In the last post I talked about Mitt Romney’s Energy Plan, where one point was his interest in increasing states rights over federal rights to regulate.
“States rights” is an issue that has been revived by the Tea Party. See States Rights and the Growing Rebellion to get an idea of where they’re coming from. The Repeal Amendment was introduced to Congress in 2011, stating:
“Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.”
The Daily Kos notes that this amendment would be bad news for our country:
The purpose of the amendment is to allow states to veto any federal “law or regulation.” Federal law is not limited to statutes and regulations but also includes treaties and our Constitution. The Supremacy Clause of Article 6 provides that our Constitution, federal statutes and treaties constitute the supreme law of the land. Back in 1819, the U.S. Supreme Court held that this Supremacy Clause is the essence of the balance of powers between the federal government and the states, providing that federal laws supersede conflicting state laws. This means that state action cannot impede the federal government’s valid constitutional exercise of power.
Thus, one purpose of the Repeal Amendment is to change the balance of powers existing between the federal government and our states.
The states rights /Tea Party activists invoke the doctrine of nullification – “the idea that states have the right to unilaterally render void an act of the federal government that they perceive to be contrary to the Constitution.” They point to the writings of Thomas Jefferson, among others, for support. See Jefferson’s Argument for Nullification and Limited Government.
Now, it is interesting to me that this line of reasoning used by Mitt Romney and used by the Tea Party – that local government can supersede federal government – sounds surprisingly similar to the arguments made by the “community rights” pro-environmental organization, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). They do not talk about states rights, but rather about “Community Rights,” superseding both state and federal law.
Friends and colleagues of mine have been working on this angle in my neck of the woods, but I have not felt comfortable with this approach. They make this argument (CELDF Mission):
“We believe that to attain sustainability, a right to local self-government must be asserted that places decisions affecting communities in the hands of those closest to the impacts. That right to local self-government must enable communities to reject unsustainable economic and environmental policies set by state and federal governments, and must enable communities to construct legal frameworks for charting a future towards sustainable energy production, sustainable land development, and sustainable water use, among others.”
Let me be clear that I’m NOT saying CELDF shares the same interests and motivations as the Romney campaign (or the Tea Party). Far from it, they couldn’t be further apart. One side wants to use local government to overrule environmental regulations they see as too strict and burdensome, and the other side wants to use local government to enact stricter regulations that have more teeth (in fact not so much to regulate, but to actually ban activities such as fracking or coal trains). What troubles me is that if CELDF were to be successful in achieving their goals, the outcome might be different from the original intent. As Michael Lilliquist wrote (see below), “Hyper-local democracy is a dangerous and potentially corrupting tool; you don’t want to use a tool which you would not allow others to use.”
I just don’t see local communities making better choices than those made at the state and federal level. This may happen in isolated pockets, but by the same token you could see vast swaths of places overturning the few gains the environmental movement has achieved on the level of federal and state policies and regulations, which is exactly what the Tea Party wants to do. As Tip Johnson, a long time local activist in my community has stated in another blog comment:
Local governments have an abhorrent record of doing the right thing. They have a long history of abusing their own, especially the poor, but anyone not in favor. If local governments had been willing to do the right thing, federal imposition of civil rights would not have been needed.
I am personally proud of one of my local city council persons, Michael Lilliquist, who has a strong record of supporting sustainability measures, and also spearheaded a local resolution to oppose the Supreme Court “Citizen United” ruling on the rights of corporations. Lilliquist attended the CELDF democracy school, and understands and supports their critique of corporate and property based rights. However, when a local community rights ordinance was proposed, he composed a well-reasoned letter on why he felt compelled to oppose it. Find the full text of his letter here, and the response from Coal Free Bellingham here. He wrote, in part (I’ll post a larger excerpt in the comments below):
“Every city is not and cannot be sovereign and independent. To believe otherwise would be to undermine the very idea of the rule of common law, common justice, and common purpose. It would undermine the “we” in We the People. It would become, each community for themselves; our way or the highway. Local rejection of federal authority has a long, sordid past, known sometimes as “nullification” and put into service by racist southerners attempting to oppress and discriminate under the cloak of local democracy. Hyper-local democracy is a dangerous and potentially corrupting tool; you don’t want to use a tool which you would not allow others to use. The enlightened arc of history has been to expand our boundaries of shared community and values, not narrow it down city by city. The rule of law should not be thrown out so quickly. The ends do not justify the means.
