A Lesson in History

by Peter Pogany

This story was written in December of 2010 by Peter Pogany. In his last published work (Havoc, 2015), Pogany shares a shorter version of the story, and introduces it this way:

“Chaotic transition is near when the established order becomes prone to disruption through stochastic developments. This characterization corresponds to the ‘butterfly effect’ as initial condition sensitivity has been nicknamed in the study of nonlinear dynamics. How an innocuous and totally unpredictable small event on the molecular/atomic level escalates in significance may be illustrated by the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Hapsburg throne, in Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914.”
Peter Pogany passed away in 2014, but were he alive today he surely would have noted the similar circumstance playing out before our eyes now. How did a coronavirus transfer from bats and pangolins to humans? What started off as a seemingly small event occurring in a seafood and meat market in Wuhan, or a small mistake made in a Chinese bio-research lab, has resulted in bringing the world to its knees. A world already poised on the edge, vulnerable to innumerable innocuous occurrences that could set in motion a chain of events that would instantiate a chaotic transition. A bifurcation that just might bring the existing world system to a transition point. A transition to what remains to be seen. Pogany again: “To put it crudely, something will set the ball rolling, perforce.”  I hope you enjoy the true story that follows, and how Pogany tells the tale. Following the story is an analysis, and then a warning! For more, see my Peter Pogany page. 

June 28, 1914. Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Hapsburg throne and his expectant wife Sophie, visit Sarajevo, capital city of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of the late Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Seven potential assassins await them, lined up along the expected route of the official motorcade according to the contingency principle — if A fails B will act, and so on.

Tragicomic coincidences almost turn the plot into a ridiculous failure. One of the conspirators throws his bomb. He hears the explosion, dutifully bites into his cyanide capsule and jumps into the nearby Miljacka River. What he did not know was that the bomb bounced off the Archduke’s car and exploded under the next one; that the cyanide was years past its “due date,” and the river that was expected to swallow him — as would befit a martyr and legendary hero for his people — was about three inches deep at that time of the year. The rest of the conspirators did not act. They either thought the deed was done or became paralyzed in the critical moment. But just when the whole thing looked like a youthful blunder, randomness came to the aid of Big History.

One of the conspirators, Gavrilo Princip, who skipped dinner the night before, got hungry and decided to sample the delicious offerings of Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen downtown. In the meantime, the Archduke — defying counsel to get the hell of out town — insisted on going through with the originally scheduled program, even extending it with the PR gesture of visiting the military hospital where the victims of the earlier bomb explosion were treated. General Potiorek, the governor of the province, decided to speed up the convoy by taking the unencumbered, freeway-like “Apel Quay” along the river. He told everybody about the route change except the chauffeur who drove the car in which he sat along with the royal visitors. It ended up alone in the narrow downtown street where Schiller’s establishment was located.

What is this? We have taken the wrong way!” yelled the General. The chauffeur immediately stopped and began to back up as a crowd of onlookers gathered. Gavrilo, now in the front of the restaurant, found himself face to face with his targets. He pulled out his pistol and killed them point blank. As is well known, the ensuing chain of diplomatic events led to the thundering “Guns of August.” The First World War was on, and from our contemporary perspective of universal history, one might say that the global society entered a period of chaos that did not subside until the end of the Second World War.

 Assassination illustrated in the Italian newspaper Domenica del Corriere, 12 July 1914 by Achille Beltrame

But once we appeal to chaos theory to explain what happened during the first part of the 20^th century and why, we must account for the butterfly effect, the nickname of “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.”

Since it is defined metaphorically as “insignificant/significant” (i.e., an innocuous happening unleashes a process that results in a major event), the assassination described obviously cannot be compared to the fluttering of the butterfly’s wings. While no direct and inexorable causality can be shown between the assassination and the ensuing conflagration, the occurrence defies the degree of insignificance stipulated by a general understanding of the butterfly effect in the context of “initial condition sensitivity.”

The problem with the application of this concept to historical narrations is that visible events range too freely between what is truly negligible and quite significant. Therefore, to find the real innocuous, totally unforeseeable occurrence (inviting even the notion of being external to human affairs as these can be recognized by simple observation), we must go deeper into matter than what individuals and their actions represent. We must enter the brain, the neurophysics of forming thoughts, making determinations, and instructing the body to carry them out.

In these terms, one might say that the nearly infinitesimal material conditions that allowed a predetermined plan (already established in the assassin’s neural network) to find an opportunity of implementation, resided in a random coincidence between two electrochemical events: One that signaled hunger for the assassin (especially for the offerings of Herr Schiller) and the forgetfulness of the General to instruct his driver about the change of route.

But a short reflection suffices to recognize that this explanation is also unsatisfactory. An uncountable number (e.g., unknowable from the human standpoint) of conditions had to come together for those two cerebral manifestations in order for the event to occur: the weather, the traffic pattern, the speed of service and portions served in the restaurant, the configuration of the crowd gathering around the royal vehicle, and so on ad infinitum. Thoughts in the General’s head that diverted his attention also corresponded to physical circumstances with an infinite number of attributes and antecedents.

To exit from the labyrinth, the initial conditions must be described in more general terms. The inquiry leads deeper into matter; into the world of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles that make up the human population and bind it with its surroundings. And we can go even deeper (almost incomprehensibly more so) if we accept the stipulations of “string theory,” the most supported version of the “theory of everything” among physicists. Whether we stop at the subatomic level or opt for strings in imaging initial conditions that prevailed on June 28, 1914, the analysis finds itself face to face with the old dilemma of chance versus necessity.

To show that the outbreak of violence ought to be ascribed to destiny rather than to a random incident, we need to make a detour through the realm of historical systems analysis.

Let us begin with a widely acknowledged observation: The Great War effectively ended the age of classical capitalism.

After a very painful — almost revolutionary — start in the British Isles during the 1830s, the institutions, organizational schemes, and the repertoire of matching individual behavior that characterized “Capitalism 1.0” spread to the rest of the world like wildfire.

Smoke-belching factories, squalid living conditions, disease and deprivation, crude exploitation, child labor, injustices of all conceivable forms on a mega scale, Marx’s Communist Manifesto mid-century notwithstanding, by the 1880s, the system turned into a roaring success. At least in broad statistical terms. Per capita income increased for the world’s growing population. International trade and other forms of cross-border economic relations accelerated with a vigor that reminds us of the late-20^th-century burst of globalization.

Scientific-technological development brought new marvels every year. Just a few examples (cited from the work of British historian Neville Williams): 1880 saw Andrew Carnegie’s first large steel furnace; in 1881, Louis Pasteur used vaccine to fight anthrax (a method that is standard practice even today in preventing the from-animal-to-human spread of this vicious disease); and so on, year after year.

No sooner did the Victorian era, which cradled the golden age of laissez faire capitalism, die in 1901, the Edwardian period was born and the triumphant march continued. Cumulative breakthroughs in industry and transportation created fabulous new opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment.

The middle class grew by leaps and bounds; especially in the industrialized countries; but even in far corners of the planet, an increasing number of people began to have access to luxuries by the epoch’s standards. Arts, music, literature, and theater flourished. There was no let-up in epochal achievements, not even on the eve of the disaster. In 1913, Niels Bohr discovered the atomic structure; in the spring of 1914, Canada completed its Grand Pacific Railway. It seemed that humanity was on its way to New Jerusalem. And yet, the machinery that wove the fabric of growing welfare became hopelessly outdated by virtue of being less and less able to accommodate further progress. There were four main reasons:

(1) Dependence on gold limited the supply of money that must expand in order to sustain growing levels of output, hence employment and income; (2) while industrialization reached the level at which national economies were prone to accelerate and decelerate if left on their own, the global order’s policy space did not include instruments (i.e., modern fiscal and monetary policies) to counter this phenomenon; (3) the system skewed distribution too much in favor of capital at the expense of labor, thereby constraining the development of mass consumption/mass production; and (4) it was unfit to accommodate institutions or schemes for international cooperation, required by growing economic and financial interdependence among national economies.

“Initial-condition sensitivity” (i.e., proclivity to the butterfly effect) hid in the incongruity between system parameters and the state of the world. Starting with the circumstances that coalesced in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, any innocuous development (such as coincidental neuro-states in the brains of Potiorek and Princip) was sufficient to tear apart global organization. Why was chaos needed?  Because the system was too entrenched and much too successful to abandon it voluntarily via thoroughgoing, peaceful reforms, and because there was no consensus as to what the next global system ought to be.

To allow history to move to “Capitalism 2.0”, which we have been enjoying since the end of World War II, global self-organization needed help from the “outside.” It got it from there since conditions deep in matter, where the state of the world actually resides, can be considered “other than us,” by virtue of being external to the strictly human-scale realm of political movements, personalities, logically explained and plausibly demonstrated individual and national aspirations, ideas and propositions.

World population was fewer than 2 billion in 1914 — roughly the same as the increase between the late 1980s and now, when planetary occupancy numbers around 7 billion souls. It is clear that the standard of living currently enjoyed by billions would be inconceivable if Capitalism 1.0 had remained in force. It had to go. Therein lurks the necessity of its being blown away by something, anything that could unleash the dark forces of the night, the chaotic dynamics from which a fresh dawn, a new world order would emerge after spectacularly failed false starts and a collective moral-catharsis-engendering deluge of blood and pain.

By 1914, the system was so anachronistic that the slightest stir in the organization of matter (intimated in political economic terms as “Capitalism 1.0”) could snowball into an event significant enough to disrupt it, along the same line of reasoning that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Mexico could lead to a thunderstorm in France.

Going deeper into matter in analyzing history and considering the human biomass with the world economy a single entity, which since the 1830s has had a demonstrated need for a comprehensive system in order to function and grow, has two advantages.

The obvious one is that such a materialist theory allows us to go beyond personalities and national policies, arguments that tend to provoke dismissals and counter arguments with no end in sight. Since it is abstract, it can exist along with other, more concrete narrative plots and explanations. Indeed, we are learning that reality is much too fuzzy to be describable only through the exclusive application of either/or, hard-nosed binary logic. The good news is that our minds have revealed their capacity to supersede straight-jacket narrow, rationalistic duality. For example, by now, physicists accept that light is both a stream of particles and a wave. Both are correct and they are allowed to live side by side without a formal synthesis.

The less obvious reason may surprise you: Global system parameters are once again out of joint with the times. Namely, the prevalent world order is predicated on vigorous economic growth and it tends to stall, and perhaps even collapse, without it. Marx was wrong in this respect too. He thought that the greatest weakness of capitalism was its inability to accommodate economic growth beyond a certain point. That may have been correct for its first version but it is eminently wrong for the current one.

