Standard of living, quality of life, and sustainability

18 posts / 0 new

Sun, 2021-07-04 12:51

Pondering

There a constant message that the economy and going green are in opposition to one another. They have to be balanced. It is insidious propaganda.

Sometimes it takes the form of arguing that while standard of living will drop quality of life will improve. The definitions are...

Standard of living refers to the level of wealth, comfort, material goods, and necessities available to a certain socioeconomic class or geographic area. Quality of life, on the other hand, is a subjective term that can measure happiness.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/08/standard-of-li...

The message is that greening the economy is going to cost us personally in reduced standard of living. We are being prepped to expect it to happen. It is like arguing the development of the car would ruin the economy because it would put the horse and buggy crowd out of business. Human advancement generally improves our standard of living.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/greening-global-economy

Achieving the target goals will be highly challenging. Yet in Greening the Global Economy, economist Robert Pollin shows that they are attainable through steady, large-scale investments—totaling about 1.5 percent of global GDP on an annual basis—in both energy efficiency and clean renewable energy sources. Not only that: Pollin argues that with the right investments, these efforts will expand employment and drive economic growth.

Drawing on years of research, Pollin explores all aspects of the problem: how much energy will be needed in a range of industrialized and developing economies; what efficiency targets should be; and what kinds of industrial policy will maximize investment and support private and public partnerships in green growth so that a clean energy transformation can unfold without broad subsidies.

All too frequently, inaction on climate change is blamed on its potential harm to the economy. Pollin shows greening the economy is not only possible but necessary: global economic growth depends on it.

The message that we can't green the economy without lowering/damaging our standard of living is designed to make people doubt the speed of transition we can aim for and support projects like TMX because we need to keep the economy going.

NDPP provided this link in another thread:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/some-indigenous-andvs-eurocentric-approac...

Core Values

Western(Capitalist) vs. Indigenous[12]

Competition vs. Harmony

Materialism vs. Prudence

Acquisition vs. Reciprocity

Accumulation vs. Distribution

Ownership vs. Kinship

Growth vs. Sustainability

Immediacy vs. Caring for Future Generations

Sun, 2021-07-04 13:34

kropotkin1951

Personally I think that mutual aid is a short hand term that encompasses it all. At the heart of eco-socialism is the concept of mutual aid. However as has always been the case the question is who controls the capital to make the massive investment required to transition now. The Chinese are apparently the only major economy that has the ability to engage in large scale projects specifically designed to achieve sustainability goals. The response of my politicians is to try to destroy their economy until they agree that the NATO financial oligarchy makes all the rules. And as we have seen over and over again the only rule that they recognize is maximization of the short term quarterly profits. It really is all about capital. China has a vibrant entrepreneurial market economy but it also has a government that has the ultimate authority to control the capital market. The death spiral of the Canadian social safety started with the loosening of capital controls and allowing rich people to move their wealth around the globe. Until the 1980's countries mostly all agreed that capital was sovereign wealth of countries owned by citizens of those countries not individual wealth divorced from the nations that produced it. The Chinese still understand that concept and the central government acts somewhat like our Bank of Canada was originally conceived to act.

Tue, 2021-07-06 13:12

lagatta4

Great contribution, kropotkin!

Tue, 2021-07-06 21:18

laine lowe laine lowe's picture

I agree with Lagatta. Very clearly defined and we definitely lost our way in the 1980s and moving on it has only gotten worse.

Fri, 2021-07-09 11:12

Pondering

Me too. I like it put so concisely, individualism or mutual aid.

Fri, 2021-07-09 17:47

Pondering

I think our standard of living will change rather than go down. That is, I wouldn't say taking a high speed train rather than a plane or car would be a reduction in my standard of living.

People are dying from dirty air right here in Canada. For people living in cities, which is most of us, better air quality would result in improved quality of life including extending it. Extending one's life is a measure of wealth. Geothermal heating and cooling won't reduce anyone's standard of living. This notion that we are all going to have to suffer just scares people it doesn't cause them to support action on climate change.

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-study-greenhouse-gas-emissions-26488865...

"This paper clearly may be cited in support of a misleading message that it is now 'too late' to avoid catastrophic climate change, which would have the potential to cause unnecessary despair," University of Exeter climate scientist professor Richard Betts said in response. "However, the study is nowhere near strong enough to make such a frightening message credible.".....

"While such models can be useful for conceptual inferences, their predictions have to be taken with great skepticism. Far more realistic climate models that do resolve the large-scale dynamics of the ocean, atmosphere and carbon cycle, do NOT produce the dramatic changes these authors argue for based on their very simplified model," he said. "It must be taken not just with a grain of salt, but a whole salt-shaker worth of salt."