…The central problem with Prop 2 is that it pits one democratically elected government against another democratically-elected government…It creates a constitutional showdown not over the issue of corporate influence or property-based rights, but rather a show-down between federal and local government. This is the wrong constitutional showdown, because a victory will bolster the dangerous states-rights agenda while not directly affecting corporation’s legal status.”
A related concern is that of NIMBYism, where people, for example, continue to use natural gas, but oppose fracking operations in their community, or environmentalists who support alternative technology, but oppose wind turbines being sited in their communities because it might ruin some people’s view, and affect property values. Alternatively, people like Amory Lovins and David Holmgren argue that destruction of the environment should occur in the places where people are using the resource that destroy the environment. If we are made to suffer the consequences locally for our over-dependence on fossil fuels, maybe that would encourage us to actually reduce our consumption. I understand Lovins once suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that if tailpipes of cars were routed so that exhaust was delivered inside the vehicles for people to breathe, only cars with zero-emission pollutants would be sold.
I’m a big believer in relocalization, but I still believe we need to work within the realm of federal laws as well as our continued connection with the world as a whole.
“This will not be an isolationist process of turning our backs on the global community. Rather it will be one of communities and nations meeting each other not from a place of mutual dependency, but of increased resilience.”
- Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook
As Jason Bradford wrote, “Relocalization is based on an ethic of protecting the Earth System–or Natural Capital– knowing that despite our cleverness, human well-being is fundamentally derived from the ecological and geological richness of Earth.”
The main feature of Relocalization, however, is not home rule government overriding federal law. It is about building a parallel public infrastructure whose goal is “rebuilding more balanced local economies that emphasize securing basic needs. Local food, energy and water systems are perhaps the most critical to build. In the absence of reliable trade partners, whether from peak oil, natural disaster or political instability, a local economy that at least produces its essential goods will have a true comparative advantage.”
Concluding Thoughts
The Romney plan says “Only government is standing in the way of energy independence.” CELDF says government has been hijacked by corporate interests and are standing in the way of sustainability.
To me it seems clear that CELDF’s analysis is basically correct. A huge barrier to achieving real sustainability is the corporatocracy, and indeed the structure of the entire neoliberal global political economy that exists today.
This must change (and it will change, as this system dependent upon unending economic growth will not survive long in the post carbon civilization it is inadvertently helping to hasten on). How to get there is where I disagree with CELDF.
This post has highlighted one area of disagreement, which is the idea that home rule “community rights” government is an effective strategy for achieving protection of the environment. I have other areas of disagreement as well, which will hopefully be addressed in future posts. However, I also want it to be clear that I applaud CELDF and its sister organizations for the degree of passion with which they stand up for the environment, and for shining a light on the concentrated power held by today’s multinational corporations.
Here is the extended quote from Michael Lilliquists’ letter.
Michael Lilliquist Explains His Position on the Proposed City Initiative Prop. 2
“… My point here is that the people’s sovereignty is embodied collectively not separately by the federal and state and local governments.
Every city is not and cannot be sovereign and independent. To believe otherwise would be to undermine the very idea of the rule of common law, common justice, and common purpose. It would undermine the “we” in We the People. It would become, each community for themselves; our way or the highway. Local rejection of federal authority has a long, sordid past, known sometimes as “nullification” and put into service by racist southerners attempting to oppress and discriminate under the cloak of local democracy. Hyper-local democracy is a dangerous and potentially corrupting tool; you don’t want to use a tool which you would not allow others to use. The enlightened arc of history has been to expand our boundaries of shared community and values, not narrow it down city by city. The rule of law should not be thrown out so quickly. The ends do not justify the means.
More importantly in my mind, Prop 2 is practically designed to create a constitutional showdown between local and federal government — but that’s not what most people are concerned about. The common target of concern is the influence of corporations in our political and legal and regulatory systems. CELDF has done a credible job in outlining how the regulatory system is often a rigged game in which the direct voices of the people or their elected representatives are stymied and thwarted by established legal privileges granted by the courts and federal laws. Well, if this the problem, then we need a healthy showdown between the rights of citizens to protect themselves and the rights of businesses to conduct harmful operations under legal shield of permits. This is a national problem, that calls for a national solution (e.g., pass an constitutional amendment that declares the Bill of Rights protect natural persons only). Prop 2 misses the mark. It’s the wrong fight. It attacks federalism not just corporatism.
