Great article but I don't really agree with the judgmental tone. It comes off a bit like "people are stupid and selfish" when the real lesson is we need to approach this in a more populist way. The recommendations are actually in line with that.
IMO the best way to get people on your side is make big promises and show how your policies can make them real. Cheap power with solar and home batteries, faster commutes with public transit, stop paying for gas with EVs, lower rent with density and public housing. Promise subsidies for all of it so everyone knows they will be able to afford the change and don't get left behind.
Prefer subsidies over tariffs, raising existing taxes over new ones, mandates over bans and rewards over punishment (except when it comes to big corporations). People hate being told what they can't do but they're mostly okay with being told what they have to do, especially when it's cheap and you explain how it benefits them.
Like the stuff about Australia exploiting gas. The average Australian is being ripped off royally by that.
From Saul Griffiths:
> Here is the part that should make every taxpayer in the country furious: those gas exports — the ones we are extending the life of, approving new ones for, calling them "strategic" — THEY BARELY EARN AUSTRALIA ANYTHING. Norway used its gas revenues to build vehicle-charging networks and help Norwegians buy electric cars. We don't even seem to try to make revenues. The Petroleum Resource Rent Tax raises less revenue in a year than the federal government collects from the excise on beer. Norway runs a sovereign wealth fund worth US$1.7 trillion off its hydrocarbons. Qatar funds its entire welfare state on LNG. We give it away on legacy contracts negotiated when oil was $30 a barrel and watch the LNG tankers leave Karratha. We are not even getting paid to be a petrostate. We are other people's petrostate, and too stupid to profit from it.
So if it's all about money in a broad "people want to save money" sense, why is a small group of people and corporations ripping off Australians to such a degree? Shouldn't their desire for money drive then to do something?
No, because their media is bought, their politicians are bought, and their idiots are all useful to these interests. So they let themselves be robbed.
And the same is true on the closely linked topic of climate, and across nations from the US to Germany.
The author's heart is in the right place but ... expecting a supplier withholding sales (eg coal and gas) will change how the industrial manufacturer consumer operates ... considering things like steel making, chemical and plastic manufacturing generally will have billions of dollars of assets already in place that can not be easily modified - is a fool's errand.
I found myself shaking my head too much to really give the essay a good read, not for anything off point, mostly for the author missing important aspects that goes to the heart of inaction - NIMBY and the greater presence of the poorly informed who are more prone to big dollar propaganda. Not all propaganda is direct or blunt, much is subtle ... insidious.
This means along with the rise of the anti science cult, it's been too easy to direct inaction on climate change, as the claims of what has recently been observed is supposedly / actually part of a large natural cycle, for which mankind has little means to change. Of course most anyone who was old enough to either notice first hand or read about changes in the weather in the weeks after 9/11 with the grounding of aircraft, has good reason to question that noise.
The nagging issue though I feel is clarity over which steps should be taken in the journey out of the maze forward to reach the goal. The broad path to the goal of tackling the rise of pollution / climate change doesn't need to be well lit, as purposeful, as-accurate-as-can-be signposts are sufficient. As such more often than not, the clarity is missing when communities, industry and govt are deciding what and where those signposts should be, and which steps are actually purposeful going forwards - popular choices proposed too often in the past, have been feel good aimed at the voting public and big businesses and have perhaps without realising fully, put most of the of burden of implementing it onto a small minority, very much outside the industrial complex and urban life where a majority of a western population lives.
As for Australia, at least with the latest government, there's been a good push towards solar and provided enough inertia to keep going regardless of the naysayers and fossil and nuclear interests that exist here. When it comes to matters of reining in land clearing and improving biodiversity most of the public here will think of all that clearing grain growers and cattle farmers have been done and still doing, despite most of the biodiverity being along coastlines, and good portions being cleared wholesale by land developers for residential suburbs, and not a mention of the massive clearing coal mining in Queensland has done to the immediate climate - the hot black open coal pits create large heat bubbles during the day, which have hindered the natural progression of the large summer tropical storms moving west to east and out to sea over the Great Barrier Reef - now the storms are shunted north or south by these bubbles on a much longer track out to sea by which time most have rained themselves out.
