Protest Germanys support for tar sands
 

Avaaz - Germany: stop Tar Sands today!

It seems that Germany is blocking a Europe-wide legislation that would basically ban the import of oil from tar sands.

Done and done, I'm happy to see the EU doing something sensible for once :D

Signed.

Germany probably need the oil to ease their impending energy shortage, I guess.

Wow, there are almost enough signers already :)

Done. :)

I'm not sure if I'm unfashionably late and whatnot, but signed anyhow.

No. 47,381 is me...

~*Txim Asawl*~

The only effective way to make something change is through some politician, sadly. Petitions are just nothing if not backed by someone who is the politics game.

Well, since the recipient of the petitioners' mails is Norbert Röttgen, the federal German minister of environmental affairs, it will at least create some attention, I guess.

And the online movement can be strong, too. Think about the appeal against the data preservation of internet user data, which was tried to be put into effect by the European Union... the federal German constitutional appeals court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) put that European law out of effect for its non-conformance to the German constitution... I was part of more than 34,000 people filing that appeal... we even got honored with a Hitler comparison by the former federal head of our State Department, our resident Dr. Strangelove, Wolfgang Schäuble (currently our Secretary of Treasury), who said "We used to have the greatest general of all times, now we have the greatest constitutional appeals case of all times..." - his attempt to mock the people who are afraid of state and government overlords controlling every move was as futile as it was tasteless. Even comparing protesters to the "Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten" did not disarm or ridicule the appeal enough to make the federal jury deny it.

We have a voice, and it is heard, too.

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

That will certainly make the difference. Fortunately for you, public opinion weighs a lot when a decision is to be taken. Not the case here, public opinion matters nothing, everything reduces to the will of the president, sadly.

Isn't importing from nationalized sources closer to the EU less expensive?


The Middle East is right next door...

Well, the offshore capacities are decreasing, so, of course, getting the mmost out of investing the least is just plain old-school capitalist thinking. And the machine fueled by this is still running... it gives off a few ugly sounds every now and then, and sometimes it feels like a pop of the clutch (woops! Was that Greece we hit?) but it's still running...

Of course, searching for alternatives is a nasty cost factor and not in the still dominant "Winnings! Not wasting money! That's our focus!" mindset. Thinking has to change to make those folks realize, that it's our own life they're endangering by plundering the resources. During the last cold spell, Germany was short of a blackout, since brokers at the power stock exchange ("Strombörse") on falling prices, not buying the energy their customers (heavy industry, aluminum smelters and mills, for instance) needed... the grid had to be powered with backup energy and was short of a critical undersupply... bnrokers at banks are speculating on food prices rising... great for their winnings, utterlý bad luck for those poor wretches who can't affor food at the new, raised prices...

Talking about food, that whole system has way expired its best-before-end date... it already stinks and needs to be disposed of...
(Hello, Agents... what seems to be the problem....?)
:D

Wiggling bare toes, getting in revolution mood...

~*Txim Asawl*~

yeah that was so stupid - there was actually enough energy, but they did not power up the plants when demand was rising because some people wanted to make some easy money.

Why Europe is buying tar sands oil? Well I guess its because peak oil is upon us and the near east (middle east for the US) is getting into conflicts...

...and because Germany is reducing their generation capacity in the middle of an oil crisis.

Quoted from Peak oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Despite the large quantities of oil available in non-conventional sources, Matthew Simmons argues that limitations on production prevent them from becoming an effective substitute for conventional crude oil. Simmons states that "these are high energy intensity projects that can never reach high volumes" to offset significant losses from other sources.[82] Another study claims that even under highly optimistic assumptions, "Canada's oil sands will not prevent peak oil," although production could reach 5,000,000 bbl/d (790,000 m3/d) by 2030 in a "crash program" development effort.[83]

Moreover, oil extracted from these sources typically contains contaminants such as sulfur and heavy metals that are energy-intensive to extract and can leave tailings - ponds containing hydrocarbon sludge - in some cases.[71][84] The same applies to much of the Middle East's undeveloped conventional oil reserves, much of which is heavy, viscous, and contaminated with sulfur and metals to the point of being unusable.[85] However, recent high oil prices make these sources more financially appealing."

