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July 27, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

"why should Croatia send our generals to the Hague? No American will ever get sent to the Hague!"

I kind of agree with the Croat. If you and I were to have lunch I would ask:

"Why should the US send our soldiers to the ICC. No Dane will ever get sent to the Hague, because no Dane will ever be in enough of harms's way to have to make a decision which might get him tried as a war criminal!"

July 27, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

Translation: "It's unfair to hold us to the same standard that we apply to Hamas or Russia. We are involved in a lot more colonial wars, so we should be given a wider margin for error."

That being said, I'm not actually in favour of prosecuting individual soldiers and other low-level apparatchiks. Except in the case of truly vile excuses for human beings (Yoo and Bybee come to mind), truth and reconciliation commissions would work perfectly well for everybody below the rank of cabinet member or colonel.

July 27, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

You make this too easy, Mr Stenfalk. What you appear to wish are show triuals of American servicemen, delivered from the Olympian heights of Continental Europe.

You also make my case for me about the reasons the US whpuld leave NATO. Having benefitted from the protection of American soldiers for 50 years, you now propose to try them in courts manned by ideologically active europeans with no personal experience of war. While your countrymen take no risk whatever of finding themselves on trial.

That will not happen, no matter how hard you strive. You have two choices: to fight beside the US soldiers, takeing equal risk of death, dismembership, and the 'justice' dispensed by the ICC 'ourts', or US withdrawal from NATO. De facto if not (quite yet) de jure.

I would prefer that you continue in the way you have begun, to insult the honor of my country and it's sericemen, and deny your own common humanity. That way the US will almost certainly withdraw from NATO, a pact which neither Europe or the US appear to need at all. Certainly the US does not need to be coupled with creatures like yourself. I leave the judgement of whether the converse is also true to Europeans, where it belongs. Make your own democratic choices, we in the US will do so also.

July 28, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

Translation: "War crime trials are unnecessary. When white people who speak English commit war crimes we don't need to put them on trial, because they're fighting The Good Fight(TM), and thus Can Do No Wrong. When brown people who speak funny commit war crimes we don't need to put them on trial either, because we'll use it as an excuse to start a colonial war and murder and torture a bunch of random other brown people and take their stuff."

Oh, and I specifically told you - in so many words - that I do not advocate criminal trials of anybody below the level of colonel. So pretending that I mean to try American servicemen is what is known as, to use a technical term, a flat out lie.

July 28, 2009

Michael Schmidt

Jakob

First you spoke of Russia "non-existent 'gas weapon,'" but then you say "in terms of vital strategic resources, we are dependent on Mercosur, Africa, and Russia." What is it?

Moreover, how do you define "legitimate" in this context: "And if Russia does not believe that the West will respect its legitimate security concerns in Central Asia, why should they respect our legitimate security concerns in Central and Eastern Europe?"

Besides, it seems that according to your worldview, small Eastern European countries are not allowed to decide for themselves if they want to join NATO or not. In your view Russia has final say about who may or may not join NATO. Or am I reading too much into your words?

July 28, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

Michael,

You make some excellent points. Jakob specializes in reading meaning into words and phrases, meaning which is not there in the original phrasing. Then he argues against his straw men, rather than addressing the real meanings.

In his defense I must admit that Jakob does insist that his opponents answer HIS questions, however. So he clearly understands that evasions are unacceptable. He merely needs to learn to allow his adversaries the same courtesies as he demands himself. It would also help a good deal if Jakob were to desist from accusing his antagonists from "arguing in bad faith".

Unfortunately I believe he is some years from attaining such insight. Assuming he ever does. And he is far from the only person to use such tactics in the European 'intelligentsia' circles, though they are not unique in this - many in the US 'intelligentsia' are fond of such tactics.

In making his argument that Croatians should not submit to judgement because Americans do not, he conveniently omits to mention the fact that when credible proof of war crime activities is raised against US personnel, they are arrested and subjected to a searching court-martial, a practice unknown in the Balkans. So under the written terms of the ICC treaty, US servicemen would nto be subject to ICC proceedings. Or so I have been assured by sincere and high-minded Europeans.

Unfortunately I don't quite believe them. Not because I doubt their honor or intentions, but because I know that there are many like Jakob who would seek to pervert the ICC treaty into a forum for political show trials of Americans. And judeged by the successful perversion of other parts of international law, they would succeed. So no ICC for the US until we know what we would be signing up for, I fear.

July 28, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

Those are all good questions, Michael, and I hope that you will bear with me as I answer them at some length.

"First you spoke of Russia "non-existent 'gas weapon,'" but then you say "in terms of vital strategic resources, we are dependent on Mercosur, Africa, and Russia." What is it?"

The two are not mutually exclusive. Russia has no gas weapon that it can use against *Ukraine,* which was the subject of the paragraph in question. Because if Russia cuts off gas to Ukraine, Russia will get into a trade war with Germany over gas supplies [1][2]. And if Russia gets into a trade war with Germany or France over gas, Russia will lose. That does not mean, of course, that Germany or France will not *also* lose such a trade war, as trade wars do not have to be zero-sum games. But it means that Russia cannot use gas as a weapon against *Ukraine* without prohibitive economic and geopolitical costs. [3]

And then you have the long term/short term view. The fact that Russia cannot use gas as a point of political leverage against Europe *today* does not mean that it cannot do so twenty or forty years from now (which is the relevant time scale here, as it is roughly the useful life of most energy infrastructure).

Finally, gas is not the only strategic resource out there. Rare minerals, for instance, are going to become a critical economic constraint as soon as we have moved our economies off the current critical economic constraint of fossil fuels [4]. Russia is a major exporter of several strategic metals - aluminium and titanium are the most prominent, but I believe they are also a net exporter of copper, which is absolutely critical to modern industrial societies, and which cannot be readily substituted for.

Bulk metals, unlike gas, can be transported anywhere that a railway car or cargo ship will go, and hence can be sold to China, Mercosur or India on short notice and without serious additional outlay of capital. Furthermore, this versatility means that a much lower percentage of metal supplies are tied to long term contracts, with the attendant security of supply.

"Moreover, how do you define "legitimate" in this context: "And if Russia does not believe that the West will respect its legitimate security concerns in Central Asia, why should they respect our legitimate security concerns in Central and Eastern Europe?""

For starters, it seems reasonable and legitimate to demand Euro-American withdrawal from Central Asia. The West has no compelling interests there, and very few - if any at all - of the regimes currently being propped up are materially preferable to increased Russian influence in terms of democracy and human rights. Uzbekistan, in particular, suffers from a uniquely reprehensible American-backed despot of a kind usually not found north of the thirtieth Northern parallel.

