“Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper : How innovation keeps proving the catastrophists wrong,” by Robert Bryce, and “This Changes Everything: : capitalism vs. the climate” by Naomi Klein (presented by Tuck Wilson)

At the Yadens Oct 16, 2014, with Tuck presenting for only the second time in book group history.

Tuck Wilson

Climate change threatens civilization and overshadows global conflicts, hunger, epidemics and even the threat of nuclear annihilation. Tonight we compare and contrast two authors who focus on the same problem with different perspectives and solutions. Perhaps a case of glass half-full or glass half empty.

The Robert Bryce book, Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Denser, Cheaper is surprisingly well-balanced given that it was written by an author from the Manhattan Institute which is supported by the carbon industry. He takes aim at the “climate catastrophists,” including Naomi Klein and says we need to get past “collapse anxiety.” Despite a doubling of the world population in the last 70 years, agribusiness has fed the world, the airlines have shrunk the world, instant communication makes it possible to be anywhere at any time, and the advances of medical science are truly miraculous. All this while greenhouse gases have doubled. Innovation and enterprise keep up with population and allow expanding middle classes in China and India. All this courtesy of technology and the free enterprise system.

Naomi Klein and her ilk are “neo-Malthusians” preaching always that we are at the peak of everything civilization needs to survive.

Given that he is a conservative, his view of global warming is quite nuanced. He says he is an agnostic about climate change but also recognizes that carbon concentrations are increasing. He does predict that the decreasing price of natural gas in the United States will drive a shift in that direction. But India and China will continue to rely primarily on coal for growing electricity demand.

Growing concentrations of greenhouse gases will cause disruptive weather and damage society and the environment. We do need a no regrets policy to do more to make ourselves more resilient and to reduce carbon emissions. The best course is “N2N,” natural gas to nuclear. For humanitarian reasons, we need to support growth of electricity in the developing world.

Naomi Klein believes that capitalism is at the root of climate change and other social problems. She has been attacked for using climate change as a stalking horse to undermine capitalism and replace it with “green communitarianism.” According to her critics, green is the new red. She forthrightly says that we should seize the climate crisis to rally support to replace our failed economic system. The same way that the American South depended on slavery. Capitalism’s depletion of natural resources raises the same moral questions since it threatens civilization.

Only a mass social movement can save us. For equity reasons, the West must lead transformation to a non–. energy future. She takes aim at free trade, which, as practiced, empowers multinational corporations and allows them to frustrate efforts to reduce carbon.

“Big green” nature environmental organizations have sold out to big business. Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, NRDC, WRI, the pew charitable trusts. Europe’s cap and trade system has failed to reduce carbon but has made a bonanza for financial firms.

Mass action is needed even though few are now engaged. We should support local initiatives, local action, community energy sources. Direct action, including blockades, is needed to slow carbon production. There are examples of successful spontaneous movements: ending slavery, Third World nations ending colonialism.

My (Tuck) view is somewhere down the middle between these two authors.

Discussion

Kristen.  Naomi Klein does a good job of identifying environmental movements naïveté about being able to work with conservatives. Conservatives do know the facts but one of those facts is that it will cost them money so they resist. But what to do? Maybe there is an example in the Netherlands where the rich merchants of Amsterdam needed the peasants who owned the low-lying lands to protect them from floods. Both sides need power to be forced into agreements. Generally common people do not have much power. In the Pacific Northwest we do have a “thin green line” that can be a barrier against some bad projects. But it is hard to see where ordinary people have much power when it comes to carbon overall. The rich increasingly have the power, almost to the point they own the government. Did not read the Bryce book but I can say that nuclear power has never worked out.

Lockheed-Martin, it is reported, has made a breakthrough in fusion power. That could be the future.

Perhaps, but fusion would be extremely capital-intensive and still has many technological barriers.

I resented both books because both trivialize climate change to make some other point. Naomi Klein wants to use climate change to prove that capitalism is bad. Bryce says that “regardless of what you believe about climate change,” we can and should move on to natural gas and nuclear power. That is his agenda. He really does not take climate change seriously. The notion that smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper, denser is the answer to all our problems is just silly. It is true that nuclear and oil and coal are more energy-dense than renewables but there are many more important considerations including environmental consequences.

What about his critique of renewables?

He is quite right about wind but it will remain an important niche resource. There are limitations of storage and transmission. Solar has much larger and broader potential. Much greater possibility for scaling from very small to very large and for integrating into the system.

Whitman College is getting money from some wind installations.

Bryce’s contention that wind takes up too much space is ludicrous. We do have space. And wind and solar can cohabit.Renewables are becoming cost competitive; integrating them and storage are big issues yet but mostly it is question of getting power industry to change.

China is moving past coal, mostly for local pollution reasons.

Nuclear’s problem really is cost. SE US will need to nuclear but

Is catastrophe around the corner?

Quite possibly even though we have cried catastrophe over too many little things.

Like slavery, carbon represents a huge capital ownership. It took a war to end slavery. Where is the power today. I despair.

But there are many people working against carbon; we are moving the dial. Look at renewable standard in Oregon. It is working.Good news is maybe we can keep using good examples to prod other local action and turn down the dial without a lot of drama.

Tidal power?

It will be a small niche. Hard to capture, equipment hard to to maintain.

Klein makes the case we can;t just chip away, we need to do something radical, but I don’t know what it is.

Campaign finance reform.

But even with campaign-finance reform, the Senate is inherently undemocratic. Maybe we need to break up into smaller states to get more senators. Klein ignores the moral values question. As Jonathan Haidt explains, liberals have a value system very different from conservatives; Klein just does not address this. How you build a broad-based movement from a value system not widely shared is a question. Maybe only 20% start with that value system.

Need to get scientists to meet with the Oregonian editorial board. And representative Walden. He is in a position to make a difference.

But they don’t respond to facts.

The problem with politicians like Gov. Walker of Florida is that they are bought, not that they do not understand. The only way to move them is with votes and money. Only money can make it a fair fight.

John Russell, how do you get your fellow building owners to build more green buildings?

They did respond to tax credits but generally they are just oriented to think very differently.

People are just making too much money today from our fossil fuel-based economy.

But all Oregon major corporations have signed a declaration of concern about climate change.

But the same corporations have other interests where they spend real money, such as opposing rate increases.