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<font size="+2"><i><b>November 28, 2021</b></i></font><br>
<br>
<i>[ Opinion in NYTimes ] </i><br>
<b>Bankers Took Over the Climate Change Summit. That’s Bad For
Democracy.</b><br>
Nov. 25, 2021..<br>
- - [essay concludes]<br>
“We can’t get to net zero by flipping a green switch,” Mr. Carney
announced late last month. “We need to rewire our entire economies.”
That is a euphemistic way of describing the sought-after “energy
transition,” which would inevitably mean enormous expense,
widespread disruption and a reassignment of many property claims.
The question is whether financiers — as opposed to, say, scientists
or voters — ought to be trusted to do the rewiring. The alliance
seems to want to resolve that question before the wider public even
realizes that it has been asked.<br>
- -<br>
A banker, too, is someone to whom you have yielded a part of your
dreaming self. You have handed him control of your savings. And
fighting climate change requires predicting the future — or at least
making reasonable assumptions about it. That is just what you trust
your investment adviser to do, at least with that narrow part of
your future that is measured by the Dow Jones industrial average.
What is more, if rewiring the world is really our goal, then it will
take resources of the sort that only the financial system controls.
“There’s no budget of any country that can do what we need to do,”
said John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate envoy, at an
early meeting of Glasgow Financial Alliance in April.<br>
<br>
But that is the problem. Governments lack the money to do these
things because they lack the legitimacy. The money that Mr. Kerry
proposes using for a climate-rescue program has not been levied in
taxes for that purpose. It is people’s personal property, their
private investments, their life savings. People might be willing to
surrender it for the noble purpose of saving the planet, but in a
democracy the government must first ask their permission. Until they
assent, it is not the government’s money...<br>
- -<br>
In most cases, it is not the banks’ money either. Mr. Carney, for
one, seems to have lost sight of that. “We have all the money
needed,” he said at the summit. No. Bankers “have” the money in the
sense of holding it, but not in the sense of being free to do what
they will with it. A banker merely stands at one of the choke points
through which other people’s money passes. In most cases he is
permitted to stand there only so long as he is selfless. He is a
“fiduciary.” He is bound by law and custom to protect only the
interest of the people whose money he is holding. He cannot wield
that money in his own interest — whether financial or ideological.<br>
<br>
Bankers have always chafed at these traditions. Certain investment
consultants in the alliance forthrightly declare that
shilly-shallying while the world overheats is itself a violation of
fiduciary responsibilities. The Biden administration shares this
view. Earlier this fall, the Labor Department drafted a rules change
in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act that would require
fiduciaries to consider “environmental, social and governance”
factors as well as the interest of the depositor.<br>
- -<br>
Banks have a hard time ignoring traditional fiduciary rules as long
as they have competitors who obey them — because, in theory at
least, depositors will flock to other banks that are focused more
single-mindedly on returns. A project such as the Glasgow Financial
Alliance therefore comes with the expectation of government
protection, protection from competition. At the April meeting of the
alliance, the Morgan Stanley managing director Thomas Nides said,
“This is a time for financial institutions not to compete but to
work together.” Deciding whether this is a good idea depends on
whether you believe financial institutions, acting in concert, are
more likely to promote decarbonization or protect their own
prerogatives.<br>
<br>
At Glasgow a few self-nominated representatives from a very rich
industry laid claim to a special role in shaping the human future.
