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Post by davidm on Jun 14, 2012 3:19:49 GMT 9.5
Here is a link I got interestingly from a Barry Brook blog. To put it in the simplest term Ted Trainer believes the road to sustainability is: 1. Simpler life style. 2. Small local communities that are largely self-sufficient. 3. A no growth economy. 4. An ethic of cooperation over competition. He also doesn't believe that any of the energy solutions put forward can ever hope to sustain us at our present life style thus his emphasis on a simpler way of living. He's also suspicious of the ultimate utility of techno-fixes and a market economy. I'd be interested to get posters thoughts on Ted Trainer's simpler way views. As far as getting a detailed picture of what they are there are many links to draw from.
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Post by grlcowan on Jun 14, 2012 5:35:33 GMT 9.5
... Ted Trainer believes the road to sustainability is: 1. Simpler life style. 2. Small local communities that are largely self-sufficient. 3. A no growth economy. 4. An ethic of cooperation over competition. He also doesn't believe that any of the energy solutions put forward can ever hope to sustain us at our present life style thus his emphasis on a simpler way of living. He's also suspicious of the ultimate utility of techno-fixes ... If he did not suspect them of uselessness, with a suspicion that can only strengthen over time, he could not believe so strongly and happily in the four things you list. My previous BNC comment on his treatment of one aspect of techno-fixes.
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Post by davidm on Jun 14, 2012 11:24:06 GMT 9.5
... Ted Trainer believes the road to sustainability is: 1. Simpler life style. 2. Small local communities that are largely self-sufficient. 3. A no growth economy. 4. An ethic of cooperation over competition. He also doesn't believe that any of the energy solutions put forward can ever hope to sustain us at our present life style thus his emphasis on a simpler way of living. He's also suspicious of the ultimate utility of techno-fixes ... If he did not suspect them of uselessness, with a suspicion that can only strengthen over time, he could not believe so strongly and happily in the four things you list. My previous BNC comment on his treatment of one aspect of techno-fixes. Would you please translate that. He can only believe somethings if he suspects they are useless? I don't think I'm following you dude.
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Post by Barry Brook on Jun 14, 2012 11:55:59 GMT 9.5
Ted’s simpler way is impractical to implement, even if we could get enough people to assent to it (and we can’t, for innumerable reasons). Although his critiques of large-scale renewables are robust, the “Simpler Way” conclusion is undermined if his nuclear conclusion is incorrect (as Ted has acknowledged to me), although general points about sustainability are still valid.
In short, the developing world lives in Trainer’s power-down society already, and they are going to do everything possible to get the hell out of it. The developed world will fight tooth and nail, and will burn the planet to a soot-laden crisp, rather than embrace Trainer’s simpler way. Power down is a non-solution to the climate and energy crises.
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Post by davidm on Jun 14, 2012 17:20:36 GMT 9.5
Just about every "solution" is impractical from somebody's perspective. At least Trainer is trying to address the two impossibles - greed and growth. Implicit in that is getting a handle on population growth which for some reason he seems reluctant to discuss, the elephant in the room that everyone skirts around.
