), to see people through a downturn. , eg which could take the form of additional support in nursing homes, or park maintenance (as decided by the local council level), to fill any number of unmet public needs.

Studies have shown most people prefer to participate in the community's economy (through employment), than being unemployed.
But I don't know where you got that $250,000/year from.

And remember, MMT describes how the federal government - the currency issuer - can fund the JG. [Briefly, if I haven't already said it, the constraints to a currency-issuing government are real resources, not money (unlike the situation for you and me, in the private sector, who must repay debt - money - to banks, by the due date)

 

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Your last point there is certainly good policy.

As to your first point, we will see what transpires in the next decade. If the weather (climate) does become particularly 'nasty' (with floods, fires, drought and hurricanes, then transition spread out to 2050 might in fact turn out to be too expensive (because of the increasingly higher damage sustained in such events).

I attended a lecture by MMT professor Stephanie Kelton today. In fact, if the resources are available* (eg factories operating below full capacity, spare labour, technical school under-utilisation, other resources) then the Fed can directly fund the required green infrastructure, without taxing or borrowing from the private sector.

*apparently most economies are operating at c.70% of industrial capacity at present.

Pollin should know that, if there is all that slack in the economy, the federal government can fund the infrastructure directly without taxing or borrowing from the private sector, because the Fed (+ treasury) is the currency issuer, not the currency user (ie the private sector).

All fine; but if the climate scientists are correct - and the situation is becoming critical - it's nice to know that MMT describes how the transition can happen ASAP (eg in a decade or two) without people asking "how will we pay for it?"

That's because he doesn't understand MMT.

In short, the Fed (the government's bank) can "lend" the necessary quantity of money to the government, created ex nihilo, which can then public-fund all the required infrastructure.
Just as private banks create funds ex nihilo when they write loans - create deposits - for credit-worthy customers.

Remember, inflation will not increase, until the economy's resource/capacity limits are reached.

 

We can do that now. Eliminate all social services programs, except Social Security, and you can give everyone a monthly check, equal to the poverty level, eliminating poverty in the US.

 

..."equal to the poverty level...."?

https://www.thebalance.com/income-inequality-in-america-3306190

"One-quarter of American workers make less than $10 per hour. That creates an income below the federal poverty level. These are the people who wait on you every day. They include cashiers, fast food workers, and nurse's aides.'

So minimum wage needs to rise to $15 per hr.

Problem is the private sector is simply not able to pay those wage rates (hence the working poor syndrome).

Hence the public sector is required to establish a floor for wages (via a MMT JG, which the private sector will have to bid above, if they want to attract workers.

That can only be achieved by a MMT public sector program

Remember, there are sufficient resources in the US to house, clothe, feed, educate, transport, connect to the internet, AND employ everyone.

So the private sector needs to lift its game, obviously; the days of slave labour are over.

But hey, if you can eliminate poverty in the US by eliminating all social services (except aged pensions), and paying $15/hour minimum to everyone of working age,....plus single payer health and debt free tertiary education...be my guest.

Remember though, people prefer to participate in the economy for all sorts of reasons, rather than sit at home and receive a poverty level payment...in fact, people still turn up to work, even when they only receive poverty level wages.

And then there's the problem of transitioning to a clean green economy. The private sector is simply unable to/will not do this alone, with $100 trillion privately invested in the filthy fossil industry (see Jeremy Rifkin's latest book: The Green New Deal).

That transition will need to be managed as described by MMT, with the Fed (with its unlimited MONEY creation capacity*) funding the compensation and transference of the workforce from fossil to green.

*provided the resources are available.