Many people, perhaps including yourself, are understandably frustrated — unable to talk to the decision makers on the Whatcom County Council, and also unable to vote on the issue. There is a feeling that, in all justice we ought to be able to vote to do whatever we feel is right and necessary to protect our interests, our health, our future. I hear you and I get it, but that’s not how the rule of law works, because different issues are dealt with at different levels of government. Under our system, the democratically-elected federal government has sole jurisdiction over some matters, while the democratically-elected state government has authority over others. The state, in turn, delegates certain responsibilities in part or wholly to democratically-elected local governments. In principle, the people are always in charge and sovereign, but we the people govern through different jurisdictions.
The central problem with Prop 2 is that is pits one democratically-elected government against another democratically-elected government; it pits the people’s representatives against the people’s representatives. It creates a constitutional show-down not over the issue of corporate influence or property-based rights, but rather a show-down between federal and local government. This is the wrong constitutional show-down, because a victory will bolster the dangerous states-rights agenda while not directly affecting corporation’s legal status.
The restoration of democracy in America needs to come about not through a weakening of our Constitution, but through a re-assertion of citizen control over federal government. If you want to take back control of our (your!) democracy, begin by understanding which jurisdiction controls what. Then work to change those rules that don’t work, but please do so at the proper level (local, state, national) and by effective means (electoral victories, etc.) that cannot be overturned in court. If passed, this proposition would no doubt be overturned, and where would that get us?”
See complete text here:
http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=1463
This is Ben Price, Project\’s Director for CELDF. I don\’t have a great deal of time to respond to this post at great length. Just to say: there is a reason that the analysis of CELDF is generally accepted but not to be acted on, according to this post. For that to be the conclusion, either the CELDF analysis is wrong, or the lens through which it is being viewed is distorted. I suggest the latter is the case.
The notion that we need not challenge the (\”our\”) U.S. Constitution and its underlying premises indicates to me the source of the cognitive dissonance bleeding through this post. Without giving a deep history lesson here, the notion the the U.S. Constitution is anything but a legal guarantor for sustaining privileges for those who have gained them, and subordinating fundamental rights to those privileges, does not have and objective understanding of the counter-revolution that was the enactment of the U.S. second constitution (the first being the Articles of Confederation), nor the secondary and non-enforceable status of the so-called Bill of Rights. Many Americans, when they think of the Bill of Rights, identify the first ten amendments to the constitution as the soul of the constitution. However, not one person living under the governing authority of the second constitution in 1789 gained even of the smidgeon of the rights enumerated therein, who did not already legally possess those rights. In other words, only privileged white men with property were guaranteed those rights. The rest of us, over the past couple of centuries, have had to fight and organize and die to be recognized as being covered by that \”Bill of Rights.\”
That the \”founders\” who drafted and pushed for the federal constitution were hostile to general rights and despised democracy can be discovered by anyone with patience to read the notes from the Philadelphia convention of 1787 kept by James Madison. The constitution which resulted elevated property rights high above general human and civil rights, as exemplified by the legalization of slavery (the elevation of the property rights of slave \”owners\” above the human rights of people now designated as \”property.\”). Women were in no better place — they were chattel of husbands and fathers nationally until 1920. Native Americans until 1922. White men without property did not finish the \”liberation\” of gaining the suffrage until after the Civil War in Rhode Island (the Dorr War) in 1842. And today, since corporations were granted Bill of Rights protections beginning in 1819 (the Dartmouth decision), and again in 1886 (Santa Clara) and in dozens of cases since, every community/local government is subordinate to the \”rights\” of property now deemed to have the status of \”legal personhood.\”
The incomplete understanding reflected in this posting would take a lot more time to delineate, but I invite anyone who wants a more complete understanding to take the time and make the effort to contact CELDF, schedule a Democracy School, an not settle for half-measures and half-truths.
Ben Price
Projects Director
CELDF.org
Ben,
I appreciate you visiting my blog and taking the time to comment. Even though you didn’t have time to post at great length, you were still able to offer a 500 word response. However, I am troubled that you did not address the simple point of my post, which is that the CELDF model is asking us to use a tool that we might not want states rights or property rights activists to use.