In doing so, they opened a rift. Climate activists were skeptical,
noting that many alliance members continue to be involved in
financing oil extraction. The bankers of the alliance, on the other
hand, seem to believe society is ready to follow their lead. Voters,
not bankers, should be the judge of that.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/25/opinion/cop26-gfanz-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/25/opinion/cop26-gfanz-climate-change.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ Facing the future, we should look to the past ] </i><br>
<b>What Can Ancient Cities Teach Us About Surviving Climate Change?</b><br>
BY MICHAEL E. SMITH -- NOV 26, 2021...<br>
- -<br>
Aztec Tenochtitlan began as a damp town in the middle of a swamp,
but it managed to thrive across conquests, epidemics, droughts and
floods to become one of the largest cities in the world today—Mexico
City. When taking students to see the Aztec ruins next to the
Zocalo, I used to wonder how places like Tenochtitlan, Beijing, or
Rome (the “eternal city”) managed to thrive for centuries, while
other cities failed.<br>
<br>
In my archaeological fieldwork, I have encountered far more failed
urban sites than cities that survived for centuries. It is now time
to examine these early cities to learn how some of them adapted
successfully to stresses and shocks, while others did not. Perhaps
this knowledge can inform current work on urban adaptations to
climate change. Researchers have identified a “knowledge gap”
between what we need to know about planning cities for the future
and we do know. The cities of the past can help fill that gap...<br>
- -<br>
Groups of historians are starting to move beyond this infatuation
with collapse to instead draw connections between past and present
with titles such as “Lessons From the Past, Policies for the Future:
Resilience and Sustainability in Past Crises.” These studies
typically describe several case studies of short-term processes (for
instance, the Black death or Roman conquest) and claim they provide
lessons for us today. The cases are anecdotes; they are not formally
compared, nor are they analyzed quantitatively. Yet economists have
found that when they look at cities over a longer historical
perspective, they are remarkably resilient to plagues, wars, and
other short-term catastrophes. After an initial setback, cities
almost always come back, economically, demographically, and
culturally.. But, what happens if we look at changes over a really
long interval, one lasting centuries or even millennia, what the
great historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée?<br>
<br>
The principle strengths of archaeology are a record of change over
centuries, even millennia, and a large enough sample of sites and
regions to create a quantitative and rigorous science of past
adaptations to shocks and change. Archaeologists now routinely apply
quantitative, scientific methods to topics such as wealth
inequality, city size, and trade patterns. It is time to extend
these methods to urban adaptations to stresses and shocks, including
both climatic changes and other natural and social forces.<br>
<br>
I am part of a research group at Arizona State University that has
begun to use archaeological data to address urban survival and
adaptation over long periods. (Disclosure: ASU is a partner with
Slate and New America in Future Tense.) In contrast to aspirational
sustainability, we take a rather stark view of ancient urban
sustainability: If a city or settlement managed to survive for many
centuries, then it was sustainable. I recently returned to the
results of an archaeological survey I directed in the Yautepec
Valley of Mexico in the 1990s, to see if they might shed any light
on climate-change adaptations and sustainability today. I think they
do. My students and I walked across the landscape and located some
400 sites—places on the landscape where people once lived. Our
chronology is rough, with time periods that last one or two
centuries. Some sites were occupied for just a single period of
time, while others were occupied for many millennia. What was the
difference between those that survived and those that did not?...<br>
- -<br>
One finding that relates to urban issues today is the effects of
city size on adaptation and sustainability. The median persistence
of settlements in the Yautepec Valley was 370 years, a high rate of
urban success by any measure. Looking more closely at the data, it
is clear that larger settlements typically lasted longer than
smaller ones. Several patterns stand out. The earliest urban centers
in this area were founded adjacent to the best farmland, in the
first century BCE. These large centers thrived for more than a
millennium. Their superior locations undoubtedly contributed to
their persistence and success. The conquest of the valley by the
Teotihuacan empire (around 150 CE), however, showed that major
political transformations can be more important than city size in
explaining persistence. This event set off a flurry of urbanization
as new administrative centers sprung up throughout the valley. These
towns probably helped administer the cultivation of cotton for
Teotihuacan. When Teotihuacan withdrew three centuries later, these
towns were abandoned. Their size (larger than other settlements at
the time) was no help when their administrative purpose came to an
end. Does the more general role of size as a stimulus to
sustainability extend to other early urban systems? If so, this may
help scholars and planners work out the optimum size for cities in
order to ensure sustainability into the future. Planners already
associate higher urban population density with greater
sustainability. If larger size is also more sustainable, then
perhaps the current trend of shrinking cities in many regions needs
immediate policy help. Economists have shown that larger cities
generate more growth per capita than smaller cities, and this
finding has been replicated for ancient cities. It would not be
surprising if these city-size effects also created cities more able
to withstand shocks and survive into the future.<br>
<br>
Two obstacles must be overcome before scientists and planners can
use insights from ancient history and archaeology. First, my
colleagues and I need to reanalyze our data with respect to
persistence over time. Just what conditions (city size,
infrastructure, institutions) promoted urban persistence in the
past? Can such results be translated for urban adaptations today?