Of the so-called unconventional sources, oil sands have a portion of 30 per cent...

Oh, and about Germany taking the throttle down in oil production: the German output is the smallest share in the North Sea oil area. I wouldn't guess that this influences the whole world.

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

Wouldn't it be funny if someone somehow filled all the oil deposits with cement?

No more fossil fuels guys. Umad?

A recent TEDx talk about Tar sands (quite moving):
Garth Lenz: The True Cost of Oil | Common Dreams

Germany had its peak oil in 1968.
It is now at 3 million tons a year.
Consumption is at about 80 tons and falling. In 2010 the reduction in consumption (about 2.7 million tons) was almost as big as the total domestic oil production. I doubt severly that any redution in domestic oil production capacity has any influence at all in terms of oil crisis. Germany cannot avoid the oil crisis because it totally depends on foreign oil.

Hehe - Aftermath: World Without Oil in HD - P1 of 3 - YouTube ;)

You know I meant overall electrical generation capacity (hence buying oil to compensate), not oil extraction, which is something completely different.

Haha, ultimate nonviolent protest :D

There you made me do it again. Defending myself against arguments that lack any foundation or reference at all.

Well here you have it:
AG Energiebilanzen e.V. (the last PDF)
That is the percentage in mineral oil consumption for electricity generation in percent over the past 20 years.
a) no increase in 2011 compared to 2010
b) overall the percentage is so low that it cannot possibly compensate for any other decline in energy production even if it would double (which it did not)

The compensation for the powerdown of nuclear power plants is mostly compensated by running the other plants at higher rates (including the remaining nuclear plants). I assume that electricity prices also are rising, creating an incentive for consumers (mainly commercial consumers) to consume less. As Germany used to be a net energy exporter, there is actually not a need to compensate that much anyways, but export is declining. What effect this has on other countries is another topic.

Another way to put this is: http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/de/111639...leibt-wichtig/
The energy production capacity was 95 GW before the powerdown of a number of reactors. Due to the powerdown, 8 gW were lost, That leaves 87 GW. Sone additional losses due to old age of power plants and such lost some more, RWE (one of the largeste energy producers in Germany) accounts the present energy production capacity for 80GW. The maximum consumption throughout the year (peak consumption) is 76 GW according to the same infographic. RWE says that we are not in the "safety margin" anymore that is 82 GW (2 more than the 80GW available now), which means that in some extreme case of massive energy consumption, the capacities could go beyond the limit and there could be the need to buy electricity from other nations or to actually power down some consumption. Nothing of this has to do with oil by the way and nothing has to do with tar sands. Tar sands produce oil and the main consumers of oil in Europe are cars and trucks as well as homes that are heated by oil.

Well, that reduced output was the exact effect during the last cold spell (by courtesy of that former-Soviet cyclone called "Cooper", shoving that Siberian air into Europe) when those brokers, responsible of their accounting districts ("Bilanzkreise") at the energy stock market in Germany, the so-called "Strombörse" speculated on prices falling - which they didn't. Of course, they withheld their buying orders and did not purchase the Gigawatts, their industrial customers needed. Therefore, energy producers and net agencies had to balance the net with short-term balancing supplies ("Regelenergie"), which are normally applied as an emergency stabilizer, since they can be placed on the spot, by the second. It is not designed for long runs, though. The capacity was all there, it just was withheld from being fed to the net - for reasons: see above.

Therefore, a large black-out in Germany was a possibility during the last two to three weeks - and, according to some sources, imminent.

So, if there have been amounts of oil withheld for a reserve, I'd say it was for a good cause, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here.
:D

BTW, I'm indirectly working for one of the two largest power companies in Germany... the one goes foward, in German.
(Secrecy clause in my employment contract, can't say the name, I'm afraid) - therefore I do have quite some insight into how all that works... and I bet that some posts of Bilanzkreisverantwortliche, as those brokers are called in German, have become vacant all of a sudden...

http://www.abload.de/img/sad280b.jpg
I Iz So Sowwy!! Us German Elektrizitäts Brokers Iz Stoopid!!

