Shell knew about climate change

Because I have been known to hang out with lefties, my position that the oil guys are not the enemy is quite a minority one. Part of this is personal—I have relatives who have devoted their careers to the difficult proposition of finding, transporting, refining, and selling the most interesting fuel source humanity is ever likely to find. In Tioga North Dakota, I went to high school with the children of the geologists and engineers that found oil in DEEP locations and ran the local refinery. So I KNOW these people are not monsters. I also know they are not stupid. My two lab partners in high school chemistry were sons of working refinery chemists and were amazingly comfortable and graceful around the subject.

There are two blindingly obvious truths associated with the oil business.

1. The modern world is so reliant on liquid fuels that if one major oil company shut down for a month, there were be lines and buyer's panics like in 1973. If ALL of them shut down, life as we know it would come to an end. We NEED these folks.
2. Of course we need to prepare ourselves for the end of the Age of Petroleum by building systems that do not need oil. This will be harder and more expensive than almost anyone admits. This absolutely necessary project will be most certainly powered by liquid fuels. We need petroleum to build the society that does not need it.

See. Making an enemy of the oil business is not only stupid, it demonstrates amazing ingratitude for some of the people that keep the rest of us alive. And here is a remarkable demonstration of my basic point. In 1991, Shell produced an accurate and informative film on the dangers of climate change. My guess is that if the crazy neoliberal political-economic zeitgeist had not been in its ascendency during that exact moment in history, Shell might have led the march into the post-petroleum economy. But the Euro was approved at Maastricht in February 1992 so neoliberalism was nearing one of its greatest triumphs. Unfortunately, neoliberalism is perfectly incapable of financing the kind of economy that can build the infrastructure necessary to eliminate the need of fossil fuels. So Shell went back to business as usual. Not very brave or imaginative, but under the circumstances, absolutely understandable and predictable.

‘Shell knew’: oil giant's 1991 film warned of climate change danger

Public information film unseen for years shows Shell had clear grasp of global warming 26 years ago but has not acted accordingly since, say critics

Damian Carrington and Jelmer Mommers, Tuesday 28 February 2017

The oil giant Shell issued a stark warning of the catastrophic risks of climate change more than a quarter of century ago in a prescient 1991 film that has been rediscovered.

However, since then the company has invested heavily in highly polluting oil reserves and helped lobby against climate action, leading to accusations that Shell knew the grave risks of global warming but did not act accordingly.

Shell’s 28-minute film, called Climate of Concern, was made for public viewing, particularly in schools and universities. It warned of extreme weather, floods, famines and climate refugees as fossil fuel burning warmed the world. The serious warning was “endorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists in their report to the United Nations at the end of 1990”, the film noted.

“If the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy, no country would remain unaffected,” it says. “Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.”

How the radical left shaped the New Deal

Last Sunday there were dueling diaries that reached the recommended list on DailyKos: History Tells Us The Extreme Left Cannot Beat Trump and What History Really Tells Us About Defeating Trump.

I did not agree with either one.

I am not a historian, but I have read a lot of American history. I am, after all, a frigging book dealer, so I should read a lot of books, right? And I don’t think it is conceit on my part, as I shuffle past the three-score mark in this mortal veil, to assert that I know a bit more about American history than a lot of other people appear to know.

For example, neither one of the two dueling diaries mentioned what, to my mind, is the obvious role played in American history by the leftist populist movements of the late 1800s. Nor did either of the diarists discuss the crucial role of the radical left in shaping the New Deal.

I was going to write a comment outlining some of what I knew, mostly by cutting and pasting from a diary I posted in December 2015, but realized there was not enough detail there about what I wanted to write about. So I went traipsing down various corridors of The Tubez, and came upon a truly wonderful article by Van Gosse, a history professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn. Professor Gosse co-founded Historians Against the War in 2003, and focuses on the African American struggle for full citizenship since the American Revolution, the New Left as a "movement of movements," and the Cold War in Latin America. The article by Gosse I found is entitled, What the New Deal Accomplished, and I will excerpt liberally (ha-ha) from it.

Even better, Professor Gosse has agreed to be my first subject of an interview-by-email, an approach I’ve been cogitating for quite a while now.

In What the New Deal Accomplished, Professor Gosse writes:

Three movements stand out as directly influencing the key New Deal programs. First was the radical movement of the unemployed which surfaced in early 1930. Through "hunger marches," constant lobbying and local protest, it forced the issue of relief for the unemployed onto the national policy agenda. Second was the movement to provide pensions for the aged, led by a California doctor named Townsend, which made the idea of universally-available government pensions so popular that Democrats adopted it. Finally, and most important, was the movement for industrial unionism embodied in a new labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Professor Gosse then proceeds to examine each of these three movements, beginning with the unemployed.

India's war on cash: who and why

On 8 November 2016, the government of India announced its intent to demonetise large denomination currency. It is one of the most baffling economic actions taken by a government in recent memory, but a few weeks ago, the Indian news website Scroll carried an excellent three part series explaining what was going on and why. It seems some economic ideologues have joined forces with large financial institutions to force demonetisation on the citizens of India. What could go wrong?

