Follow the Real Money Behind the New Green Agenda — F. William Engdahl

What is becoming clearer is that the latest global push for dramatic climate action is more about justifying a major reorganization of the global economy, that to a far less efficient energy mode, implying a drastic lowering of global living standards. In 2010 the head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Otmar Edenhofer, told an interviewer, ” … one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore … ” What better way to do it than to start with the world’s largest money controllers like BlackRock?...

Capital flows away from increasing risk toward increasing opportunity. This is not necessarily a bad thing if currency sovereigns step up to fill the gaps with currency issuance.

Bill Totten's Weblog
Follow the Real Money Behind the New Green Agenda
F. William Engdahl | NEO (January 27 2020)

Naked Capitalism
‘Something Big Is Shifting’: As Georgetown Announces Fossil Fuel Divestment, Students Across US Demand Their Schools Follow Suit
Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

Your Company’s Next Leader on Climate Is…the CFO — Laura Palmeiro

If your chief financial officer is the last person you would think of to take charge on climate change, think again. Today, smart organizations are shifting their sustainability responsibilities toward the finance function....

The focus needs to be on true cost accounting. Economic calculation doesn't work when markets are not dealing in terms of true cost owing to socialization of negative externality.

Harvard Business Review
Your Company’s Next Leader on Climate Is…the CFO
Laura Palmeiro

America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East — Michael Hudson

The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control o Near Eastern oil as a buttress o the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down. 

I sat in on discussions of this policy as it was formulated nearly fifty years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute and attended meetings at the White House, met with generals at various armed forces think tanks and with diplomats at the United Nations. My role was as a balance-of-payments economist having specialized for a decade at Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen and oil companies in the oil industry and military spending. These were two of the three main dynamic of American foreign policy and diplomacy. (The third concern was how to wage war in a democracy where voters rejected the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War.) 

The media and public discussion have diverted attention from this strategy by floundering speculation that President Trump did it, except to counter the (non-)threat of impeachment with a wag-the-dog attack, or to back Israeli lebensraum drives, or simply to surrender the White House to neocon hate-Iran syndrome. The actual context for the neocon’s action was the balance of payments, and the role of oil and energy as a long-term lever of American diplomacy....

Michael Hudson as his best.

The Vineyard of the Saker
America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East

Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

The Growing Threat of Water Wars — Jayati Ghosh

In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly....

Project Syndicate
The Growing Threat of Water Wars
Jayati Ghosh | Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi

Morgan Stanley — "Climate Will Be A Key Driver Of Asset Prices In The Months And Years Ahead"

Anecdotally, several acquaintances have altered their view of future real estate prices and prospects, affecting their decisions on RE purchases and sales to reduce risk in view of expected or demonstrated location exposure. A very small sample, but it seems this could already be happening.

If so, this is where the rubber hits the road.

Zero Hedge
Morgan Stanley: "Climate Will Be A Key Driver Of Asset Prices In The Months And Years Ahead"
Tyler Durden

Dire Climate Change Warning in Report for Pentagon: US Military Could Collapse in 20 Years; Lack of Water, Domestic Disasters, Disease, Mass Migrations as Threats to Operations — Yves Smith

Resource scarcity developing which will affect war-fighting as well as domestic economies.

But don't worry, climate change is just a hoax, you see. (snark)

Naked Capitalism
Dire Climate Change Warning in Report for Pentagon: US Military Could Collapse in 20 Years; Lack of Water, Domestic Disasters, Disease, Mass Migrations as Threats to Operations
Yves Smith

A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why Alf Hornborg

Definitely a should-read that advances the debate. While not an MMT-based view it does illuminate the  symbiotic relationship of technology, engineering, innovation, real resources, "money," culture and ideas in the present world system, which is ecologically unstable and is becoming unsustainable. Alf Hormborg argues that this is not simply a matter of tweaking the system through scaling technological innovation. The problem is the design of the system.

The Conversation
A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why
Alf Hornborg | Professor of Human Ecology, Lund University

Bernie making waves

Presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday released a plan to protect independent news outlets and journalists from the effects of widespread media consolidation.
Sanders, decrying the mega-mergers he says have led to a handful of large corporations acting as gatekeepers for the information most Americans receive, calls for concrete steps “to rebuild and protect a diverse and truly independent press so that real journalists can do the critical jobs that they love” in an editorial for the Columbia Journalism Review.

"Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read, and download," Sanders writes. "Given that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and 'benevolent' billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny."

Going for the throat. Who controls the narrative controls the world.

As an aside, "who controls the narrative controls the world," used to apply to American soft power. Over the past several decades the US has managed to shrink its formerly awesome soft power considerably through endless war and imperial arrogance.

The Hill
Sanders releases media plan: Press shouldn't be controlled by corporations, 'benevolent' billionaires
Zack Budryk

Bernie Sanders recently released his plan for implementing the Green New Deal. These include such comprehensive goals as transitioning to 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and decarbonizing the entire economy by 2050 (full details here).

To get there, Sanders plans a number of ambitious projects, including massive and job-creating infrastucture spending and "declaring climate change a national emergency." The implications of the latter are not entirely spelled out. A number of candidates have proposals that "declare a national emergency" regarding climate change, but not in the same sense that George W. Bush, for example, may have meant had he declared the 9/11 attacks a national emergency (he didn't, but he could have).

That kind of national emergency, a Bush-Cheney kind, implies an exercise of presidential power that approaches martial law, something that most pro-climate Democrats don't contemplate. Does the Sanders plan contemplate a stronger-than-rhetorical response to climate change? It's not clear yet from Sanders camp messaging.

We aren't there yet, but when climate change becomes front page news we will be and people will be demanding that a national emergency be declared, as coastal cities are threatened by rising sea level, for example.

Down with Tyranny

Bernie Sanders' GND Plan Will Nationalize Power Generation in the U.S.

See also

The continued inability of America’s liberal democratic establishment to address the ills besetting the country—climate change, unregulated global capitalism, mounting social inequality, a bloated military, endless foreign wars, out-of-control deficits and gun violence—means the inevitable snuffing out of our anemic democracy. Overwhelmed by the multiple crises, the liberal elites have jettisoned genuine political life and retreated into self-defeating moral crusades in a vain and futile attempt to deflect attention away from the looming social, political, economic and environmental catastrophes.

These faux moral crusades, now the language of the left and the right, have bifurcated the country into warring factions. Opponents are demonized as evil. Adherents to the cause are on the side of the angels. Nuance and ambiguity are banished. Facts are manipulated or discarded. Truth is replaced by slogans. Conspiracy theories, however bizarre, are incredulously embraced to expose the perfidiousness of the enemy. Politics is defined by antagonistic political personalities spewing vitriol. The intellectual and moral sterility, along with the inability to halt the forces of societal destruction, provides fertile soil for extremists, neofascists and demagogues who thrive in periods of paralysis and cultural degeneracy.

Liberals and the left have wasted the last two years attacking Donald Trump as a Russian asset and look set to waste the next two years attacking him as a racist. They desperately seek scapegoats to explain the election of Trump as president, no different from a right wing that tars its Democratic Party enemies as America-hating socialists and that blames Muslims, immigrants and poor people of color for our national debacle. These are competing cartoon visions of the world. They foster a self-created universe of villains and superheroes that exacerbates the mounting polarization and rage.

“Bourgeois society seems everywhere to have used up its store of constructive ideas,” Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979 in “The Culture of Narcissism.” “It has lost both the capacity and the will to confront the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm it. The political crisis of capitalism reflects a general crisis of western culture, which reveals itself in a pervasive despair of understanding the course of modern history or of subjecting it to rational direction. Liberalism, the political theory of the ascendant bourgeoisie, long ago lost the capacity to explain events in the world of the welfare state and the multinational corporation; nothing has taken its place. Politically bankrupt, liberalism is intellectually bankrupt as well.”...

Truthdig
The Curse of Moral Purity
Chris Hedges

Planetary Thinking — Eric Berglöf

As policymakers, academics, and activists prepare for next month's United Nations climate summit in New York, they should consider precisely what it will take to build a truly sustainable global economy. First and foremost, the world needs a new multidisciplinary approach that is broad enough to tackle the challenge....

Project Syndicate
Planetary Thinking

Eric Berglöf

It’s official: Parts of California are too wildfire-prone to insure — Nathanael Johnson

California is facing yet another real estate-related crisis, but we’re not talking about its sky-high home prices. According to newly released data, it’s simply become too risky to insure houses in big swaths of the wildfire-prone state.