:P

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~

Yeah, that also, Txim. But in any case - OIL has basically nothing at all to do with electricity in Germany and the same is true for much of the rest of the world. Japan is an exception among the industrialized nations I think. And i suspect even those 1.someting percent that comes from oil is due to a very few diesel generators that are used to buffer peaks in consumption plus the couple of combined heat/electricity plants in buildings that use oil to make electricity locally and use the heat to warm the houses. I dont know if the statistic only counts grid-electricity, otherwise I would say that that oil is probably mostly going to small diesel generators for construction sites and such. None of the above has the capacity to significantly make a dent in the oil consumption that comes from non-electricity generating combustion engines

Here in the States, there are still areas that use filthy fuels for generating power. The power for the power company that serves this three county area uses COAL to generate power.
Right across the ten meter wide drainage ditch that people call the Rio Grande,
from El Paso, the power in Juarez, Mexico is generated with coal, and in the winter, the poorest of the people of the city heat their packing crate shacks by burning tires. The smoke from all of this, is taken right over El Paso by the prevailing winds, causing them to be in CONSTANT VIOLATION of the EPA's pollution limits, but the EPA realizes the unique problem that the city is in, and cuts them some serious slack.
Ateyo and I live almost a hundred miles to the east, on a plateau that is 1,200 to 1,600 feet higher than El Paso, and our air is VERY clean by comparison.
Niri Te

Oil is still cheap compared to many power sources - so, yes, running at higher capacity on existing generation infrastructure can be used to compensate for a degree, but adds an element of instability as well as increasing prices; which is presumably why oil is being sought - it is comparatively cheap, and is fast to respond to demand - if existing oil/gas infrastructure is run at higher load to keep up with demand, the load balancing capacity needs to be held elsewhere.

So, yes, generation capacity (theoretical maximum, not realised) IS reduced, realised capacity as pecentage is higher but that bears less relevance. That matters when a country can produce MW-range demand surges from normal life, compared to significant low spots at night. That's why more fixed output energy sources are run as a base load, with faster-responding ones used to fill the peaks.

Oil is only "cheap" because it's meant to be constantly consumed. It's the running costs that make it profitable in the long run, and thus, not cheap, and not good for the environment. Oil companies know that they can keep the prices cheap enough for people to buy it, because we are dependant on fossil fuels as our primary source of energy for transportation, and many other essential things these days.

These things are always a combination of the natural reality of things, that is why solar power isn't really all that attractive in northern places compared to more sunnier climates, but also due to the fact how our whole economy is built upon consumption, and energy is one of the things we consume quite a lot. The whole idea that the economic model that is based on consumption needs tangible, consumable things like oil and coal to be around as a fuel source.

Anyhow, I'm rather bad at explaining all these things, and I know Aurora is a lot better at this stuff than I am, but then again she has the sort of reputation that people don't really take her all that seriously anymore due to her constant effort to spread awareness and fight against inevitable destruction of our planet and so on. I guess I would otherwise agree with her, but I'm not one to let go of my gadgets and creature comforts, for I'm too soft to go on without them.

All of this has nothing to do with Germany and Tar Sands. Of course it is convenient to have some oil as a reserve to fill peak electricity demands, but we are talking here about exceptional demands that go beyond the regular margins of power consumption. Germanys electricity system is well able to buffer the regular highs and lows and peaks by its regular power generators. That does include however natural gas which is a whole issue in itself. Natural gas and hydropower are the most used capacities to buffer peaks in demand. Oil is, as can be seen in these reports, a very minute portion and there is not way that an increase in that demand would actually increase oil imports by more than a percent.
The reason for the high oil prices at the moment and the idea to get some from the tar sands is much easier and obvious. Iran is threatened with wars and embargos. Most of the oil in Germany comes from Russia, but global market prices do react on the Iran problem. To add to this, the formerly top-of-the-list producer Saudia Arabia has peaked in production. They cannot deliver more oil than they do now (and will probably decline in the next years). All of this are very solid reasons to look for other sources of oil. And it has nothing to do with electricity. Another reason for Germany to seek alternatives is the huge dependence on Russia for oil and natural gas. Basically, Russia pwns Germany in that respect.
Its plain simple - we are running into peak oil and the predicted and now visible effect of that is, that oil is getting more expensive and more uneconomic sources with harder accessability, requiring more technology and involving higher risks do have to fill in for the easy oil of the past. Global conflicts are also a predicted and now visible outcome of dwindling oil supplies.