Note the role of Harvard economics high priest Kenneth Rogoff, the deficit scold whose April 2013 book warning that disaster inevitably resulted when a nation surpassed a specific ratio of debt to GDP, was found to contain computation errors.

Understanding demonetisation: The problem with the war on cash Force marching unprepared citizens towards a cashless utopia that has little space for the informal sector is callous and indefensible.

Part I: Understanding demonetisation: Why there’s a war on cash (and you are in the middle of it)

Part II: Understanding demonetisation: Who is behind the war on cash (and why)

Part III: Understanding demonetisation: The problem with the war on cash

Another Indian news source described the "bewildering pain and desperate hope" the real economy has been plunged into after two months of demonetization. The article includes timetable of demonetization in India.

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms have reported lower sales, especially in rural areas. Some 90% of the FMCG market in India comprises small mom-and-pop stores, heavily reliant on cash sales. And 60% of small traders have already seen a drop in sales post-demonetisation, according to market research firm Nielsen.

In rural areas, where internet penetration is limited, cash is often the only mode of payment. People in the hinterlands have struggled to access cash—there are 7.8 bank branches per 100,000 persons in rural India—and this, in turn, has affected wage and loan disbursal in these areas.

Mark Blyth refuses to let Democrats off the hook

Mark Blyth is a Scottish political scientist and a professor of international political economy at Brown University. Blyth first came to my attention when his prediction of Trump's electoral victory, and how it was tied to the vote for Brexit, was widely shared after the USA election.

I very rarely urge people to watch an entire video. This is that rare one. Blyth is merciless in his critique of the Democratic Party's acceptance of neoliberalism, and absolutely refuses to let the Democrats escape their responsibility for Trump's being elected because of that acceptance of neoliberalism.

This was part of a panel discussion, Trending Globally: Politics and Policy, held by the Watson Institute on January 25, 2017.

Update (JL, 21 FEB 17)
Anyone who has tried to watch this YouTube lately has discovered it has been taken down and replaced by the following message: "Mark Blyth--"Liberalisms' g..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Watson Institute, Brown University. Anyone who actually got to watch the video will probably agree that this is quite a loss. Blythe analysis was accurate, sophisticated, and nuanced. One would think that the Watson Institute would be thrilled to have this thing go viral.

But they are not and my only speculation is that the Watson Institute is run by establishment Democrats who are anything BUT thrilled to see an analysis that is quite critical of their efforts.

How the Dutch build a tunnel under a highway in one weekend

Ingenious!

Once Wall Street and the City of London are forced back into their proper role of subservience to the rest of the economy, we are going to be doing a LOT of this kind of work. Think of building rail mass transit systems in Los Angeles and Mexico City and Cairo and Lagos and all other cities, with the same densities of route miles and stations as the systems in Paris, Moscow, and Tokyo.

Here is a nice list, for North America only, of Openings and Construction Starts Planned for 2017. This is probably around only one or two percent of what we will end up doing in the next half century.

Well, that was interesting—Trump takes on the establishment

When during his inaugural speech, Donald Trump came out swinging at the political / economic establishment that has created and enforced the neoliberal Washington Consensus for at least 35 years, one could almost hear the gasping and pearl-clutching in the formerly smug and self-satisfied salons where the rich go to celebrate their brilliance. Mostly, because he was attacking the very schemes that had enriched them.

And let's not forget that neoliberalism is also a theological belief system. One must block out a serious chunk of reality to come to the conclusion that the neoliberals have good ideas. And the best way to do that is worship at the "commandments" of free trade. The most faithful are given prizes, mislabeled Nobels, by the Swedish Central Bank. And in their further delusions, they call what they do "science." For this crowd, what Trump said was blasphemy—a good sign that he was boorish and ill-mannered. Claim you want to renegotiate NAFTA on the stump in some rust-belt ghost town is one thing. Actually promising to do the unthinkable on the Capital steps is a bridge too far (gasp, clutch).

The inaugural address quote below was taken from an interesting article on Populism and Trump. The definitions of populism are all over the map these days so it is best not get too strict about definitions (too Protestant!). Just so you know, my definition of Populism grew out of an effort to understand the implications of the Peoples Party of 1892. They were the first people to call themselves Populists so they pretty much define the historical origins of the movements that were spawned by the educational efforts of the People's Party (and ITS precursors.)

“What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now.

“…At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

“But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

“For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. We’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own. And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

“We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon. 

“One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind. The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

President Trump

You are 70 years old. You have an amazingly beautiful wife. Your kids seem capable of taking over the family business. You have a tricked-out 757-200 so you'll never fly coach again. Your meals are prepared by award-winning chefs. And while your digs are WAY too garish for my taste, they are very nice and probably well-built—and you have more than one.

So why in god's name do you want to spend your declining years picking fights with the establishment? Why do you want to get into pissing matches with media monopolies? Why do you want to take down the cultural insanity represented by mindless Russia-bashing? I mean, do the math—figure out how much money has been spent to demonize USSR / Russia over the years and decide if any cultural meme is more deeply embedded. You had trouble selling steak—selling the idea that we should be allies (again) with Russia will make that problem seem trivial. Anyway, you get the idea. This is a life considerably more hazardous and uncomfortable than being a wealthy property developer with a trophy wife.

