Royal report

The Royal Society, Britain's oldest science institution, has released a new report on human ecological problems and prospects.

Just in time for students in the Core 3 class, Environmental Sustainability, to begin to outline their final essay, which is a response to the question "Can human civilization become ecologically sustainable?"

I've just had chance to flick through the report summary and a few pages, but it seems excellent and filled with key, recently updated data.

The report particularly takes on a key problem that hardly anyone has been willing to address in recent years, the difficulty with resource consumption. We were just talking about that yesterday in class.

I expect this to be a very influential publication.

Here's the landing page:


http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/

The Donald takes on Scotland

I'm not usually a celebrity-chaser on this blog, but this one just has me amused and bemused, I supposed.

The people of the British Isles, whichever of the various nationalities, ethnicities, and regional cultures we belong to, share one important trait. We're islanders. That makes us unusually independent in many, many ways. We can be persuaded, but we're not easily coerced.

Our multiple and overlapping internal factions, which today include a myriad of new British ethnicities from our most recent Asian, Caribbean, and eastern European immigrants, also have a shared experience of literally centuries of striving with one another internally, then coming together in various coalitions, sometimes a coalition of the whole, to strive against external enemies and competitors.

This makes it very difficult for outsiders to know exactly who is which side in any given conflict. Unless of course, you try, as did various characters throughout history, including a certain Mr. Hitler, to take on the whole island archipelago, with almost all it's various inhabitants. 

In an earlier note I commented on just how much trouble these features were likely to give Mr. Trump, were he to decide to intervene in island politics.

I have to say the results are beyond my wildest expectations. Apparently Mr. Trump was the focus of a near-riot yesterday in Edinburgh.

The educator in me is fascinated to know just whether or not he learned anything from this experience. It's what we call "a teachable moment."

Enjoy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/25/donald-trump-appearance-scottish-parliament

The morality tale continues

Student Amy K. sent in this link to a NYT article on how austerity is driving political change in Europe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/business/global/europe-caught-in-vise-as-austerity-weakens-economy.html?hp

Remembering the Kinder Trespass

Tomorrow, the 25th April, is the 80th anniversary of the Kinder Trespass, one of the world's first environmental protests. Upwards of four hundred working class ramblers marched over a property line to protest the closure by wealthy aristocrats of grouse moors and ancient footpaths where the 'right to roam" had long been thought an inalienable British right.

As a result, today there are no such restrictions and free access to mountain and moorland country is untrammeled throughout the United Kingdom as a matter of right.

I have a family connection to this important piece of British history. My paternal grandfather was one of the organizers.

Here are some links:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1932/apr/25/1

http://ucsustainability.blogspot.com/2011/03/family-legacy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_trespass_of_Kinder_Scout

Solar parity in Maine -- already

Regular readers will know that I've been saying for many years that solar PV will soon achieve grid parity, and that when it does, we will then have a powerful tool to simultaneously reduce climate emissions and develop national and regional energy independence

For a few months now we've been hearing stories about new solar PV installations by our friends and colleagues at ReVision Energy in Liberty. Apparently these installations run on the leaseback/PPA model and, through creative financing, can undercut retail power costs by one or two cents per KWH.

I think this is a swell piece of news.

Better yet, now the college is considering a sizable installation too.

Not only do I get a great deal of pleasure in seeing grid parity achieved right here in Maine, but I'm a big supporter of this excellent company, where a lot of the employees are former students.

http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/21473/Default.aspx

Solar PV is clearly one of the solutions to climate change.  And I'm proud that our alumni are being part of the solution.

Not only can we reduce emissions, but we can also gain a great regional and local economic multiplier.

There's one caveat: The nature of grid balancing on our region is such that most of the ISO-New England emissions that will be offset by these panels will be peak emissions, and therefore most likely from peaking combined cycle natural gas plants, not coal plants.

But even if the impossible were to occur and someone invent a solar panel that worked during the night in Maine when the grid is off-peak, the "mix" of energy in New England is such that any emissions offset would most likely be from gas and not coal.

In other words, what we need next is solar parity in other states, especially those where the mix is coal-rich. That will take a little while yet. Maine has expensive power, about twice the cost of power in the cheapest states. If, ceteris paribus, all things were equal, then for other states, the price of an installation will have to drop by perhaps another fifty percent before parity can be achieved.

But all things are not equal. Other states have more sun, so that will help.

Eco-eco at the UN

My colleague Brian Czech from the International Society for Ecological Economics posted this on ecolog.

________________________________________
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU] On Behalf Of Czech, Brian [czech@VT.EDU]
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 6:16 PM
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Steady Statesmanship for Biodiversity Conservation Commences at United Nations

On April 18, 2012, steady state economics was formally introduced to the United Nations. In the General Assembly, five panelists covered limits to growth, the Anthropocene, and ecological economics. At the conclusion, "steady statesmanship" (i.e., adopting steady state economics as economic policy) for international diplomacy was proposed. The session was hosted by the Plurinational States of Bolivia and reaction of UN member states was positive.

Following introductory remarks of the UN Secretary General and the Ambassador of Bolivia, the first three panel talks pertained to life on Earth and the human impacts thereon. The fourth talk was an overview of ecological economics commencing at 1:35:35 of the webcast, and the final talk was on steady state economics for biodiversity conservation, commencing at 1:56:40. The complete webcast is available at:

http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/2012/04/general-assembly-interactive-dialogue-on-commemoration-of-international-mother-earth-day.html

The Wildlife Society and the American Fisheries Society were acknowledged as having recognized limits to growth and the conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation.

Brian Czech, President
Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, and
Visiting Professor of Natural Resource Economics
Virginia Tech, National Capitol Region
Falls Church, Virginia

Are young people tiring of old econ?

That's what Revkin thinks, citing some recent debates and the Mankiw walk-out.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/young-people-tire-of-old-economic-models/#more-43883

Here at Unity, of course, we had a recent protest by non-students (and maybe two actual students) at an economics related event held on campus. But I talked to some of the protesters afterwards, and it was pretty clear that while they definitely had a gripe with many, many facets of our current society, such as the IMF and World Bank, the bailout, politics, the tax code, and on and on (some or all of which are eminently questionable), they didn't actually have a particular economic theory they espoused.

In other words, they knew something was wrong, but didn't know how to fix it.

I wrote a fairly long explanatory email to one of them. She wrote back saying she didn't have time to read it.

(But she had time to protest, and to disrupt an event designed to help our own students decide which economics they agreed with.)

The students in Revkin's article are perhaps a bit more academic, and seem to be gravitating towards ecological economics, which is gratifying. I studied this particular branch of economics in the 1990s, under one of its primary founders.

Despite a fine education in eco-eco theory, and a decade and a half of membership in ISEE, I'm on record in this blog as stating that a move to ecological economics at this point, particularly a unilateral move to ecological economics by the west, would simply hand China world supremacy on a plate.

I stand by that thinking, so far. It seems to me that China is increasing self-assertive and belligerent, and not at all even the qualified force for good the west has been for many years. Advocates for an end to growth have to figure out how we get there without also endangering democracy and freedom. If the west stops growing and China keeps growing, democracy and freedom will likely be threatened. I can't see any other conclusion to draw from the evidence, particularly the current state of the Chinese nation.

But if the students and other protesters involved in the Occupy movement are studying eco-eco, then that is at least a beginning.

Unfortunately, to understand ecological economics you have to understand mainstream economics, so there is still a lot of work for them to do.