Judging by the intensification of environmental problems associated with expanding levels of output; along with the expected rise in the prices of oil and other key resources (e.g., several metals) — once the world economy gets back to its full-swing — it appears that nature is trying to tell us something. It may be this:

“Hello earthlings! Considering your huge and growing numbers, coupled with your insatiable material ambitions, I am switching to a constraining mode. It’s time for you to move on and become consciously resonant with my laws. Have you considered Ecological Capitalism (Capitalism 3.0)? Perhaps. But the need to find a substitute for your current ‘expand or perish economy’ faces quite a struggle for acceptance. And admit it: Most of you don’t know much more about it except that it must be something very different. Since the corrective challenge penetrates the wellsprings of your ordinary aspirations, piecemeal reforms are not an option. Your species faces a new spasmodically zigzagging search via macrohistoric chaos. As of now, and increasingly so in the future, you are destined to live with ever-sharpening ‘sensitivity to initial conditions.’ The enhanced sense of unpredictability along with the growing threat of discontinuity you experience means that global society’s rendezvous with another axial date is not far off.”

Remember June 28, 1914! Be in shape!

Consciousness and the New World Order

In the previous post on Chaos, Havoc, and the American Abyss, we began a discussion about the work of Peter Pogany, and how it relates to the situation we now find ourselves in with the pending Trump administration here in the U.S.

A recent post in The Guardian by George Monbiot starkly outlines the seriousness of some of the crises we’re currently facing: The 13 Impossible Crises that Humanity Now Faces (hat tip to The Chrysalis). “One of the peculiarities of this complex, multiheaded crisis,” Monbiot writes,  “is that there appears to be no “other side” on to which we might emerge.”

Recall that in our previous post we discussed how deep infrastructure issues such as resource depletion and climate change impose eventual limits to growth, which then disrupt economies built upon heavy environmental resource extraction and financed by debt. And remember Pogany’s statement that “a stagnating economy is civil discontent waiting to happen – especially at a time when government spending must be curbed.” And also that the coming chaos might eventually, as a chaotic transition, lead to a much healthier organization of society.

What will it take? “It will take nothing less than a mutation in consciousness, as outlined by the Swiss thinker, Jean Gebser (1905-1973).”

And what does that mean?  To unpack this, let’s survey chapter 5 of his book, Havoc, Thy Name is 21st Century!

A concise dictionary definition of ‘consciousness’ is “the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.” Consciousness, according to Pogany, is made up of active and passive components, that together contain the information necessary to deal with the issues that the “physical-social-cultural-economic-environment presents for the individual.”

“Consciousness,” Pogany says, “is best visualized as a continuous spectrum that stretches from intensely active components, engaged when dealing with a crisis in the family, at the workplace, or in the environs otherwise dilineated; to the body’s biological processes, which remain passive unless attention is explicitly drawn to them (e.g., in the doctor’s office).”

A point that Pogany is eager to emphasize is that “individual consciousness is inseparable from its socieeconomic substratum.”  This means that we come to common understandings about the “rules of the game” – cultural ideas about ways of living that we tend to take as given, real, and true. “What people living under a stable global system consider ‘true assertions’ about history, society, and the economy presupposes a scaffolding of the conceptual universe  that the mind tends to conflate with the laws and regularities of the natural world.”

“We are complex products of a world order.” Philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Husserl have all spent a lot of time making this clear, not to mention “the psycholinguists, the existentialists, the structuralists and the postmoderns.” And yet mainstream economics does not recognize this fact.

The stable global system, or world order, that we currently live in takes as a given that growth dependent economics is the only possible way forward. Everything is built around this arrangement, and the shared expectation is that we must find ways to keep it going. Margaret Thatcher’s TINA principle is invoked – “There Is No Alternative!” Never mind the fact that numerous heterodox economists have proposed alternatives, and never mind the fact that there are system feedback signals everywhere telling us that the growth dependent economy is exacerbating so many of  the world’s most intractable problems. The feedback signals are not yet strong enough to overcome the current global system’s self-defense mechanisms. In his 2006 book Rethinking the World, Pogany called these signals “A siren that shrieks too late, then causes a brawl at the fire station” (p. 187).

In my 2015 paper, Patterns for Navigating the World in Energy Descent (available here and here), I wrote:

“[Our growth oriented economic arrangement] is one more “myth of the given” that should not be taken for granted. Edgar Morin referred to “development” as:

The master word…upon which all the popular ideologies of the second half of this [20th] century converged…development is a reductionistic conception which holds that economic growth is the necessary and sufficient condition for all social, psychological, and moral developments. This techno-economic conception ignores the human problems of identity, community, solidarity, and culture… In any case, we must reject the underdeveloped concept of development that made techno-industrial growth the panacea of all anthroposocial development and renounce the mythological idea of an irresistible progress extending to infinity (Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millenium, Morin, 1999, pp. 59-63).

Addressing this “myth of the given,” Pogany pokes fun at his own profession:

Historically, geocapital [matter ready to be used to feed cultural evolution] has registered a net increase; additions and expansions more than offset exhaustions and reductions. This long-lasting successful experience led to the culturally ingrained confidence in the possibility of its eternal continuation. Economic growth theory keeps “deriving” the same conclusion over and over again: Optimally maintained economic expansion can continue forever. Translated from evolutionary scales to our own, this is analogous to “Since I wake up every morning I must be immortal” (Rethinking the World, 2006, p. 118).”

The problem is, this “economic growth theory” has become something our entire society is built upon and is dependent upon, and has become ingrained into our collective structure of consciousness.  Pogany believed that the challenge to develop a sustainable world system is so great that it will require a major transformation of individual consciousness structures; and yet, the average individual would be incapable of becoming so transformed as long as current socioeconomic conditions prevail. So, the current system is holding up our personal transformation, and our lack of personal transformation is holding up the transformation of the system. “Ay, there’s the rub.”

Pogany introduces the reader to the work of cultural philosopher Jean Gebser, and his outline of five “patterns, structures, or mutations” of consciousness. According to Gebser, we’re currently at the tail end (the deficient stage) of the fourth structure, the mental-rational structure, and are facing the chaotic transition that we hope will lead us to the fifth “integral” structure of consciousness.

We will take a closer look at Gebser’s five structures of consciousness in our next post.  And for a preview of some of the other points we’ll eventually get to, check out The Trump Agenda is a Dead End over at The Chrysalis.

Word of the Year: “Post-Truth”…and Finding “Balance” with Yin and Yang

The Washington Post reports: “It’s official: Truth is dead. Facts are passe.” The Oxford Dictionaries have declared “Post-Truth” as the “word of the year.”
“In this case, the “post-” prefix doesn’t mean “after” so much as it implies an atmosphere in which a notion is irrelevant — but then again, who says you have to take our word for it anymore?”

The term came into common use after the Brexit campaign and the U.S. presidential election. Trump’s “pinochio rating” on how many lies he told in the campaign was higher than any other person to have run for that office, and yet it made no difference to his supporters.

Scott Preston, at The Chrysalis blog, has been following the “post-truth” meme for quite a while, and has numerous posts discussing it in a Gebserian/integral frame. Especially in his flurry of posts since the election. In The End of the End of History, he writes,

“…some may conclude that I’m just whistling past the graveyard in suggesting — following Gebser — that “post-truth” is a simultaneous destruction and restructuration of truth, and consequently of “human nature”, consciousness, humanism, and universality and so on. They may be right. But I hope to give further reasons why we can anticipate “post-truth society” as an essential restructuration including the very meaning and understanding of “truth” itself, and why vox populi, vox dei [“the Voice of the People is the Voice of God”] implies an essential truthfulness despite appearances to the contrary and the weakness of the ego-nature.”

Finding “Balance” with Yin and Yang

This also relates to The Chrysalis blog.  The other day Scott had an insightful post, also related to this “Post-Truth” theme: Our Post-Truth Era and the Coincidentia Oppositorum. Another very good post worth your time.  But it was a comment to that post by Steve Lavendusky that eventually led me to this second subject of Balance and Yin/Yang.

Steve posted the Seven Principles of the Order of the Universe and the Twelve Theorems of the Unifying Principle by George Oshawa, the founder of Macrobiotics. I found that pretty fascinating, and then found another page from that website on the subject  “Misconceptions About Yin and Yang: The Goal is Not Balance But is Imbalance.”

This page offers some key insights into the Polarity pattern, and what it means to “balance” patterns for enduring health. This could be of interest to any PatternDynamics practitioners. We shouldn’t think of “balance” as a static thing, but rather as “balancing” – a process that is fluid, dynamic, and on an ever changing continuum. Stability, rest, and coming back to center are healthy pursuits, but perhaps we should think of it as a process of bringing the ongoing flux into some kind of control. Working towards a centering process that has a polarity swing in a narrow range, rather than wild swings to the extremes. And yet we still need to maintain an openness and resilience in response to the wilder swings life throws our way, taking them as opportunities for needed change. Chaotic transitions can lead to much needed positive change.

The author of the piece (Phiya Kushi) below frames the yin/yang polarity as “seeking imbalance and the creation of dynamic polarity.” This is his way to set up a contrast with our common understanding of “balance.”:

“There is a prevalent and even an a priori like assumption that the stated and desired goal of yin and yang is always to achieve balance and that when they are balanced then everything is stable, is in harmony and all is at peace and flows smoothly. This is a misconception. Let me explain.

Nothing in this universe is ever in perfect balance with the exception of the entire universe itself. In all its manifestations, the goal and direction of yin and yang is actually towards imbalance and the creation of a dynamic polarity. This imbalance and polarity is the source of movement and change itself and gives rise to the continuous creation of all phenomena. The greater the imbalance, the greater the polarity then the greater the movement and dynamic change.”

Read the rest of the article here.

 

 

Chaos, Havoc, and The American Abyss

“If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” – Thomas Hardy

In the final days before the 2016 American presidential election the pundits were out in force, engaged in collective hand-wringing.  Glancing through lists of commentaries and op-eds, here are some of the titles:

Don’t Trust the Future to President Havoc, America and the Abyss, An Order of Chaos, Please, Venomous 2016 Race Slithers to a Finish, Who Broke Politics?, Democracy’s Majesty and 2016’s Indignity, Final Days – Awful Choice, Europe on Pins and Needles, The First 100 Horrific Days of a Trump Presidency, America’s Descent into Banana Republican-ism, An Election is Not a Suicide Mission, Liberals Cried Wolf about Bush and Romney and We Were Wrong – Fascist Trump is Different, and The Post-Truth Presidency.

How did it come to this? And where are we headed after the election?

Many have speculated on the reasons for the current crisis in American politics, and surely there are many facets that have played a part, and there are many angles to cover.  Richard Heinberg’s recent analysis (An Order of Chaos, Please) covers much of the same ground  I was intending to cover here, and serves as a good introduction.  He begins by disabusing us of the notion that things will return to normal once the election cycle has concluded. He then shares the somewhat conventional wisdom that many Americans these days, formerly of the middle class, do not have things as well as their parents did. The “wage class” has declined in both income and political power, thanks in part to globalization and other forces. Backs are up against the wall, and people are ready for change. The same-old, same-old doesn’t cut it.

Heinberg then takes it a step further, telling us that “American civilization was destined to unravel anyway.” He mentions Joseph Tainter’s work, “The Collapse of Complex Societies,”  and offers the sobering analysis that “social pressures from unsustainable debt levels, increasing inequality, and rampant corruption” are the new normal, thanks to “deeper infrastructural issues having to do with resource depletion, pollution (in the form of climate change), and the essential unsustainability of economic growth.” The current election cycle is merely the prelude to an unfolding spectacle of America’s fabric coming apart.