"Besides, it seems that according to your worldview, small Eastern European countries are not allowed to decide for themselves if they want to join NATO or not. In your view Russia has final say about who may or may not join NATO. Or am I reading too much into your words?"

That depends on NATO's strategic stance towards Russia. If NATO continues its current policy of belligerent encirclement, I would wish that it was pushed as far away from Russia as humanly possible: Stationing missile bases of unidentified purpose in Eastern Europe [5] and propping up half-mad oligarchs like Saak'ashvili in Georgia are geopolitical incidents waiting to happen. However, if NATO were to find some mutually acceptable accord with Russia, I would see no problem. But then again, in that case I doubt that Russia would have any unresolvable problem with it either.

Furthermore, it is worthwhile to examine the underlying assumptions involved in your question. You would never ask this question of an American objection to a Latin American country joining OPEC, to Mexico joining a strategic alliance with China, to Newfoundland leasing missile bases to Iran or to Libya entering a military alliance with Russia. If you wish to claim that small countries bordering a great power should have it within the ambit of their national sovereignty to enter into alliances with potentially hostile foreign powers, then this is a standard that must be applied consistently. To Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Libya, just as it is applied to Poland, Taiwan, Korea and Pakistan.

Until and unless there is a consistent single standard in international politics, it remains one rule for white people and another rule for brown people (and Russians). This is fundamentally untenable, for all the reasons put forward above.

Finally, there is another double standard that deserves mention: Russian interference in domestic Ukrainian or Georgian politics is considered verboten, but Western interference (funding of pro-NATO politicians, granting or withdrawing economic support based on sovereign decisions, etc., etc., etc.) is considered an acceptable part of normal diplomacy. If we had a consistent standard for what is acceptable in international politics, either Western meddling in Eastern Europe (and in Latin American, and in Africa, and in the non-EU part of the Mediterranean) would be verboten alongside Russian and Chinese meddling, or we would stop whining about Russia and China attempting to influence countries that are in their obvious sphere of interest.

Being whining hypocrites it is unlikely to dispose other great powers favourably towards us.

Notes:

[1] Ukraine controls approx. 90 % of the pipelines to Germany, which means that Ukraine can steal gas intended for Germany with impunity - and the clearing point for these transactions is at the Czech border, so Gazprom (rather than Ruhrgas) is left holding the bag whenever that happens.

[2] If I may be permitted a digression at this point, it is worthwhile to consider the details of how the gas market operates. Gas is inextricably tied to the transmission infrastructure (the pipelines), which means that gas is typically sold between state-controlled utilities (or transnats with implicit state backing) using long term take-or-pay contracts.

Even disregarding contracts (which Gazprom has *never* done - not even during the Soviet era), Russia has no pipelines to anywhere else from the fields supplying the European market. Ergo Russia cannot sell its "European" gas to anybody else. It must either sell or forego revenues (liquid natural gas carries a considerable EROI cost and will still be dependent on capital-intensive infrastructure at the side of the buyer, so it is not a realistic alternative to pipelines for bulk quantities of gas. And constructing a pipeline from west of the Urals to China or India would be a herculean endeavour).

And, to reiterate the point about long-term contracts, in the case of France, Germany and Italy, refusing to sell would be to break the long-term contracts that finance the maintenance and capital cost of the pipelines and other gas infrastructure (these revenues are not negligible - according to the last figure I saw they are on the order of a quarter to a third of all foreign currency available to Russia). This is a risk that neither Gazprom nor its Soviet predecessor have *ever* undertaken.

So, unless you're going to claim that modern Russia harbours greater antipathy towards the EU than its Soviet incarnation did, it seems reasonable to assume that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Britain is more vulnerable because it lacks storage capacity and has no long-term contracts with Gazprom. But that is because their last five or so governments have been stupid Thatcherites (but I repeat myself) who haven't planned for the decline in North Sea gas production. Any serious effort on the UK's part to reduce its gas dependency (starting with a partial renationalisation of the electricity supply) would push the problem into the reasonably far future and perhaps avert it entirely.

[3] For those who labour under the delusion that France or Germany lack the political courage to take up serious geopolitical challenges, I submit that a) that's not true, and b) even if it were true, France and Germany would have no choice but to enter into a trade war if their gas supplies were cut off, because gas is a strategic resource that cannot be replaced on a one-year time scale (which is approximately what the French and German storage would permit them to outlast).

[4] And if we fail to move off fossil fuels, Russian gas supplies would not be our most serious problem; most of our gas-consuming infrastructure would be underwater before the end of the century anyway.

[5] The so-called missile shield that is their official purpose is physically impossible, so it is an open question what they are actually going to be used for.

July 28, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

Oh, and Russia is actually a net exporter of oil too. *That* is the potential Russian energy weapon you should actually worry about, because it's tied to neither pipelines nor long term contracts. So Russia has neither a physical compulsion nor a legal obligation to sell it to us. So far, however, Russia hasn't used that particular point of leverage, and it does not look like they will within the foreseeable future.

July 28, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"In making his argument that Croatians should not submit to judgement because Americans do not"

This is not actually the argument I was making. It is, in other words, a straw man. But hey, who's counting?

"he conveniently omits to mention the fact that when credible proof of war crime activities is raised against US personnel, they are arrested and subjected to a searching court-martial,"

Cheney (and his trained monkey), Clinton (both of them), Rasmussen (both of them), Aznar, Tory Bliar, Brown, Corruptioni, Yoo and Bybee have never been subjected to investigations, despite compelling evidence that they have committed crimes against humanity that would have had them stretching hemp if they had been Nazis in '45 (authorising torture, manufacturing pseudo legal cover for torture, violations of the Geneva Conventions, prosecuting wars of aggression [yes, Nazis were convicted of that in Nürnberg, and the precedent has never formally been repudiated by any international court], and so on and so forth and etcetera).

And this is just the list of the most obvious Euro-American perps from Iraq and Kosova. Moving beyond those, Euro-American politicians are consistently exempt from international law - despite the deliberate genocide in Gaza, the war of aggression in Ossetia, the treatment of Afghan prisoners of war and sundry other atrocities whose perpetrators remain at large, no European or American politician has ever appeared in front of a war crimes tribunal.

"So under the written terms of the ICC treaty, US servicemen would nto [sic] be subject to ICC proceedings."

Correct. Only US generals and politicians would, because there is no serious effort made to prosecute them within the American judicial system.

But hey, I can see how you could miss that point. After all, this is only the third or fourth time I'm making it.