Also, you mischaracterize my post, put words in my mouth, and use what I believe are faulty points of logic.
I wrote: “To me it seems clear that CELDF’s analysis is basically correct. A huge barrier to achieving real sustainability is the corporatocracy, and indeed the structure of the entire neoliberal global political economy that exists today.”
I was attempting to be generous, and to acknowledge we are on the same team. It seems we both believe that protecting the enduring health of the planet is important, and that the corporatocracy in the U.S. is a huge barrier to that. I would add that it is a worldwide problem crossing numerous political arrangements, and not just a problem with the U.S. legal/corporate structure. And also that there are other important barriers – our lack of sustainability is not a single problem with a single source, and there is no single solution that is going to fix it.
You characterize my position to be that this analysis is not to be acted upon, which is totally erroneous. From that incorrect conclusion, you then attempt a logical argument: “either the CELDF analysis is wrong, or the lens through which it is being viewed is distorted. I suggest the latter is the case.” It is entirely possible that my lens is distorted, but it does not logically connect to whether the analysis is correct or not.
It might indeed be odd if I had said the analysis was correct, but not to be acted upon. However, if one says an analysis of a problem was basically correct, but the strategy to address that problem is faulty, that is a very reasonable thing to say, and I think I was fairly clear on that when I wrote “How to get there is where I disagree with CELDF.” And at the end of the post, once again I tried to be very clear: “This post has highlighted one area of disagreement, which is the idea that home rule “community rights” government is an effective strategy for achieving protection of the environment. ” Basically agree with the analysis of one aspect of the problem, basically disagree with the strategy to address that problem.
You then go on to state: “The notion that we need not challenge the (\”our\”) U.S. Constitution and its underlying premises indicates to me the source of the cognitive dissonance bleeding through this post.”
Putting words in my mouth again. Where did I state that we need not challenge the Constitution? Your last 3 paragraphs are a nice advertisement for your Democracy School, and you create a straw man implying that I disagree with these points (“cognitive dissonance,” “incomplete understanding,” “half-truths”). And the primary points in my post remain unanswered.
Coal Free Bellingham had a long response to Michael Lilliquist’s letter (comment number 1 above), but did not address the central point he raised: “Every city is not and cannot be sovereign and independent. To believe otherwise would be to undermine the very idea of the rule of common law, common justice, and common purpose…Local rejection of federal authority has a long, sordid past, known sometimes as “nullification” and put into service by racist southerners attempting to oppress and discriminate under the cloak of local democracy…you don’t want to use a tool which you would not allow others to use. …The central problem with Prop 2 is that it pits one democratically elected government against another democratically-elected government…This is the wrong constitutional showdown, because a victory will bolster the dangerous states-rights agenda while not directly affecting corporation’s legal status.”
No one responded to Tip Johnson when he raised a similar point in response to David Maas’ article at NW Citizen (http://www.nwcitizen.com/entry/our-right-to-decide): “Local governments have an abhorrent record of doing the right thing. …If local governments had been willing to do the right thing, federal imposition of civil rights would not have been needed”
And now you also have not addressed this central concern, the topic of my post: “I just don’t see local communities making better choices than those made at the state and federal level. This may happen in isolated pockets, but by the same token you could see vast swaths of places overturning the few gains the environmental movement has achieved on the level of federal and state policies and regulations, which is exactly what the Tea Party wants to do.”
And so I ask you Ben, what is CELDF’s opinion of the Repeal Amendment introduced in 2011? How do you view the balance of powers between federal and state governments? Should states have the right to unilaterally render void an act of the federal government that they disagree with? Or should local communities have that right? What do you think of Mitt Romney’s energy agenda, which includes “Empower states to control onshore energy development”? If you disagree with the Tea Party strategy for obtaining local control, how do you maneuver your group being allowed to use this tool and not other groups with a different agenda?
Finally, my post was not designed to give a “complete understanding” of the CELDF model. I narrowed the focus for a reason, to try, within the confines of a single blog post, to flesh out some thoughts about a very specific, but important part of that model.
Yet to be discussed are other important parts of the model.