Heinberg eloquently sums up the depressing scenario that seems all too likely:

“The government of the United States of America has developed increasing numbers of tics, limps, and embarrassing cognitive lapses during the past ten or 15 years, but it has managed to go on with the show. Yet as dysfunction snowballs, a maintenance crisis becomes inevitable at some point. When the crunch comes (most likely as a result of the next cyclical economic downturn, which is already overdue and could be much worse than that of 2008), we will reap the fruits of a system that is simply no longer capable of acting cooperatively to solve problems.”

“…The nightmare of the election itself will end soon.  But we may not like what we wake up to.”

Indeed. We are now being forced to wake up today to a Trump presidency and a divided country.

There is another writer who had a perspective that I have found to be unique, timely, and insightful. His name is Peter Pogany.  One of his last major papers, written in 2013 (Thermodynamic Isolation and the New World Order) before he passed in 2014, was about havoc, chaos, and the abyss, and it was turned into a book published in 2015: Havoc, Thy Name is 21st Century.

As dismal as his short term outlook was, Pogany wasn’t all doom and gloom. Like Michael Dowd, Pogany was a short term pessimist, but a long term optimist (Dowd calls himself an “apocaloptimist,” listen to his interview discussing with Terry Patten The New Ten Commandments and the Coming Apocaloptimism here).

Pogany was an economist who saw that “a stagnating economy is civil discontent waiting to happen – especially at a time when government spending must be curbed.” Our current world economy is structured so that it requires continued growth at unsustainable rates just to maintain our standard of living.  We’ve hit the wall, and the wage class around the world is responding – Brexit and President-elect Donald Trump are two corresponding results. According to Pogany, the world is in the beginning phase of a “nonlinear macrohistoric episode” – a chaotic transition, which he saw as a necessity to precipitate a crisis of consciousness that would eventually lead to the wide-spread “integral a-rational” consciousness structure, as based on the thinking of cultural philosopher Jean Gebser

“What will it take to go from considering tightened modes of multilateral governance a monstrous dystopia to people around the world on their knees begging for a planetary Magna Carta that is more detailed, focused and enforceable than the United Nations Charter of 1945? It will take nothing less than a mutation in consciousness, as outlined by the Swiss thinker, Jean Gebser (1905-1973). But a mutation of the implied magnitude amounts to nothing less than a break with centuries of ingrained habits, values, and expectations. It is simply inconceivable without the hard fate of macrohistoric turmoil.”

Darkness must come before a new dawn. It is Pogany’s work that we’ll continue to discuss in more detail in posts to come. An overview of his work can be found on our Peter Pogany page. Many of his older essays are archived at Resilience.org here.

Read Part 2 of this series here: Consciousness and the New World Order

The I-732 Carbon Tax: Responding to Critiques

In response to my previous post, in which I voiced my strong support for I-732, I’ve heard back from several friends who echoed and applauded my position.  I’ve also heard from three respected friends who have voted against, or are considering voting against the initiative.

This is the WA state tax swap ballot initiative that Sightline Institute has declared “would give Washington the continent’s, if not the world’s, most potent, persistent, and comprehensive incentive to move swiftly beyond dirty fossil fuels and to a carbon-free future.”

It’s an initiative that has the support of over 50 climate scientists at UW, as well as numerous economists.

So why would some of my climate change concerned friends consider voting against this initiative? Allow me to address the concerns my friends raised with me.

Argument # One is that a recent report coming out of British Columbia has shown in the ten years of having implemented a carbon tax, emission have actually gone up in the province.

My Response:

The “recent report” was not referenced to a source, so I performed a quick online search.  I found a December 2015 report by the Carbon Tax Center, British Columbia’s Carbon Tax: By the Numbers.  This report found that “The 12.9% decrease in British Columbia’s per capita emissions in 2008-2013 compared to 2000-2007 was three-and-a-half times as pronounced as the 3.7% per capita decline for the rest of Canada. This suggests that the carbon tax caused emissions in the province to be appreciably less than they would have been, without the carbon tax.”

British Columbia’s Carbon Tax By the Numbers

Note that the chart above provides not only the change in emissions in BC after the tax went into effect, but puts their numbers in context, comparing to the rest of Canada, and also giving us emissions per capita, AND per GDP.

A caveat in the report tells us that “GHG emissions increased in British Columbia in 2012 and again in 2013, not just in absolute terms but also per capita. This suggests that the carbon tax needs to resume its annual increments (the last increase was in 2012; its bite has since been eroded by inflation) if emissions are to begin again their downward track.”

This means not that emissions were increasing beyond the pre-tax levels, but, as the other chart here makes clear, that the downward trajectory had reversed course and was beginning to creep up again.  Note the reason: The BC tax was frozen at 2012 levels. The proposed initiative for WA state does not have this defect – see below.

After more digging online, I think I found the report my friend was referring to.  The report above was prepared by an organization biased in favor of the carbon tax approach.  This second report, by Food and Water Watch, has a bias against market based solutions to climate change.  You can find their report, “The British Columbia Carbon Tax: A Failed Market Based Solution to Climate Change,” here.  This report skews the numbers a bit by ignoring the dramatic drop in emissions that occurred during the first 6 months of the tax, because it was not a full year, and because they attribute the decline to the recession rather than the carbon tax.  So it comes down to what period of time is measured, as they admit: “It largely depends when the change is measured: The taxed emissions decline was more than 10 percent from the 2004 peak to 2012, but that includes many falling years before the carbon tax was enacted; the decline was 2.2 percent from 2008 to 2014, but the tax was in effect only for the second half of 2008.”

In addition, this second report does not give us the context against the rest of Canada, nor the per capita and per GDP numbers.

I’ll admit that I haven’t spent a lot of time comparing the validity claims of the two contrasting reports, but the links are there for those who want to dive deep.  What does stand out to me is that the first report (“By the Numbers“) gives us a long trend comparison between BC and the other Canadian provinces, and I think this mitigates other factors such as the recession and is a more robust and fairer overall report.

However, there are others much more skilled at analyzing data than I, and they devote much more time and resources – we’re lucky to have the Sightline Institute in the Pacific Northwest for this purpose.

Like the “By the Numbers” report, Sightline agrees that the real weakness of the BC tax is that it was frozen in 2012.  In contrast, according to Sightline, the CarbonWA plan of “setting the price’s rising trajectory all the way to 2059 would vault Washington to the head of the North American pack on climate leadership. Other North American carbon prices are not yet high enough nor sustained enough to achieve climate-stabilizing pollution reductions…I-732 would give Washington the continent’s, if not the world’s, most potent, persistent, and comprehensive incentive to move swiftly beyond dirty fossil fuels and to a carbon-free future.”

“…Unlike the British Columbia carbon tax, which froze its price in 2012 pending further legislative action, I-732’s tax would continue increasing by 3.5 percent plus inflation every year until 2059 and by the inflation rate thereafter. This price trajectory sends a clear signal that clean energy is the smart choice in the Evergreen State for the rest of the century.”

The second argument from my friends is in two parts: a) oil and gas companies are supporting this initiative because it would give tax breaks to corporations and instead (b) will put the burden of a carbon tax on the low income working class (and the rest of the public consumers).

My Response:

a) I have found no evidence that oil and gas companies are supporting I-732.  Again, according to Sightline, the tax “covers pollution from burning fossil fuels, including gasoline, diesel, aircraft fuels, refinery and industrial operations, natural gas, and coal or natural gas burned in power plants in-state, and in plants out-of-state when they deliver electricity to Washington homes and businesses.”

b) Will the tax unfairly burden low income Washington residents? No. It actually makes the WA state tax system less regressive and more progressive, and has provisions to benefit those of lower income. It does this by reducing sales tax by 1%, and provides a Working Family Tax Rebate of up to $1500 to low income families. It also lowers the B&O Tax on Manufacturing so that manufacturing jobs will not be lost. Here is yet another quote from Sightline:

“I-732 hews closely to this principle [of mitigating costs to communities with lower incomes], yielding the biggest gain in tax fairness in Washington in nearly four decades, with thousand-dollar net benefits for hundreds of thousands of low-income families. I-732 does nothing procedural to increase the influence of low-income families on decision making. It does, however, put most of them ahead financially. Indeed, has any reform in the last decade, aside from the Affordable Care Act, increased many low-income working families’ annual income in Washington by more than $1,000 apiece in a single stroke?”

If you’re still unsure, read the whole meticulous analysis by Sightline (fyi, they refute the supposed “budget hole” that I-732 would create):

Weighing CarbonWa’s Tax Swap Initiative
Does I-732 Really Have a “Budget Hole”?
Weighing the Critiques of CarbonWA’s I-732

Cliff Mass has a good overview response to many of the other objections raised to I-732, here: Why I-732 is a Win-Win.

Are We Going to Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good?

You might want to check out the conversation Thom Hartman had with Vien Truong, representing opposition to I-732. Hear the perspective of the ‘No’ campaign, along with Hartman’s own reflections, i.e. Does It Have to Be Perfect?.

On that score (does it have to be perfect?), blogger John Michael Greer has a very trenchant critique of climate change activism as a whole, partially attributing it’s failure to gain traction to 4 points he calls 1) piggybacking,  2) the partisan trap, 3) purity politics, and 4) pandering to the priviledged.

1) Piggybacking: “This is the insistence that any movement for social change has to make room on its agenda for all the other currently popular movements for social change, and has to divert some of its time, labor, and resources to each of these other movements.”  The ‘No on I-732’ campaign is guilty of this charge. Many Washington Sate environmentalists actually oppose the measure and want to kill it because it does not include some of their “climate justice” concerns. Greer gives the same-sex marriage campaign as a contrasting success, where they were able to keep their eye on the ball with their single issue and not tie it to every other issue on the left (however important they may be in their own right).

2) The Partisan Trap: “The Democratic Party is the place where environmental causes go to die,” according to Greer. “This isn’t accidental,” he says. “Both US parties have perfected the art of reducing once-independent movements for social change into captive constituencies, which keep on working to elect candidates for one or the other party, while getting essentially nothing in return.” I-732 attempts to avoid this trap by making I-732 revenue neutral and enlisting the support of fiscal conservatives who care about the environment.

3) Purity Politics: “…movements for social change must exclude everyone who fails any of a battery of tests of ideological purity. It’s been pointed out, and truly, that the Right looks for allies to attract while the Left looks for heretics to expel; this is one of the reasons that for the last forty years, the Right has been so much more successful than the Left.” Greer also observes that “capacity to bridge ideological divides and find common ground on a single issue isn’t a guarantee of victory, but refusing to do so is almost always a guarantee of defeat.”  I-732 may not be perfect, but it is a very well crafted, and sincere effort to put together an initiative that bridges ideological divides and has actually gained support from both the left and the right in true bi-partisanship. It is a practical and pragmatic approach that actually has a chance to be implemented.  It will likely be too late if we think we can wait for something better.