Sadly, coal is the primary power source in Germany as well. There are over 20% renewables already and rising, but coal and nuclear are still the top of the list. And a lot of that coal is mined in open pit mines in Germany that are close in their horror to the tar sands.

Honestly - all of these have to go - coal, nuclear, natural gas and definitely oil. They are all killing the planet. I dont like the alternatives so much, especially on the scale that people like to implement them, but still I think they do have less impact if done properly, while with the present options, the risks or impacts are always going to be high.

Oh yes I mean - we are all used to these comforts and gadgets and it would be hard to let go. But without a planet, all these comforts are meaningless... :(
Anyways - oil is cheap also due to another thing - environmental impacts and social impacts are not accounted for. The companies make a profit and people get cheap oil because who pays for it is the ecosphere and poor people. CO2 is changing the climate, tar sands effluents poison rivers in Canada causing cancer in indigenous people living there and oil leaks cause fish death in the oceans. Not even to begin to mention Nigeria where a whole river delta was turned into an oil swamp and local people suffer greatly economically and environmentally from the oil "developments" there (which is why they have after years of nonviolent protesting decided to take up arms and use guns and speedboats to bring the oil production there to an end - or at least slow it down). Plus think of all the war and death in the "middle east". Do you think that would have happened if there was not a problem with oil? All of these people that died or suffer froma ll of this, plus the uncounted nonhumans who suffer even more - they all pay for the oil in order for western industrialized nation to perceive oil as "cheap". Oil is not cheap - it is vastly expensive, but because it is stolen and conned from the world, it looks like it is cheap. It is about as cheap as the watch a shady person holds in his hands after stabbing some guy in a dark alley. Hey, it did not cost a penny, right?

I take what you have to say VERY seriously Auroraglacialis. while I am a strong supporter of Nuclear power when it is built and operated in a sane manner, it does nowhere near the day to day damage that Coal fired power plants do to the environment. I am also a huge supporter of Wind, Solar, Geothermal, and Tidal energy generation.
Niri Te

And for me, the planet is meaningless without these comforts, since raw nature demands physical ability, and that is something I don't really have.

I know the whole "back to nature" thing works, but it's simply not for the likes of me, and I'm never going to pretend otherwise. It is a hard and ultimate solution, that will come eventually if we don't get our act together with technology and create a sustainable system, but I just hope I won't be around to see it all go. Then again one must wonder if there even will be nature left to go back to for the people who so desire, once our broken system has reached its point of no return.

There may not be after the system breaks but Nature cannot be beaten. As long as there are small green shoots pushing through the concrete Earth can become like Pandora once more :) Remember Earth started out as a ball of fire and dust and it recovered from that.

That may be true, but you won't be there to experience any of it, so kind of pointless, at least from selfish point of view. Give me enough energy and I'll make the whole planet implode when I wake up cranky one morning. That's how the world is going to end, see for yourself.

Not pointless, it doesn't matter if we aren't here to experience it. All that matters is that all will be well again. At least that's the way I see it.

Haha - "smash it with a hammer" :P (the video) - funny.

As this is NOT another nuclear debate, I will not reply to Niri Te :P - you all know my opinion on that and many will also know my arguments against that.

I think we should not let it "play out", frankly. Certianly, if civilized humans do not manage to get a grip they have the potential to turn this planet into a wasteland before they go extinct - or in a less severe scenario civilization just collapses and we go towards a way of living that reminds more of the beginning of history. Happened to the Mayas and the Anaszasi before. But I think that this is more or less the destiny - and thus I think frankly that we cannot let it play out because the longer this goes on as it does, the less will be left for those that come after us, humans or nonhumans. I am sick of still hearing the same stuff said by decisionmakers, politicians and corporate people as they said 25 years ago when I was a teenager. They keep saying that we all want a sustainable world and many even said back then that we should eventually turn to renewable energies because of climate change and limited fossil fuels and the impact of it all, but of course we need to keep the coal and nuclear plants running now because we dont have a replacement just now, but in a few years surely we can make it. And here we are, 25 years later and the same bull**** is coming along about how we need to keep the coal plants running and we need nuclear as a "bridge technology" on the way to a sustainable future... Nothing is gained, nothing changed. The only way there will be change frankly is if the use of these polluting processes (mining, oil drilling, coal burning,...) is prevented, prohibited and stopped in any way. Only then will people start to really make serious changes. Only if they are not allowed to dig up the tar sands, the bituminous coal, the copper and bauxite below sacred hills, the oil in the Arctic - only then we will see change. Otherwise it is just too cheap and attractive to keep on doing the same crap and keep on polluting and risking many lives.