Regards,
davidm58
David,
To put it as succinctly as possible, the difference between the political organizing of Tea Partiers and other property-rights based folks and the CELDF approach is that our strategy places inalienable rights above property privileges. In other words, unlike the materialist-property centered view of the purpose of law and governance (to protect privilege and vested property interests above all), the Rights-Based strategy follows the argument made by the Declaration of Independence: that inalienable rights may not legitimately be denied or abridged by any government, because people erect governments to guarantee those rights. When governments do otherwise, they are de facto illegitimate and the people have the fundamental right to alter or abolish them.
It’s the same for local governments as for State and federal: the limitation on the authority of government is set by the inalienable rights of the people. And all levels of government have one core obligation: to protect those rights. And no level or branch of government shall delegate rights denying authority to anyone, including corporations.
When the State or federal government acts to violate rights, the people have authority to use that government closest to them to correct the wrong. However, they DO NOT have the authority to use State or local government to undue, deny or violate rights. This last statement is what is rejected by those who would use “State rights” to limit or violate rights.
It should also be noted that no government, Stale, federal or local, “has” rights. Governments have obligations, responsibilities and authority delegated by the people, which they at all times retain power to revoke.
Ben Price
Ben,
Most of your second reply here is a very interesting discussion about rights, and what kinds of rights should take precedence over others. I am hoping to do a post later on this topic, perhaps entitled “Nature’s Rights vs. Community Rights vs. Individual Rights.” Your reply above could be an important contribution to that discussion.
You say “our strategy places inalienable rights above property privileges.” I would say, that is not your strategy , that is your ethics or a part of your philosophy. That may sound like a pedantic or nit-picky complaint, but words matter here, because it is the strategy that I am trying to address in this post. Because it still seems to me that you’re engaging the same strategy – the same legal tool – that the States Rights advocates are using.
You come closest to answering my questions when you say the people have the authority to use the government closest to them to correct the wrong, but do not have the authority to use state or local governments to undue, deny or violate rights. So I’ll take that as the answer.
I remain concerned that you are opening a door here, creating a legal precedent. If the “targeted, isolated, qualified nullification” (as someone else described it to me in an email) you are advocating for were to be adopted, it then opens the door, where the other side then has their own petition and passes a proposition that they then convince the majority to vote for saying we (in whatever locale) decided that the clean air act is unconstitutional, and therefore we want to nullify it in our community. I just don’t think we can apply the point of law you are trying to use only to issues we care about, and not let others apply it to issues they care about. I’m not sure you’ll be able to retain control of the scripting.
Also there is still this concern, which Michael Lilliquist articulates about “the wrong fight”: “CELDF has done a credible job in outlining how the regulatory system is often a rigged game in which the direct voices of the people or their elected representatives are stymied and thwarted by established legal privileges granted by the courts and federal laws. Well, if this the problem, then we need a healthy showdown between the rights of citizens to protect themselves and the rights of businesses to conduct harmful operations under legal shield of permits. This is a national problem, that calls for a national solution (e.g., pass an constitutional amendment that declares the Bill of Rights protect natural persons only).”
Dear David,
That you want to claim a mere semantic difference between claimed property rights and inalienable human and civil rights illustrates the point I have been driving at: that the supposed agreement you have with the CELDF strategy of organizing around community rights is an instance of false agreement. I won’t simply embrace your back-handed compliment without mentioning that it is no compliment at all. With due respect but certainty, I say you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the community rights strategy. And I assert it is no ideology — it leaves to those who employ the strategy the decisions about what to believe or not and what policies to implement — it is not even a legal theory at its core. It is instead an organizing strategy. That it is so and you do not agree is neither here nor there. It’s not dependent on your belief in it for it to be so.
As a favorite author of mine once said: reality is that which when you stop believing in it doesn’t go away.
I will truncate my remarks to simply say that you don’t know what you do not know, and that the distinction between inalienable rights and the privileges associated with property seem not to have been explored here. The right to own property is not in dispute, so long as we agree on a rational definition of property. If by “property” we mean that which is created by ones own personal efforts, then we can agree perhaps that there is a right to own property and it is a fundamental right. But the Rights OF Property, such as the privilege to profit from accumulating interest, dividends, rent, and other masked versions of general servitude, or the constitutional rights bestowed on corporations (property) are of another order and belong not to the realm of fundamental rights, but to an ideology of privilege. Likewise, no one is born with an inalienable right to maintain monopoly control over a certain acreage, lording over a part of the land on the earth’s surface. But that is the basis upon which U.S. law, derived from British Empire tradition, derived from the Law of Conquest, is built.