"And judeged [sic] by the successful perversion of other parts of international law, they would succeed."

Translation: International law does not apply to us. When it is made to apply to us, it has obviously been perverted.

Sorry, no points. Please try again next week.

July 28, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

Ahem. I#m not supposed to pour oil on the fire.

So I shant....

July 29, 2009

Nikolina-Romana Milunovic, Zeppelin University, Silver Contributor (52)

Dear Mr. Stenfalk, thank you for your opinion article.
I strongly agree with your, in my opinion, most important assertion:
"The fact that these are global problems should not be construed as a license to think of them as "somebody else's problems," and we can certainly do a lot to curb them ourselves."
I think this way of thinking is especially obstructive when it comes to climate change, where Western responses have so often sounded something like: "Yes, indeed, we do pollute the environment immensely, but look at Asian NICs!"
Morever I think you made a good point in your observation of the phenomenon of different rules when it comes to the implementation of international law. However, I think that the US is no isolated case. When it comes to human rights, the international community is well aware of Chinese wrongdoings, yet somehow this is rarely an issue when Western leaders visit the country for economic treaties.
Wouldn't you agree that double standards in general exist because of economic power advances and can be detected everywhere in the world?

July 29, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

Thank you for your kind words.

I certainly agree that most or all of the double standards discussed here can be traced back to geopolitical power. And certainly other great powers also have double standards (and almost all countries have double standards in their domestic politics vis-a-vis disfavoured ethnic or social groups).

I have emphasised Euro-American hypocrisies here for three reasons: The first is brevity. A comprehensive list of human rights abuses, broken promises and violated treaties would be well beyond the scope of an op-ed piece. It would also be mind-numbingly dull (and depressing) to read.

The second is that this site's target audience is primarily Euro-American, and I hoped to cause some measure of introspection, rather than the feel-good complacency that all too often results from studying other people's failings. The splinter in your brother's eye, and all that. What's more, changing our own behaviour is entirely within our own power. Changing the behaviour of China, on the other hand, requires either moral suasion or persuasive strategic leverage. Thanks to Reagan and his friends, we no longer have persuasive strategic leverage over China, and unless we ourselves live up to the standards we set for China, we cannot expect moral suasion to have any appreciable effect.

If this had been a site aimed at a Russian or Chinese audience, Chechnya and Belarus or Tibet and Taiwan, respectively, would have taken the place of Yugoslavia and Venezuela. If it had been a purely Danish audience, I would have restricted my examples to our own domestic war criminals, crooks and hypocrites (there's certainly enough to choose from).

The third reason is that I am from Western Europe, which means that the propaganda, sanctimonious whining, hypocrisy and obvious lies that I have first-hand experience with are mostly the ones that we tell to the rest of the world. The ones the rest of the world tells us rarely make it into our news stream.

July 29, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

"Changing the behaviour of China, on the other hand, requires either moral suasion or persuasive strategic leverage."

Or, perhaps, market-clearing 'green' solutions. What is pollution, after all, but waste? If you can cut out the waste with one or more machines, products, or procedures without forcing people to make massive changes in their daily live or actually improving those lives (in threir judgment, not yours) - well than you have a solution which will spread itself.

Moral suasion, on the other hand, acquires all the trappings of established religion very quickly. Complete with shamans, high priests, popelets, and Archdruids. You must frighten the people into behaviors which you, as the religious, deem desireable. You do this by promising they will go to heaven or be sent to hell.And of course the rules don't apply to the shamanate. One might prefer to use Ralph Nader as the spokesman for green technology instead of Al Gore, because Mr Nader actually lives an ascetic personal lifestyle while Mr. Gore does not......

Unfortunately shamanism doesn't work very well over time, human beings being the inately skeptical beings that we are......

"Thanks to Reagan and his friends, we no longer have persuasive strategic leverage over China""

How so? Oh, I would agree that the 'West' doesn't have 'pervasive' strategic leverage over China, but one with a knowledge of history might well doubt whether it ever did? One might cite the Boxer War as an example of influence, but I would argue that that war (as well as the other colonial wars in China as examples of failures of influence. Certainly such 'pervasive' influence cannot be argued to have survived the final victory of the Chinese Communists. Cannot see what Reagan had to do with that myself!

I would argue that after a period of relative isolation lasting from 1950 tuntil the collapse of the Cultural Revolution, has gradually come to have ever-increasing influence outside it's borders, although far from 'pervasive' influence in any way. Even today.

July 29, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

An example of a potential 'market-clearing' green solution might be the current work of Dr Craig Venter, who is currently working on third and fourth-generation biofuels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter#Current_work

Third-generation biofuels (as I understand it) are fuels which can be made from whatever local 'waste' biomass is available in a locality, and appears to bear a business model more akin to a brewery than the current international infrastructure of pipelines and vast refineries. It may also hold the promise of cutting out the refining process entirely (designing the vats and the bacteria to produce 'gasoline' directly.

Fourth and fifth generations biofuels (again to my understanding) take the process one step further. Apparently one limitation of third-generation fuels is the actual lack of sufficient concentrations of carbon dioxide in the vats. So the efficiency of such a brewing process would in theory be considerably enhanced by plentiful supplies of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is now a waste product of many industrial processes, which is in fact what the 'Green Revolution' is all about. Or so I think.

Imagine a technology which converts waste carbon dioxide into a valuable resource to be captured and turned into fuels suitable for powering cars and heating? Such solutions, if practical, hold potential to in fairly short order transform the economic and political landscape of the energy industry. And the most-polluting places (such as the *new* industrial cities of China and India) would be the most profitable locales to deploy such solutions. Not to mention the many wasteful power plants remaining in the West.

Market-clearing indeed!

July 29, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"Or, perhaps, market-clearing 'green' solutions."

The bulk of all greenhouse gas pollution is in sectors - power generation, transportation, heating, city planning, some large scale industrial production facilities - in which there are no markets. These are all planned sectors, either under the direct command of the state (in the case of city planning) or joined at the hip to the state. Whenever they are not effectively planned, disaster ensues.

Those sectors which are significant and partially market-based (mostly home construction and some large scale industrial production facilities) are still subject to numerous regulations - building codes, zoning rules, emissions regulations, etc., etc., etc.

Pretending that "market-based solutions" can solve the problem of greenhouse gas pollution is thus easily seen to be a pipe dream.

"Certainly such 'pervasive' influence cannot be argued to have survived the final victory of the Chinese Communists. Cannot see what Reagan had to do with that myself!"