Well said, no argument please :) - we all know each other's views already.

The main issue with hydroelectric is that is is not a generation source when it comes to rapid response to demand peaks, it's storage via pumped storage. Depending on the design capacity and level of utilisation, it can be depleted in minutes, and can take hours to be reestablished to a useful level, and as such, is typically used for demand surges such as advert breaks in popular TV programmes rather than general daytime demand being greater than nighttime.

The reason the Mayans died out has nothing to do with what they did and everything to do with invasion :P - on the other hand, I agree about keeping obsolete methods running when we have extant technologies to replace them, but equally, some newer ones are ubeconomical and should not be seriously considered as a solution other than in extreme specific cases - they work in sites where conditions are perfect, but not in every random convenient place, even if some companies do place them there simply to gather subsidy funds to the point that numerous wind turbines are run at a loss and their operators profit entirely from subsidies, while the energy fed into the national grid is sold at a loss due to costs involved. Eliminating useless subsidies and placebo methods is just as important as reducing coal/oil dependence.

Correct, though most of the capacities are not pumped storage but regular dams. They buffer spikes in demand. Everything else is covered by slowly changing capacities of the other, more slowly powerplants. Another rapid response technology is natural gas burning. The point I was trying to make was however that Germany has quite a margin of excess production. Even the peaks in demand do not go beyond the present production capacities with the powerplants that are in use. Only under extreme conditions that are hypothetical, there could be power outages (and only if other countries are affected the same way and cannot trade). Overall, Germany has no energy crisis at this time in terms of electricity, but as I said this is independent of oil, which was the main point of this whole text, that electricity, nuclear power plants or wind turbines all have zip to do with the demand for oil in Germany, which is why none of tat has anything to do with Tar Sands.
The demand for cheap oil from tar sands is mainly a matter of peak oil, political instability in the near east and the attempt to diversify sources for oil imports. The oil is needed mostly for transport (cars, trucks, ships, planes) and heating - plus industry (chemicals, plastics,...). That was my point.
So the question can be, where the oil would have to come from if not from tar sands and if one does not want to depend on Iran or Saudia Arabia or on Russia and the answer is of course that there are no ethical and clean and environmentally friendly sources for oil. I am sure that domestic oil here is relatively ok, highly regulated and thus expensive. And limited. Only solution is to use less and less oil.

Don't you confuse them now with the Aztecs? The Mayan collapse I was referring to happened at about 900 AD. Of course the final blow was by the Spanish. But by then, the height of the Mayan civilazation had long passed.

AFAIK, those subsidies are only paid if they actually put energy in the grid, not during construction or when they are turned off...
But what I really dont understand is why everyone is so hung up on "the economy" as the measure of what should be done and what not. It is an artificial system that was created by humans under a number or false premises and that does not work properly, as we can see all around us these months. I think people are really too much thinking that we can do only things as a society as long as it is "economical" in the sense that it is profitable on the free market. I think this makes no sense at all if you look at the world that exists outside of the economy, e.g. the real real world, the world of rivers, air, fishes and birds. And of human life and health. It is of course economical to have slaves or to dump toxic waste in a river instead of disposing of it at high cost. But it is morally and ecologically wrong and so there have to be instances that guide, guard and excert force on people doing things that are just wrong. So for these instances things like laws, regulations or subsidies exist, that of course "distort" the economy in favour of what we know is the right thing to do. I am not a friend of subsidies as they often end up misused, but I also do not think, that something has to be economical to exist - if it makes sense in another way. I dont think universities, scientific research, schools, kindergartens, hospitals or museums do have to be economically viable - because they serve a purpose that benefits the society as a whole. So it is allright if society as a whole pays for it. And in terms of energy and industry, the scope has to be expanded and one has to look at the nonhuman world as well because we care for that world as a society, so I think that it totally makes sense, that this also does not need to be 100% oriented towards being economical in the market sense. It has to be "economical" in terms of EROEI, because otherwise obviously it makes no sense (e.g. putting more energy into something than getting out, which is true for some forms of biofuels and for windmills that never run or solar panels that dont get enough sunshine) and it has to be appropriate to the area, but I think monetary profits are not the primary goal when it comes to technologies that affect societies, humanity or the natural world that we want and have to live in.