4) Pandering to the Privileged: “Since the early 1980s, most activists have framed their appeals and their campaigns as though the only audience that mattered consisted of affluent liberals, and as often as not went out of their way to ignore or even insult the great majority of Americans—you know, the people who would have had to be on their side if their cause was going to achieve any kind of lasting victory.” It is here that the I-732 campaign might have done a better job in engaging with advocates for the poor, minority coalitions, and climate justice folks. But the reality is that I-732 will result in a larger increase of income for low income working families than any other reform of the last decade.

“In summary,  I-732 is a chance for citizens of Washington State to make a meaningful step towards reducing carbon emissions, will make our State tax system fairer and less regressive, will foster business and economic activity, and will serve as a positive example to the nation of environmentally effective bipartisan action.” – Cliff Maas

WA State Carbon Tax Initiative: I-732 Needs a Vote from You

I-732 is an initiative on the ballot here in Washington state calling for a revenue neutral carbon tax (it lowers other taxes at the same time it raises a tax on fossil fuels), and it needs and deserves your support.  Here’s how it reads on the ballot:

This measure would impose a carbon emission tax on certain fossil fuels and fossil-fuel generated electricity, reduce the sales tax by one percentage point and increase a low-income exemption, and reduce certain manufacturing taxes.

And here is how the NY Times summarized it in an Op-Ed written in support of this initiative:

[I-732] would impose a tax on greenhouse gas emissions generated by fossil fuels like petroleum, gas and coal. The tax would start at $15 per metric ton next year, increase to $25 a ton in 2018 and then rise gradually over a few decades until it hits $100 a ton in 2016 dollars. (A typical passenger car emits about five metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year.) The money raised by the tax would go to lowering the state sales tax, effectively eliminating a business tax on manufacturers and giving up to $1,500 in tax credits to low-income residents.

Climate scientists and economists have long said that one of the best ways to fight climate change is to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions and raise that price over time, which would encourage the switch to cleaner energy sources, like solar and wind. The initiative’s approach is based on a carbon tax that British Columbia put in place in 2008. Ireland and Sweden also have such taxes.

The Washington proposal would be the first in the country and could well set an example for other states.

James Hansen, perhaps the most respected and famous climate scientist and activist, has said for years that a carbon tax and dividend program is the best way to fight climate change – much more effective than the common “cap and trade” schemes politicians like to promote. Hansen is a very strong supporter of the WA state initiative.  From his op-ed in the Seattle Times:

…The most efficient way to phase out fossil fuels is a steadily rising carbon fee collected from fossil-fuel companies and distributed uniformly to the public. The public should support this “carbon fee and dividend.” Wealthy people will pay more in increased prices than they receive in the dividend. However, economic studies show that carbon fee-and-dividend spurs the economy, increases the gross national product, creates millions of jobs and rapidly reduces fossil-fuel use. Most people would come out ahead.

So why did nations from Australia to Europe and states such as California adopt an ineffectual and bureaucratic cap-and-trade system? In a word: politics. Seven years ago, then-U.S. Sen. John Kerry admitted to me that a fee-and-dividend policy was a better approach. But in words that still ring in my ears, he said, “I can’t get one vote for that.” Instead, liberals pushed for Waxman/Markey cap and trade, with votes bought and paid for by giveaways to special interests, the bill stretching to more than 2,000 pages.

Conservatives — and I, in congressional testimony — brand cap and trade as “cap and tax,” because it raises the price of energy for the public with the money used to grow government. Australians dumped the government that adopted cap and trade and rescinded the bill. California’s bureaucratic program, after 10 years, has had a vanishing effect on emissions — worse than the average of the other 49 states.

I-732 has not been compromised by special interests. Instead of giving the funds collected from fossil-fuel companies to the public, it would reduce the sales tax 15 percent — from 6.5 percent to 5.5 percent — and funds a Working Families Tax Credit for low-income families. Energy prices would rise, but the measure would induce investments in clean energy, giving Washington a head start in technology competition.

I-732 is the product of a lean group of committed people who gathered 350,000 signatures, even in the absence of support from certain “Big Green” environmental groups that remain eager to work with special interests that benefit from cap-and-trade and tax-and-spend schemes.

For the sake of government transparency, and to provide an example for other states and the rest of the world, but most of all for young people, future generations and nature, vote “yes” on I-732.

To conclude, I’ll share a portion of an email that has been going around a bit, and that perfectly expresses my thoughts (and my frustrations) around this issue. Note the reference below to the analysis of Sightline Institute. If you have any doubts about whether or not to support this issue, please delve into the Sightline analysis.  From Kristy Royce:

“…I want to make sure you hear the whole story. We are within striking distance of passing this! And this is a BIG DEAL!

So … a carbon tax. Under normal circumstances, no email would be required. Carbon tax? Yes, of course! We’ve been waiting decades for this! We’ve known for years that this is the single most effective policy to tackle climate change.

But this is not a normal time.

You may have heard that many of the progressive and green groups are not supporting I-732. You may have seen Fuse’s Progressive Voter Guide that advises a No vote on I-732. How is this possible?

That is some crazy talk!

The politics around I-732 are complicated*, but the short version is this: The groups opposing I-732 oppose it for one main reason: it is revenue neutral. In other words, it’s a carbon tax that won’t bring in any additional revenue, because it lowers other taxes at the same time it raises a tax on fossil fuels.

These groups are so committed to the idea that a carbon tax should raise new revenue that they’re willing to kill the strongest climate policy in North America over it. They’re even willing to trot out the same lies that right wing opponents always use against environmental initiatives: in the official Voters’ pamphlet, they have the audacity to call it a “job killer” and say that “it will not significantly address climate change.”

Here’s what Sightline, the Pacific Northwest’s premier progressive think tank had to say about I-732:

“I-732 would launch Washington to a position of global leadership on climate action. By implementing a pollution price, rising steadily for four decades and keeping pace with inflation thereafter, I-732 would reorient Washington’s economy away from fossil fuels and toward low-carbon options. The price would be simple to administer and would cover most of the state’s pollution. By reducing Washington’s regressive state sales tax and funding tax credits for working families, I-732 would make the state tax code more progressive.”

“Taken on whole, for us at Sightline, and judged exclusively on the basis of policy, not politics or political strategy, the policy’s flaws are cause for concern but are dwarfed by I-732’s potential benefits.”

If you’re still unsure, read the whole meticulous analysis (fyi, they refute the supposed “budget hole” that I-732 would create):

Weighing CarbonWa’s Tax Swap Initiative
Does I-732 Really Have a “Budget Hole”?
Weighing the Critiques of CarbonWA’s I-732

You can tell from the way they wrote the piece that they’re bending over backwards to avoid pissing off all their allies on the left. But facts are facts.

Please join me in supporting I-732 and helping to spread the word. Please vote YES for climate action!

Cheers,
Kristy

* The complication is mainly around the involvement of environmental justice, climate justice, and social justice groups representing communities of color. I’m not in any way minimizing the importance of the issues they’re raising. But I deeply believe that opposing I-732 over these issues is a huge mistake. As so often, perfect is the enemy of good, and I believe that to be the case here.”

Pogonomics and Pope-onomics

The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings. – Pope Francis

Pogonomics

Pogo was a famous comic strip written by Walt Kelly, that ran from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.  In 1970, Kelly designed a poster to celebrate the first Earth Day, using the slogan “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

On Earth Day 1971, Kelly used the slogan once again, this time in the comic strip itself:

In the 1980s, Joe Dominguez began teaching courses on financial integrity, and later co-wrote with Vicki Robin the best selling book Your Money or Your Life. He framed his teaching around what he called “Pogonomics.”  In a 1990 column on the subject “What is Enough?” Dominguez wrote,

While no one was paying much attention, economics replaced religion as the touchstone of human life. Like religion, economics has priests and rituals. The purpose of these priests and rituals is to interpret the meaning of events while keeping the people in confusion. Any effort on the part of the masses to connect directly with the realities behind the rituals is considered a sacrilege.

Dominguez’s concerns are well expressed in this excerpt:

The purpose of money is to consume resources. Any time that you spend money, you are consuming resources. Since you have traded a piece of your life to get that money (through your employment), you are also consuming your own resource (your life-energy) when you spend money. The new resource you bought with the money now belongs to you – it is not available to others. It is now your right to use it up, to prevent others from getting it, to hide it from other people in your closet, to make other people feel bad because they don’t have it.

When you want to consume more resources than you can get with the money you got by selling your own resource (your life energy) through your employment, you can sell your future and your children’s future. This is called “trading futures,” or debt. You have to use up even more resources when you are consuming via debt – the extra amount being called, interestingly enough, “interest on consumer debt.” This is a very efficient way to “use up, devour, destroy, waste and squander.”

While you are in employment, acquiring money and debt, and consuming, you are creating the environment. All along the way, from when that resource was taken from the Earth to the time you have consumed as much of it as you want and then thrown it “away,” it has been creating environment. The mining equipment that got to the resource had to create environment by removing trees and topsoil that were in the way, had to burn (consume) fuels that created a different recipe for the air environment, had to run a lot of water to take the used-up chemicals into the river environment. Then the resource had to be transported to the refiner, creating a lot of environment along the way, and the refiner created more environment, and then the manufacturer created still more environment, and then the shipper had to create lots more environment to package the resource so that it would appeal to the consumer, who would pay the money that it cost for all that environment (and employment and resource). The consumer often uses the new resource to create more environment as well, and then throws it “away” – creating even more environment.

Hence, the concept of Pogonomics is indeed summed up as “We have met the enemy and he [or she] is us.”

Pope-onomics

Pope Francis has a very similar analysis, which we are here referring to as “Pope-onomics.”  This article by Nathan Schneider (thanks to theurj for the link) outlines some of the Pope’s economic ideas which argue against free market growth at all costs, monetary policies that encourage crippling debt, and  of “a financial system that rules rather than serves.”

Rush Limbaugh is wrong when he characterizes the Pope’s economics as “pure Marxism.”  However, neither is it pure capitalism, which comes as a shock to the mainstream view that our current “business as usual” economic order is non-negotiable. Schneider comments, ” It’s not an economics of the right or left, of Democrats or Republicans, but an economics of cooperation.”

Like Pogonomics (and permaculture), Schneider also points out that “The future Francis hopes for is one that comes chiefly from the bottom up.” He told a group of activists in Bolivia, “The future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize and carry out creative alternatives.”

Here are a few comments from the Pope Francis Encyclical, Laudato Si‘ (yes, it is worth your time to set aside an hour or two to sit down and carefully read through the pdf of this entire document):

“In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. Yet only when ‘the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,’ can those actions be considered ethical.”

“A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power. This is what consumer movements accomplish by boycotting certain products. They prove successful in changing the way businesses operate, forcing them to consider their environmental footprint and their patterns of production.”

“Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.”

“Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending.”

Pope Francis seems to resonate with Joe Dominguez’s moral and ethical concerns about economics having replaced religion as the touchstone of life. In 2013, in his first major written work,  Evangelii Gaudium, he specifically asks us to say “No to an economy of exclusion” and “No to the idolatry of money,” which he said could lead to “a new tyranny.” “Money must serve,” he says, “not rule.”