Ronnie Raygun started the policy of deliberate de-industrialisation in the United States. His friends in Europe wrecked considerable havoc over here as well, but (Britain aside) our political systems proved much more resilient to the Anglo Disease.

As an aside, one should never cease to remind advocates of "market solutions" that even where market solutions exist, they may not be the best solutions. Famine, to take an obvious example, is a market solution. So is the American health care system.

As a further aside, effectively curtailing greenhouse gas pollution does not necessarily entail any reduction in our well being. There is nothing that a car can do for most city dwellers that a well-developed public transit system and well-planned commercial zoning laws cannot do better. There is no discomfort inherent in better insulated houses. Co-generated district heating is not technically inferior to in-house furnaces, and heat pumps are actually superior to electric radiators. The electricity from photovoltaics, windmills and tidal power is no different from the electricity from coal-fired power plants. Similarly, there is no reason other than convenience, habit and sunk costs that most industrial plants cannot run in a non-GHG-polluting manner. The list goes on for a long while, but if the reader has not grasped the point by now, it is unlikely that further examples will be of any use.

July 29, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

Pardon me, in an earlier post I read 'persuasive' as 'pervasive'. But this actually weakens the argument that Reagan had anything to do with the decisive actions which led to the loss of 'persuasive power' - if it ever existed, which it did only fleetingly if ever.

Surely the First and Second Opium Wars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War) made Western 'persuasion' a moot point? If not, one suspects that the Boxer Rebellion and the Eight-Nation Alliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance) may have finished this?

Ok, if not that, perhaps the Sino-French and the Sino -Japanese Wars did the trick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War_(1883-1885), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese_War_(1894-1895)).

Not to mention the Second Sino-Japanese War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese_War_(1937-1945)).

I confess myself convinced by the piercing wit of this analysis. Given all this history - it obviously must have been Reagan.... ;)

July 29, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

"The bulk of all greenhouse gas pollution is in sectors - power generation, transportation, heating, city planning, some large scale industrial production facilities - in which there are no markets. These are all planned sectors, either under the direct command of the state (in the case of city planning) or joined at the hip to the state."

We appear to agree completely here, Mr. Stenfalk. The State is the problem and must be eliminated to allow the free market to flourish. Statism and dirigisme only block the path of progress. Long live laissez-faire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire)! A goog French concept if ever there was.... ;)

July 29, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

There is no market in those sectors because no market is possible in those sectors.

That is a very basic fact of economic life in an industrialised society. Indeed, it is a fact that has been known to all sane economists for the last fifty or so years.

July 29, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"Pardon me, in an earlier post I read 'persuasive' as 'pervasive'. But this actually weakens the argument that Reagan had anything to do with the decisive actions which led to the loss of 'persuasive power' - if it ever existed, which it did only fleetingly if ever."

This is not about the power of moral suasion, as you seem to believe. It is about economic and/or cultural power. Soft power, if you will.

The EU has persuasive leverage over Turkey, because Turkey desires accession to the EU (although our racist wingnuts are busy pissing that leverage away with their Islamophobic posturing). Iran has persuasive leverage over Saudi Arabia, because Iran controls the Straits of Hormuz, on which Saudi Arabia depends for its oil exports to Europe. The US has persuasive leverage over Israel, because Israel depends on American economic aid for its continued existence as an industrial economy, and on American military aid for its continued occupation and colonisation effort in Palestine.

We have no comparable soft power over China. We can decide to cease buying their products, but then they would see no compelling need to keep propping up the dollar, which means that the dollar would collapse. Europe might not care about that, but Europe is not the principal export market for China. Europe can decide to cease selling capital goods to China, but China is not structurally dependent on imports of capital goods from Europe.

And for all the reasons you mention, we have little in the way of cultural power over China.

July 29, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"Craig Venter, who is currently working on third and fourth-generation biofuels."

Political science 101: Any work on greenhouse gas pollution sponsored by Exxon may be presumed to be a stalling tactic until proven otherwise.

In this particular case, considerable scepticism as to Mr. Venter's research is probably justified.

"Imagine a technology which converts waste carbon dioxide into a valuable resource to be captured and turned into fuels suitable for powering cars and heating?

[...]

Market-clearing indeed!"

Thermodynamics 101: Substances of low free energy cannot be converted into substances of high free energy without an input of free energy that at least matches the difference in free energy.

Thermodynamics 102: Carbon dioxide has lower free energy than the substances used as fuel sources. Ergo, turning carbon dioxide into fuel involves an input of energy that could otherwise have been captured and used to replace carbon-based energy carriers.

Engineering 101: As a rule of thumb, any energy conversion costs between a half and a full order of magnitude of the available free energy.

Engineering 102: A carbon capture and conversion (CCC) scheme would involve at least one additional conversion (more probably two) compared to simply capturing the requisite free energy and using it to perform work.

Engineering 103: The alternative to capturing and converting carbon dioxide is to use the available free energy to replace carbon-based fuels as a source of useful work. This alternative, by avoiding one or two energy conversions, can normally be expected to be between three times and a hundred times more efficient at reducing GHG pollution.

Conclusion: Reduction of energy consumption and elimination of mass reliance upon hydrocarbons is not optional. To use a phrase that you are undoubtedly familiar with, There Is No Alternative.

July 29, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

AMrket-clearing solutions actually exist. The 'crearing' can be so sweeping as to cause the former solution (and their problems) to fall almost completely out of memory.

Take - the internam combustion engine, which is a classic example. From the 1870's on the probkems of pollution caused by the transport system of the day were gradually choking cities worldwide. I refer of course to the beasts which then powered transport both private and public. Horses, mostly.

Vast numbers of hard-working horses produce equally vast quantities of manure. They also produce carcasses of dead horses. Both carcasses and manure are worthless byproducts which caused major public health problems, threatening water and food supplies and promoting disease. Not to mention the traffic - which was horendous. By report far worse than the present.

The IC engine placed in private carriages (cars) and omnibuses (buses) ended all that, in combination of course with street-railways (trolleys and trams) and electrified train systems such as London's Tube, the Paris Metro, and the S-bahns and U-bahns of German cities.

And a miracle occured . We had far fewer horses, and their worthless pollution (known as horse manure) became valuable organic fertilizer. I shoveled enough of it as a youth to know that well. We didn't dump it in the sewer, quite the contrary! No, I filled countless wheelbarrows and toted them out to fertilizer the truck garden of my employer....