So where do people want to be powered? Toward security and future hope and some sense of community I assume. How is that going to happen? Maybe it won't given some fatal tendencies in human nature. But if it does Trainer has offered as thought through an alternative as I've seen. He seems in the Gandhian tradition.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 14, 2012 19:06:32 GMT 9.5
Here is a link I got interestingly from a Barry Brook blog. To put it in the simplest term Ted Trainer believes the road to sustainability is: 1. Simpler life style. People may like the idea of simplicity (and may even tell themselves they bought an iFad because they like simple design instead of because they want to be fashionable and follow every fad) but they don't want to do without modern technology (and we also can't feed 10 billion people in such a simple life). 2. Small local communities that are largely self-sufficient. That's what we used to have and it turns out there are good reasons we no longer have it (namely the advantages of specialisation). That's what we've escaped and we don't want to go back. To have a no growth economy you can not have technological progress as new technology grows the economy, a no growth economy also means that our children and grandchildren will not have a better life than we have (unless it is at the expense of others). These points are enough to make the idea of an economy which isn't growing unacceptable. 4. An ethic of cooperation over competition. Competition has its advantages, so does cooperation. We shouldn't be trying to play one off against the other or say that we need to prioritise one over the other because we don't, instead we need to have both of them. He also doesn't believe that any of the energy solutions put forward can ever hope to sustain us at our present life style thus his emphasis on a simpler way of living. It's already been proven that nuclear fission is capable of doing exactly that for a decent amount of time. He's also suspicious of the ultimate utility of techno-fixes[…] Technofixes are the only things which have actually worked, attempts to change how people behave have a history of failing (largely because people don't want to change). Ronald Bailey just pointed out that capitalism is the only thing which can be sustainable. If it weren't for political interference (i.e. anti-nuclear laws and regulators) the free market would have solved most of global warming a decade ago (it was projected that nuclear would make up almost all new power station builds by the '80s and that fossil fuels would be largely gone from electricity generation by 2000 and based on historical rates of nuclear construction it probably would have happened that way had the cost of nuclear electricity not been driven up by holding it to a higher standard than anything else). Ted’s simpler way is impractical to implement, even if we could get enough people to assent to it (and we can’t, for innumerable reasons). To be able to solve our problems through a lowering of the standard of living you'll need everyone to go along with it, without a global dictatorship at least as oppressive as the Khmer Rouge it's just not going to happen. Just about every "solution" is impractical from somebody's perspective. Yes, but not all are impractical from the point of view of reality (and that's the point of view which actually matters). At least Trainer is trying to address the two impossibles - greed and growth. But what about the 10th rule of acquisition? Or the 45th (or maybe that's 95th, must have been important to be stated twice)? Though without growth things aren't going to be getting better and greed can indeed make the world a better place (provided it is directed properly). Implicit in that is getting a handle on population growth which for some reason he seems reluctant to discuss, the elephant in the room that everyone skirts around. Because when we see what getting population below even current levels would require we realise that it's a solution worse than any problem we've got. So where do people want to be powered? Towards a better future. I happen to think that Leslie White was onto something when he suggested that the level of civilisation is determined by per capita energy usage and the efficiency of using that energy. I'll just end with parts of some comments I posted elsewhere (actually the rest of that thread is worth a read as well): On the issue of it really being a clash between two different ideas as to how civilisation should be, I’m going to have to agree but also point out that the reactionaries don’t just want to go back to the past for themselves, but for everyone else regardless of what everyone else wants (on the whole the progressives who want civilisation to continue to progress are the majority, even if the reactionaries claim otherwise). What this means is that they can not possibly accept nuclear power because it makes it possible for the progressives they want to drag back into their imagined glorious past to have their way and increase per capita energy usage. Also: If nuclear ends up a part of the solution to global warming then we are locking ourselves into a high energy future simply because a high energy future would be possible with nuclear and more desirable to the majority of the public than the alternative, that is why making nuclear distributed won’t make it acceptable to the Green movement (though it is likely to help a lot with getting nuclear deployed). Basically, given the choice between a technofix, or a simpler life the public will choose the technofix (and in a democracy, it is the public which gets to make the choice).
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Post by davidm on Jun 15, 2012 2:47:44 GMT 9.5
Whatever case one wants to make for nuclear the love of the free market is not one of them. It is a technology that requires heavy government subsidies and government insurance guarantees. Business investors just aren't interested. But we've already discussed that elsewhere.
