General election 2020 (8 Viewers)

[ann post]

So in *meetings* that I *go* to in discussion the whole climate thing etc - It made me realise that what was a few years ago called

climate science vs climate denial

has been largely reframed as

climate science vs jobs/employement.

Which is in ways the same discussion on a slightly different pitch - with the sorta difference being that to a point everyone gets it but what they don't get is why this new thing isn't profitable, like its a thing in business and work, how do we monetise it. It's pretty mad but that's the bounceback i've been hearing so far. Easy for me to say, i'm very cheap to run and not an employer of course- but it does make me wonder about intervention. There isn't time to re-direct what people have put a career into..

 

[Lili Marlene]

The shortest answer I have come across comes from that The Divide book, where he posits that the only way to do it is to move away from GDP being the measurement of how well a country is doing.

and it makes sense since it's the fundamental starting point of everything in our current economic model, the moment you change that everything else shifts really quickly.

Plus GDP doesn't even make sense on its own terms after a certain point (reached in the 70s by most western countries, Ireland probably a little later) and they have to use all sorts of economic voodoo to keep it going.

edit: here's a piece on it here Outgrowing growth: why quality of life, not GDP, should be our measure of success

(i'm sure none of this is news to the good pricks of thumped)

 

[magicbastarder]

yeah, there is a move to calculating environmental capital, or ecological system services or whatever they're calling it. calculating how much we get for free from the environment, partly as a way of quantifying how much these things will cost if we wreck the environment enough that we can no longer depend on it for free.

i know there's a lot of pushback from environmentalists, because it does sound like monetisation of the environment, and could in theory be used to calculate against it as well as for it.

 

[ann post]

I've not read that book, or any other books ever but have heard that from other sources.

RE: election, green party fissures etc etc. Ryan got one bill across the floor this year.

For those who don't want to read it (that's everyone then?) the TLDR is that

IReland for years has had a huge financial oil stockpile, a supply for 90 days for a scorched earth type moment. It is held in tanks, but i say its a financial stockpile because i think technically the oil can be in storage in other countries, just financially it is guaranteed to us.

This is something we all have been paying for for years.

The bill ryan put in this years means that excess money from the fund for this goes direct to a climate action fund.

National Oil Reserves Agency (Amendment) and Provision of Central Treasury Services Act 2020

Considering the way 2020 went this should be a windfall of sorts.
Also if we reduce oil usage (FYI domestic / personal is about 16-20% of this reservoir) then every year we reduce money that was ringfenced for oil bounces back to climate

Looking at bills for the past 6th months

SF had a good housing one.
Ged Nash has one floating around about lobbyists that could be useful.

So tbh, twitter greens are fun but that is the only bill that has crossed the floor with the greens so far and it came from their corbyn Ryan. So maybe twitter greens are fun but not changing the stitching of anything and Ryan is detestable but using the Dail.

Unpopular opini-ann.

 

[Lili Marlene]

yeah, there is a move to calculating environmental capital, or ecological system services or whatever they're calling it. calculating how much we get for free from the environment, partly as a way of quantifying how much these things will cost if we wreck the environment enough that we can no longer depend on it for free.

i know there's a lot of pushback from environmentalists, because it does sound like monetisation of the environment, and could in theory be used to calculate against it as well as for it.

It's all very pie in the sky though isn't it? Short of Irexit the only way I can see it happening here is through massive pressure on the EU. I know the argument against the EU is that it is neoliberal by-design and can never be reformed but i'm not 100% convinced of that. You'd need a left or centre-left party in power in Germany and probably some unbreakably strong trade union muscle across Europe to force the changes though. I think Irish farmers would come around pretty quickly if they're not left destitute.

 

[egg_]

yeah, there is a move to calculating environmental capital, or ecological system services or whatever they're calling it.

Yep. Ecosystem services is a big buzzword in ecology* atm. Grant money available, research projects in progress

*ecology the actual science rather than the ... I dunno, hippie philosophy

 

[egg_]

I don't think it's that pie-in-the-sky @Lili Marlene - it's basically quantifying nature in the way that capitalism can understand, in order to account for it within a capitalist decision making framework (rather than ignoring it, like before)

 

[Lili Marlene]

I don't think it's that pie-in-the-sky @Lili Marlene - it's basically quantifying nature in the way that capitalism can understand, in order to make decisions that affect it within a capitalist framework.

No I mean actually making the changes is pie in the sky, no one in power is moving on it in any real way that I know of. At best they're quantifying nature so they can exploit it more efficiently. It's all green energy and grant research, but not tackling the endless growth projections that underpin the big things.

 

[egg_]

AFAICS GDP is too deeply embedded in politics/economics to be moved until/unless climate mitigation measures all fail and we move into the kind of serious crisis mode we'd be in if we were at war

 

[Lili Marlene]

AFAICS GDP is too deeply embedded in politics/economics to be moved until/unless climate mitigation measures all fail and we move into the kind of serious crisis mode we'd be in if we were at war

Same.

 

[Cormcolash]

It all sounds as if capitalism is just fucked up or something, weird

 

[hydromancer]

Coillte do more ecological damage than good. They are planting non-native species in big single species swathes, they plant them so close together that nothing can grow, or live, under them and they keep them this way when they are thinning. Then they fell them all in one go and often this leads to erosion as the soil, now unprotected, gets washed into the rivers.