So there is definately hopw for carbon, as long as (as you point out) government with their regulations forbidding rational use of valuable resources are swept out of the way! ;)

July 29, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

Mr Stenfalk,

You mention thermodynamics & engineering in 'proving' that Dr. Venter cannot succeed in his chosen endeavor, but you somehow seem to have overlooked biology & 'genetic' engineering. WHich are Dr Venter's specialties of course. Should He attempt to create solutions based completely upon thermodynamics and civil engineering I agree he would likely fail.

But he is not doing that. He is working upon solutions based upon the fields he knows, tailored organisms. I daresay we can assume that Dr. Venter knows infinately more about these fields than any young physicist or aging software engineer likely do, would you not agree?

But perhaps you are correct after all, but for political reasons - not scientific or engineering.

There exist certain areas of the world which are so backward and narrowminded as to completely reject rational solutions created by science. And in this case I don't refer to Alabama, as lamentably ignorant as the denziens may otherwise be.

No, the area I am referring to has legally outlawed the sale of improved products based upon genetic engineering, commonly referring by them as 'frankenfoods'. This benighted part of the world may well outlaw the sale of 'frankenfuels', thus remaining backward and rejecting the virtuous 'Green' technology. It is very sad.... ;)

July 29, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"So there is definately hopw for carbon, as long as (as you point out) government with their regulations forbidding rational use of valuable resources are swept out of the way! ;)"

Anybody who labours under the delusion that cutting back on government regulation will help resolve the issue of GHG pollution needs to cut back on the mushrooms.

And then go read The New Industrial State.

"AMrket-clearing solutions actually exist. The 'crearing' can be so sweeping as to cause the former solution (and their problems) to fall almost completely out of memory."

Yes. The sweeping solution is called electrified rail, photovoltaics and wind power in this case. But that is not a market solution, and it does not involve pretending that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Nor will it prevent us from halting the exponential growth in aggregate global industrial output.

"You mention thermodynamics & engineering in 'proving' that Dr. Venter cannot succeed in his chosen endeavor, but you somehow seem to have overlooked biology & 'genetic' engineering."

You seem to be confused about the nature of biological processes. Genetic manipulation - or indeed any other kind of biology - does not permit you to bypass the laws of thermodynamics. No process known to man permits you to bypass the laws of thermodynamics.

And if you don't trust me on this, I strongly advise you to go read this book. It will explain to you - in almost pedantic detail - how Venter's proposal cannot possibly be more efficient than simply putting up a windmill and a solar cell instead.

"No, the area I am referring to has legally outlawed the sale of improved products based upon genetic engineering, commonly referring by them as 'frankenfoods'. This benighted part of the world may well outlaw the sale of 'frankenfuels', thus remaining backward and rejecting the virtuous 'Green' technology. It is very sad.... ;)"

GMOs are over-hyped and under-tested for most of the applications that they are currently being employed in. For instance, GMO crops have lower yields than non-GMO crops for most growing conditions that they have actually been tested under. And where they improve yields the improvement is frequently insufficient to justify the very much non-trivial testing and safety procedures involved. GMOs in controlled environments (growing medicine in greenhouses, etc.) is a far more promising venue of research. But, again, over-hyped and under-tested at the current stage.

As for GMO-based fuels, silicon PV elements are far cheaper and more efficient at capturing the free energy of the incoming sunlight than even the best biological organisms evolution has produced (6-12 % conversion rate for PV vs. approx. 2 % net conversion rate for plants at optimal growing conditions). So there is little prospect of GMO fuel crops of any kind having an EROI that exceeds that of an off-the-shelf PV element.

I have no problem with GMOs in principle. But I have a very big problem with releasing unproven technology of any kind, and then praying that the god of the Invisible Hand will magically deliver all the benefits that the hype promises, and protect us from any unknown adverse consequences. We saw how well that worked with asbestos, BoneLock, thalidomide and positive-feedback nuclear reactors. The manufacturers of GMOs are, bluntly put, untrustworthy, and the FDA has been gutted by thirty years of Ronnie Raygun and his friends running amok in the American government with their insane ideology.

July 30, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

"And then go read The New Industrial State."

An excellent book, I read it as an undergrad majoring in economics. As I recall a major part of the thesis was about the manner in which large, stable Industrial companies were destined to remain on toip and must therefore be regulated by an enlightened Mandarinate - for the good of the public. Notable examples of such dominant industrial companies included GM, Chrysler, AT&T, NorthernTelecom (Canada), and General Electric(the UK company).

The book has not, perhaps, aged well. I am sure it does an excellent job of presenting the conventional wisdom of the Keynsian school of thought in 1967, the year in which it was published.

I might suggest that you expand your readings in economics to two other economists. One is a European older than Gailbraith who nonetheless does a rather better job of explaining the economic climate we find ourselves in, including the collapse of huge dominant enterprises such as GM, Enron, AT&T, and Northern Telecom.

You might wish to start with the originator of the theory of creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Capitalism-Socialism-Democracy-Joseph-Schum...

Then continue with a little Milton Freidman: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/01...

Many things have been conclusively proven to be impossible over the hstory of mankind. I believe the possibilty of heavier than air flight was one such idea which was decisively rebutted, and the New York Times newspaper did a superlative job of finally putting to rest the wild-eyed and thoroughly unscientific notions of one Dr Robert Goddard that rockets might be caused to fly for vast distancesor even out of the gravitational field of the earth. Not to mention perhaps the most famous of such incidents, the confrontation between an Italian theorist and the Roman Catholic Church.

So you are in excellent company. I think I will close my little essay with a quote once put intop the mouth of a fictional European:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
- Hamlet Act I Scene V

July 30, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"An excellent book, I read it as an undergrad majoring in economics. As I recall a major part of the thesis was about the manner in which large, stable Industrial companies were destined to remain on toip"

You recall wrong.

The thesis is that successful industrial production using advanced technology with considerable capital outlay requires planning, management of demand and the removal of control from the market. This disempowers the shareholders, who are neither competent to, nor usually interested in actually running the company and instead lodges power firmly with the organisation that is tasked with planning and managing.

It does not specify that the firms that were dominant at the time would remain dominant, just as the geopolitical theory of hegemonic powers has no requirement that the hegemons of today will remain hegemons tomorrow. A fact that Americans would do well to keep in mind, by the way.

"and must therefore be regulated by an enlightened Mandarinate - for the good of the public."

This bears little resemblance to the policies suggested in TNIS, and more to the straw men and caricatures that Friedmanites and other delusional ideologues erect of the argument.

"The book has not, perhaps, aged well."

We still have a substantial planning system. To take a few simple examples, virtually all microprocessors are manufactured by just two companies; the majority of all air planes are built by just three companies; personal computers, two or three companies; windmills, three or four companies, of which two are clearly dominant; processed foods, two companies; trains, less than five companies.