Yes I know—silly questions. The country was founded by revolutionaries who in many cases were extremely successful. Jefferson had nice digs (Monticello), Washington was a very successful property speculator, Franklin was a rich celebrity writer / scientist / inventor who spent a lot of his energy chasing women, etc. They also had more comfortable things to do than to pledge "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" (final sentence of the Declaration of Independence) to a revolution that most certainly meant death if they failed. So history does hold examples of people who risk a lot for ideas.

And who knows, maybe your motivations are not exactly lofty. Perhaps it is something merely annoying like the fact that USA airports don't seem so nice compared to well, almost anywhere else in the world. Not only does your airplane not get petted properly, but its just plain embarrassing to folks who believe the USA should be good at things—especially things associated with aviation. Or maybe it's just a need for attention. But it's who you are so lets work with that.

The other night, I saw a brief interview with Melania. She claimed that 10-year-old son Barron liked to build things, then take them apart so he could build something else. She called him "little Donald" because of that. I got pretty excited. I know kids like Barron exist because I was clearly one of them myself. Finished projects rarely lasted more than a week because the whole point of construction sets is construction (well, duh!) So if you want to keep playing, you must simply move on to the next project. And if indeed you are like that yourself, you possess an important quality that this nation desperately needs.

So from one compulsive builder to another, I think we should discuss how you could end up on Mount Rushmore.

The MOST pressing problem facing humanity is climate change. Yeah I know you have called it a hoax. But you have also made some more enlightened comments that have been caught on tape. Besides, we all saw how well you got along with Elon Musk and he is arguably the most articulate spokesman out there when it comes climate change. Perhaps you liked him so much because he is also a serious builder.

Climate change is an interesting problem. It's a problem defined by what Musk deems his intellectual lodestar—physics first principles. Climate change is a fact whether anyone believes it to be true or not because it conforms to the laws of physics first principles. But those who seemingly cannot understand physics first principles do not understand the nature of the problem so resort to pseudo-religious responses. Think about it. They have meetings. They pass laws mandating better outcomes. They try to raise our awareness of the serious nature of the problem in the hope that their rah-rah speeches will inspire their listeners to change. And the CO2 levels climb.

There are a lot of ways that humans produce CO2 but far and away the most important is our all-time favorite invention—fire. Yes there are frivolous uses for fire—example, a 757-200 with only one important passenger. But by far, the biggest uses of fire are for heating our homes, growing and preparing our food, commuting to work, etc. We live in a world that was designed and built to run on fire. And because of climate change, this world can no longer exist. The world's infrastructure is, with a few exceptions, obsolete. Hopelessly obsolete.

Replacing the global fire-based economy with a renewable-energy economy will be, by FAR, the greatest building project in human history. And anyone who can pull this of will be remembered as the greatest builder in history. Mostly, it must be a builder who isn't afraid of big numbers. So think about this one—the serious people who have tried to assemble an honest bid for this project seem to believe it will cost $100 TRILLION spread over 30+ years. So that's the price tag for actually Making America Great Again.

Just a reminder, $1 trillion spent on salaries will create 20 million $50,000 / year jobs for one year. You think that creating that many jobs for people who would love to build the new and improved America will satisfy your supporters? I do.

So we have a BIG problem that can only be solved by builders with vision and imagination. The planet is awash in people who would love to be part of some global-scaled project that makes their world a better place—many are unemployed and most of the ones with jobs are underemployed. So we have projects that clearly need doing and people who want to do them. So what's the hold-up? That's easy. We cannot seem to figure out where the $3-4 Trillion a year will come from.

And here is where your expertise is really needed. Anyone who has ever financed a big real estate project has dealt with the moneychangers. After watching them create almost unlimited amounts of money to finance such utterly useless ventures as mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the crash of 2007-8, it must be blazingly obvious that there should never be a shortage of money because the ability to create it is infinite.

So what is needed is for the moneychangers to get on board with the biggest project in human history. Get the big hedge funds guys, the TBTF bankers, the Fed, and whoever else is relevant in one room and say "I am going to need at least $3 Trillion per year to Rebuild America. It is your job to ensure that the money is there when we need it. If you cannot do this job, I will institute plan B—take the ability to create money away from you and return it to where the Constitution explicitly claims that power should reside—with the Treasury Department of the US government. You can play or watch—it's up to you.

And hey, if you fold in the great climate-change question into the bigger project of rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, you don't even have to take a public stand on the issue. I think the questions you really want to ask your self are these: Do I want to go down in history as the greatest builder of all time? or; Do I want to be known as the builder who when faced with the largest development opportunity in human history, chose to take a pass because upscale hotels and golf courses are much more your speed?

The ball's in your court, Mr. President. Do you want to remembered as a great man or as one of history's sad jokes? You may be some ways from sinless perfection, but you are gifted in the very skills most necessary to build a better future. That's close enough. In fact, there are deeply religious people who believe you are an answer to their prayers.