 

What Pope-onomics does encourage is self-governing economies and cooperative enterprise, which are owned and controlled by the people who depend on them (workers and customers), and are not set up to maximize profits. Co-operatives have a long tradition in the catholic tradition and indeed in the very roots of the very earliest Christians.

Acts 2:42-47: The Fellowship of the Believers

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, ghey gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Schneider references the 1916 book Distributive Justice by priest-economist John Ryan, and quotes his conclusion about the Advantages and Prospects of Co-operation: “Co-operation is a golden mean between individualism and socialism. It includes all the good features and excludes all the evil features of both….[cooperatives cultivate] a greater development of the altruistic spirit than is possible under any other economic system that has ever been tried or devised.”

Fossil Fueled Republicanism and the Six Myths About Climate Change that Liberals Rarely Question

In my final post in the Holiday Smorgasbord series, I want to share two articles that are each directed at (and finding fault with) different ends of the political spectrum. I don’t think the point of either of these articles is to demonize individuals who embrace either conservatism or liberalism, but rather to point out that in general we are not being served by the mainstream political discourse from either perspective. I find these articles by Michael Klare and Erik Lindberg to bring an appropriate balance to one another. I close with the alternative offered by Peter Pogany.

Fossil-Fueled Republicanism

Michael Klare’s latest post offers his take what the latest U.S. election results portends for the immediate future:

Pop the champagne corks in Washington!  It’s party time for Big Energy.  In the wake of the midterm elections, Republican energy hawks are ascendant, having taken the Senate and House by storm.  They are preparing to put pressure on a president already presiding over a largely drill-baby-drill administration to take the last constraints off the development of North American fossil fuel reserves.

The new Republican majority is certain to push their agenda on a variety of key issues, including tax reform and immigration.  None of their initiatives, however, will have as catastrophic an impact as their coming drive to ensure that fossil fuels will dominate the nation’s energy landscape into the distant future, long after climate change has wrecked the planet and ruined the lives of millions of Americans.

Read more here.

Six Myths About Climate Change that Liberals Rarely Question

This post by Erik Lindberg is, as of this writing, showing 551 comments on the Resilience.org site – by far the largest number of comments I have ever seen on a single post at that site. Some liberals are taking offense, but I think are missing the point, as I stated at the top of this post.

Myth #1:  Liberals Are Not In Denial 

“We will not apologize for our way of life” –Barack Obama

The conservative denial of the very fact of climate change looms large in the minds of many liberals.  How, we ask, could people ignore so much solid and unrefuted evidence?   Will they deny the existence of fire as Rome burns once again?  With so much at stake, this denial is maddening, indeed.  But almost never discussed is an unfortunate side-effect of this denial: it has all but insured that any national debate in America will occur in a place where most liberals are not required to challenge any of their own beliefs.  The question has been reduced to a two-sided affair—is it happening or is it not—and liberals are obviously on the right side of that.

If we broadened the debate just a little bit, however, we would see that most liberals have just moved a giant boat-load of denial down-stream, and that this denial is as harmful as that of conservatives.  While the various aspects of liberal denial are my main overall topic, here, and will be addressed in our following five sections, they add up to the belief that we can avoid the most catastrophic levels of climate disruption without changing our fundamental way of life.  This is myth is based on errors that are as profound and basic as the conservative denial of climate change itself.

Read more here.

Rethinking the World

Now, if this is the situation we find ourselves in with mainstream political discourse, with its unwillingness to consider options other than continued growth (about which see yesterday’s post here) – is there hope for meaningful action?  If folks want to explore this further, consider the work of Peter Pogany, whom I’ve been reading lately. Pogany has pointed out that we currently live in a “world order” or “global system” (since approximately 1945) that is basically not capable of voluntarily moving beyond the paradigm of economic growth; therefore a chaotic transition to a new global system will be required :

“The current world order cannot deliver long-term sustainability on a planetary scale. By design, it is incapable of recognizing humanity’s thermodynamic reality. A new form of global self-organization is needed and it is probably waiting in the wings.” (http://blog.gebser.net/)

Pogany doesn’t mean there’s something all set up that we can easily and seamlessly transition to. On the contrary, he sees world history as a “thermodynamic process of self-organization,” which “precludes smooth transition from one relative, globally valid steady state to the next.” (quoted from his 2006 book Rethinking the World).
But he does see, based on his own work, as well as that of Jean Gebser (The Ever Present Origin) that after a period of chaotic transition, we will move “toward a new form of self-organization that would recognize limits to demographic-economic expansion. What will it take to go from the current hostile disgust with the dystopia of tightened modes of multilateral governance to people around the world on their knees begging for a planetary guild? It will take nothing less than a mutation in consciousness, as outlined in the oeuvre of Jean Gebser (1905-1973).” (quoted from his 2013 paper on Thermodynamic Isolation and the New World Order).

This is no fairy tale, and yes, human agency is definitely involved. Pogany’s approach is a systems thinking approach with a the laws of thermodynamics as a foundation, and built around his own expertise as an economist; he calls his approach new historical materialism.

“Only Cassandra may know whether the “best” (a quick global transformation), the “historically conditioned expectation,” or the worst (no global transformation, not even in the wake of an ecological disaster) is in the womb of time.”

Too woo-woo? Only if you consider previous transformations to be woo-woo. Pogany sees the French revolution as a chaotic transition to Global System 1, characterized as “laissez faire/metal money,” and two world wars and the Great Depression as the transition to the current Global System 2, characterized as “mixed economy/weak multilateralism.” What will it take to transform into a radically new Global System 3, which he expects to be characterized as  “two-level economy/strong multilateralism,” and which, he says “will favor cooperation over competition; acquiescence over indifference; responsible sociability over isolation; integrative open-mindedness over stubborn, perspectival dogmatism, altruism over extrasomatic hedonism.”

Sadly, Peter Pogany passed away in May of this year. May he rest in peace.

–  –  –  –  –  –  –  –

Review, in case you missed the previous posts in this series: A Holiday Smorgasbord of Recommended Reading, Listening, and Watching by David MacLeod

Watching the Watchdogs: 10 Years of the IEA World Energy Outlook

The primary deliverable from the IEA is the massive World Energy Outlook (WEO) report that is released annually in November. Concerned about peak oil, I began reading the Executive Summary to this report 10 years ago.

 

Climate Change and Pacific Northwest Glaciers

Here’s a story from KUOW’s Ashley Ahearn that aired on NPR on how climate change is affecting the glaciers in Washington State – focused on the Easton glacier on Mt. Baker, and the Skagit River it drains into.  Since 1900 we’ve lost about 50 percent of our glacier area, and this makes the Northwest “uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

Permaculture, A Vision of a Post-Oil World

Yves Cochet’s Preface to the French edition of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.

What’s Going on with Low Gas Prices, Shale Oil, American Energy Independence, and OPEC?

There’s a lot of confusion going on right now – as the price of gasoline in the U.S. is declining, we are becoming ever more complacent….

Responding to Limits to Growth: Embrace Life and Locate Your Values

Two voices that I have been following off and on for the last decade, and who have both been warning about limits to growth, and more importantly what we as individuals can do about it: Nate Hagens and John Michael Greer.

Watching the Watchdogs: 10 Years of the IEA World Energy Outlook

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the energy watchdog of the industrial world. The developed nations of the world were caught off guard by the oil crisis of 1973. They then realized energy resources are so fundamental to all of civilization, and recognized how vulnerable we are to supply disruptions. Forty years ago in 1974, the International Energy Agency was formed, tasked with keeping an eye on these precious resources, and providing policy makers around the world with information to make better informed planning decisions.

The primary deliverable from the IEA is the massive World Energy Outlook (WEO) report that is released annually in November. Concerned about peak oil, I began reading the Executive Summary to this report 10 years ago. Five years ago I wrote a summary of what the report has been telling us from 2005 – 2009, concerning issues related to peak oil: The IEA and World Oil Supply Projections. Given that another 5 years have passed, I offer an update, which will bring us to today’s release of the 2014 World Energy Outlook.

The short version is this: The IEA World Energy Outlook has gradually moved from rosy to pessimistic reports over the last ten years, or what Stuart Staniford called “increasingly reality-based.” Over the last decade, the report’s projected oil demand has gradually decreased by 20 million barrels per day (mb/d), and the projected costs have continued to rise. Yet even their most pessimistic reports, I believe, fail to capture true reality. It seems that politics plays a strong role in what is allowed to be published. It also must be stated that predicting the future “is a fool’s errand,” as Kurt Cobb reminds us in his review of the 2013 report.

Not that the report tries to predict the future – its purported purpose is to lay out realistic scenarios that allow for intelligent planning by policymakers. However, the scenarios have not turned out to be realistic, and that’s the rub.

So why should we pay any attention at all to these yearly exercises? 1) because the IEA has access to the most comprehensive data available; 2) because there is much useful information if you learn to read between the lines; and 3) because they are considered the voice of authority by so many; and 4) because it is intriguing (to me anyway), to follow the trajectory, year by year, comparing the changes and the contradictions, and trying to learn something in the process.

The bottom line of the latest report released today, November 12, 2014, is that we live with an energy system under extreme stress and danger, and sustained political efforts are essential and urgent if we are to avert both supply disruptions and climate disaster. For a couple of independent reports that I feel are more realistic, see the end of the post.

Prior to 2005: Watchdog Fail

It has been reported that the IEA was aware of peak oil as far back as 1998. Researcher Lionel Badal has uncovered the story (a fascinating tale) that the 1998 WEO contained an oil supply graph that included “a balancing item” that they named “unidentified unconventional oil” that conveniently made up for shortages beyond 2010. This was said to have been a code to indicate peak oil.

The political fallout that resulted after publication of that report resulted in very conservative WEO reports from 2000 to the present.

Part 1: A Recap of 2005 – 2009

2005: Don’t Worry, Be Happy

2005 was the year world oil production begain its multi-year plateau, after steady increases for many years, and is now regarded by many as the world peak of conventional oil production (see also here). It was also the year The Hirsch Report was produced for the U.S. Dept. of Energy, warning that “The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem,” and that mitigation needed to be implemented 20 years in advance of the peak.” In 2005, peak oil was still seen as a pretty fringe idea. The then executive director of the IEA, Claude Mandil dismissed the idea of peak oil out of hand and stated confidently that “Hydrocarbon resources around the world are abundant and will easily fuel the world through its transition to a sustainable energy future.” [International Energy Agency, 2005. Resources to Reserves: Oil and Gas Technologies for the Energy Markets of the Future, page 3. IEA, Paris, quoted by G. Monbiot, http://www.monbiot.com/2008/12/15/at-last-a-date/]. In the 2005 WEO, Oil demand by 2030 was projected to be 120 mb/d.

2006: Expectations Lowered

In 2006, the peak oil community was pointing out that after years of steadily increasing supply of oil, production had been flat for a full year since 2005 – perhaps “peak oil” had arrived. The 2006 WEO began lowering expectations of demand growth from 120 million barrels per day (mb/d) to 116 mb/d by 2030.

2007: A Supply Crunch in 2015?

