Immoral Rearmament

That's the title of a review of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. The review was written by historian Richard Evans in the Dec. 20 New York Review of Books. Here's an interesting quote:

So extensive was Hitler's drive to rearm that it was absorbing over a fifth of German state expenditure by the eve of the war.

That skewed priority ensured the destruction of Germany, leaving few resources to, for example feed, clothe, and shelter its people, let alone maintain a modern economy.

According to official U.S. government accounting, the U.S. similarly allocates over a fifth (21% in 2007) of its budget to "national defense". According to the War Resisters League, however, adding the military portions from departments other than Defense and the debt and obligations of past military actions and readiness brings the figure to over half: 51% in 2008. Even subtracting past obligations, the figure is 31%, almost one-third of the budget.

The only outcome of that kind of misspending is disaster. Its logic requires ever more build-up which only comes at the expense of a functioning society.

Reduce emissions by reducing energy use (duh!)

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has released its study of the economic impact of a federal Renewable Electricity Standard (RES), which is being debated in the U.S. Congress as part of new energy legislation. The ACEEE found that the RES would lower electricity prices, primarily by reducing demand rather than by adding renewable energy plants.

The RES, which is allegedly meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but instead simply calls for 15% of electricity sales by 2020 to be from renewable sources, allows 27% (why not all, as in Canada?) of the requirement to be met by efficiency improvement, i.e., actually reducing use. The ACEEE assumes the 4% efficiency will be used, and that's where the savings are -- in both prices and emissions.

The ACEEE underscores this by analyzing another scenario that would combine a 15% RES with a 15% efficiency requirement, finding very much greater savings.

That is not surprising. Requiring purchases of renewable energy does nothing towards the goal of reducing greenhouse gas and other emissions or of reducing the use of dwindling or sociopolitically problematic energy sources. It is like a diet regimen that says every time you eat a dish of ice cream you have to eat a carrot (or pay someone else to eat a carrot).

In Canada, Alberta requires a 12% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2014. A similar federal rule is expected to take effect in 2010.

The U.S., in contrast, only adds tax giveaways to the carrot industry to those for the ice cream companies. Cutting down is bad for business.

Colorado: 20% of electricity from wind and solar means 18% new nonrenewables, too

An analysis by the Colorado Energy Forum (CEF) notes that Colorado's Renewable Energy Standard (RES), requiring that 20% of the electricity from investor-owned utilities (and 10% from large municipal and rural cooperative utilities) be obtained from renewable sources, primarily wind, by 2020, will not represent a correspondingly expanded capacity to to reliably supply growing demand.

The CEF analysis estimated that more than 3,300 MW of wind generation and nearly 200 MW of solar generation must be deployed to meet Colorado's RES.

However, after taking into account the intermittent nature of many renewable energy resources, especially wind and solar, a gap in needed power supplies of between 3,700 and 4,500 megawatts will still exists.

"When taking into account the intermittent nature of wind and solar resources, we estimate that the reliable capacity credit for these renewable resources ranges between 330 MW and 1,122 MW," according to the study's authors. "This means that even after the requirements of Colorado's RES are met, significant amounts of new electric generating capacity still will be required to meet the state's needs. Based on the assumptions and data in this study, Colorado will need to address additional resource needs in the range of 3,700 MW to 4,500 MW by 2025." (press release, Nov. 9, 2007)

In other words, all those wind turbines won't keep the lights on. You have to use other sources to guarantee capacity, because the wind doesn't always blow when you need it.

In addition, there is a need of new capacity because of adding a significant amount of wind to the system. The grid requires excess capacity to be able to cope not only with times of exceptional demand but also with outages (inadvertent as well as for maintenance) of some of its plants. The wind is largely unpredictable, especially for the precise needs of the electrical supply, so more excess capacity is required to deal with that extra burden.

Giant wind turbines are not symbols of "green energy"; they are window dressing for a huge expansion of the conventional grid.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Why Robertson endorsed Giuliani

Most likely to hasten Armageddon.

Green technology just a new name for old pattern of exploitation

Wendell Berry, letter to the editor, New York Review of Books, Sept. 27, 2007:

... As for rural poverty, Mr. Dyson's thinking ["Our Biotech Future", July 19] is all too familiar to any rural American: "What the world needs is a technology that directly attacks the problem of rural poverty by creating wealth and jobs in the villages." This is called "bringing in industry," a practice dear to state politicians. To bring in industry, the state offers "economic incentives" (or "corporate welfare") and cheap labor to presumed benefactors, who often leave very soon for greater incentives and cheaper labor elsewhere.

Industrial technology, as brought-in industry and as applied by agribusiness, has been the cleverest means so far of siphoning the wealth of the countryside -- not to the cities, as Mr. Dyson appears to think, for urban poverty is inextricably related to rural poverty -- but to the corporations. Industries that are "brought in" convey the local wealth out; otherwise they would not come. And what makes it likely that "green technology" would be an exception? How can Mr. Dyson suppose that the rural poor will control the power of biotechnology so as to use it for their own advantage? Has he not heard of the patenting of varieties and genes? Has he not heard of the infamous lawsuit of Monsanto against the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser? I suppose that if, as Mr. Dyson predicts, biotechnology becomes available -- cheaply, I guess -- even to children, then it would be available to poor country people. But what would be the economic advantage of this? How, in short, would this work to relieve poverty? Mr. Dyson does not say.

His only example of a beneficent rural biotechnology is the cloning of Dolly the sheep. But he does not say how this feat has benefited sheep production, let alone the rural poor.

[These statements apply similarly to wind energy development. See also the comments by Garret Keizer (click here) specifically about wind energy and the rural poor.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, human rights, animal rights, , anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Struggle for land rights in India and Mexico

National Wind Watch has posted recent detailed updates about the struggle of the Zapotecas in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Adivasis in Gujarat, India, against abuses by giant wind companies (Spain's Iberdrola in Mexico and Suzlon in India), aided by the government and police, taking land for industrial wind energy facilities.

Grassroots Resistance: Contesting Wind Mill Construction in Oaxaca, by Sylvia Sanchez (originally published by Znet)

Unclean Intrigues Behind Clean Energy: Dhule Adivasis’ Glorious Struggle for Land Rights, by a fact-finding team led by Anand Teltumbde (originally published at struggle-for-land-rights.blogspot.com)

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism

It's killing season!

To balance the current deer-season adulation of killing for "sport", click the title of this post for the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting.

You can hunt all you want, but this group shows that most rationalizations of it are delusional and self-serving.

To start with, hunting isn't about keeping the deer (or moose or bear) population down. State Fish & Game agencies "manage" the population so there's plenty for the hunters, who then finance those agencies in a self-perpetuating circle.

And shouldn't we be recoiling in horror at pictures of children and "their" kills? What "tradition" are they being trained for, if not one of being comfortable with self-serving deadly violence? Is that healthy?

It is true that some land is kept from development owing to the interests of hunters. But that, too, is problematic, because the best forest for hunting is frequently logged, not left wild. And it's nothing but sad that the only way some people can enjoy (or justify) the outdoors is by killing something in it.

If you eat animal flesh, then you certainly might as well get out and kill it yourself, but it is rather a stretch to claim any honor or sport in it.

Most people mark the progress of human civilization by how much more we can do without having to kill, not by how much more sportingly or efficiently or rationally we can kill. So let's keep our shortcomings in perspective, not on a pedestal.

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, ecoanarchism