Articles by Jon Rynn

Efficiency without renewable energy is not sufficient

Recently George Monbiot argued that humanity must figure out a way to leave the fossil fuels in the ground:

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burned.

In other words, things like fuel economy standards and efficient appliances won't help unless cars and appliances are powered by renewable energy (solar/wind/geothermal).

The problem might be more manageable if we divide it into three parts:

1. Active energy sources -- wind/solar/geothermal.
2. Passive energy sources -- mostly in buildings, as detailed in David's recent excellent post .
3. Design -- as in how to design cities, towns, and the their transportation systems.

Once we have moved to renewable electricity and passive systems as the source of almost all of our energy needs, then we can keep the rest of the fossil fuels in the ground.

Why ecology explains growth, and economists don’t

Recently there have been a number of discussions concerning economic growth and global warming. Some have argued that the effort to prevent as much global warming as possible will incur unacceptable costs to the global economy in terms of growth. Others have argued that growth is causing global warming.

I want to argue that neoclassical economics is badly designed to help with this debate. The two main problems, in my opinion, are that economics does not see the economy as being composed of a set of nonsubstitutable "life support" functions, to use Joshua Farley's phrase; and the neoclassical theory of economic growth is inadequate (PDF) for understanding how global warming (and most everything else) will effect growth.

The problem of economic growth looms large in both the DICE model put forward by William Nordhaus, and the Stern Report, led Sir Nicholas Stern, because they both calculate the extent to which global warming and global warming mitigation will effect growth. In 1991, Stern opined that growth theory "has, however, been a popular topic for those involved in formal economic theory only for short periods, notably from the mid 1950s to the late 1960s." There is a good reason for this: neoclassical growth theory doesn't really explain economic growth.

What a fossil-fuel free agriculture might look like

At some point in the future, humanity will have to produce its food without the help of fossil fuels and without destroying the soil. In a well-researched and succinct new essay, "What will we eat as the oil runs out?", Richard Heinberg analyzes the main problems with the global agricultural system, and proposes a solution: a global organic food system.

Heinberg lays out four major dilemmas of the current system:

The direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil prices: increased costs for tractor fuel, agricultural chemicals, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs ... the increased demand for biofuels ... the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events caused by fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions...[and] the degradation or loss of basic natural resources (principally, topsoil and fresh water supplies) as a result of high rates, and unsustainable methods, of production stimulated by decades of cheap energy.

He then goes into more detail concerning these four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse, and shows how, even now, these crises are leading to a decrease in global food production.

Later in this post I will propose a thought experiment solution, based on Heinberg's solution of a fossil fuel-free agriculture:

The economy is an ecosystem

It is increasingly argued by people who used to be climate change deniers that preventing global warming will be too expensive to contemplate; even the Stern report, which was put together by a sympathetic economist, estimates that the world economy would have to decrease annual growth by about 5 percent. On the other hand, reports are emerging that argue that green jobs will reinvigorate the economy, creating an entirely new green-collar job sector.

I want to argue something much stronger -- that by building green industries, such as wind, solar, geothermal, public transit, zero-emission buildings, and others, we will not only provide millions of jobs, we will be able to rebuild our manufacturing and machinery industries and thereby expand the middle class and the long-term source of our wealth. I will argue such an expansion can be environmentally sustainable.

In order to understand why this is so, we have to understand how the economy works, looked at from a production-centered point of view. Think of the economy as a kind of ecosystem -- a system that is full of various niches and levels, as a natural ecosystem is.