The tone of the 2007 World Energy Outlook was noticeably becoming less rosy. They discussed decline in output from existing fields, admitted the possibility of a temporary supply crunch in 2015, and expressed concern about whether investment needed to meet future demand would be forthcoming. It was noted that we were becoming more dependent on a few Middle Eastern countries as declines in output from other countries increased. Demand was still projected to be 116 mb/d by 2030.

2008: Findings Replace Assumptions, and Time Is Not On Our Side

2008 marked a significant change in the stance of the IEA in regards to peak oil. The IEA has always focused on projecting oil demand, assuming supply would be forthcoming (as a commenter correctly reminded me in response to my 2009 article). For the first time, the 2008 WEO had undertaken a detailed examination of the 800 largest oilfields and seriously considered supply concerns. And for the first time they acknowledged the peaking or plateauing of conventional oil production: “Although global production in total is not expected to peak before 2030, production of conventional oil…is projected to level off towards the end of the projection period.” Decline rates of existing fields were changed from 3.7% in the previous year to 6.7% in 2008, and projecting an 8.6% decline rate by 2030. Oil demand projected for 2030 declined from 116 mb/d to 106 mb/d – revised downward by 10 mb/d, with additional concern that “there can be no guarantee that [these “plentiful” resources] will be exploited quickly enough to meet the level of demand projected.” Considering the dramatic change from previous years projections, British journalist George Monbiot asked IEA chief economist Fatih Birol what the previous figures were based on. The reply: “It was mainly an assumption, a global assumption about the world’s oil fields….Last year it was an assumption, and this year it’s a finding of our study.” Birol further clarified his expectation that conventional oil would come to a “plateau” around 2020, and saying “I think time is not on our side here.”

The WEO 2008 Executive Summary emphasized not only supply concerns, but also the ongoing problem of policy makers avoidance of addressing climate change: “Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable – environmentally, economically, socially… It is not an exaggeration to claim that the future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply. What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution… The sources of oil to meet rising demand, the cost of producing it and the prices that consumers will need to pay for it are extremely uncertain, perhaps more than ever.” The Summary ends with a strong warning: “Time is running out and the time to act is now.”

2009: The Whistleblowers

Days prior to the release of the 2009 report, a front page article in The Guardian told us that “Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower.”

“The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies…”

This article reinforced my already existing opinion that 1) The WEO is written by committee, and represents numerous interests, resulting in reports that tend to favor conservative statements, and 2) that political influence also strongly tempers what is allowed to be conveyed in these reports. Reading the Executive Summaries, one often gets there are competing, sometimes contradictory ideas vying for predominance. These reports, therefore, have to be read with a grain of salt, and a carefull eye to read between the lines. What keeps me coming back to these reports each year is this tracking of the changes to their statements over time – mostly in the direction of increased pessimism.

What is interesting is that these revelations came at a time when the report was actually at its strongest in terms of warnings about oil supply. In fact, deputy executive director Richard Jones stated, in a reply to the allegations, “We’re the ones that are out there warning that the oil and gas is running out in the most authoritative manner. But we don’t see it happening as quickly as some of the peak oil theorists. Generally, we’re viewed as more pessimistic than we should be by the (oil) industry.”

The 2009 WEO reports the results of two scenarios: a Reference Scenario – a baseline of expectations if governments make no changes to existing policies; and a 450 Scenario, “which depicts a world in which collective policy action is taken to limit the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent (ppm CO2-eq).” Continuing on the current energy path in the Reference Scenario is said to lead to “alarming consequences for climate change and energy security.” Oil demand in 2030 is expected to be 105 mb/d, down just 1 mb/d from the 2008 report, but they state that for importing countries this would require “increasingly high level of spending…representing a major economic burden for importers, with OECD countries spending 2% of their GDP on oil and gas imports.

Part 2: 2010-2014: “Will Peak Oil be a Guest, or the Spectre at the Feast?”

2010: Peak Oil Occurred in 2006 – Did We Forget to Tell You?

The 2010 WEO is notable for a casually dropped bombshell, which the mainstream media ignored: peak oil, which was derided in 2005, ignored in 2006-2007, acknowledged in 2008 with the statement “production of conventional oil…is projected to level off towards the end of the projection period [of 2030];” leaked by IEA whistleblowers in 2009, and now in the 2010 report we’re explicitly told that conventional oil peaked 4 years prior in 2006! See how it is nonchalantly dropped in the following sentence: “Crude oil output reaches an undulating plateau of around 68-69 mb/d by 2020, but never regains its all-time peak of 70 mb/d reached in 2006, while production of natural gas liquids (NGLs) and unconventional oil grows strongly.”

So, of course, this is not really a problem, according to the WEO, because natural gas liquids and unconventional oil [tar sands, shale oil (tight oil), oil shales, biofuels, etc.] will make up the difference (at least until 2035), provided, of course, that the usual caveat of proper investment is attended to.

Peak oil analyst Stuart Staniford noted about the 2010 report, “Suddenly, the subject of impending peak has gone from not worthy of discussion to in the past already!”

New Policies Not Adequate for the Crisis We Face

In 2010, three scenarios are presented: The Current Policies Scenario, which projects a 1.4% energy demand growth, a 450 Scenario (a scenario designed to keep climate change to 2 degrees C of warming), which projects a 0.7% demand growth, and, for the first time, a New Policies Scenario, “that anticipates future action by governments to meet the commitments they have made to tackle climate change and growing energy insecurity.” The New Policies Scenario projects an energy demand growth of 1.2% per year. For comparison, it is noted that the previous 27 year period experienced 2% demand growth per year. It is acknowledged that the New Policies are not nearly adequate for the crisis we face. These new policies suggest trends that could put greenhouse gases at over 650 ppm, and would likely result in a temperature increase of more than 3.5 degrees C.

40% of Oil to Come from Fields Not Yet Found

Nevertheless, New Policies now becomes the reference scenario in the WEO, and oil demand is projected to reach 99 mb/d in 2035 under this scenario (down from 105 mb/d by 2030 in 2009). To get to those 99 mb/d, the report sees OPEC needing to boost its output by over one-half, with Iraq tasked with “a large share” of that increase. Non-OPEC oil production is expected to be held broadly constant by unconventional oil production and natural gas liquids (NGL), which will then start to drop at the end of the period. The report then offers another disclaimer: “The size of ultimately recoverable resources of both conventional and of unconventional oil is a major source of uncertainty for the long-term outlook for world oil production.” For me, it does not inspire much confidence to be putting our hopes for a growing supply of oil for the next 20 years on the Middle East, especially when the bulk of it must come from Iraq. According to the report, 40% of oil production in 2035 will need to come from fields not yet found.

Permission is granted to jump to the end of this post to see the 2014 graph showing a decline in unconventional oil produced by Brazil, Canada, and the U.S. well before the 2030s.

A Cry for Help

It is also important to note that the WEO sees increasing demand to come primarily from the non-OECD countries (i.e. China and India), as the rest of the industrialized world decreases consumption. Kjell Aleklett, ASPO President, characterized the WEO 2010 as “a cry for help,” stating that the IEA avoids discussion of economic growth in the west, interpreting it to mean that economic growth will not be possible:

“The IEA now sees OECD oil consumption falling from today’s 41.7 mb/d to
35.3 mb/d by 2035. This means that all OECD nations, including Australia, must revise down their future consumption estimates. Non-OECD nations are now expected to increase their oil consumption by 19 mb/d by 2035. Two thirds of this will come from China and India.”

Aleklett concludes:
“By showing this data without announcing this obvious conclusion [that the peak of total oil production is imminent] the IEA is making a cry for help to do what, for them, is politically impossible. WEO 2010 is a cry for help to tell the truth about peak oil.”

2011: “If We Don’t Change Direction Soon, We’ll End Up Where We’re Heading”

The 2011 WEO report actually does offer the useful advice that “If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re heading.” This reminds me of the adage I heard from Matt Simmons: “When you find yourself stuck in a hole, rule number 1 is to stop digging.”

The Year of Living Dangerously

2011 was the year of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the Arab Spring, and the beginning of Occupy Wall Street. The WEO report noted there were few signs that the “urgently needed” change in direction of global energy trends were underway, “boding ill for agreed global climate change objectives,” and they offer this grim prognostication: “China is projected to consume nearly 70% more energy than the U.S. in 2035, yet per-capita energy consumption will still be less than half the level in the U.S.”

They acknowledge some steps in the right direction – “Half of the new power capacity installed [to the year 2035] will come from renewable energy technologies” – but that “the door [limiting climate change] to 2 degrees C is closing.” Another grim statement: “Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permissible by 2035 in the 450 Scenario is already ‘locked-in’ by our existing capital stock.”

Mindful of MENA

Projected demand for oil remains at 99 mb/d for 2035. “To compensate for declining crude oil production at existing fields, 47 mb/d capacity additions are required, twice the current total oil production of all OPEC countries in the Middle East.” Once again, the shortfall is expected to be made up from NGL, unconventional sources, and the largest increase from Iraq. Light tight oil (LTO, or shale oil) from the U.S. is acknowledged as playing a significant role to allow us to decrease imports, but the IEA is not yet hailing it as the savior (but see below regarding natural gas). Also mentioned is an increasing dependence on oil from the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) region, which must rely on vulnerable supply routes. “In aggregate, the increase in production from this region is over 90% of the required growth in world oil output, pushing the share of OPEC in global production above 50% in 2035.” With the caveat, again, of sufficient investment.

Natural Gas – You Gotta Wear Shades!

Dropping the caveats of uncertainty, the report trumpets “Golden prospects for natural gas… a bright future, even a golden age, for natural gas.” This is due to the revolution in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling, making unconventional gas half of the estimated resource base.

The Nuclear Conundrum – Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It

In the wake of Fukushima, the report warns, “The consequences [of a low-nuclear future] would be particularly severe for those countries with limited indigenous energy resources which have been planning to rely relatively heavily on nuclear power. It would also make it considerably more challenging for emerging economies to satisfy their growing demand for electricity.”

2012: Don’t Look Over Here – Everything’s OK, and the Kids Will Be Alright!

The 2012 WEO report is marked by a temporary return to a tempered exuberance and brings the shale oil (light, tight oil, or LTO) explosion in the U.S. to the fore: “A new global energy landscape is emerging. The global energy map is changing, with potentially far-reaching consequences for energy markets and trade. It is being redrawn by the resurgence in oil and gas production in the United States and could be further reshaped by a retreat from nuclear power in some countries, continued rapid growth in the use of wind and solar technologies and by the global spread of unconventional gas production. Perspectives for international oil markets hinge on Iraq’s success in revitalizing its oil sector. If new policy initiatives are broadened and implemented in a concerted effort to improve global energy efficiency, this could likewise be a game-changer.” [Emphasis theirs]

Locking-In Climate Change

And yet the report acknowledges in the next sentence that alas, “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path.” Subsidies for fossil fuels in 2011 were $523 billion – 6 times more than they were for renewables and 30% higher than they were in 2010. In regards to climate change, this statement stands out: “If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time. Rapid deployment of energy-efficient technologies – as in our Efficient World Scenario – would postpone this complete lock-in to 2022, buying time to secure a much-needed global agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.”