And this is world-wide. At the time Galbraith was writing, these figures would have described just North America. So in the parts of the economy that are still encompassed by the planning system, concentration of industrial power has increased markedly.

In those areas of high technology where the industrial conglomerates have been looted, the planning system has, of course, broken down. This has almost uniformly yielded poor results, both in terms of economic performance and in terms of social justice.

In those countries where there are multiple electrical grid operators that are not vertically integrated with the generators (like California), electricity generation has been unstable and costs have been higher than they were before the planning system in that sector was gutted. In those countries where gas is supplied by state-controlled (quasi-)monopoly utilities (Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia), gas is cheaper and more reliably available than in countries where it is supplied by multiple independent utilities (chiefly Britain). In those countries where private companies run the trains, train service is uniformly execrable compared to the countries where public or regulated monopoly utilities run the trains. And whenever a rail net is privatised and unbundled, service and reliability drops and costs and prices rise. Cities that are planned with competence and where the planning is enforced with some vigour are always more habitable and aesthetically pleasing than cities that are unplanned.

The caricature of the book that you have remembered may not have aged well, but then again, it was never pretty to begin with.

"You might wish to start with the originator of the theory of creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter"

I am familiar with Schumpeter, and while some of what he writes shows some insight, his notions of technological development are fundamentally inapplicable to modern industrial societies. And so are his ideas on the economic effects of advanced technology.

"Then continue with a little Milton Freidman"

Friedman's economics were little more than warmed-over Hayek. His fundamental delusions, like Hayek's, are a) using a model of human decision-making that is not even wrong, b) ignoring externalities and c) ignoring economic power. As a software engineer, I assume that you have at least passing familiarity with the concept of Garbage In, Garbage Out, which is a quite apt description of Friedman's little exercise in mathematical masturbation.

Everywhere Friedman's ideology has been used as a basis for regulating the political economy, it is led to an industrial collapse. The US, Britain, Chile, Indonesia, the list goes on. The economic success stories of the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of this (Germany, China, Japan, and so on) all involve a substantially planned economy and a strong industrial policy.

"Many things have been conclusively proven to be impossible over the hstory of mankind. I believe the possibilty of heavier than air flight was one such idea which was decisively rebutted, and [...]"

*Yawn*

I have seen that list before. You are, however, in perhaps less estimable company than you would place me in, as the Galileo Gambit (which is the technical term for the rhetorical fallacy you just tried to pull) is usually deployed by global warming deniers, anti-vaccinationists, creationists and sundry other... less than reputable, shall we say, elements of intellectual life.

"I think I will close my little essay with a quote once put intop the mouth of a fictional European:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
- Hamlet Act I Scene V"

I will close with another little quib: "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -Carl Sagan

July 30, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

"But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

So Dr Craidg Venter = Bozo the Clo0wn? Or am I putting words in your mouth?

I submit that Dr Venter has a slightly more distinuished record than Bozo. It may even be remotely possible that Dr Venter knows more about the subject than you do. That is an appeal to authority of course, but then your arguments implicitly do so as well.

My impression is that Dr. Ventor is not attempting to repeal any of the laws of thermodynamics but rather attempting via biolgical processes to create tailored bacteria which will be able to use biological material and carbon dioxide to create biological substances resembling gasoline and other useful substances. A second problem is causing the GM'ed bacteria to exude the substances outside the cell wall, or so I gather.

Assuming that Dr Venter or one or more of the other scientists working in this succeed, a third problem will present itself, that of scaling it up from the test tube or lab-sized brewing vats into industrial-sized breweries, and also of adapting the base process to the many different feedstocks locally available in different regions. This may be difficult - or it may not. Various forms of plant life bear considerable resemblence to each other, with variations in chemical and water content of course.

But I will point out that successful processes need not work univerally to be useful. Nor does this have to be a global pancea and solve all the problems immediately.

Dr Venter's suggested solution does not make the carbon dioxide go away, but rather will recycle it into a form which can be re-used instead of being expensively injected underground as current technology proposes. Conceptually it seems similar to current water re-use systems.

Where we differ is that you seem to concieve this as a regulatory problem, but systems of beaurecratic control do not exist adequate to the scale of the problem. Thus you resort to persuasion, an lament that good will powerful enough to provide a lever does not exist.

Yet I say to you that this much good will cannot exist. The Statist solutions to carbon dioxied Europe proposes would, under current technology, beggar most of the planet. Even if European powers (and later on the US) had not repeatedly invaded China or conquered India, there is no way you could engender enough good will to cause either country to impoverish itself. Nor can you impose by fiat a treaty which would impose a great depression upon the US, Brazil, or anyone else. Try to do so and any government which tried it would fall virtually immediately, probably destroying the political party which imposed it. For a generation, I think.

To solcve this we need to go for win-win solutions. Not one solutions, but many. Technologies which you try to peddle as market-clearing - are not. They would not work in the US without massive social engineering which cannot be done under a democracy. It needs a dictatorship. And your current solutions will simply not work in China or India at all.

Moreover, the ultimate solutionm Europe is relying on is actually - depopulation. The treaties have been written so that a depopulated Europe will be able to pollute much more per-capita than a growing US, and particularly a growing India. The treaties are written to advantage Europe because Europe has the diplomatic power - now.

Your general theme of Western hypocaracy is a good one. Where you fail is that when you write about International Law beginning at 'Home', the examples you cite aren't really your home; they occur in the US predominantly. You fail to mention European hypocracies very much, and therefore give every appearance of failing to understand that this has to be done cooperatively if it is to be done at all. Europe has tried - and failed, to impose it's solution......

July 30, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

"So Dr Craidg Venter = Bozo the Clo0wn? Or am I putting words in your mouth?"

Not quite. The way he acted when he participated in HUGO may cast some doubt on his scholarly judgement, but there is nothing wrong in principle with the research programme that he's pursuing.

It just isn't about making biofuels.

His research is about trying to figure out how to make the minimal possible lifeform - a lifeform that does nothing other than consume sugar and replicate. That's interesting research for a variety of reasons, and it does have a number of potential practical implications, if he can get it to work. But biofuels isn't one of them.

Piggy-backing one's research on politically inspired hype and fashionable topics is neither new nor seriously frowned upon in scientific circles, ritualistic verbiage to the contrary notwithstanding. But it behooves discussions of policy to distinguish between the way research projects are marketed and the actual science involved - what can be gleaned from press releases rarely bears any resemblance to what is actually in the papers that inspired those press releases.