I agree the solution it so use less oil - but then a replacement source needs to be found.
Hydroelectric dams are amazingly environmentally destructive (ever hear about one somewhere called Belo Monte? :P) and they are also only useful for either a small baseload (equivalent to the river's flow) or covering peaks by releasing larger amounts of water and then waiting for the reservoir to top up again (the latter also potentially having dangerous downstream effects).

The subsidies are paid if they feed into the grid, yes, but as I said, the grid input is performed at a loss because they simply can not charge a high enough price to cover their operating cost. The point of economical is that without a subsidy, the operators would not be able to remain in business, not that it would be less profitable. That is entirely different - they do still produce a return on energy used to create them, but operating costs and construction/manufacturing cost eliminate that. If there were no other energy sources but ones that inefficient, then, yes, energy prices would be several orders of magnitude higher and they would run at a profit, but as long as there is any way to undercut them, they are not going to be viable, and even serve as a distraction, as a "here, look, we're doing something" that distracts attention from real, viable and even simultaneously profitable ideas.

Preferrably yes, if there is none, then not. Again and again - what do we regard as having priority - a planet that is alive, healthy, not heating up, not polluted by oil, that can sustain us and our descendants - or the ability to move around at a whim in individual cars, get cheap gadgets from China, peas from Equador and plums from south Africa. If we see the second one as primary, then of course the conclusion is that an alternative has to be found before anything can change. But that is insane because it is quite obvious to many people that what really is primary is the first part because without that, there is no one alive to drive around and there are no peas in Equador.

Agreed. The argument I was making was only directed at the topic of energy "safety" in Germany in respect of the current situation, trying to say that the situation is not yet unstable here. Nothing more. Quite obviously the dilemma is of course that ALL forms of mass energy production are destructive, which is why I dont really think that it should go on. But thats the old topic again, nothing to do with tar sands and oil.

I think you did not really understand what I was saying. I said basically SCREW THE ECONOMY! Seriously - right now everything is measured in if it is profitable, if it makes money, if there are costs and profits involved and the profits have to be bigger or equal to the costs and investment. But that is all artificial, it is all a human invented economy, based on work, lifestyle, wages, privilege, labour cost, cost of what people are willing to pay for something or what people think that others are willing to pay for it. I think while this is at the moment political reality, within this context this system the constrictions of acting sane are vastly limited. Things can only be done if they are economic, meaning making at least marginal profits for those who are investors. This leaves out almost all of the sane options to act because within this context, only solutions that are sane AND profitable for investors can be implemented. But that leaves out all the options that actually require investing more work or money to save the planet. It also leaves out all things that actually benefit the majority of people (which are not the investors). And it definitely leaves out all options that benefit indigenous peoples, poor peoples or nonhumans at the expense of rich "western" humans profits.
Justice cannot be served that way. Imagine being in court and the judge would love to convict a criminal that killed thousands of poor people by neglect but that provided cheap products for millions. Would you want the judge to sent him to jail or to say that it is more profitable to let him go so he can run another company providing these great cheap profitable goods? (Thats Union Carbide, Bhopal, if you want to know what I am referring to - and yes, the decision was to let them off the hook with a warning).
It is insane to set profitability (and thus the requirement that something has to be economical) ahead of what is the right thing to do. Economics has to ethics it has no morale and it does not give a sh|t about the environment, people, nonhumans, the planet unless it somehow costs them money to hurt them or it gives them profit to save them. And this may be a case here and there but it is not at all universal and if it is so, it usually is only so because there are some institutions like governments, mass movements or people resisting that force them into that situation.

Ich red mir hier den Mund fusselig!