This is not a trivial task. Just reconfiguring the Yautepec data to
look at the persistence of settlements through time required
dedicated labor by a postdoc and graduate student. Second, urban
adaptation scholars and archaeologists need to come together to
establish specific useful connections between the patterns and
processes identifiable for ancient cities, and the factors promoting
or hindering the adaptations of cities to climate change today.
Archaeologists can analyze many attributes of cities and settlement
systems beyond their size and persistence; we welcome suggestions on
what to do next.<br>
<br>
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona
State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy,
and society.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/ancient-cities-climate-change-urban-resilience-adaptation.html">https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/ancient-cities-climate-change-urban-resilience-adaptation.html</a><br>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
[ Academic source ] <br>
Published: 24 May 2020<br>
<b>Lessons from the past, policies for the future: resilience and
sustainability in past crises</b><br>
John Haldon, Merle Eisenberg, Lee Mordechai, Adam Izdebski & Sam
White <br>
Abstract<br>
<blockquote>This article surveys some examples of the ways past
societies have responded to environmental stressors such as
famine, war, and pandemic. We show that people in the past did
think about system recovery, but only on a sectoral scale. They
did perceive challenges and respond appropriately, but within
cultural constraints and resource limitations. Risk mitigation was
generally limited in scope, localized, and again determined by
cultural logic that may not necessarily have been aware of more
than symptoms, rather than actual causes. We also show that
risk-managing and risk-mitigating arrangements often favored the
vested interests of elites rather than the population more widely,
an issue policy makers today still face.<br>
</blockquote>
Introduction<br>
Effective risk management and assessment require knowledge of past
events to generate comparative risk scenarios. Yet understanding the
impacts of environmental stress on historical societies is an
underdeveloped and fragmented field of study, with substantial
disagreement among specialists. As a result, we cannot say with
precision what constitutes an existential risk to a given historical
society, i.e., a risk that could trigger the collapse of a political
or cultural system. Past human societies as a whole have been
extraordinarily resilient in the face of severe challenges, but the
configuration of social and political structures was always impacted
in a number of ways, with substantial implications for development
pathways (e.g., the different medium-term outcomes of the Black
Death in England and France) (Borsch 2005, pp. 55–66; Herlihy 1997).
Historical case studies, therefore, can offer valuable guidance on
present day issues in designing risk management strategies and
sustainable policies (Haldon and Rosen 2018; Rosen 2007). Detailed
research into what, if any, role environmental challenges have
played in the transformation of previous societies, including in
conflict, migration, critical systems failure, and politics, is an
essential requirement, along with grounded inquiry into
socio-economic feedback loops...<br>
- -<br>
How societies in the past responded to stress depends on three key
sets of conditions: their complexity (the degree of interdependency
across social relationships and structures), their institutional and
ideological flexibility, and their systemic redundancy, all of which
together determine the resilience of the system. These three
conditions do not exist in isolation, but combine and recombine in
innumerable historical configurations. Historians must reduce this
to ideal–typical models, since it is practically impossible to
analyze them all. Moreover, we must research particular historical
case studies to illustrate these general patterns and to show how
each case is subtly different from the next.<br>
<br>
‘Resilience’ is invoked in different ways within different
disciplines. In historical research, it has largely played a role in
work on collapse and adaptation, where societies are understood as
complex adaptive systems and in which ecological models have been
influential. Since the basic structural dynamics of a societal
system contribute to the types of collapse to which it may be
subject, approaches to collapse, and resilience that unites
structure and process are the best way forward in applying
historical examples to contemporary planning initiatives with
respect to environmental problems. This is a helpful approach,
especially when allowances are made for individual human agency and
belief systems (Cumming and Petersen 2017; Haldon 2020, building on
ecological theory and formal resilience theory; also Anderies 2006;
Berkes and Ross 2016; Gunderson and Holling 2002).<br>
<br>
Resilience and the potential for a society to maintain cohesion and
cultural continuity through periods of system-challenging stress has
costs. The question of how to distribute the costs of resilience,
and the degree to which this might be built into any system, varies
across time and cultural milieu. In the following, we examine
several cases in past societies where we can observe (1) both
top-down and bottom-up responses to significant environmental