The U.S. All but Self-Sufficient – “Saudi America”!?

Due to the development of light, tight oil, the United States is projected to overtake Saudi Arabia, and become the largest oil producer through to the mid 2020s. It is projected that North America becomes a net oil exporter by 2030 (presumably combining LTO from the U.S. with the tar sands from Canada). “The United States, which currently imports around 20% of its total energy needs, becomes all but self-sufficient in net terms – a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy-importing countries.” [Emphasis theirs]

In regards to oil demand expected in 2035, the quantity remains from 2011 (99 mb/d), but the price has increased from $210/barrel in nominal terms to $215/barrel.

The Devil is in the Details – Counting on Iraq

Despite the resurgence from LTO in the U.S. noted above, “supply after 2020 depends increasingly on OPEC.” “Much is riding on Iraq’s success” the report tells us, with Iraq making “the largest contribution by far to global oil supply growth.”

So, while the overall tone of the report is positive and optimistic, the details sometimes send a different, contradictory message. Yet it was the “good news” about the fracking boom in the U.S. that garnered front page headlines around the world, and has stuck in the consciousness and zeitgeist since then. Countless articles since then have reminded us in various contexts that “the world is awash in oil.”

In contrast to this industry promoted meme, Michael Klare had a very different takeaway:

“Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the U.S., you would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news about the world’s future oil supply.  No such luck.  In fact, on a close reading anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world oil dynamics should shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline and uncertainty.”

Renewables are expected to become the second-largest source of power in the world by 2035 and will closely match coal as a source of electricity. This transformation is being driven by falling technology costs, rising fossil-fuel prices, and continued subsidies.

Energy is Thirsty

Water is given some attention in this year’s report, acknowledging that “energy is becoming a thirstier resource,” with water needs projected to grow at twice the rate of energy demand. “The vulnerability of the energy sector to water constraints is widely spread geographically,” increasingly affecting many of the existing and emerging energy technologies, such as shale gas development, Canadian tar sands, maintaining power plants in India, and maintaining oil field pressures.

Really, Truly Ugly

I’ll mention again Michael Klare’s analysis of the 2012 report, which I highly recommend (The Good, the Bad, and the Really, Truly Ugly). He writes,

“Its portrait of our global energy future should have dampened enthusiasm everywhere, focusing as it did on an uncertain future energy supply, excessive reliance on fossil fuels, inadequate investment in renewables, and an increasingly hot, erratic, and dangerous climate.”

2013: Era of Oil Abundance is Cancelled

The 2013 WEO Report repeats some of the themes from 2012: “China dominates the picture within Asia, before India takes over from 2020 as the principle engine of growth. …China is about to become the largest oil-importing country and India becomes the largest importer of coal by the early 2020s. The United States moves steadily towards meeting all of its energy needs from domestic resources by 2035.” And the world is still on a trajectory towards 3.6 degrees C of global warming.

No Era of Abundance? That’s Not the Future We Ordered!

It is noted that the sustained high price of oil at $110 per barrel since 2011 is “without parallel in oil market history.” The claim for U.S. shale oil is similar to those made in 2012, but the tone is not as optimistic sounding:

“Light tight oil shakes the next ten years, but leaves the longer term unstirred. The capacity of technologies to unlock new types of resources, such as light tight oil (LTO) and ultra-deepwater fields… But this does not mean that the world is on the cusp of a new era of oil abundance. …no country replicates the level of success with LTO that is making the United States the largest global oil producer. The rise of unconventional oil (including LTO) and natural gas liquids is meets the growing gap between global oil demand, which rises by 14 mb/d to reach 101 mb/d in 2035, and production of conventional crude oil which falls back slightly to 65 mb/d.”

In the next paragraph, a statement somewhat contradictory of the previous paragraph is made: “The role of OPEC countries in quenching the world’s thirst for oil is reduced temporarily over the next ten years by rising output from the United States, from oil sands in Canada, from deepwater production in Brazil and from natural gas liquids from all over the world. But, by the mid-2020s, non-OPEC production starts to fall back and countries in the Middle East provide most of the increase in global supply.” In one sentence the U.S. is seen as meeting “the growing gap” between demand and conventional crude to 2035, and in another it is implied that the U.S., or at least non-OPEC production in total will be declining a decade earlier by the mid 2020s.

6% Declines in Conventional Oil Fields, More Rapid Declines for Unconventional

As first reported in 2008 (examining 800 fields), we are reminded that the IEA analysis (of 1600 fields this time) confirms that “once production has peaked, an average conventional field can expect to see annual declines in output of around 6% per year…. the implication is that conventional crude output from existing fields is set to fall by more than 40 mb/d by 2035.”

And finally, the rapid rate of decline in unconventional fields, and a startling admission: “most unconventional plays are heavily dependent on continuous drilling to prevent rapid field-level declines. Of the 790 billion barrels of total production required to meet our projections for demand to 2036, more than half is needed just to offset declining production.” Which prepares us for 2014…

A Dramatic Shift in Stance and Tone: A Short Lived Shale Boom

In June of this year (2014), I wrote a post titled New Energy Report from I.E.A. Forecasts A Decline in North American Energy Supply  about a special report titled  World Energy Investment Outlook. I noted the dramatic shift in stance and in tone from 2012, when the agency forecast that the U.S. would overtake Saudi Arabia in oil production by 2020, and that North America would be a net oil exporter by 2030. Now they were telling us that output from North America will plateau and then fall back from the mid-2020s onwards.

The other important aspect of this special report was its careful look at the amount of investment that will be required going forward. I wrote:

The focus of the new report released by the IEA today is on how much investment in the energy sector is going to be needed in the next 20 years (World Energy Investment Outlook). The numbers are sobering. They estimate that $48 trillion dollars needs to be invested to meet energy needs…but really it needs to be closer to $53 trillion if we want to address climate change. They don’t even bother talking about a 350 parts per million target, but rather 450 parts per million to limit global warming to 2 degrees C.

2014: Gloomy Times Ahead – An Energy System Under Stress

And so we come to the 2014 WEO, released today, November 12, 2014. The opening words of the executive summary offer a warning: “An energy system under stress. The global energy system is in danger of falling short of the hopes and expectations placed upon it. Turmoil in parts of the Middle East – which remains the only large source of low-cost oil – has rarely been greater since the oil shocks in the 1970s…” We are advised that the insights of this report “can help to ensure that the energy system is changed by design, rather than just by events.”

Kurt Cobb characterized the 2013 report as sounding “like a group of Gloomy Guses.” The 2014 report is, I believe, the gloomiest we’ve seen yet.

This year’s report projects to 2040, when energy demand is expected to have grown by 37%. For the last two decades demand has grown by 2% per year, but they see it slowing to 1% per year after 2025 as the result of price pressure (due to limited and more expensive energy), policy effects as the world attempts to grapple with climate change, and also due to an expected change in the structure of the global economy, with a greater emphasis on services and lighter industrial sectors. World demand growth is expected to decline to 0.3% by the 2030s as it moves towards a plateau in global oil consumption.

Energy Consumption in the U.S. Falls Back to Levels Not Seen in Decades

The report expects energy demand to stay flat in Europe, Japan, Korea, and North America, while we see rising consumption in China, India, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. By the early 2030s, China is expected to become the largest oil-consuming country, while use in the United States “falls back to levels not seen for decades.”

A “Last Chance” to Contain Carbon Dioxide Emissions

We are reminded yet again that even though policies are in place that will bring the share of fossil-fuels in the energy mix to less than three-quarters in 2040 of what it is today, it won’t be enough to contain the rise in carbon-dioxide emissions that keep us on the path that could result in a global average temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.   Urgent action is required. A special report on climate action is being prepared for release in min-2015 in preparation for the UN climate summit in Paris, possibly a “last chance” to contain carbon-dioxide emissions – the Central Scenario shows that the entire global CO2 budget to 2100 that would hold us to 2 degrees C of warming will be used up by 2040.

Will Supply Meet Demand?

Demand for oil is expected to reach 104 mb/d in 2040. The question is will there be enough supply to meet this demand? I will quote at length from the executive summary:

“Investment of some $900 billion per year in upstream oil and gas development is needed by the 2030s to meet projected demand, but there are many uncertainties over whether this investment will be forthcoming in time – especially once United States tight oil output levels off in the early 2020s and its total production eventually starts to fall back. The complexity and capital-intensity of developing Brazilian deepwater fields, the difficulty of replicating the US tight oil experience at scale outside North America, unresolved questions over the outlook for growth in Canadian oil sands output, the sanctions that restrict Russian access to technologies and capital markets and – above all – the political and security challenges in Iraq could all contribute to a shortfall in investment below the levels required. The situation in the Middle East is a major concern given steadily increasing reliance on this region for oil production growth, especially for Asian countries that are set to import two out of every three barrels of crude traded internationally by 2040.”

Is There a Hidden Code in this Graph?

Note the graph below, taken from the slideshow accompanying the press release of this report, which shows declining output in the U.S. before 2020, and the enormous burden placed on Iraq and a small number of other Middle East countries after 2020 to make up both the shortfall from declines everywhere else, plus meeting expected demand – regardless of the instability in the Middle East, isn’t this conventional oil that the 2010 report told us had peaked in 2006?

Also discussed in the slide presentation are the low prices for oil that have manifested in recent months. It is pointed out that we now live in a time where high prices are necessary to sustain the more expensive processes necessary to extract the unconventional oils that are currently propping up supply. “Lower prices are starting to curtail upstream spending plans, with implications for future supply. Over time, squeezed cash flow would constrain the capacity of North America and Brazil to act as engines of global supply growth.”

Renewable Energy – Not Enough

Renewable energy received $120 billion in subsidies in 2013. Oil, coal, and gas received over 4 times that much, with $550 billion in subsidies. Looking at renewable industries to 2040, wind power is expected to grow globally by 34%, hydropower by 30%, and solar technologies by 18%. Renewables are expected to account for nearly half of the increase in total electricity generation by that time. Use of biofuels is expected to triple, and use of renewables for heat will more than double. Yet none of this will be enough to cut carbon dioxide emissions to acceptable levels.

Nuclear power is projected to increase by 60%, but its share of electricity generation will rise by only 1%. According to the IEA, if policies are enacted to decrease use of nuclear power (in its Low Nuclear Case scenario, global capacity drops by 7%), “indicators of energy security tend to deteriorate in those countries that utilize nuclear power.” It is also emphasized that “Nuclear power is one of the few options available at scale to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions while providing or displacing other forms of base load generation.” With almost 200 reactors scheduled to be retired, this presents an acute energy security challenge. The cost of decommissioning these nuclear facilities is estimated to be in the range of $100 billion, while acknowledging there are “considerable uncertainties” about these costs. The number of countries operating nuclear plants will rise from 31 to 36, “as newcomers outnumber those that phase out nuclear power.” The total of spent nuclear fuel will double, even though no country has yet opened a permanent disposal facility.