Trainer himself is clearly no free market capitalist. From the first link.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 15, 2012 3:33:04 GMT 9.5
Whatever case one wants to make for nuclear the love of the free market is not one of them. It is a technology that requires heavy government subsidies and government insurance guarantees. Business investors just aren't interested. But we've already discussed that elsewhere. The reason business investors aren't interested is because with current political environment they may spend a lot of money and not actually get anything making money (you only need to look at Shoreham which was built (over schedule and thus over budget due to some rather disgusting tactics by the anti-nuclear movement) and then not allowed to actually start operating). Fact is that with the current system (which is not a free market, if one technology is held to a far higher standard than the others then how anyone could honestly call it a free market is hard to understand) you can spend millions just trying to get permission to even start building a nuclear reactor and still not actually get it, then you've got to get that reactor completed and started and historically the regulators have tended to make it hard (and for no good reason). OTOH you can get a gas turbine installed quickly and with almost no regulatory crap to put with up, is it any wonder that that's exactly what businesses do? Change the nuclear regulations so that a nuclear power plant is as easy to get approval for and to bring to operation as a gas turbine and then see how many methane burners get built (making methane burners harder to build could also give you that level playing field). Besides, the insurance guarantees you mention (and which aren't explicit in all countries) are implicitly given to other industries anyway (if a chemical company has an accident and can't pay for the damage who is going to step in?). Trainer himself is clearly no free market capitalist. From the first link. You never made him out to be (in fact you said he was suspicious of it. Then again, there really aren't many free market capitalists out there anyway, most of those who fly the banner of the free market do so selectively and are quite happy to socialise their losses or suppress a rival through government action (often through funding activist groups as proxies to claim the 'credit') instead of superior products. Though over the long term the free market does tend to do a better job than government bureaucrats and ivory tower academics, even if it does give us such abominations as SUVs (still, if the alternative was a Trabant…). Quote from Ted Trainer: Our second major mistake is allowing the market to determine our fate. An economy which relies heavily on free market forces will inevitably allocate most of the world's wealth to the few, produce inappropriate development, destroy the environment, and ignore the needs of the majority. What is done must be determined by what humans and ecosystems need, not by what is most profitable in a market. The people who are best able to decide what they are need and what development is inappropriate are not academics in ivory towers, the market gives the common people are way to vote with their dollars on what best meets their needs and it tends to work better at meeting the needs of the majority then central planners (does Ted Trainer even know what the needs of the majority are? does anyone?). We also haven't found an alternative to capitalism that actually works decently, some degree of socialism embedded within capitalism can work, in fact is probably a good thing (e.g. the various social democracies) but attempts to do away with the market tend to lead to rather serious problems (including for the environment, the Soviet Union did not care for the environment very well at all) which make the current environmental problems we're having seem pretty damn nice by comparison. It's been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others, much the same could be said about capitalism.
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Post by davidm on Jun 15, 2012 11:56:21 GMT 9.5
As far as I know in France, China, and India nuclear power is totally a government enterprise. Since these are the nuclear vanguard countries it kind of makes cheering for free market capitalism a joke if you are also boosting the superiority of these countries in generating nuclear electricity.
Small is beautiful has a lived tradition and doesn't run you into these gross inconsistencies.
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Post by anonposter on Jun 15, 2012 18:28:41 GMT 9.5
As far as I know in France, China, and India nuclear power is totally a government enterprise. Since these are the nuclear vanguard countries it kind of makes cheering for free market capitalism a joke if you are also boosting the superiority of these countries in generating nuclear electricity. Socialism can work in some cases (electricity generation is one of the places where it does fit well), I was simply pointing out that nuclear has never failed in a free market (so we can't actually rule out the free market working) because basically every market it ended up in was rigged against it. Small is beautiful has a lived tradition and doesn't run you into these gross inconsistencies. Megaprojects also have their advantages (and nuclear can do small is beautiful if you want it to).
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Post by davidm on Jul 24, 2012 10:42:01 GMT 9.5
In 2010 Trainer wrote 'The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World'. Yes this recapitulates the first link as a set of ideas but this is the first time it is presented as something that came in book form. Here is a summary of some of its main points. transitionvoice.com/2012/07/beyond-capitalism-with-a-human-face-a-radically-simple-way/I have argued this position repeatedly. If technology and its benefits has a purpose it is to help us live within established natural boundaries. Just because beavers build dams and bees make beehives and we domesticated fire didn't change the fact that there are natural limits that we are up against and to delude ourselves that because of technological success there are not is suicidal. Here's a nice little change of pace, instead of a Fortune or Forbes richest list here is a Post Growth Institute enrich list with an emphasis on folks charting us toward sustainability. Glad to see Gandhi is in the top 10 but it's a travesty that Thoreau and John Muir aren't listed.
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