"Where we differ is that you seem to concieve this as a regulatory problem, but systems of beaurecratic control do not exist adequate to the scale of the problem."

Ah, but they do. Electrified rail can be implemented on a city, country or regional scale, PV on a city scale, wind on any scale that is politically acceptable, building codes on city, country or regional scale, and so on and so forth and etcetera. All of these are within the power of countries to regulate, and thus within the power of treaties to enforce.

Violators of such treaties can face embargoes (in the case of China), adverse currency manipulation (in the case of the US), complete dismantling of their economies (in the case of the Bermudas, Switzerland and the sundry other minor flag-of-convencience countries around the globe) or a gamut of other inventive nastiness.

"The Statist solutions to carbon dioxied Europe proposes would, under current technology, beggar most of the planet."

Flat out wrong. Go here (via), here and here for comprehensive debunkings.

When thinking about economics (and this is another point that Friedman and his fellow travellers willfully refuse to grasp) money is a form of bookkeeping. Nothing more. What matters is the resource constraints, and these are in the vast majority of cases not captured by the monetary costs in any meaningful way. Throwing around cost projections is flim-flam, unless those cost projections concern themselves with the actual economic fundamentals, rather than the bookkeeping units known as "money."

As an aside, I find it amazing that I have to - in this day and age - debunk Herbert Hoover's budget philosophy. I would have thought that one Great Depression would be enough to teach even the most delusional proponent of lassiez faire the error of his ways. But apparently not.

"Nor can you impose by fiat a treaty which would impose a great depression upon the US, Brazil, or anyone else."

The Great Depression was the result of insufficient state spending, not excessive state spending, and was cured by increased state spending, both in aggregate and in proportion to the economy. A fact that every schoolchild who has paid attention in civics class should know.

"Moreover, the ultimate solutionm Europe is relying on is actually - depopulation."

False. Europe is not currently depopulating. This is a talking point peddled by racists concerned with European "race-mixing" and other similar nonsense. Please consider getting your news and views about Europe from sources other than Heritage and similar racist organisations.

"The treaties have been written so that a depopulated Europe will be able to pollute much more per-capita than a growing US"

This is a talking point peddled by neoliberal belief tanks.

The treaties as currently written are 1) going to allow the US to populate more per capita than Europe, by the next best thing to half an order of magnitude. First and second derivatives of demographic data is insufficient to materially alter this picture, almost no matter what they look like. And 2) insufficient for the problem at hand.

"Your general theme of Western hypocaracy is a good one. Where you fail is that when you write about International Law beginning at 'Home', the examples you cite aren't really your home; they occur in the US predominantly."

No. They apply to the political right, because the political right is vastly more hypocritical on the subject of international law than the political left. This is simply a fact of life, and has been a fact of life at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union - more probably since the Soviet invasion of Hungary or Afghanistan, both of which crystalized progressive opposition to Soviet imperialism.

If the US is more hypocritical on the subject of international law, it is partly because it is an empire (empires are always whining hypocrites on the subject of international law), and partly because it is further to the political right than Europe is.

"Europe has tried - and failed, to impose it's solution......"

Europe has never seriously attempted to impose the solution here advocated. Doing so would start - as I point out above - by implementing it at home. Which there has been no serious attempt to do.

August 4, 2009

Marek Swierczynski, journalist at TVN24, Diamond Contributor (1100)

What is law? Romans divided the concept into ius and lex. The first was what the Western civilisation understands as natural law. The latter were legal norms, that you should obey or be punished. Now, what is the international law that Mr Stenfalk is demanding to rule the world? Currently, international law is little more than ius, as there is no effective international law enforcement (as the UNSC is a political not judicial body). And rightly so, because otherwise the idea of state independence would be jeopardised. Mr Stenfalk demands a system of international jurisprudence to be created, but actually he demands a system of international law enforcement for the norms he sees as indispensable in facing world's most frightening challenges. While I can't see this happening, I agree that we consider applying more of this international ius into our legal systems, provided these norms are realistic enough and make only acceptable harm.

August 4, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

Marek,

You are correct, it is ius, and current enforcement is currently little more than felt guilt. The shameless don't feel it as all, so it is inflicted (deliberate use of the term) selectively upon countries capaple of such an emotion and who actually shoulder responsibilities which predictably will lead to foul moral choices. Thus cutting out 90% of the Western World.

Problem is that the inflictees get tired and angy of it after a time and decide to get shut of the whole thing.

The discussion starter is an inflicter in this scheme of international guilting; the US is the inflictee. And many are thinking very hard about getting out of the business altogether....

August 5, 2009

Marek Swierczynski, journalist at TVN24, Diamond Contributor (1100)

Well, Don, please don't be too harsh on "the new Niels Bohr" (Jakob, forgive me for being a bit provocative). He raises a few important points and they're worth thinking about. For instance: the technology decline in the West. Look at the backyard you live in, Britain. It ceased to be a major defence technology manufacturer and inventor a while ago. France still considers itself to be one, but for years it can not deliver on the Airbus A400M, along with other major European powers. If we thought what it takes to be an advanced technology industry, we'd probably say it's space, jet and nuclear - in research, development and implementation, both for military and civil purposes (I'm speaking late XX century terms, that still count). In the West we can see a decline in these assets, while the East and South gets more and more of these capabilities - even if half-legally from rogue deliveries. Russia has struggled to maintain the triad and with the luck of oil prices it managed to do so. But in China, North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan, RSA and elsewhere we see these power technologies flourishing. Maybe it's just catching up with the West, while the West itself entered a new phase of development with nano-technology, bio-technology and energy-saving, but I doubt you can build an energy-saving-nano-bio-bomb...

August 6, 2009

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

But Marek, what you fail to understand is that even if EADS cannot make a military transport to spec France will still be dominant in the strategic yohgurt industry.

Not too sure that us yanks are in a position to crow too much about EADS' misfortunes. At least they are delivering the A380 finally, whereas the Boeing 787 hasn't had it's maiden flight yet. When EADS and Boeing do manage to get their production numbers up these planes will be profitable. I know the 747 was late, and as I recall the A300 was way late. But when they did arrive both planes made a lot of money.

Power balances are shifting, and US policies have been shifting with the global shifts. Not too sure what china is doing in Aerospace. Obviously they have nuclear missles (and have had virtually forever. And I know they have a space presence also. Brasil has the Embraer jets, and very quietly have been expanding their presence in other markets. Power is shifting in that direction and in perhaps a decade people will realize that Brazil wields as much power and industrial might as any European country this side of Germany, and has been giving the US a run for it's money in some areas as well.