That said, even the models used by the IPCC show that we will need to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reach the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, even if we achieve zero emissions by 2050.

"What the study does draw attention to is that reducing global carbon emissions to zero by 2050 is just the start of our actions to deal with climate change," University College London climate professor Mark Maslin said in response.

We are now seeing unmistakable signs of climate change in the form of floods, fires, droughts and pestilence which is doing a very good job of convincing people that climate change has arrived.

Mon, 2021-07-12 13:58

kropotkin1951

I think Pondering you are under estimating the effects on the eco-systems in various regions. A coast with no shellfish is no coast at all. The recent climate change furnace that descended on the West Coast had effects that are truly frightening. Climate chaos is upon us. In the 1980's intelligent scientists knew we had to change by 2020 but we used the nicer modeling predictions that showed us warming might occur slower and the effects would not be quite as bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZipe3b37Tk

Mon, 2021-07-12 15:32

(Reply to #7) #8

Pondering

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I think Pondering you are under estimating the effects on the eco-systems in various regions. A coast with no shellfish is no coast at all. The recent climate change furnace that descended on the West Coast had effects that are truly frightening. Climate chaos is upon us. In the 1980's intelligent scientists knew we had to change by 2020 but we used the nicer modeling predictions that showed us warming might occur slower and the effects would not be quite as bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZipe3b37Tk

And every single year for at least the next 40 years, probably 60, it will get worse. Exponentially worse. Even if we stop burning oil 100% today.

I just don't believe our standard of living is as closely tied to burning oil as the oil industry tries to convince us.

There are many who argue that greening the economy will be a huge economic boom and I find that argument at least as convincing as predictions of economic collapse.

Ever since money was disconnected from gold reserves it's worth whatever we say it's worth. The US has "printed" so much money over the past decade that inflation should be rampant but it isn't. It is in the best interests of the western world that the dollar remains strong so it will.

Sure we have all sorts of complex global finance arrangements or laws, all of which we can change whenever they don't suit the US.

I'm not saying no one will suffer. Many Canadians may suffer. But overall Canada is in a position to flourish. Wealth is set to flood the country. We will have to send water to the US but the continent is a fortress containing all the resources to sustain life and much more. North American doesn't need to import one damn thing to make anything known to mankind.

Aside from climate change of course, I think the greatest threat to NA is white supremacy. Trump came frighteningly close to winning a second term. Unfortunately I think the movement is set to grow. It will take concentrated effort to stop it and even then it could get worse.

By 2050 whites will be a plurality not a majority in NA. Probably faster in Canada. Whites will still have the most power for awhile but that is changing and will continue to change. They are right that "whites" are being replaced. We don't have enough babies to replace our population so we need ever increasing immigration to support economic growth. This is also true in Quebec. It is inevidable that our euro-dominent culture will become an American/International culture, I hope more international than American.

Racism will be lessened if we do well economically. Racism always increases when times are bad.

People want to act on climate change. You say we don't understand. We understand. Most thinking people are stunned and afraid. This is good news for the NDP and the Greens. Bad news for Conservatives. Mixed news for the Liberals. The Liberals have hung their hat on balancing the economy and the environment.

I predict a surge for the NDP and the Greens will either hold steady or rise. This is going to impact views on trans-mountain.

On what do people base their assumption that greening the economy means reducing our standard of living in Canada? We can reduce consumption dramatically without lowering our standard of living as a country. Oil producing provinces will have a rough ride but Ontario and Quebec will be fine. Same for BC. As a whole our standard of living will be just fine. We are going to suffer from climate change but not as badly as other places in the world.

I think that not greening the economy will lower our standard of living. Greening the economy is what will save it.

Mon, 2021-07-12 16:07

(Reply to #8) #9

jerrym

Pondering wrote:

Even if we stop burning oil 100% today.

I just don't believe our standard of living is as closely tied to burning oil as the oil industry tries to convince us.

The problem is that we did not convert away from the oil industry much earlier. Now the problem is we cannot effect changes fast enough to avoid a major downturn in our economy as global warming hits home with ever greater impact. Even if we stop burning oil 100% today. Just look at what is happening around the world right now. And I have not included every major impact that is already occuring.