Last winter when we wrote about home insurance rates possibly going up in the wake of California’s massive, deadly fires, the insurance industry representatives we interviewed were skeptical. They noted that the stories circulating in the media about people in forested areas losing their homeowners’ insurance was based on anecdotes, not data. But now, the data is in and it’s really happening: Insurance companies aren’t renewing policies areas climate scientists say are likely to burn in giant wildfires in coming years....

I had friends burned out in the recent fires and insurance paid for it. With insurance it was still a disaster, not only materially but also psychologically. Without insurance?

The Midwest is affected by the opposite issue — flooding. And the coasts are being threatened by sea level rise.

Big changes coming economically and financially.

Grist
It’s official: Parts of California are too wildfire-prone to insure

Nathanael Johnson

Solar Power Is Now As Inexpensive As Grid Electricity In China Charles Q. Choi

Researchers found that PV systems could produce electricity at a lower price than the grid in 344 cities.

Good news for air quality and climate. China has been relying on coal-fired plants (72% in 2016).

Two anecdotes. I have a friend that teaches for six-weeks in Beijing on occasion. I once said to him that it must be a great experience. He answered that it was terrible, the pollution was so bad. I have another acquaintance that is Chinese, now living in the US. He's been here about 20 years. I asked him if he thought ever of returning to China. He shook his head and pointed upward. I asked him what he meant, and he said, "blue sky." 

China is not alone in this in the developing world. Electrification is a big deal, and cost is a major consideration.

IEEE Specturm
Solar Power Is Now As Inexpensive As Grid Electricity In China

Charles Q. Choi
 

Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas? — Jim Morrison

Cost is the reason that climate change is putting many people in deep denial, and even some people most committed to addressing this emerging challenge have not come to grips with what it will take engineering-wise, which determines the cost. Nor is the engineering solution always readily evident.

Engineering solutions to design problems on this scale are enormously expensive in any case.  But the challenge is identifying the proper case, and getting the assumptions right. 

Recall New Orleans and the Army Corps of Engineers charged with building the levies to protect the city against hurricanes. The design solution involved assessing the degree of the challenge. This involved making assumptions. 

In NO, the question was what category of hurricane to protect against as the max expected, with a degree of extra protection in case. The cost among the options is one of the constraints, and upping the category is major cost-wise. So there is a tradeoff between resilience and cost. 

Given the historical data, the experts settled on Category Three. The rest is history. Climate change is even more of challenge in identifying the assumptions that fit the most likely case in a given situation, like fortifying a coastal city, which involves projecting the future for some time to come.

Similarly in Iowa with recent flooding. The 1993 flood was considered at the time a 500 year phenomenon. Then, the 2008 flood came along and was far worse than 1993, resulting in billions of dollars in damages, a quarter billion to the University of Iowa property in Iowa City alone. 

The good thing is that the political and economic universes of discourse are changing, and the debate is beginning. And, of course, holding back rising sea level is just one challenge that climate change is posing.

Naked Capitalism
Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas?

Jim Morrison

Originally published by Yale Environment 360 and cross posted from Grist’s Climate Desk collaboration

The world’s companies should be forced to account for Global Heating — Richard Murphy

Head in the sand, so far. Massive denial.

"Capitalize the gains, socialize the losses" is becoming an unsustainable business model.

Tax Research UK
The world’s companies should be forced to account for Global Heating
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Michael Hudson — Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy

Control of oil has long been a key aim of U.S. foreign policy. The Paris climate agreements and any other Green programs to reduce the pace of global warming are viewed as threatening the aim of dominating world energy markets by keeping economies dependent on oil under U.S. control. Also blocking U.S. willingness to help stem global warming is the oil industry’s economic and hence political power. Its product is not only energy but also global warming, along with plastic pollution....

Naked Capitalism
Michael Hudson: Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Bringing science into economics must necessarily entail measurements in the scientific units. Ikonoclast

...Bringing science into economics must necessarily entail measurements in the scientific units above (plus the utilization of taxonomic schemes for biota). Thus if we assess by scientific studies and measurements that we are causing the 6th mass extinction and forcing dangerous climate change by releasing CO2 from our fossil fuels, then we have assessed that we should stop using fossil fuels. How we stop is the next matter for consideration and then we must examine energy transitions, energy saving and consumption curtailment, all in scientific and technological feasibility terms. Only real resource considerations are meaningful. Money considerations are completely meaningless. This is if we are being entirely logical and scientific.

MMT begins with availability of real resources. 