Power to Shape the Future in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Executive Summary closes as it usually does with attention given to areas of the world that have extremely limited access to adequate energy supplies. Emphasis is given this year to sub-Saharan Africa, where 620 million people do not have access to electricity and where 730 million do not have adequate cooking facilities, resulting in nearly 600,000 premature deaths per year due to indoor air pollution. The area is rich in largely undeveloped energy resources – the challenge being to develop these resources in ways that are equitable for the people who live in this region.

If you’ve read this far, you have my sincere thanks for sticking with it. The 2014 WEO is disturbing enough as it is, noting the numerous wicked problems and predicaments we face in regards to energy in these days of the early 21st century.  As I wrote last June,

 The IEA is becoming increasingly more realistic as they move beyond demand driven scenarios, and acknowledge that the era of easy oil is over. The alternatives we are left with are becoming increasingly expensive – from unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and shale plays, to renewables. However, at some point (a point we may have already passed), geology responds less and less to the human construct we call money.  We’re currently living at the high point of the fossil fuel Pulse, and I don’t believe we can negotiate an avoidance of the backside of the pulse’s decline – but we can take measures to make a graceful descent if we begin early enough (ten years ago).

I’d like to recommend two additional independently produced reports, which when combined, I feel give an even more realistic picture of what we’re dealing with in terms of oil supply. 

The first is a presentation prepared by energy investment banker and analyst Steven Kopits, Global Oil Market Forecasting: Main Approaches and Key Drivers, which I wrote about here. and with a follow-up here. Kopits explains the predicament of the rising costs of oil production, and argues for supply based rather than demand based forecasting.

The second recommendation is Drilling Deeper: A Reality Check on U.S. Government Forecasts for a Lasting Tight Oil & Shale Gas Boom, by David Hughes, a respected and experienced geologist working for the Post Carbon Institute. This report confirms that tight oil in the U.S. will most likely peak before 2020 – matching the current IEA forecast, but the decline thereafter will probably be more rapid than the IEA is estimating. For a commentary on this report, see Asher Miller’s (executive director of Post Carbon Institute) The Revolution that Wasn’t: Why the Fracking Phenomenon Will Leave Us High and Dry.

Finally, if you’re wondering about the current decline in oil prices (I planned to cover it more in this piece, but ran out of space and time), check out Ugo Bardi and Gail Tverberg.

You can find the older WEO reports here.

 

It’s Time to Vote

I was recently asked via email if I was going to be providing voting recommendations again this year. Here is my response – for those of you who live in Whatcom County, Washington.  (If you live elsewhere, please feel free to use the Voting Information Tool at the bottom of this post.)

Thanks for asking.  I can imagine that many of you, like me, are really turned off by the all of the political ads coming at you from radio, TV, and direct mailings. The most frustrating part is that most of the money being spent on these ads are not doing anything to seriously educate the voting public, but rather simple messages that have been researched by marketing experts to push buttons in order to achieve knee jerk voting reactions.  I received a big two page fold-out mailer the other day that had a bunch of scary looking guns on the front. I opened the page, hoping to see some informative content on the inside, only to find two totally blank pages, except for a box in the lower right corner telling me to vote yes on 594!

I urge you, however, to put this distasteful phenomena behind you and remember to cast your ballot. It is as important as ever.  The small races close to home may be more important than the big, national races, and your chance of making an impact are higher here as well.

Case in point: If you care about the proposed coal port at Cherry Point,  I believe the most important races for those of us in Whatcom County are the neglected Charter Review Commission. The safest recommendation for the commission is to straight up vote only for the Democratic party endorsed candidates. The Republicans are mostly supporting a proposal that would take decision making power regarding the coal terminal out of the hands of the County Council and giving it to the County Executive. They are also supporting redistricting, which will restrict people voting for County Council to only vote for the district they reside in.  This would give conservative candidates in the County a distinct advantage. Both of these moves are “pro coal” moves.  See Flip’s list of Democratic party endorsements below.  You can vote for 5 commissioners in each district, but in one case there are only 3 candidates endorsed, and you don’t have to vote for more.

In general, I think the choices are pretty straightforward this year.  Tim Johnson, of Cascadia Weekly had an astute observation: “You vote for the individual, but you elect the caucus.”  In other words, there may be some likable Republican candidates, but the current Republican caucus has become extremist and toxic, and by electing good Republicans, you strengthen that toxic caucus, unfortunately.

I agree with the voting recommendations of Riley Sweeney in his 2014 Voting Recommendations post, mostly with Cascadia Weekly (see page 10 of the Oct. 14 issue), and with Flip Breskin (below).  So there’s no need for me to say more than recommending you take advantage of these resources.

				2014 Voting Recommendations Hello Loyal Readers, Sorry for the delay but here are my picks this election. First, a few disclaimers. As a political junkie, I wear many hats. I serving my last f…
				View on sweeneypolitics.com

From: “Flip Breskin”

Date: October 24, 2014 11:46:42 AM PDT

Subject: [Fl!pPix] Pix For Politics

 

 

For newcomers to this list: I send a single email (clearly labeled) just before
elections, describing how I am voting and why, without asking you to vote my way. Other
than that, my Fl!p’s Pix list is almost exclusively about local music and arts. You can
ignore this email if you’re not interested in what I think of politics.

CONTENTS
Politics
Judges
Candidates
Initiatives & Ballot Measures
Advisory Votes
Charter Review

POLITICS
Here is how I am voting this year, plus a bit about what I’ve learned in general. I am
not asking you to vote my way. If I’m asking you anything, it’s to go do your own
research and make up your own mind! And to please, please VOTE! In this election, the
conservatives are doing well at turning out their supporters by frightening people about
liberty to own guns, abortion, higher taxes, and jobs at any cost. If progressives do
not vote, we will lose.

JUDGES
When I first started doing Fl!p’s Pix For Politics, my original motivation was that I
couldn’t tell anything much about the judicial races from the voter’s pamphlet. I always
wound up talking with my dad and other attorneys I know and trust (lots of them play
music!) to see who’s good. To some extent it’s less about their politics than whether
they pay attention from the bench, rule carefully, play fair, don’t get overturned. This
year was much easier than usual.  Vote for the incumbents; they’re doing fine. I
support:

CHARLES JOHNSON. His opponent has never practiced law in Washington State. That would be
crazy for the state supreme court! Not qualified.
DEBRA STEPHENS. Her opponent is campaigning on a single issue: reform of the State Bar
Association Disciplinary System, which disciplined him! Whether or not the system needs
reforming, a single issue candidate is not a good choice for the state’s high court.

PUBLIC UTILITIES DISTRICT
We have a choice between two very different philosophies: support for the PUD being run
only for the benefit of big business, or run to best serve the whole community’s needs.
The coal trains are the single biggest issue, but the basic difference in philosophies
between the two candidates will show up across the board.

BOB BURR
In the current set-up, Bob will be out-voted two-to-one, so we won’t see different
results from the voting.  Where we will see a difference is in transparency.  Bob will
daylight the subsidies we, the public, give to industries. Bob’s opponent, Jeff McClure,
already guaranteed our water to the proposed Cherry Point coal refinery – 2 billion
gallons a day – for the next 30 years. McClure put the needs of huge corporations over
the needs of the farmers who feed us. Some single issues are worth my vote.

CANDIDATES
This one was easy for me this year.  There are dramatic and important differences in the
positions of the candidates before us. On candidates I’m voting with the Democrats. 
Here’s their website:
http://whatcomdemocrats.com/content/candidates

US Congress  District 1 Suzan DelBene
US Congress District 2 Rick Larsen
State Senate District 42 Seth Fleetwood
State House – Position 1 District 42 Satpal Sidhu
State House – Position 2 District 42 Joy Monjure
State House – Position 1 District 40 Kris Lytton
State House – Position 2 District 40 Jeff Morris

A few notes:

SETH FLEETWOOD. Seth has been a reliable and progressive public servant on the Whatcom
County Council & Bellingham City Council for many years. The Republicans managed to
gerrymander him out of his own district and are making his need to move to stay in the
race into a campaign issue. (Snarky…) His opponent, incumbent Doug Ericksen, has
consistently worked to protect loopholes for the oil industry and other powerful
interests while voting to cut funding for education. Ericksen has also been the biggest
roadblock to passing the Oil Transportation Safety Act. He does not support access to
safe and legal abortion, and the state legislature can have a profound impact on
Washington women’s access to all forms of reproductive health, including birth control.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/10/17/3911109/election-view-seth-fleetwood-backs.html

SATPAL SIDHU is an educator, businessman, local religious leader, and enthusiastic
American By Choice. He created local education programs that specifically create local
jobs for local students. Highly effective at creating common ground.  He’ll help end
gridlock.
http://votesatpalsidhu.com/

JOY MONJURE is someone I’ve known for decades. She’s been a mover & shaker – creating
the Procession Of The Species parade; founding the Food and Farm Finder; growing the
Farm to School program; serving on the Everson City Council; and she’s been working for
years on local water issues. I’m voting for her with great pleasure. Her opponent
incumbent Vincent Buys is ineffective.  In four years in Olympia, he passed only four
bills, three in his first year, and one in the last three years. Vincent also thinks
women should pay more for health insurance because we cost more for reproductive health
care and he, as a man, shouldn’t have to pay for that. He does not believe in the
Affordable Care Act.
http://www.votejoymonjure.com/

INITIATIVES & BALLOT MEASURES

I-1351 YES Reduces classroom size
I-591 NO   Remove firearm background checks
I-594 YES  Closes firearm sales loophole

Notes on I-594: In states with very similar laws, women are dramatically less likely to
be killed by domestic partners. I think this one is very important! I was worried when I
heard that our sheriff had come out against this, but he will have to stand for election
in the County, and supporting I-594 could be expensive for him in the future. Former
Bellingham police chief Don Pearce is a major spokesperson in favor of I-594. To
volunteer for this campaign, please contact david@wagunresponsibility.org or
206-450-5790. And talk with your friends.  Let’s do it!
http://wagunresponsibility.org/category/news/

ADVISORY VOTES
Just maintain them. These are on the ballot because of a Tim Eyman initiative that
requires the public to vote on anything that “raises taxes” including closing loopholes
or extending measures that already exist. The vote does not actually make a difference. 
It’s advisory only. And voting costs the public money to do.  Thanks Tim…

CHARTER REVIEW
The Whatcom County Charter Review Commission is a unique political event that happens
every 10 years. Each County District votes for and elects 5 citizens to sit on the
review commission. They will meet occasionally in 2015 and propose ballot measures to
appear on next year’s general election ballot. (Copied from the Democrats mailing).

This election has boiled down, once again, to coal. Republicans have two goals: district
voting to make it harder to elect progressives, and shifting the decision on the coal
trains from the County Council to the County Executive. Here are the Democrats’
endorsements. I think it’s worth going with their slate this year to have the best
chance of keeping public influence over the coal train decision.

District 1
Todd Donovan
Barbara Ryan
Eli Mackiewicz
Thomas Stuen
Alie Walker

District 2
Susan Gribbin
Judd Morse
Bob Bandarra
Stan Snapp
Kate Blystone

District 3
John Lesow (I am SO impressed with this man!)
Richard May
Chris Johnson
(They endorsed only three for district three, and I don’t know enough to say.)

Love/Fl!p

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