CBC is reporting that 283 wildfires are burning in BC, including 97 new ones in the last two days. In addition to destroying Lytton in the last two weeks, wildfires have threatened or are threatening the communities of Kamloops, Vernon, Castlegar, Whitecroft, Sparks Lake, and Coldstream. In California the temperature reached 54.4 C (130 F), which matches the highest temperature recorded on the planet since 1931 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/09/death-valley-record-hi...). The California "air was so dry that some of the water dropped by aircraft evaporated before reaching the ground" (https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/california-wildfires-heath-wave-west-coast...). The entire west coast is seeing another scorching heatwave while "Tropical Storm Elsa hit the New York City region with torrential rains and high winds as it churned up the East Coast on Friday with a tropical storm warning in effect from Southern New Jersey to Boston" with wind gusts "expected over portions of Atlantic Canada" (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/9/storm-elsa-soaks-us-east-coast-h...). In New York, the torrential rains flooded subway stations. In Michigan, there was four to eight inches of torrential rain that was "part of a yo-yo precipitation pattern Michigan has seen in the last five years" that "will likely become common as the climate continues to warm" said Jim Maczko, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service station in Grand Rapids. (https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2021/06/28/why-michigan-f...) As noted in the last post, "Any hope of reaching global climate goals depends on reining in deforestation in Brazil. But any hope of reining in deforestation depends on Bolsonaro".(https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jair-bolsonaro-r...) Yet he is continuing to destroy the Amazon rainforest at an extremely alarming rate. In Madagascar, the U.N.’s World Food Programme warns the climate crisis has pushed over 1 million people “to the very edge of starvation” as the country has seen a series of severe droughts. (https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/25/headlines/biden_administration_ba...) "Disaster displacement figures were the highest in a decade. More than 98 per cent of the 30.7 million new displacements in 2020 were the result of weather-related hazards such as storms and floods and concentrated in East Asia and Pacific and South Asia." (https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/environmental_migration_and_stati...)

Siberia has also hit a record temperature of 38 C for anywhere above the Arctic Circle and the permafrost around the world from Siberia to Canada is melting at an accelerating rate. Since it contains nearly twice the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, that will further greatly accelerate global warming and bring even much greater devastation.

We can no longer afford arguments about who should pay for or act to arrest climate change. In 2011, the representatives of the US at a climate change conference argued that China must pay a large share to fight climate change while China argued that the US should pay because it has released carbon dioxide for a longer time. After 45 minutes of arguing back and forth, Prime Minister Nasheed of the Maldives said it didn't matter who paid, but if nothing was done, his island nation, which has a highest elevation of 4 m, would disappear. We are now at that point for the entire world. Canada, the US, China, Russia, India, etc. governments all need to start working on this before now before we totally fry this planet. We are out of runway.

Mon, 2021-07-12 17:11

#10

kropotkin1951

"On what do people base their assumption that greening the economy means reducing our standard of living in Canada? We can reduce consumption dramatically without lowering our standard of living as a country. Oil producing provinces will have a rough ride but Ontario and Quebec will be fine. Same for BC. As a whole our standard of living will be just fine. We are going to suffer from climate change but not as badly as other places in the world."

Pondering the point I was making is that you can't eat money. There is no wealth available on a dead planet and I am afraid that the extinction train has already left the station and is just shunting on to the main track to pick up speed. Some humanity might survive but the idea that Canada by and large will come out okay is IMO extremely optimistic to the point of wilful blindness.

Both Trudeau and Horgan are building pipelines and providing multiple layers of subsidies to the oil and gas industry. They both claim to be climate change fighters and environmentalists. The only alternatives that have any chance of forming government are the BC Liberals or federal Conservatives so I have little hope that politics can fix our descent into the abyss.

Mon, 2021-07-12 22:29

(Reply to #10) #11

Pondering

Me:

"On what do people base their assumption that greening the economy means reducing our standard of living in Canada? We can reduce consumption dramatically without lowering our standard of living as a country. Oil producing provinces will have a rough ride but Ontario and Quebec will be fine. Same for BC. As a whole our standard of living will be just fine. We are going to suffer from climate change but not as badly as other places in the world."

kropotkin1951 wrote:
Pondering the point I was making is that you can't eat money. There is no wealth available on a dead planet and I am afraid that the extinction train has already left the station and is just shunting on to the main track to pick up speed. Some humanity might survive but the idea that Canada by and large will come out okay is IMO extremely optimistic to the point of wilful blindness.

Climate change will continue for the next 4 decades or so no matter what we do but if we act now and over the next decade we are far more likely to maintain our standard of living than if we don't act.

I am all for honesty, but the right wing message that greening the economy will hurt our standard of living is not helpful in convincing people to act. It is quite possible our standard of living will be hurt at this point no matter what we do. In my opinion our standard of living will suffer more the longer we fail to act.

Greening the economy is good for the economy not bad for the economy.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Both Trudeau and Horgan are building pipelines and providing multiple layers of subsidies to the oil and gas industry. They both claim to be climate change fighters and environmentalists. The only alternatives that have any chance of forming government are the BC Liberals or federal Conservatives so I have little hope that politics can fix our descent into the abyss.