I have been arguing that the challenge presented by climate change is not so much economic issue as a matter of science and engineering. First the design problem has to be delineated based on scientific research involving measurement that conform to best practice in science. Then, a design solution, or alternatives with tradeoffs, must be proposed in engineering terms. Some of those tradeoffs may involve nominal cost, but in design problems that are regarded as existential challenges, like war, nominal cost is mostly irrelevant to purpose. 

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Bringing science into economics must necessarily entail measurements in the scientific units.
Ikonoclast

New Study Predicts Millions of Americans May Become Exposed to “Off the Charts” Heat — Dimitri Lascaris interviews Michael Mann

I use a simple rule. If you want to have an idea of what we will be facing by the middle of this century absent concerted action on climate change, then what we think of today, what we perceive, what we describe as record heat or a record heat wave— in a few decades, we will simply call that summer. The typical summer day will be like the most extreme day that we have seen in our lifetimes at this point. And what unusual heat, record heat, will look like at that point, we don’t even have an analog for that. And so, clearly if we continue on that path, we’re venturing into dangerous territory where a substantially large part of the planet basically becomes uninhabitable to human beings. And obviously, when you take a growing global population, less land, less food and water because of the aggravating impacts of climate change on those as well. You’re talking about unprecedented levels of conflict. It’s a future that we don’t want to see. The good news is there’s still time to make sure that that is not our future....

TRNN
New Study Predicts Millions of Americans May Become Exposed to “Off the Charts” Heat

Dimitri Lascaris interviews Michael Mann | Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earth Science Systems Service Center at Penn State Univerity

ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Bill Mitchell — ‘Sound finance’ prevents available climate solution with massive jobs potential

When the governments in the advanced nations abandoned full employment as an overarching macroeconomic objective, and instead, starting pursuing what I have called full employability, they stopped seeing unemployment as a policy target (to be minimised) and began using it as a policy tool to suppress inflation. As mass unemployment rose, the politics were massaged by the mainstream of my profession who claimed that the level of unemployment that constituted full employment had risen (this was the NAIRU era) and so there was really no problem. Governments adopted the neoliberal line that they ‘didn’t create jobs’ and had to target fiscal surpluses to ensure their position was ‘sustainable’. The costs in lost income and human suffering have been enormous – most people would not have any idea of the massive scale of these losses that accumulate day after day. Now, it seems, the ‘sound finance’ school is going a step further. We are probably facing an environmental emergency in the coming period (years, decades) but the question commentators keep asking is not what we can do about it but ‘how can we pay for it’? So ‘sound finance’ has already destroyed the lives of millions of people around the world as a result of mass unemployment and poverty, now it is turning its focus on the rest of us. Madness. Paradigm change has to come sooner rather than later.

No lack of funds for military, tax cuts for wealthy, corporate bailouts and donor pork.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
‘Sound finance’ prevents available climate solution with massive jobs potential
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Himalayan glaciers melting twice as fast: study — AFP

...climate change is eating the Himalayas' glaciers, threatening water supplies for hundreds of millions of people downstream across South Asia...

Yahoo News
Himalayan glaciers melting twice as fast: study
AFP

Also

BBC News
Chennai water crisis: City's reservoirs run dry

Scientists amazed as Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years early — Matthew Green

James Lovelock predicted long ago that global warming would develop faster than predicted owing to the synergism of the ecological system in which there are knock-on effects.

Reuters
Scientists amazed as Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years early

Matthew Green

How Climate Change Could Lead To A Global Economic Crisis — Nick Cunningham

A top U.S. financial regulator is worried that climate change could threaten global financial markets.

Rostin Behnam, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said that the financial system was at risk from the growing frequency and severity of storms. “The impacts of climate change affect every aspect of the American economy – from production agriculture to commercial manufacturing and the financing of every step in each process,” Behnam said at the meeting of the CFTC’s market risk advisory committee on Wednesday.

As most of the world’s markets and market regulators are taking steps towards assessing and mitigating the current and potential threats of climate change, we in the U.S. must also demand action from all segments of the public and private sectors, including this agency.”

He added: “Our commodity markets and the financial markets that support them will suffer if we do not take action to mitigate the risk of contagion.”

The message is not necessarily a new one, but it is significant since it comes from the CFTC, which is not exactly a hippy enclave. Also of significance is the fact that Behnam was appointed to the CFTC by President Trump, although by law the vacancy that he filled had to be a Democrat.….

OilPrice.com

How Climate Change Could Lead To A Global Economic Crisis

Nick Cunningham