Great article but I don't really agree with the judgmental tone. It comes off a bit like "people are stupid and selfish" when the real lesson is we need to approach this in a more populist way. The recommendations are actually in line with that.
IMO the best way to get people on your side is make big promises and show how your policies can make them real. Cheap power with solar and home batteries, faster commutes with public transit, stop paying for gas with EVs, lower rent with density and public housing. Promise subsidies for all of it so everyone knows they will be able to afford the change and don't get left behind.
Prefer subsidies over tariffs, raising existing taxes over new ones, mandates over bans and rewards over punishment (except when it comes to big corporations). People hate being told what they can't do but they're mostly okay with being told what they have to do, especially when it's cheap and you explain how it benefits them.
This seems like mostly pseudo-profound bullshit.
Like the stuff about Australia exploiting gas. The average Australian is being ripped off royally by that.
From Saul Griffiths:
> Here is the part that should make every taxpayer in the country furious: those gas exports — the ones we are extending the life of, approving new ones for, calling them "strategic" — THEY BARELY EARN AUSTRALIA ANYTHING. Norway used its gas revenues to build vehicle-charging networks and help Norwegians buy electric cars. We don't even seem to try to make revenues. The Petroleum Resource Rent Tax raises less revenue in a year than the federal government collects from the excise on beer. Norway runs a sovereign wealth fund worth US$1.7 trillion off its hydrocarbons. Qatar funds its entire welfare state on LNG. We give it away on legacy contracts negotiated when oil was $30 a barrel and watch the LNG tankers leave Karratha. We are not even getting paid to be a petrostate. We are other people's petrostate, and too stupid to profit from it.
https://energyandstuff.substack.com/p/46bn-per-year-what-aus...
So if it's all about money in a broad "people want to save money" sense, why is a small group of people and corporations ripping off Australians to such a degree? Shouldn't their desire for money drive then to do something?
No, because their media is bought, their politicians are bought, and their idiots are all useful to these interests. So they let themselves be robbed.
And the same is true on the closely linked topic of climate, and across nations from the US to Germany.
This was very well thought out and written.
The author's heart is in the right place but ... expecting a supplier withholding sales (eg coal and gas) will change how the industrial manufacturer consumer operates ... considering things like steel making, chemical and plastic manufacturing generally will have billions of dollars of assets already in place that can not be easily modified - is a fool's errand.
I found myself shaking my head too much to really give the essay a good read, not for anything off point, mostly for the author missing important aspects that goes to the heart of inaction - NIMBY and the greater presence of the poorly informed who are more prone to big dollar propaganda. Not all propaganda is direct or blunt, much is subtle ... insidious.
This means along with the rise of the anti science cult, it's been too easy to direct inaction on climate change, as the claims of what has recently been observed is supposedly / actually part of a large natural cycle, for which mankind has little means to change. Of course most anyone who was old enough to either notice first hand or read about changes in the weather in the weeks after 9/11 with the grounding of aircraft, has good reason to question that noise.
The nagging issue though I feel is clarity over which steps should be taken in the journey out of the maze forward to reach the goal. The broad path to the goal of tackling the rise of pollution / climate change doesn't need to be well lit, as purposeful, as-accurate-as-can-be signposts are sufficient. As such more often than not, the clarity is missing when communities, industry and govt are deciding what and where those signposts should be, and which steps are actually purposeful going forwards - popular choices proposed too often in the past, have been feel good aimed at the voting public and big businesses and have perhaps without realising fully, put most of the of burden of implementing it onto a small minority, very much outside the industrial complex and urban life where a majority of a western population lives.
As for Australia, at least with the latest government, there's been a good push towards solar and provided enough inertia to keep going regardless of the naysayers and fossil and nuclear interests that exist here. When it comes to matters of reining in land clearing and improving biodiversity most of the public here will think of all that clearing grain growers and cattle farmers have been done and still doing, despite most of the biodiverity being along coastlines, and good portions being cleared wholesale by land developers for residential suburbs, and not a mention of the massive clearing coal mining in Queensland has done to the immediate climate - the hot black open coal pits create large heat bubbles during the day, which have hindered the natural progression of the large summer tropical storms moving west to east and out to sea over the Great Barrier Reef - now the storms are shunted north or south by these bubbles on a much longer track out to sea by which time most have rained themselves out.
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