[/quote]

Not any more. The Conservatives are out of the running. Federally they will never win another election in Canada, not that neoliberalism needs them. The Liberals fill in quite nicely. They are good cop bad cop.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-tories-across-the-nation-co...

It is entirely possible that it is a strong NDP showing that deprives Trudeau of his majority – a result that many Conservatives would privately consider a victory.

The only certainty at this point is that all the parties are flying blind when it comes to the real mood in the country. Are buoyant Liberal polling numbers based on post-pandemic euphoria that might go flat, like Champagne left out overnight? Or has Trudeau tapped into the spirit of the times, a development that might threaten the Conservatives’ status as the Official Opposition in the House of Commons?

The implication there is that the Conservatives are so far out of step that the NDP could become the official opposition. I doubt that will happen this election but the fact that MSM on the right is acknowledging this is very significant.

As you have noted we are seeing dramatic changes beyond anything we have experienced so far. Those changes are driving sentiment to the left. You can see what is going on with the Green Party. Even if Paul survives this vote she will fail the leadership review. As the clear runner-up with lots of strong support Lascaris is the most likely to win the next leadership race. That will give him a voice on the national stage.

Tue, 2021-07-13 00:38

#12

kropotkin1951

Greening the economy is not going to destroy the economy, climate chaos is going to destroy everything including the economy and its not going to take another twenty years. Some people in some parts of the world might survive in pockets of livable habit, like at the end of the ice age.

I have been hoping that this little piece of temperate rain forest might provide such an oasis which is why I am now literally experiencing traumatic shock. The sea creatures that nurtured the indigenous cultures around the Salish Sea for over ten thousand years are baking in the heat. I can see the foothills above my town being clear cut and that is going on all over the Island. It used to be that forestry on the Island was a renewable resource because the trees grow back. However with the new climate I don't see how we can grow a rain forest again. I think we end up in forty years looking a lot like pictures of northeastern Turkey. My NDP government is subsidizing the oil and gas industry at something like double the rate that the pro-business BC Liberal's did. We are so fucking fucked.

Tue, 2021-07-13 02:46

#13

NDPP

Billionaires go to space as millions go hungry

https://youtu.be/8h4FI8b43uk

Oxfam warns of a hidden hunger pandemic that could be much worse than Covid-19. Currently the world averages 11 people starving to death every minute of every day, and while most of the world is boiling with covid and without vaccines, Canada has reportedly ordered enough to do its population 5 times over.

During the Nazi holocaust, some privileged inmates were tasked with helping the SS unload incoming boxcars of inmates to the deathcamp Auschwitz. They were also required to search for and turn in any hidden jewelry or other valuables discovered. For this they were apparently allowed to keep much of the food they found. These workers were referred to as the 'Canada Kommando' because they were so highly privileged by comparison with other inmates who were starving.

Perhaps the story resonates for others as it does for me regarding Canada's relative privilege in the world, how it became that way and what it does to keep it so.

Tue, 2021-07-13 09:02

#14

Pondering

Okay, I get why so many people go right. If we are doomed then there is no point in trying. Might as well just have fun for the time that is left.

Tue, 2021-07-13 13:56

#15

Edzell

Left? Right?

Left, right, left, right ... marching into disaster, waving our political banners and bleating our partisan rhetoric.

Tue, 2021-07-13 17:05

#16

lagatta4

I really wish we would refrain from using the term "Fortress North America". It has very isolationist, rightwing origins. And strangely, refers only to the US and Canada, though there are far more people in Mexico than in Canada...

Tue, 2021-07-13 17:08

(Reply to #16) #17

kropotkin1951

lagatta4 wrote:

I really wish we would refrain from using the term "Fortress North America". It has very isolationist, rightwing origins. And strangely, refers only to the US and Canada, though there are far more people in Mexico than in Canada...

I don't want to be in a fortress with the POTUS and his seventeen security agencies in charge.

Tue, 2021-07-13 23:58

(Reply to #17) #18

Pondering

lagatta4 wrote:

I really wish we would refrain from using the term "Fortress North America". It has very isolationist, rightwing origins. And strangely, refers only to the US and Canada, though there are far more people in Mexico than in Canada...

It is very right wing. I'm not promoting it. I'm just saying at this time it exists and will continue to exist under the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP.

Even if Lascaris takes over the Green Party and is someday elected PM he won't be able to do anything about it. The US has the biggest military in the world by far and we share the longest undefended border in the world. Under Lascaris we would withdraw funds from the military but whether or not we belong to NORAD the US will still be surveiling Canadian airspace and will still shoot down any threats.

Mexico is and will continue to be a buffer zone.

In my opinion, sovereign nation or not, we have no choice. We can be part of NORAD so maybe have some input or we can quit NORAD and the US will go it alone and "protect" us whether we like it or not.