To save the planet first you must embrace capitalism

FACEBOOK - CAPITALISTS AGAINST CORPORATISM

Oh, don't splutter into your green tea. You know as well as I do that the future - constrained and damaged and poisoned and violent - will not be built on grand centralising dreams of the authoritarian bureaucrats on the left and right, but on individuals doing it for themselves, their families, their communities and the planet.

The socialists - the nostalgic liquidating death cult - are dancing in the ashes of the world that's leaving them, leaving their dreams of control, order and artlessness dead.

The corporatists - socialists and tories by another name - are on the front line of liquidation, feeding off each other, trying to grab more and more, and wasting years developing high tech security and surveilance systems for a low tech future.

The sheep - those barely educated, materialistic little drones are just swept along by it all, loving Alan Sugar and Jeremy Corbyn in turns, flapping around for something solid to hang on to, whilst everything falls to the floor around them, shattering on their highly polished parquet flooring that's so last year.

There's only one ray of hope. That the economic system that guarantees freedom if not success, that punishes and rewards in turn, that promises nothing and always delivers more than that, is so wonderfully adaptive, so quick to act, so neutral, is something that we can hang on to through all the trials that are coming. That in a world where nothing seems to stay the same there is one solid, permanent feature that we can be sure will help us as things fall apart.

To build a better world you need do just two things - ignore what egotists try to push you to do and embrace capitalism.

illusions and omega males

FACEBOOK - GREEN PROGRESSIVES

It's been an interesting couple of weeks as we watch Britain's political system implode, leaving just a nasty smell and a mass of irrelevance.

Cameron is finished thanks to his adventures with ham, the LibDems have a long way to go before anyone will bother even acknowledging their existence and, worst of all, Labour have decided to go for the unelectable yet again.

We've seen this happening all over the world. Complete stupidity and irrelevance taking the place of discourse. People with a huge sense of entitlement - just because of where they've been born - have a queue of nonentities lining up to sell them snake oil. They are lapping it up. The USA has its Republicans, a gang of people so stupid it's impossible to parody them, throughout the Middle East tyrants in and out of government slaver away cutting off heads and destroying hope, in Greece a smarmy cult won power and immediately did everything they said they wouldn't, and then got re-elected!

But in the UK we wanted to go one better. Let's find the least talented, most uncharismatic, pointless individual ever. A public school twit who has never known real work or poverty or danger - and then feeds the entitled drones around him ridiculous dross that wasn't even workable when the economy was growing, let alone now. Socialism - for fuck's sake!! If the glove fits though ... socialism was an invention of the middle and upper middle classes to keep working class people under control. It's a liquidation cult - let the decent people make the money, then steal it from them. Great for a year or so ... until all the entrepreneurs have moved on and suddenly the economy is fucked.

And all the time we have great swathes of unfortunate people escaping the disgusting chaos caused by one lot of psycho bully scum for the supposed delights of western Europe, not realising for one minute that if anything they are throwing themselves into an even greater disaster in the making.

It's not easy going for the 100% neutral approach to life. It's not easy going against the flow, telling people the facts and standing back whilst the bullshit is flung at you.

But realistically it's our only hope for the future. We need to stop feeling entitled, we need to stop finding scapegoats and we need to start building the sustainable communities that are our ONLY hope for the future. We should perhaps all have 'CUT THE CRAP' tattooed on our hearts. I have.

UKIP - Greener than the Greens?

FACEBOOK - GREEN BRISTOL

Well I've still not got it together enough yet to write a big piece on the election results, and things are still settling down out there.

I will say that the result has had the affect of turning almost the whole country against the so-called 'government' and it looks like most people are now looking locally at last.

One party existed purely for entertainment and humour and that was of course UKIP. As expected by most of us they won just one seat, but I think Dummy Nigel's after election cabaret did surprise most of us. He has of course now destroyed whatever political career that he thought lay in front of him.

And the 'party' itself seems to be in terminal decline, with the tories stealing many of their maddest ideas and presenting them as if saying something means it will happen. In/out referendum, bringing back foxhunting, trying to ban EU citizens living and working here etc etc. Mad stuff that wouldn't be believed in a work of fiction ...

UKIP's sole MP Douglas Carswell started flirting with the Green Party soon after winning his seat, suggesting we had a common issue over the way votes are counted, that we smaller parties should push for AV or whatever system is currently fashionable, so that small parties can get an appropriate amount of seats. (Of course the stunning SNP victory proves that a small party CAN win under FPTP, but he seems to have missed that).

It got me thinking how UKIP and the Greens resemble each other. Well the Greens aren't absolute supporters of the EU in the way that the big parties (and Labour) are. But our reasoning is completely different to the Little Englander drivel spouted by the kippies. I'm sure that eventually the EU will collapse under its own weight but for now the ability to live and work anywhere in Europe is esomething we don't really appreciate it - until some idiots threaten to take it away and force us to live in this bland little island!