But this is it - we can NOT be restricted by what "the economy" wants, or what privileged people happen to desire. Because of course just like the slaveowner wants not to give up his lifestyle no one nowadays wants this (The slaveowner might have said "find me a good alternative to slavery that is as profitable and that allows me to maintain my regularly cleaned victorian home and warm meals twice a day and clean, wellfed horses - then I will consider abolishing slavery)
So I think to ask the question "how can we create a sustainable, fair, equalitarian culture and keep the planet alive while we make profit and improve/maintain our livestyles" is a question that can be asked but that cannot be the limit of action. The real question is "how can we create a sustainable, fair, equalitarian culture and keep the planet alive. And if it is possible also make profit and improve/maintain our livestyles".

A last example is again hospitals. What do you think makes more sense - to have doctors that first treat a severly injured patient and then ask if he may be able to pay for it - or to ask him for a credit card or money first? Ever since the ancient Greeks, the answer was that the primary objective is to help and not to make money. Recently that is changing in tune with the overall market-economics. Consider Earth to be the patient and humans to be the cause of the injury but also the doctor. What shall we do? Help Earth first or first look if there is a profit to be made and if she can pay the bills?

Not everyone has this limit to their thinking, "how can I keep things the way they are and remain rich", and in fact I'd say that more than ever before, most of US would be receptive to change. More of a problem, and a very real problem I believe, is that many (at least in the US) still don't believe there actually is a problem with anything we are currently doing. Just last night, Rick Santorum made what he believed was a valid point: CO2 can't be toxic or hurting anything, because plants breathe it.
Yes, this really came from the mouth of one of the potential leaders of the nation. The actual quote was a bit sillier, and I'll add it if I can find it.
I am really more inclined to believe the problem does not stem from selfishness alone, but is also largely due to ignorance and misinformation.

Edit: Argh bad phone grammar. Anyway, there's all kinds of lolz about that quote I mentioned before. It's not like I make a regular habit of watching CSPAN :P but happened to catch this anyway.

Without an economy, nothing would EVER get done - just look at how every communist nation in human history has collapsed, because there was no reason to do anything and a tendency towards stagnation because there was no reason to improve or compete. I don't think you understand the economics - people will never work for nothing, and that includes operating whatever source is used. They will instead work a means that actually provides for them, which goes to ones that are viable without external support - that external support comes from taxes, so in the end, is taken right back from the people who it is paid out to.

Moco Loco, I think that most people are aware of the problem. I am sure that at least here in Europe, you could ask people from the street and they would agree that the world is in a bad shape and that something has to be done. In most cases the thoughts will however then go in different directions (changes in the economy, more regulations, less regulations, more technology, less technology, better management,...). In the US it seems there is a division between people who think the same way and a rather large group of radicals that deny it and rather stick to "god will not let us run out of oil" and "women taking contraceptives are sluts and *****s" to justify whatever privilege they want to keep.

I disagree. That majority of the people do not want the ones they see as rich and privileged to remain rich by keeping things the way they are. But they want to maintain whatever privilege they have left and maybe get back the privilege they had before 2008. I saw it in the occupy protest here. People bickered about being threatened about loosing their savings, their pension plans, their jobs, their houses. And about the "1%" being the ones taking it all. All quite understandable and quite correct - the "crisis" is a way to take even more form the poorer and give it to the rich. But I saw only rarely mentioned privilege from the other side. The one that plays hardly a role in the occupy movements. The fact, that even the "99%" are in fact, globally seen, and specifically if seen in context of all life on Earth, the "real 1%". They desire to have a bigger piece of the pie, to spread the wealth of the nation to all of its citizens. Fair, yes. But they assume that there can be a wealth that is given. But that wealth is based on explotation of others - this is not as much a topic.
There was a relatively recent survey, that I cannot find by google now that asked people in the UK about this. A majority was not willing to give up their lifestyle in a significant way. So changing lightbulbs is not a problem - you have as much light as you had before AND are saving the environment. But to do something that would disable them from having as much light, to get rid of the car and walk/bike instead, to move in a smaller home - nope - no chance. Industry tells us we can have more light by using more efficient bulbs, hybrid cars and better insulated homes and so lifestyle can be the same but efficiency is better, so the environment is saved. That is what people want to think and what their baseline is. And that is all about privilege, because of course most people in the world have no car and most not even a bike.