It is not unscientific nor counter-empirical to observe that none of the property boundaries, nor any of the national borders, nor any state lines or municipal jurisdictions can be seen from earth orbit. Those lines exist nowhere but on paper and as ideas. Only from maps derived from other pages with ink upon them is it possible for us to imagine such chartered monopolies over parts of the planet earth — parts off limits to all inhabitants but those with the legal “right” and the violent fire power to back it up. Those lines are law. Who decides what the law will be?
Those lines are not inalienable rights but piss lines in the dirt. They keep out everyone except those with “titles” to monopoly control, and those titles are trans-generationally transferable just as blood lines of nobility use to be. Property is the relatively new viral carrier of privilege from one privileged minority to the next privileged minority. We need to create a trans-generational carrier of fundamental rights, and so far the U.S. Constitution has failed miserably by comparrison.
Privatization of the planet, beginning one might say with the British Enclosure of the Commons, barrels into the future with the full throated support of the Constitution and common law. It seeps into non-real-estate realms, into the realm of ideas, the patenting of life, and it crushes what rises to claim a birthright authority to self-determination without the titled credentials of property wealth.
More some other time.
Ben Price
Ben wrote: “That you want to claim a mere semantic difference between claimed property rights and inalienable human and civil rights illustrates the point I have been driving at: that the supposed agreement you have with the CELDF strategy of organizing around community rights is an instance of false agreement.”
This is getting tiring. I don’t need to go further than that first sentence, because once again you have totally misread my remarks. I can’t have a dialog with you if you keep misinterpreting my comments and put words in my mouth. I never discussed my thoughts on the differences between property rights and inalienable human and civil rights. I merely said it would be a good topic of future discussion.
I generally like CELDF’s analysis, but I read something in their newsletter that is an obstacle to energy literacy.
They had an article stating the problems of “fracking” for unnatural gas, a huge problem in their home state of Pennsylvania. The writer claimed that we have the right to determine our energy future, instead of corporations. While this is nice politics, it’s not based in physics. A grassroots, democratic, compassionate approach on energy policy would still have to be rooted in what is physically possible.
I’ve used solar energy for more than two decades. It’s great but it’s not going to replace our current consumption. We would have to relocalize production, not on a fifty or five hundred year plan, but much, much faster.
Also, the price for not fracking (for banning it) would be an end to wasting natural gas for electrical production. We will need to save the remaining natural gas for heating cities in the winter and learning to live with considerably less electricity than we use today.
Physics are more important than politics.
A renewable energy society would have a smaller, steady state economy. Green growth is a myth at this late date.
Mark,
Physics does not prove the need for an energy gormandizing society, and you rest your argument on a false premise that human society based on fossil fuel consumption for the past two and one half centuries is the only option for the future. An argument that depends on the status quo not being changed is tautological and not reasonable. Consider another argument: I suggest that water is the empirically provable contingent for human society to survive, as well as clean air to breathe. But fracking demonstrably destroys both. It is not mere philosophy to claim that the people directly affected by governing decisions have the greater claim to be the ones to make those decisions. And so an argument for localizing energy policy, as well as agricultural, water, waste disposal and other policies are not antithetical to the laws of physics. They are antithetical to the religion of empire, the doxology of centralization, the reverence for power of privilege over the authority of fundamental rights.
What is peculiar to humans is the ability to create an utterly fictional meta-reality, using language and symbols, that not only separate humans from nature, but humans from the real universe. We tend to think technology is an instance where we use language and symbols (math too) to arrive at empirical “facts” and then use those facts to manipulate the “real” world to our collective advantage. For however much our math and reasoning leads us to more powerful manipulation of the empirical world, the uses to which we put such technology generally serves the interests of our fictional meta-realities (ideologies, dogmas, myths, faiths etc). So the science may be objectively factual, but the use of it is anything but. And the results may be community devastating, environmental destruction and lots of other negatives that scientists deny responsibility for and ideologues argue can’t be wrong because they are “science-based” and create economic profit centers.