If we did leave the EU we'd take a huge hit to our economy - I reckon anywhere between a 10% and 15% fall in GDP. Even the Greens don't want the economy to shrink that fast, but UKIP do! Greener than the Greens ....

And their other bete noire, immigration? Let's think about this ... why does immigration exist? The answer is simple - growth and demographics. Corporatism and consumerism is based on endless growth. Yeah, I know WE know that's impossible and unsustainable, but the less bright parties - all of 'em - don't. And demographics - we've an ageing and not particularly fertile population and if governments are going to continue to be able to pay pensions and benefits they need a supply of young, fit and employable imported people. UKIP wants to close this door so we have to imply that they also want to start reversing growth - and they plan to do it far quicker than we ever could. Again, UKIP, Greener than the Greens.

You couldn't make it up ...

positive negatives

FACEBOOK - EROEI

It was announced today that UK inflation is now 0.1%. We economists fear deflation, its inevitable effect is to delay consumption in the hope that prices will fall further. Companies lose sales, workers lose jobs, the economy falls further.

But wait - isn't this a good thing from a Green perspective? Surely we WANT the economy to slow down, for consumption to fall.

And this cuts to the heart of the irony in a Green worldview. 'We' want to stop austerity which means we want the economy to expand. But we don't want an expanding economy, we want a contracting economy that eventually evolves into a steady-state economy. So we should be supporting austerity, which should result in falling GDP. Falling inflation or even deflation. Falling interest rates. Falling savings. Above all falling consumption and investment.

My answer? You expect too much - which is both a cop out and an answer.

Becoming Green, becoming a citizen of a steady state economy state isn't going to be easy. The only way we can ease it is by bringing it in gradually. Step by step. A genuine free market would of course make this process so much more straightforward, but no nation on Earth has a free market. Every nation has the dreaded scourge of politicians, desperately fishing for votes and baiting the hook with bigger and bigger promises of more, more, more. And the little voter fishies fall for it every time. 

We've had permanent 'teaser' interest rates now since 2008, and they're not going up any time soon. Now deflation makes the issue even more complex. As energy and resources continue to stutter on the cliff edge of rapidly falling EROEI and raw materials perhaps we finally have the real first harbinger of the contracting economy, just as we gain a fresh new government that doesn't even know about these issues, and even if they did would ignore them as they bait their rods ready for 2020 ...

7th May 2015

FACEBOOK - GREEN PROGRESSIVES

Well we're there - General Election (UK) 2015. All I will say is vote Green.

I do think it's going to be a groundbreaker, as it's the first election where the 'smaller' parties are the key and the big parties (Tory, Labour, LibDem) are on the sidelines. There's been growing disillusionment with British politics for years now, something that started in Scotland and Wales and has now spread over the whole country. That's no surprise. The Scots have felt disenfranchised for decades now, and the SNP have cleverly moved into the vacuum. It's a little different in Wales, but I think that confidence is growing there too, having a language isn't enough any more! The Cornish are forging ahead and here in Wessex we're starting to think of ourselves more as a nation than just a region, and why not?

The other important thing is of course the heady and deadly blend of climate change and falling EROEIs that are going to change absolutely everything for every one of us. Yet listening to the parties, with the small exception of the Greens, you'd think we were heading towards some sort of utopia where the economy will continue to grow, where miraculous new (and cheaper) energy sources will appear and where illness, poverty, discrimination and disatisfaction will all be consigned to the history books.

It isn't all grim. This very change in our political structure gives hope that as the old toff mafia starts to vanish into history community based politicians with a gift for the hard sell will slip into the positions of power and influence that need to be handed over to people with a clue what's going on. The fracturing of the old UK will make this transition so much easier as the governed and the governers get closer to each other.

This'll be an election that does get into the history books but over the longer term the reason for that will change. It's the first small sign that we are beginning to 'get' what's almost upon us, and that we're not going to just roll over and be dead. 

We've got this!

pragmatism and fragmentation

Pic copyright Steve Sainsbury /Bristol Camera

FACEBOOK - GREEN PROGRESSIVES

Just a few weeks to the election - and probably the most intriguing one for decades. The UK is still reeling from the independence vote in Scotland last year. We are also watching with interest the winding up of UKIP, probably the only political party in the world that wants to return a country to a non-existent past. We have a Labour Party that looks down on working people and makes no attempt to understand or represent them, and we have the tories who as always see politics simply as a career choice and a way of networking amongst the self-appointed elite. We have super confident Scottish nationalists on the verge of getting freedom from this dying union with less confident Welsh and Cornish nationalists picking up speed in their wake. We have a far right that has mistakenly hitched a ride on the back of the ridiculous UKIP, bringing them and themselves down in the process. We have the shellshocked Lib Dems wondering what hit them ...