Not all forestry is equal, as @magicbastarder was saying. We need to invest time in native, slow growing, species, not just to support the air but also our native flora and fauna.

Yeah sure but what do you say then to someone who wants timber say to build a house ? The only option to not growing wood for commercial purposes in Ireland then is to import it which might a reasonable option but either way wood is wanted for commercial reasons. I live close to a couple of Coillte woods by the way the larger one had it's soft wood felled and it's interesting to watch it recover over the years but it is certainly not single species.

 

[Squiggle]

Yeah sure but what do you say then to someone who wants timber say to build a house ? The only option to not growing wood for commercial purposes in Ireland then is to import it which might a reasonable option but either way wood is wanted for commercial reasons. I live close to a couple of Coillte woods by the way the larger one had it's soft wood felled and it's interesting to watch it recover over the years but it is certainly not single species.

The non-native timber grown here, mainly conifers that shouldn't be maturing so quickly and wouldn't in their native climates, isn't fit to be used for building. It's crap, not even useful for matches, pallets and packaging. As far as I know most of it ends up as chipboard, HDFB or cardboard/paper.

So I'd say to someone who wants timber to build a house to do what they already do and import it from somewhere else. If we don't grow native trees we won't have high quality home grown timber.

My Dad is a former dairy farmer who now has 100 acres of mixed, native species, forestry growing on "prime" agricultural land. His income comes entirely from setting the remainder of the farm to other farmers for grazing. They make enough to survive, just about. Most of the forestry will take 60-80 years to mature, some less. It's a long term, multi-generational, investment, but unless we as a species start thinking of our legacy we're fucked.

 

[ann post]

It's crap, not even useful for matches, pallets and packaging. As far as I know most of it ends up as chipboard, HDFB or cardboard/paper.

Swedish flatpack furniture store then.

 

[nooleen]

Just picturing the ancient Irish swinging majestically from tree to tree as they traversed the land. Like apes.

We would never have come down from the trees without the help of the Brits

 

[Cormcolash]

We would never have come down from the trees without the help of the Brits

 

[ann post]

 

[flashback]

There's still this issue of subsidizing the production of meat and dairy, in excess of what is needed, to the extent that it artificially lowers the prices.

A lot of the best land is taken up with livestock, and because the government is subsidizing it so heavily, the real cost of meat and dairy is artificially low, while the environmental cost is ignored.

All that has to happen is that the environmental cost is summed up. There's easy ones, Eg how often do parts of the country flood? How much effluent is flowing into rivers, resulting in fish kills. Actual insurance claims. Then there's more difficult ones to quantify, the cost of having very low biodiversity on pollinators etc. Carbon sequestration could be considered as profit on the other hand.

We're paying to do the almost worst option, which is hard and demands huge resources, and it seems like we're not even all that interested in the outputs of this worst option. It's a choice that the government had made.

Or no? I guess I'm honestly confused about this, because it seems completely cut and dry to me, but it's clearly not. Or is it?

 

[Lili Marlene]

There's still this issue of subsidizing the production of meat and dairy, in excess of what is needed, to the extent that it artificially lowers the prices.

A lot of the best land is taken up with livestock, and because the government is subsidizing it so heavily, the real cost of meat and dairy is artificially low, while the environmental cost is ignored.

All that has to happen is that the environmental cost is summed up. There's easy ones, Eg how often do parts of the country flood? How much effluent is flowing into rivers, resulting in fish kills. Actual insurance claims. Then there's more difficult ones to quantify, the cost of having very low biodiversity on pollinators etc. Carbon sequestration could be considered as profit on the other hand.

We're paying to do the almost worst option, which is hard and demands huge resources, and it seems like we're not even all that interested in the outputs of this worst option. It's a choice that the government had made.

Or no? I guess I'm honestly confused about this, because it seems completely cut and dry to me, but it's clearly not. Or is it?

Irelands GDP grew in 2020, our only job as a country is to grow GDP each year and service our debts. As long as farmers are paid enough to get by they won't complain and vote in someone else. Why change anything at all?

It's an over-simplistic way of putting it but i see no flaw in that argument until we change the measurement.

 

[Squiggle]

Land set aside for grazing by animals is generally more biodiverse than land used for crop growing, and is less intensively farmed. Grazing land will also, generally, have shelter in the form of tree hedges and drainage ditches. Animals are generally only grazed on small portions at a time, with the rest of the land left unoccupied to allow the grass to regrow.

Land set aside for crops (including market crops for human consumption) is normally intensively farmed, usually has no drainage or hedgerow. Fertiliser and insecticide run off causes serious environmental damage.

Consumer demand will drive the model used. If people want environmentally sound farming they need to be willing to pay to support local, organic, farmers - who, at least in my Dad's time, don't qualify for subsidies. My father never got a subsidy for farming, because he wouldn't intensively farm, plant "sward" and cut out all the ditches in favour of fences, among other things. His insistence on crop rotation, nurturing rather than supplementing the soil, maintaining diverse pasture with herbs, flowers and a variety of grasses and avoiding all chemical fertilizers was "unscientific" he was told.

It's very easy, if you have never lived as a farmer, to make assumptions about it. It's a very diverse field. "Farmer" as a description for someone is about as specific as "artist" or "musician"...