challenges, how different sectors of society responded or reacted,
and where we can detect positive as well as negative outcomes; (2)
the differential costs of resilience when states are faced with
substantial economic and political challenges; and (3) state- and
society-level responses to pandemics and both planned and unintended
consequences...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-020-09778-9">https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-020-09778-9</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ a serious oversight -- clips from the NYTimes] </i><br>
<b>Interior Dept. Report on Drilling Is Mostly Silent on Climate
Change</b><br>
The department recommended higher fees for oil and gas leases, but
there was no sign the government planned to take global warming into
account when weighing new applications.<br>
<br>
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department on Friday recommended that the
federal government raise the fees that oil and gas companies pay to
drill on public lands — the first increase in those rent and royalty
rates since 1920.<br>
<br>
The long-awaited report recommended an overhaul of the rents and
royalty fees charged for drilling both on land and offshore, noting
one estimate that the government lost up to $12.4 billion in revenue
from drilling on federal lands from 2010 through 2019 because
royalty rates have been frozen for a century.<br>
<br>
The Interior Department said its goal is to “better restore balance
and transparency to public land and ocean management and deliver a
fair and equitable return to American taxpayers.”<br>
<br>
But the report was nearly silent about the climate impacts from the
public drilling program. The United States Geological Survey
estimates that drilling on public land and in federal waters is
responsible for almost a quarter of the greenhouse gases generated
by the United States that are warming the planet...<br>
- -<br>
Oil and gas industry representatives warned Friday that raising fees
would cause prices to skyrocket and undermine energy security.<br>
<br>
“You know there’s something wrong with a policy when it’s released
on a Friday and even more so when it’s a holiday weekend,” said
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which
represents oil and gas companies...<br>
- -<br>
Frank Macchiarola, a senior vice president at the American Petroleum
Institute, a trade group, said in a statement the Biden
administration is sending mixed signals by releasing emergency oil
reserves and then proposing to raise costs for the industry. It
suggests the administration has “no clear roadmap for the future of
federal leasing,” he said.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, environmentalists said they were concerned that the Biden
administration was backtracking on a central climate pledge.<br>
<br>
Brett Hartl, director of government affairs for the non-profit
Center for Biological Diversity, called the 18-page report a
“massive betrayal” of the president on climate change.<br>
<br>
Mr. Hartl said environmental groups had expected the agency to
review the fossil fuel leasing program, taking into account the
environmental harms of drilling at the local level as well its
contribution to the global climate crisis. He said the report, which
barely mentioned climate change, “isn’t worth the paper it was
written on.”<br>
<br>
As a candidate, Mr. Biden promised to stop issuing new leases for
drilling on public lands. “And by the way, no more drilling on
federal lands, period. Period, period, period,” Mr. Biden told
voters in New Hampshire in February 2020.<br>
<br>
This month, he appeared at a global climate summit meeting in
Glasgow to urge other world leaders to take bold action to cut
emissions from oil, gas and coal. Mr. Biden has pledged to cut
United States greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below
2005 levels by the end of this decade. Interior Secretary Deb
Haaland is a former environmental activist and former member of
Congress who had a campaign website that included this quote from
her: “We need to act fast to counteract climate change and keep
fossil fuels in the ground.”<br>
<br>
But last week, the Biden administration offered up to 80 million
acres in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling leases — the largest sale
since 2017. The administration was legally obligated to hold the
lease sales after Republican attorneys general from 13 states
successfully overturned a suspension on sales that Mr. Biden had
tried to impose. Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil offered $192
million for the rights to drill in the area offered by the
government...<br>
- -<br>
Multiple studies from government and fiscal watchdog groups have
concluded that the federal government underestimates the value of
the oil and gas resources on public lands, and undercharges
companies for extracting the fuels.<br>
<br>
In addition to raising rents and royalties, the report recommended
an increase the current minimum level for bonds. Companies have
abandoned thousands of wells on public lands, which frequently leak
methane and pose other hazards. But the current bond level is not
enough to cap and clean them, leaving taxpayers to foot the costs.<br>
<br>
The Interior Department could enact some of the proposed changes
through regulation, but most of the recommendations in the report
would require congressional action.<br>
<br>
Even at their current levels, the royalties are still a major source