... and then we have the Greens.

We live in confusing times. The country has been in economic shock since 2008 and there's no obvious way out. There is the sterile austerity/not austerity gambit - which as Greens we know is nonsense. There is pandering to 'Britishness' but not the wonderful multicultural and crazy Britishness that we all know and live, but a weird media-based filmic hybrid of the 50s and the 90s, which none of us know or live.

The primacy of myth and magic over reality and science suggests real issues at the heart of the psyche of this country. Why has this happened? I suspect it's closely linked to the economic crisis, which is clearly a harbinger of our future low-growth, no-growth or negative growth declining energy economy. Nostalgia is taking over at the same rate as we are losing our senses ...

... and then we have the Greens.

The Greens are close to a breakthrough, that much is clear, though whether that breakthrough will be in 2015, 2020 or even 2025 is anybody's guess. But even the Greens have their problems, their clinging to nostalgia and a more comfortable if backwards-looking view of Britain. The party is still infested with extreme lefties and marxists who moved away from Labour as the toffs took over, and saw the Green Party (correctly) as a soft touch. Some 'Greens' still see no irony or shame in describing themselves as marxists or even trotskyists. Is there any greater nostalgia? How exactly do these 'Greens' imagine the future of low energy, low resources and localization will sit easily with their dream of the big state, compliant workers, disrespect of the environment and class war (with the middle classes as always being the winners)?

The Greens need to sweep this rubbish under the carpet and start building a REAL Green Party to take power in the coming decades. It needs to appeal across the board, not just to a few middle class academic and soulless lefties. It needs to show those members who run businesses (and there are MANY of those) that the party supports local capitalism and will help businesses establish themselves under the new sustainable paradigm. They need to push the positives of a species that works in cooperation - rather than against - nature. They need to bring joy, light and humour into the whole process. Because, believe it or not, the time for government is not now far off. As Greens we need to become the people that can help run a country, to listen to people and to announce our motto from the rooftops ...

Be kind and have courage!

April Fools!!

FACEBOOK - GREEN PROGRESSIVES

Perhaps April Fools should stick to the first day of the month (or even the first morning) but it seems to be leaking out and embracing the rest of the month.

This morning I heard a garbled report that claimed that 100 million barrels of oil had been found near Gatwick. Think about that - just over a day's worth of oil and it makes the news. But later (on the same programme) that figure had inflated to 150 BILLION barrels. Now that is a tidier sum ... but it's about as realistic as when people claim the skies are being sprayed with 'chemtrails' or that we are about to have the worst winter in 300 years (thanks Nathan Rao - you are a demigod!)

So how did that figure inflate, and what exactly does it mean? Well we start with that original quote, 100 million barrels. It seems that's what an exploration company (which of course has no interest in bigging this up LOL!) claims there is in one square mile underground. Mmmm. Really? Well the chances are that after a proper pore over maps and calling in experts with their 3D tech they drilled that well in precisely the area that oil was most likely to occur. And it seems they've found some. But what exactly does that mean? It may well mean that there is, in the pores of the rock underground, approximately 100 million barrels of oil. But that doesn't mean for one minute that 100 million  barrels of oil will come spurting out of the ground! Much of it may be unrecoverable, it may need HUGE amounts of energy put in to get it out (leaving a much lower NEW amount available). It may need refining facilities that don't yet exist - and may well not attract investment anyway. It needs to be transported to where it can be refined  even using rail (which it probably will) it will still use more energy to move it, reducing the net amount even more. Even the best sums suggest there will only be around 5 million to 10 million NET barrels available (about one and a half to three hours' worth!) 

Now that best figure has been inflated on the assumption that every part of this field will be equally productive. This is extremely unlikely. An oil field isn't some great undersea lake of oil, just waiting to gush out as soon as we puncture the ground! Oil exists in pores in the bedrock and there are often fractures or blockages that can make huge differences to the amount of recoverable oil. I would probably conservatively estimate that in reality this field will have perhaps 300 million to 500 million  barrels of recoverable NET oil. Not to be sniffed at, but at 4 to 6 days of worldwide oil use really a tiddler. Good for cashflow, not very good for our economy as it may well slow down investment in sustainable energy and, as always - and especially if fracking is needed at least in part - terrible for the climate.

And the consensus is that we need to leave 2/3rds to 4/5ths of the remaining fossil fuels in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change. Even Mark Carney, the Guvnor of the Bank of England, hardly  a mung munching, sandal wearing, tree hugging Greenie, has said as much. Why are we bothering with this rubbish when it's clear there's no future for fossil fuels?

But probably the biggest clincher of all will be the Daily Mail and Express reading NIMBY locals, who will fight like mad (missing the irony that they are immersed in fossil fuel consumption heaven) to stop this horrid industry on their land. Perhaps, just for once, they will be on the right side?