Re Santorum et al - to me this is just a sign that the US are totally loosing it. Really, they are. They are going cookoo as a nation. I dont even want to deal with that, but sadly they have the largest weapons arsenal in the world int hat loony bin there. People in the US are afraid, angry, paranoid and confused. They dont know what is real anymore - the economy, nature, space travel, the moon landing, aliens, 2012 prophecies, the rapture, the bible, science, religion,... So they just seem to pick what suits their own interests best (or looks like it does in the short run) and decide to believe that one. Frankly, I can imagine that 2012 becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if they go on like that. At least for the US...

That is not really true. Look at Wikipedia. Or many other online things. Or the countless community project, charity projects. Or just look at people caring for their children or parents or firends. Dont you think the "Homo economicus" is a rather limited way to view humans? Humans do what they like to do and what gives them sustanance. They will of course work harder if you either tell them they can have more and more - or, what is more common - deprive them of their basic needs. THIS is what the present economy does. It takes away any way of people to sustain themselves by what is around them and then sells back to them these very things - at the cost of their workforce. Of course that works and people will work more and more and be productive. But is that the goal? More productivity? Is that why humans are here?

But that was not even what I tried to talk about (except I said "screw the economy"). My point was, that the economy as is is set up now is meaning that things get only done when there is some profit in it, when there is a return on investment. But this excludes all solutions that are not making a profit, as much sense as they make. For example if you could somehow create a machine (technological solution) that makes clean energy, sucks up CO2, cleans rivers and eliminates smog - but to operate it is quite expensive and the price you can charge for the electricity is not enough to pay for the operation costs because a lot of people have to work in the company to make it run. But it is for the benefit of the world and all people. It is totally uneconomic but it makes a lot of sense to do it, right? You might say that you could start charging people for the use of the purified air and water and then it becomes economical, but how do you want to do that - send out bills to people to use air and water? Or you raise a water tax, but that then is again the same as subsidies. Basically what happens is that all people pay a share for a healthier environment, for cleaner water,...
So in purist economics, that machine would never be built because it is not making a profit.

Another example - you probably like space travel and the plans to build a moon base and go to Mars. Is there profit in it? Or is that to a large degree funded by public money, aka taxes aka the money of all people living in a country? Why should I pay for some guy to take a walk on Mars and not pay for ways to reduce fossil fuel usage? Why should I pay for tanks and fighter jets and submarines and not for solar panels on rooftops or people changing to more efficient use of energy? Can you imagine someone scrapping the military, space program and science research because it is uneconomical? Or dont you think there is something that is beyond "the economy" that cannot be denoted in $ and € but that is worth keeping?

I agree that often subsidies are misused - they are given for the wrong things or people find tricks to get them without providing what they were given for. That is corruption, that always happens. But I think the general idea of all people in a country chipping in to keep something going that is not economical but that makes sense for these people is not flawed.

Man Aurora, you write so much. I'm not trying to disprove you or anything, that was only my opinion. Okay, I guess that's a valid reaction, that those people in the US are just a bunch of radicals, and maybe a big bunch, but I know that a very significant portion of Americans are at least not sure, which alone is kind of unacceptable.

I think the desire of many people to not give up the standard of living society has achieved is perfectly reasonable, to be honest. After all the progress civilization has made, who really wants to take a step back? The best solutions would, in theory, sustain both the nice things we have now and the environment. Of course, the ringer for this type of solution is a significant population decrease with other changes to follow. I myself would rather not give up my nice things, and like everyone else (or the greedy majority, anyway) would prefer to trade them in for something even better. In the event this is not possible, I think it's the government's place to do something about it (restrictions, regulations, etc). I'm not trying to stand up for anybody (at all), but I think that ignorance is the major player here. In short, if people really /knew/ how bad things are, I believe they'd give many things up willingly, but I still hold to the impression that almost no one realizes exactly what's going on in the world. But who knows, really; I live in one of the most luxuriously ignorant regions of the world.

Also, when I make blanket generalizations such as these, I'm really referring to America unless I say otherwise, since I've never been out of the country in a significant way.