of revenue: the federal government has so far collected $9.6 billion
this year from drilling on public land and in federal waters, up
from $8 billion last year.<br>
- - <br>
Environmental advocates said they supported raising those fees and
royalties, but added that the increase would not slow drilling or
climate change.<br>
<br>
“That’s the stuff that needs to happen,” said Joel Clement, who
resigned from the Interior Department in protest during the Trump
administration, and now serves as a senior fellow at the Harvard
Kennedy School. “But it’s a first-base hit, not a double or a home
run. And at this point, we have to have a home run on leasing on
public lands. It’s one of the immediate climate levers that can
bring real change. The leasing program must account for climate
emissions. That’s how you get to a lasting moratorium on drilling.”<br>
<br>
Mr. Clement and other climate policy experts said the Interior
Department should incorporate the potential climate impacts of
leasing oil and gas drilling into the assessments required by the
1970 National Environmental Policy Act, which says the government
must consider ecological damage when deciding whether to permit
drilling and construction projects.<br>
<br>
If all assessments of the impacts of drilling on public lands were
required to include the potential warming impact of burning the
fuels within the leases, experts said, that would create the legal
groundwork for the government to stop issuing new drilling leases.<br>
<br>
But moving forward with such a policy would quite likely face
political blowback from Republicans, the oil industry and Democrats
in oil and gas states. That could also complicate the
administration’s efforts to steer its broader spending bill through
a razor-thin Democratic majority in Congress.<br>
<br>
“The political tightrope is vexing, but the bottom line is that we
have to end oil and gas leasing on public lands,” Mr. Clement said.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that doing so would change the
global conversation on the energy transition.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/climate/climate-change-drilling-public-lands.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/climate/climate-change-drilling-public-lands.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[The news archive - looking back - Krugman analysis ]</i><br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
November 28, 2014</b></font><br>
November 28, 2014:<br>
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman observes:<br>
"Of course, polluters will defend their right to pollute, but why
can they count on Republican support? When and why did the
Republican Party become the party of pollution?<br>
<br>
"For it wasn’t always thus. The Clean Air Act of 1970, the legal
basis for the Obama administration’s environmental actions, passed
the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 73 to 0, and was signed into law
by Richard Nixon. (I’ve heard veterans of the E.P.A. describe the
Nixon years as a golden age.) A major amendment of the law, which
among other things made possible the cap-and-trade system that
limits acid rain, was signed in 1990 by former President George H.W.
Bush.<br>
<br>
"But that was then. Today’s Republican Party is putting a conspiracy
theorist who views climate science as a 'gigantic hoax' in charge of
the Senate’s environment committee. And this isn’t an isolated case.
Pollution has become a deeply divisive partisan issue.<br>
<br>
"And the reason pollution has become partisan is that Republicans
have moved right. A generation ago, it turns out, environment wasn’t
a partisan issue: according to Pew Research, in 1992 an overwhelming
majority in both parties favored stricter laws and regulation. Since
then, Democratic views haven’t changed, but Republican support for
environmental protection has collapsed.<br>
<br>
"So what explains this anti-environmental shift?<br>
<br>
"You might be tempted simply to blame money in politics, and there’s
no question that gushers of cash from polluters fuel the
anti-environmental movement at all levels. But this doesn’t explain
why money from the most environmentally damaging industries, which
used to flow to both parties, now goes overwhelmingly in one
direction. Take, for example, coal mining. In the early 1990s,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the industry
favored Republicans by a modest margin, giving around 40 percent of
its money to Democrats. Today that number is just 5 percent.
Political spending by the oil and gas industry has followed a
similar trajectory. Again, what changed?<br>
<br>
"One answer could be ideology. Textbook economics isn’t
anti-environment; it says that pollution should be limited, albeit
in market-friendly ways when possible. But the modern conservative
movement insists that government is always the problem, never the
solution, which creates the will to believe that environmental
problems are fake and environmental policy will tank the economy.<br>
<br>
"My guess, however, is that ideology is only part of the story — or,
more accurately, it’s a symptom of the underlying cause of the
divide: rising inequality."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/paul-krugman-pollution-and-politics.html?ref=opinion&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/paul-krugman-pollution-and-politics.html?ref=opinion&_r=0</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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