Thse shifts don' tmean that the US should take them as threats, but they are compelling reasons (to me at least) why the US should shift resources away from the military-industrial complex and back into commercial applications. So as yo be able to compete. The US should very carefully select the military missions which it does choose to keep doing.

The past decade has shown that the US is no longer 'leader of the Free World', if it ever was. That means our strategy also must change, to something more in line with that of a great power, but not a superpower. We can no longer sumon the necessary influence or will to be everything everywhere.

August 6, 2009

Jakob Stenfalk, N/A, Silver Contributor (54)

Marek, why is the current version of the state desirable as the social unit that enforces laws? You simply presume that this is so - yet we have many examples of deeply dysfunctional states.

Zimbabwe has destroyed its own agriculture; Poland oppresses sexual minorities; China censors its press; the US fights wars of conquest in countries where the US has no business sending soldiers; Singapore shelters tax thieves from other countries. And the list goes on [1].

And who defines what constitutes "harm" and how much of it is "acceptable" in implementing international law?

Is it "harm" to strike down Polish anti-abortion laws? Most civilised people would not think so. Is it "harm" to enforce rigorous banking standards? The Canary Islands might argue that - it would destroy their economy to do so. In fact, the Canary Islands might argue that it is "unacceptable" harm. But why should it be considered acceptable to base your economy on being a safe haven for rich criminals?

The Soviet Union might have considered it "unacceptable harm" to stop sending dissidents to concentration camps. Should that be allowed to stand? Similarly, the US might find it "unacceptably harmful" to have to close its concentration camp in Guantanamo. Should this be allowed to stand?

Donald, you're optimistic if you think that ten percent of the rulers in The West are capable of feeling shame over breaches in international law. Certainly neither Sarko, Bliar, Cheney, Rasmussen (either of them) or Murdoch are showing any shame. (Nevermind the JP Morgan and Goldman crooks.)

And if you're tired of being pointed to as the chief violator of international law outside Israel, then there is an exceedingly simple solution: Stop breaking international law. It really isn't very complicated.

But of course that would mean having to actually roll back the military-industrial complex (which small-government advocates are usually oddly silent about) and start living within your sustainable resource base, which would mean an end to the McMerican Way of Life [2].

As to technology, the US and Britain have largely fallen by the wayside - as a predictable result of Thatcher's and Raygun's "what's good for The City/Wall Street is good for Britain/The US" delusion.

However, Germany still produces the best ball bearings in the world. France and Canada produce the world's best trains. The US has a substantial share of global microprocessor development (though most of the actual production is in Taiwan and Singapore...). Denmark makes the world's best high-pressure pumps. The only non-integrated manufacturer of gearboxes for windmills is German (well, not the only one, but the only one whose gear boxes don't break down when the wind starts blowing). Continental Europe is not in danger of losing the tech edge in many sectors.

Of course our relative position will suffer. That is only natural - we cannot expect to be better than the Chinese at everything under the sun. On the other hand, there is no reason to expect China to be better than Europe at everything either. Unless we go on a Raygun/Thatcher crack binge and thirdworldize our industrial plant like Detroit has done.

Regarding space, jet and nuclear technologies in particular, France has the world's best nuclear power plants (and a fairly respectable nuclear arsenal too).

The US remains the world leader in space exploration. Europe and China are about neck-to-neck on commercial rocketry, but Europe has the scientific edge over China in space.

Jet propulsion is a thing of the past. It will not be a serious industrial sector in this century, outside some specialised military applications.

Which are mostly going to be pork barrel anyway - with oil in the € 40-140 range, only advanced industrial states will be able to afford an air force. And if an advanced industrial state finds itself in a serious shooting war with another advanced industrial state, then it has already lost under any sanity-based foreign policy doctrine.
_________________________________
[1] Lest one be tempted to conclude that "the government" is the problem, I would like to take the opportunity to remind the reader that "the government" is simply a shorthand for "the guy who can take your food, water, shelter and life away from you."

The corollary to this is that "the guy who can take your food, water, shelter and life away from you" is the government. So unless you are capable of providing all of these things for yourself - without help, without barter, without nothing - there will always be "the government." You just won't have a vote in who it is.

[2] Some people labour under the delusion that "our way of life is not negotiable." I would like to point out that neither are the laws of nature, certain schools of French philosophy notwithstanding.

If the laws of nature say that you will be driving fewer car-miles in this century than you did in the previous one (and they do), then you are going to drive fewer car miles during this century than you did in the previous one. The only choice you have is whether you're going to do so the nice way or you're going to do so the hard way.

The nice way is to make a political decision to phase out cars and replace them with trains. The hard way is to wait for oil to hit 200 €/bbl and let "market solutions" take care of it, the same way "market solutions" took care of the Irish Potato Plague of 1845.

So far The West is choosing the hard way.

June 10, 2010

Joe

Jakob's theories [translation]: "I'm in love with autarkies that pander to my political sensibilites."

The only legitimacy that any law has comes from the body of people that agree to have it put upon them. A population which consents its' laws upon itself. Not some fallacious 60's era clean and fair UN dream, or some "global gocvernance" model fit for little more than the imaginings of Star Trek fans waiting to receive the Vulcan Ambassador.

At odds with "global governance" arguments and this is the "magic wand" use of the term International Law, is that it is FELT universally legally legitimate, and imagines that there exists somewhere, some "big book of international law". No doubt some supranational constabulary is supposed to enforce it, no?

International Law is the practice of determining the interaction of laws across legitimate legal presincts, not, as Jacob and so many like to think, anything that violates their ideological outlook.

When the ICC was so eager to prove itself by demanding that the functioning legal system of the states of the former Yugoslavia NOT be used for the mere purpose of demonstarting their international-creamy-goodness, they actually COMPRIMISED the legitimacy of the sentances they could hand down.

After all the violators and the violated were arguing cases that took place in states of the former Yugoslavia, and could have been tried there REINFORCING THE FUTURE of those legal systems, were it not for the vanity of these fake fantasy "internationalists" who seem to dream of one thing:
international arrest warrants for the purpose of taking those they disagree with politically, and holding political trials in nation states that can be manipulated to play along. Don't like Tony Blair? Haul him off to Paraguay! - and so forth.

But what will you do when the same specious tripe is used to demand the head of Jakob Stenfalk? It might seem a satisfying bit of hate to choke your chicken over now, when you're talking about a figure you detest, but when do you think giving that form of alegal tryanny the force of the "big book of international law" will be wise in the future?