Hans, as you say we are nowhere on track to reach the Paris climate goals. Isn't it time for a change of tack? What is your take on a carbon takeback obligation? I think it might be the backstop policy we need to actually reach netzero (on time) and get the fossil fuel industry on board with the energy transition.
It is the main way one can remain optimistic about reversing the negative environmental trends science affirms daily. I also note, as I wrote in an earlier comment to your blog, that like any species that quadruples its numbers in the lifespan of living individuals, we are in plague phase. This multiplies impacts, and further affects the economics of the shrinking p/capita 'pie' of natural wealth which provides our sustenance and that of most other life forms. It would be great if you could address scale of the feet making ecological footprints on the planet!
Great article, Hans. In a week in which one of my favourite economists, Yanis Varoufakis was banned by Germany, it is interesting to read your own cross-section. In economic terms I have come to see (complete amateur) that tax reform is at the heart of transformation of economic potentiality in a renewable energy world. In particular the reform required is for all nations to establish a resource rent tax as foundational. In this tax, no corporation can avoid their tax because the resource exploitation they 'borrow' from a nation is readily calculated from public domain information, and such tax can provide a powerful investment in communities and national infrastructures including transport, energy networks, education, and ecosystem restoration and conservation. It has the prospects of assisting communities to own their energy supply and decoupling energy from centralised corporation which has the added effect of empowering democracy.
Following the work of Yanis Varoufakis, personal agency and democracy is further empowered by legislation that protects personal data as property which can only be loaned through contract at a price agreed by the owner or as mediated by the government on behalf.
Personal data exist in a tension with the national interest i.e what personal data do we all provide a public national data base to allow democracy and government to work efficiently and effectively?
However the likelihood that such payments accrue back to the individuals is the possibility of a universal basic income.
Likewise with the resource tax, with a much diminished income tax and elimination of point of sales taxes or housing transaction taxes, the average person accrues more personal savings.
These together, and with the assist of new technologies - robotics, AI, remote communications - open the possibility for new working schedules and the motivation for individuals and groups to define new lifestyle models and technical or service innovation.
Hans, as you say we are nowhere on track to reach the Paris climate goals. Isn't it time for a change of tack? What is your take on a carbon takeback obligation? I think it might be the backstop policy we need to actually reach netzero (on time) and get the fossil fuel industry on board with the energy transition.
As always, your articles are clear, and consistent. They assume that human cognition and rationality might win out against animal instincts and universal 'laws' of nature, such as: https://www.issuesofsustainability.org/helpndoc-content/MaximumPowerPrinciple.html
(longer version in Wikipedia)
It is the main way one can remain optimistic about reversing the negative environmental trends science affirms daily. I also note, as I wrote in an earlier comment to your blog, that like any species that quadruples its numbers in the lifespan of living individuals, we are in plague phase. This multiplies impacts, and further affects the economics of the shrinking p/capita 'pie' of natural wealth which provides our sustenance and that of most other life forms. It would be great if you could address scale of the feet making ecological footprints on the planet!
Great article, Hans. In a week in which one of my favourite economists, Yanis Varoufakis was banned by Germany, it is interesting to read your own cross-section. In economic terms I have come to see (complete amateur) that tax reform is at the heart of transformation of economic potentiality in a renewable energy world. In particular the reform required is for all nations to establish a resource rent tax as foundational. In this tax, no corporation can avoid their tax because the resource exploitation they 'borrow' from a nation is readily calculated from public domain information, and such tax can provide a powerful investment in communities and national infrastructures including transport, energy networks, education, and ecosystem restoration and conservation. It has the prospects of assisting communities to own their energy supply and decoupling energy from centralised corporation which has the added effect of empowering democracy.
Following the work of Yanis Varoufakis, personal agency and democracy is further empowered by legislation that protects personal data as property which can only be loaned through contract at a price agreed by the owner or as mediated by the government on behalf.
Personal data exist in a tension with the national interest i.e what personal data do we all provide a public national data base to allow democracy and government to work efficiently and effectively?
However the likelihood that such payments accrue back to the individuals is the possibility of a universal basic income.
Likewise with the resource tax, with a much diminished income tax and elimination of point of sales taxes or housing transaction taxes, the average person accrues more personal savings.
These together, and with the assist of new technologies - robotics, AI, remote communications - open the possibility for new working schedules and the motivation for individuals and groups to define new lifestyle models and technical or service innovation.