Who decides? Not science, but something else. Facts are facts. What we do with them defines who and what we are.
Ben Price
You wrote:
Physics does not prove the need for an energy gormandizing society, and you rest your argument on a false premise that human society based on fossil fuel consumption for the past two and one half centuries is the only option for the future. An argument that depends on the status quo not being changed is tautological and not reasonable. Consider another argument: I suggest that water is the empirically provable contingent for human society to survive, as well as clean air to breathe. But fracking demonstrably destroys both
My reply:
I actually have the opposite opinion that you suggest I have.
I’ve used solar PV for over two decades.
But the reason we use fossil fuels – and minerals – is they are very concentrated. Solar is great but it’s harder to concentrate. This is physics, not politics nor official science. It’s merely a physical fact.
I’m glad to see the environmental movement wake up to the fact that fracking is evil, but few dare suggest that if this evil is banned – which it should be – the natural gas supplies will decline much faster and we’d have to stop burning natural gas for electricity, saving what’s left to heat northern cities in the winter. Conventional natural gas peaked in the US in 1973.
It takes time to “transition” and when most communities in the US grow only about a percent or two of their food supply it is clear we are totally dependent on fossil fuel. It takes fossil fuels and minerals to make solar panels and wind turbines. We should use some of what’s left to make a bridge toward a smaller, relocalized society so our grandchildren have something usable at the end of the fossil fuel era.
I recommend these short reports:
“Awareness of Climate Change by the media and general public is obviously running well ahead of awareness about Peak Oil, but there are interesting differences in this general pattern when we look more closely at those involved in the money and energy industries. Many of those involved in money and markets have begun to rally around Climate Change as an urgent problem that can be turned into another opportunity for economic growth (of a green economy). These same people have tended to resist even using the term Peak Oil, let alone acknowledging its imminent occurrence. Perhaps this denial comes from an intuitive understanding that once markets understand that future growth is not possible, then it’s game over for our fiat system of debt-based money.”
– David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, “Money vs. Fossil energy: the battle to control the world”
http://www.holmgren.com.au/DLFiles/PDFs/Money_vs_Fossil_Energy.pdf
http://www.futurescenarios.org
David Holmgren, “Future Scenarios: Mapping the cultural implications of peak oil and climate change”
this is the best short summary I’ve read about the need to integrate Peak and Climate together
http://www.postcarbon.org/new-site-files/Reports/Searching_for_a_Miracle_web10nov09.pdf
SEARCHING FOR A MIRACLE
Net Energy Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society
by Richard Heinberg
Foreword by Jerry Mander
A Joint Project of the International Forum on Globalization and the Post Carbon Institute. [ False Solution Series #4 ]
September 2009
There are a number of reports that claim a totally renewable energy society is possible in the coming decades. Carbon Free, Nuclear Free. The 2050 report from Stanford. These and others are correct – whatever society exists several decades from now will no longer use fossil fuels, because you cannot burn fuel that no longer exists. “Searching for a Miracle” asks the same question but with examination of the physical logistics of transition coupled with the fact that we are at Peak Energy.
Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) has to be considered when evaluating energy potentials and the investment of resources (not only fiat money) required for their deployment.
Ben,
I have a request that you slow down and carefully read what is being written here before you hit ‘reply.’ I don’t know Mark at all, but I did not interpret what he said to be remotely similar to what you are implying. Check out his website (linked from his name), and l I think you’ll have another confirmation that you must have read him wrong.
Not only is he NOT saying that “human society based on fossil fuel consumption for the past two and one half centuries is the only option for the future,” I think what he is saying is the exact opposite: Simple physics dictates that human society based on fossil fuel consumption of the past 250 years is not possible to continue into the future. He is saying we will not be able to determine our energy future – instead we will have to make difficult choices based upon the physical limitations of our planet. We will be forced to consume much less energy.
Mark,
Thanks for visiting the site and posting comments. I just took a brief tour of your websites, and I like what I’m seeing. I so much agree with the graph on your PeakChoice.org site, where the hierarchy of needs begins with ecology, then goes to energy, then all the way up to spirituality. I also like the Permatopia.com site. I’ll have to add these to the blogroll.
Thanks. I’d appreciate a PeakChoice link, but “permatopia.com” is being folded into PeakChoice.org, so no need to link there.
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