Sure, and he’s the Brexit negotiator but this isn’t about that. Michel Barnier is telling us that we’ve all got to do something about a Green New Deal and all that. OK, maybe we do and maybe we don’t. A point up for discussion. His idiocy though is apparent when he confuses two rather major points. One, the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb CO2 – more accurately, CO2-e. OK, that’s climate change and we’ve all got our opinions on that.…
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George Monbiot’s Delusion – Capitalism Doesn’t Require Growth Even As It’s Good At It
George Monbiot gives us the latest cool kids reason why capitalism has to be done away with – the environment can’t take it. This being entirely at odds with the actual science here of course, even the science coming from the IPCC. However, it’s worse than that as it’s conceptually wrong as well.
As to the science bit we do indeed have all those International Panel on Climate Change reports. All of which are based on economic models, the best collection of which is still the SRES.…
See MoreThese People Are Mad – Let’s Have Less Efficient Production In Order To Save The Planet
There’s nothing wrong with craft production, of course there isn’t. By equally there’s nothing particularly great about it. We’d also be entirely mad to support craft production over other more efficient methods if we were trying to save resources – you know, that saving the planet thing. But that’s what is done here. Craft is praised, industrial not. OK, even fair enough. But the only reason anything grows into industrial production sizes is because that’s the more efficient method of doing it.…
See MoreFido Will Be Fine – Dog Food Made From Insects Arrives
Given the fine and delicate nature of the average dog’s tastebuds this new form of dog food – made from insects – will do just fine. There is though rather an overdoing of the environmental benefits as the story is laid out here. For we’ve not been feeding our pets on what we would ourselves eat all these years. That might be one of these new millennial things but it’s most certainly not standard practice:
Dog food made from insects to go on sale in UK for first time
Globally pets consume 20% of meat and fish, a figure insect pet food could help to reduce
Dogs are omnivores, as long as they’re getting protein, fats, carbohydrates and so on they’ll be fine.…
See MoreStock Markets Reduce CO2 Emissions, Bank Finance Increases Them
This is an interesting finding. Sure, we know about the curve, developing countries get dirtier then cleaner as they get richer. But there is a connection between how that is all financed. A more Anglo Saxon economy, relying more upon equity ans stock markets, appears to produce fewer such emissions, a more continental one largely financed by bank loans create more emissions. Huzzah for Anglo Saxon capitalism then, eh?
Finance and pollution
Ralph De Haas, Alexander Popov 05 October 2018
The environmental Kuznets hypothesis predicts that pollution will increase at early stages of development but then decline once a country surpasses a certain income level.…
See MoreThe Degradation Of Academia Continues
So, super, the Labour Party has pledged to do even more to beat climate change. Huzzah! etc. And then we get a British professor – yes, one employed upon your and my tax pounds – musing that perhaps we really need to go further than this and to overturn that entire idea of economic growth. At least, that’s what he thinks he’s saying which is the degradation:
… See MoreAnd there are even greater challenges for the Labour Party.
Clear And Obvious Protectionism – A Cartel Forming – In The Napa Valley
We are all warned that the American economy is becoming more concentrated. There are fewer producers of any one thing, each of them thereby gaining more market power. It is this which explains the rise in the profit rate, the stagnation of the workers’ real wages. OK, I don’t buy the basic story as I’m, to put it mildly, entirely unconvinced that there is a stagnation in real wages – we’re not counting digital consumption properly.…
See MoreAmazingly, Every Claim Here About The World Is Wrong
The Guardian treats us to a bit of worry waving from one of its Australian journalists. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket apparently, we’re all making the world worse and after us, the deluge. The interesting thing about the claims made being that not one of them is true:
… See MoreWhich brings me to something Number Two Daughter, a nearly-teen, said in the car a few months ago.
“Mum and Dad – I don’t want you to be upset at this or anything,” she began.
Earth Hour, The Annual Celebration Of Killing Off Civilisation
Each and every year I become ever more flabberghasted with the excesses of Earth Hour. That’s the evening when we switch off the lights to celebrate the impending doom of industrial civilisation. Or something like that – the usual plans suggested do mean that at least. So, we all sit and shiver in the dark in order to mimic our forefathers before civilisation which does seem an odd thing to do to raise awareness of that environment said civilisation has saved.…
See MoreBanning Plastic Straws Is To Fail Chesterton’s Fence
The Environment Secretary is to consider the banning of plastic straws. Pubs and so on will be forced to use paper ones instead. Apparently it is better to kill trees these days than to use inanimate feedstocks like oil and gas – things the environmentalists tell us we’ve too much of already.
However, this is to fail Chesterton’s Fence – for why do we use plastic straws in the first place? This isn’t something we know ourselves but given that people do use them we’re really very certain that there is a rational reason for their use.…
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